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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 9th, 2023

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  • Yeah, I hate the interfaces, but especially the super-loud non-mutable beeps which seem to be common on every model I’ve seen. My two-burner induction setup has analog knobs for temp control, which is awesome, but it stills beep when you turn them, with every single temperature increase. Drives me crazy.

    I’ll never go back to gas though. My new apartment came with a gorgeous brand new gas range, and it absolutely sucks compared to my $50 countertop induction.


  • I think you are underestimating the power of empathy. I mean this constructively, not as an attack. In my opinion, it’s the single most important emotion for leading a fulfilling life, maintaining healthy relationships, and contributing to and living in a healthy society. The cool thing about empathy is that almost everyone can learn how to do it, even if it doesn’t come naturally. Think of it like a muscle you need to exercise. If you don’t use it regularly, your abilities can atrophy.

    You’ve already recognized that you’re not great at empathy, which shows that you are capable of self-awareness, which is huge! The next step is just to find a way to turn that awareness inside out and put yourself in other peoples’ shoes.

    The fact that you’re wrestling with the issues you bring up, shows me that you do care about these things. So I think it could be valuable to interrogate what specific things you do and don’t care about when it comes to all the things you mentioned. If you do that with empathy for others always in mind, I think most of your concerns will resolve themselves.

    Cultivating Empathy




  • Since this community is for any kind of question, I’ll answer, but I get the vague sense that you don’t really want a genuine answer, based on the inherent bias you included in the question (calling someone older than 20 a hag is pretty uncool, for example).

    But here goes: people have different tastes. Different things turn on different people, and your lack of experience being aroused by older women says nothing about the legitimacy of those who are. Also being 21 for example, is still considered very young by most people. Your question presumes that everybody in the world must only be attracted to very young women, and frankly that’s a bit strange and just not how the world works.

    Try to put yourself in some other people’s shoes, and I think this question would answer itself. Your sexual preferences are not everyone’s preferences.



  • Bernie has compromised on some issues, like a good politician should. Nearly everybody else has compromised their integrity and the offices they hold with corrupt behavior. There’s a huge difference.

    Effective politics/government doesn’t exist without compromise. America was founded on compromises, some of which were morally reprehensible, some of which were just about the structure of the nation and its government. A huge caveat of course, is that compromise only works when there are at least two groups equally willing to concede something big enough to reach a resolution.

    Without the ability to compromise all we’re left with is tyranny.


  • To clarify, this is because the arbitrary deadline for feds to accept the “offer” is Thursday, and there are a lot of frightened people out there who think this might be their best option. I’ve spoken to a number of federal employees about this, and none of them are convinced there’s any reason OPM will actually honor the severance pay promised in the email, so they’re just going to wait to be fired and potentially lose out on a ton of severance pay. I think that’s the right call though, at least for those who can afford it.

    There was no legal foundation for this “fork,” but agencies can’t reject it since it came from their HR overlords. All the communications about this “offer” have been extremely vague with no specific instructions, guidance, or guarantees. I’m willing to bet they’ll renege on the deal (why wouldn’t they?) and everyone will have to wait and see what the Supreme Court ultimately says about it months after the damage has already been done and careers and livelihoods have been ruined.


  • I was responding to the comment above (and lots of other chatter like this), which said “people voted for Musk” which is just not true. And like you said, the people don’t vote for the cabinet, they vote for the person who nominates cabinet members. It’s useful to point out because these distinctions have real-world consequences. Musk is a what’s called a “Special Government Employee,” which is an unelected position.


  • I don’t want to be pedantic, but okay I will. Musk wasn’t on any ballot. Not a single person voted for an individual named Elon Musk. It wasn’t an option. Enough people voted for Trump and Vance for them to win, but they were the only two on the ballot. It may seem like a distinction without a difference, because Musk functionally has an insane amount of power and influence, but that power was delegated to him by the person that people actually voted for, which is how our government works. People might have voted for Trump hoping he would use Musk in this way, but they still only voted for Trump.

    I feel silly writing all that out, but these kinds of distinctions matter imo.


  • This is a pretty big disappointment imo, and shows that the party didn’t really listen to its voters or learn from the election in any meaningful way. He was the least interesting and compelling candidate. I wish they had gone for someone with an actual ideology and values that they’ve lived and acted on for years—like Faiz Shakir. This role is very important, and it would have been a great way to show us that Dems actually care about us, and not just the money. But nope, they’ve taken yet another opportunity to give power to a bland vanilla fundraiser who almost nobody has heard of.

    The race hinged more on the candidates’ organizing and fundraising resumes than on their postures regarding the ideological soul of the party, as it did in 2017, after President Donald Trump’s previous election win.




  • It’s a pattern of behavior. If a user spends their time nitpicking every minor detail of a comment, but seems to be incapable of understanding that other people have different ideas, or worse purposefully parses someone’s language incorrectly just to continue an argument back and forth without any progress or even a desire to see a resolution, only wanting to have the last word, I consider that to be trolling. Nobody has benefited from the interaction, and everybody leaves frustrated, annoyed, and only further entrenched in their original position.

    I think people have pretty different ideas of what behavior counts as trolling, but simply disagreeing with a user or not liking their posts doesn’t make them a troll.




  • Ehh I’d suggest feeling it out for yourself to be honest. I’ve had some great interactions on .ml communities, as well as .world communities. But also some hair-pulling insanity. That’s where some of the most active conversations happen, but that also means you’re more likely to encounter some trolls and some awful petulant fools. When you do, just unsubscribe from the community or block the user and you’re all set.

    Self-curation is one of my favorite things about Lemmy, and it’s why I like .ee as an instance, because it’s quite neutral and they let individual users choose what communities we want to see and don’t force decisions down our throats. The beauty of this place is that you can always switch instances or block communities and users you dislike, you just have to spend some time curating your experience.


  • I’ll elaborate. Clearly the part of the story that matters is that an important resource providing information on reproductive health was taken down for what seems like absurd and petty partisanship. Nonchalantly discarding resources that were built with our taxpayer dollars bugs the shit out of me, especially when it’s such critical information for a government to provide.

    I was just pointing out that a huge chunk of government work like designing, building, and maintaining websites for all the agencies, programs, departments, etc. is done by federal contractors, whose contracts are funded with our taxpayer dollars. And by taking down the website like it’s nothing, the administration is just tossing our money down the drain.

    These things are also expensive as all hell, way way too expensive, but that’s a different problem.