Honestly from the point where

…he lost all my sympathy. I was increasingly curious about how things were going to go wrong for him. More fascinating train wreck, less investment in him personally.

Same here. Back before that I was basically only on reddit. Now I’m only on fediverse. One (anti-)social media is more than enough.

The main thing with db0 as opposed to other instances is that it:

a) also caters to another crowd (FOSS enthusiasts)

b) doesn’t suffer (at least from whay I’ve seen) from censorship problems. Db0, the owner, isn’t auth far left (tankie) but anarchist and seems pretty reasonable.

c) Actually has a sign-up process (which means fewer people choose it)

d) Has a lot of big comms in software due to early arrival and not doing stupid things.

I myself have an acc there, mostly due to foss interest.

As everyone else has said, mostly convenience. Easier parking, quicker leaving, generally safer. If I’m early to work I’ll “drive-through” an empty spot to park with the nose outwards. The rearview mirrors make it very easy to keep track of where your car is going.

Occasionally I’ve also managed to do some stupidly tight parking jobs where I literally had to climb out of the trunk :)

Yeah idk. It’s one of those things I fix into proper sentence structuring when I feel like writing more formally. Otherwise there may just be random parenthesis (like this with interesting thoughts) cluttered in occasionally - sorta lazy.

Agreed - all Ghibli movies are beautiful in their own right, but taking that cinematic mastery and applying it in what is essentially a film about the tragedies of war?

Shivers.

I feel this so much in my 90s hatchback :'(

The SUV plague is a european phenomenon too.

…or you can be coding assembler - it’s all just bits to me

At least in my country, this is already the norm. If it can’t be used as food for humans in one way or another it can be used in countless otber contexts such as animal feed or fuel via biogas or biodiesel. Same applies to food waste from shops, restaurants and households.

Nothing goes to waste.

Of course not, and even many objects should, at least in my opinion, be treated with some respect. I mostly agree with what you’ve written here.

To act as though we are above them

In my opinion, it is precisely because we are above them that we (or at least many of us) abhor unnecessary suffering and waste. The wolf however does not care when it slaughters a whole herd of sheep to eat just their livers and leave the rest to rot, neither does it hesitate to kill the zookeeper that has fed it for a decade when they slip up for just a moment.

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Like deciding what animals live and die?

Yup, in most cases it is the owners of said animals that decide what happens to them, like with other property. The government trying to force (or prevent) putting an animal down would also be overreach.

The exceptions when it comes to property rights are generally when human beings are somehow endangered, which is where most rights and freedoms, sensibly, are limited.

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I expect you’d have a rather different stance if it was advertising for something you enjoy in life that was being singled out and banned.

It’d be very different if it was a blanket ban on all advertisement in these contexts, but it isn’t. It’s the government trying to decide what people eat.

I wouldn’t be opposed to blanket bans on advertisingin certain contexts. This however is the state going nanny on the populace.

Yikes, how is that supposed to be uplifting? Sounds a whole lot like authoritarian overreach. Let people decide for themselves what they do and don’t want to eat.

Not really. The Fediverse has a slant towards american left/far left and moderation tends to reflect this in larger communities. Particularly the americentrism and hostility to different perspectives can make it difficult to have meaningful discussions on certain topics.

(For context, I’d be impressed if I have more than ~30 countrymen active in the fediverse)

Here’s a few reasons:

• Not funny

• Not nuanced

• Bad art

• Comes off as smug/condescending (author)

• Makes fun of/disparages broad groups of people

• Assigns positions that people don’t agree with to labels they identify with.

Etc. Etc.

Honestly, I would recommend not books on atheism per se, but rather ones exploring non-theistic philosophy. Schools of thought amongst atheists and agnostics are just as diverse, if not more so than amongst theists. My world view is made up of many things, humanitarianism, empiricism and so forth. Ideas that build a foundation.

There is also the more emotional side, finding beauty and purpose in life. Personally I find myself coming back to the works of Carl Sagan, particularly “The pale blue dot”. Capturing, at least for me, a lot of essence.

Here is a short excerpt that he read. Just, wow.

Idk if I’d call it 5d chess, more like a showman that uses drama with the intent of social manipulation without any scruples. That’s how he managed to win both the 2016 & 2024 elections.