I don’t think normal people said it in the mid-to-late 90’s. Like, the Soviet Union was (seemingly) finishing splintering and there was war and strife but there was a sense the world could manage it through diplomacy. The Montréal Protocol was already showing success. Most new technology still seemed promising instead of dystopian.

I’m not saying anyone was right or that we’re actually in the end times. Most of history involves muddling through crises. But it felt like global strife was at a low point and we could actually achieve global consensus on important issues.

My personal opinion (as a dispassionate atheist) is that religion isn’t the problem with human nature. In the U.S., for instance, we have some Christians who have strayed so far, I don’t get how they’ve even seen a Bible verse. But also, basically every major Civil Rights leader was a Christian preacher or woman of faith. There are similar situations everywhere. There’s Buddhists who are so non-violent they wouldn’t kill a fly and other “Buddhists” who commit genocide, which doesn’t even make fucking sense.

So, my view of religion is that it’s mostly not the thing to focus on. People can be organized for good or evil and there’s plenty of secular things where people define an identity. I suspect if religion never existed, we’d have all the same problems. I mean, we have soccer hooligans and it’s not because people object to 22 people getting some exercise on a lovely afternoon. (Or a miserable, rainy Wednesday night in England.)

I get what you’re saying but I like that Lemmy has a left wing bias (with a dash of libertarians). If it was the dominant media site, I’d agree about the echo chamber risk but so much media (in the English speaking world, anyway) is under right wing ownership now. Having a handful of sites that are a refuge from it all is a feature for me, not a bug. It’s an escape from the echo chamber.

You’re not wrong but Tesla is probably more of a meme stock at this point. We might not be able to blame Wall Street for this one. There’s a lot of retail investors in Tesla stock because they think Elon is a super brain genius despite all evidence to the contrary.

It appears the world’s most divorced bozo is at it again.

Why do I need a reason?

Thanks for taking my joke literally and showing me a new search engine. That Google one seems pretty good. I’ve been using AltaVista and my BBS to find info but that’s way quicker.

Also, if you want to be a smart ass about it, use https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=dikfore

What’s the easiest EU country to emigrate to?

That report fails to take into account that the Cybertruck is already a wreck when it rolls off the assembly line.

Do bagels count as cake based on calorie count or bread based on texture/flavor or doughnuts based on shape?

When the pandemic happened, there were people who didn’t know how to make the easiest meals. I was shocked. So, my rule on recipes is that nothing is too basic.

It’s usually just to take a small amount of delicious oil or fat — whatever you have on hand — and saute diced onions with diced bell pepper (or local equivalent) until the onions are slightly transparent. Keep going if you want the onions start being brown and have a sweet flavor. That brown is just the natural sugars coming out of the onion and is what “caramelizes” means. Caramel is sugar. And then add garlic and/or ginger and whatever spices you like.

If you want to, add meat. If you don’t, do not. (Often, that very oil step is done from browning meat and not wasting the fat.)

If you want soup, add a lot of liquid and whatever and cook it slowly. If you want paella, jambalaya, jollof, biryani, or equivalent — every culture has a rice dish — use the rice recipe on the bag as if it were water. (Use stock if you have any but water works fine.)

There are dishes that are different. Like fried rice and French Toast use old rice and toast respectively. Baking is a science. But anyone can make a pot of delicious with a few ingredients and it’s a 10 minute, one pot meal.

Ok, I wrestled a cop and pinned him. What’s step 2? Please respond before his backup arrives.

Learn to cook the base of meals in different cultures. Like a Sofrito.

Most of the best classic dishes in the world really start with three or four ingredients and are just variations. You shouldn’t overthink it or buy rare ingredients. You’re better off picking one and mastering the basic steps. Learning to cook isn’t about learning to recreate a chef-cooked meal. It’s about learning to cook simple, cheap ingredients.

How will we ever figure out who has an STI without predictive A.I.? If only there were tests.

This is something Apple got right. OS X 10.0 was good and they’ve made lots of incremental changes but didn’t just arbitrarily change the whole “centered application dock at the bottom and menu bar at the top” situation. When new form factors emerged, they just made a new interface and didn’t try to hot glue a mouse/touchpad OS and touchscreen OS together for the fuck of it.

When I was in high school, I wrote a TI-86 program in BASIC to do geography/physics formulae. Like “find the volume of a cube” and then it would ask you for the variables and solve for whichever one was missing.

My teachers found out and actually ruled it not cheating because I wrote the program myself and hadn’t shared it with everyone. (I eventually became a computer programmer so they were probably right.)

So, I’d say by that precedent, as long as you gave yourself the tattoo and learned a new trade, it’s fine. But looking at a friend’s tattoo would be cheating.

For the most part, it’s probably better for me. I never really got into the big subreddits that make the front page anyway. It was mostly a place for me to nerd out on small, more academic or hobby subreddits anyway. (I’m a Linux user and software developer so that all pretty much transferred over here fine.)

I find the quality of posts/replies here to be better in terms of quality but, obviously, sometimes there’s fewer (or, worse, zero). I like Voyager as an app (or web interface if your instance supports it). And I’ll pretty much always accept the less and the more to support open standards/communities/software.

I switched over when I read an interview with the CEO — I think with The Verge — and figured it was over. It was obvious he was juicing numbers to go public and there was no point investing time on a platform that would only get worse for users.

Heritage Foundation is the main Republican “think tank.” When Republicans are out of power they hire people who they expect will return to power. When a politician writes a book no one gives a shit about, they buy copies in bulk to try to manipulate The NY Times best-seller list and make it seem popular. It’s just an arm of the Republican Party.

The equivalent for Democrats is the Center for American Progress. It’s not as evil but it’s also not a real think tank. (Real think tanks hire Ph D’s and produce academic-level work. Heritage and CAP are more like marketing companies masquerading as non-profits.)