drphungky

Yes, this is an echo chamber. Yes, most things are very samey. You don’t see alternative opinions because this is a TINY community. Like crazy tiny. Lemmy has what, 60,000 active users? You know a ton of those are bots too. Even after a reddit exodus that site gets what, 2 million daily users*? So you’ve got a crazy small group but it’s also very similar in type of person who is here. It’s overwhelmingly educated middle aged men with a tech background or focus. So you’ve got a limited pool of opinions to draw on, and then EVEN if you do occasionally get a different opinion, even within that narrow band of experience it can get voted down or swarmed.

Look, I only lurk here occasionally, and I see stuff I disagree with constantly. I see stuff in this thread I disagree with. But I don’t post about it because it’s not worth it. I also don’t have time to argue a minority opinion on the internet, and my life is better since I stopped doing that. And I guarantee I’m not alone. But I ASSURE you this is a bubble.

…but if it makes you feel better though, most people live in bubbles. I have been lucky to grow up in a very different place than I live, and I’ve found that politically, most Americans absolutely talk past one another because they are incapable of understanding “the other side” because they’ve never truly talked to people on the other side or listened to them, much less lived with them and understood them. This isn’t enlightened centrist BS, I have a side I agree with, but I also don’t misrepresent the views of people I disagree with based on no actual knowledge. And with non politics it’s very similar - small groups beget small opinion spaces based on a small pool of experiences. Whether that’s cars or AI or Linux.

We used to get exposed to people with different life experiences and opinions in so-called “third places”, and we don’t have them anymore. Way fewer people go to chuch and the middle of the road protestant mainline has been subsumed. Social clubs like the elks and masons are far less popular. 12% of the population doesn’t serve in the military with a socioeconomic cross-cut. Kids don’t even have malls, sports start specializations early, and the Internet, almost worst of all, has made it easier than ever to get a social fix consuming only content from those most like you or what is algorithmically fed to you.

Anyway, things are bad, I do not have a solution, but I have a little bit of time and feel compelled to post when you are practically begging for unpopular opinions. So my unpopular opinion is holy shit is this place an echo chamber, and if you don’t feel that deep in your bones you need to immediately drive 2 hours outside of whatever city you live in and go to a pancake breakfast hosted by some local scout troop, go to some small town festival and talk to people, or hell go visit a church of a religion you don’t belong to. And don’t talk to people your own age, or same familial structure. Talk to someone who thinks voting is dumb. Talk to someone who doesn’t care which Linux distro you’re on because they don’t even HAVE a computer, they just have an iPad.

…and yes, realistically you’re probably not gonna make a connection that way without moving somewhere, and I’m obviously being mostly flippant, but at least don’t turn on conservative tiktok or watch Fox News and expect that to be “the other side”. Experiencing a different bubble is “growth” I guess, but people aren’t the bubbles they live in, and actually talking to them is a way better way to understand WHY we disagree, not just how. Again, like I said, I don’t have real solutions on how to do that. I just have the answer to your question and yes this place is a bubble.

*Note I’m pulling those numbers out of my ass, but I bet I’m close on orders of magnitude. And yes I know reddit is half bots too.

Yeah I don’t understand how this is different than headscale, but I’m very much not savvy on the pipes and tubes that make the Internet go round. Can anyone explain?

It’s worth noting that not only did I not have to create this meme, I didn’t have to Google that hard to find it.

“ARRRRROWED!!!”

“Ow, my skin!”

We got married in DC and saved so much money on locations. We booked the Jefferson memorial 6 months in advance for like $50 (saved a couple thousand), and a boathouse on the Potomac for $800 (saved 8-20 grand) because we knew someone - wedding still cost like 33k. We were so cognizant of cost too - no flowers at all, DJ instead of a band, bought our own booze, etc.

I think people don’t realize how much more expensive cities are, and also do a terrible job accounting for all the true costs of things. Food was obviously the bulk of it and other big things like booze, rings… But I kept impeccable records, and what really added up was the little $100 here, $300 there things. Hotel and plane tickets for destitute father-in-law, all the meals at restaurants you’re taste testing to see if you wanna have the rehearsal dinner there, tips, food while the bridal party is getting ready, gifts for bridal party, the officiant, etc etc.

I wouldn’t trade it for the money back because I’m notoriously cheap, so I pinched and saved and was super proud of our wedding’s price to quality ratio, but I’d be lying if I said the final tally wasn’t super painful and didn’t delay our house a bit. It worked out in the end, though. Thanks interest rates!

I just replaced the honk in my car today, so I can assure you they very much do.

In related news, Subaru has yet to do a recall on a very important safety device going bad, despite the Internet being awash with 2016-2018 Outbacks having bad clocksprings. At least it’s a relatively easy fix.

FreeCAD is free and parametric. It’s what I use after Fusion changed their subscriptions around. I don’t need to be forced into a subscription once I put in the time to learn how software works, thank you very much.

Chainmail bikinis

You mean women’s armor?

Walkabout mini golf and eleven table tennis are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. It is very literally unreal how unrealistic they are.

We had a Eufy baby monitor that was so bad (replaced three times when trying to update firmware, the fourth time it died it was due to a drop) that it has actually made me think less of Anker as a company. If they stick to that being their low quality bargain brand, maybe I’ll consider Anker again, but for now I’m out.

Yeah, it seems like they finally invested in firmware and software programmers. WAY fewer issues than back in the day, still amazing hardware quality.

On windows at least, that sort of already exists. You can hold down Alt and use 3 numpad numbers to “compose” any ASCII character you like. It’s fun!

Either the SAS survival handbook because it’d be one of the most useful books to have completely memorized, or maybe the Bible just to dunk on fundamentalists by quoting obscure passages that contradict each other.

Neither sounds super fun, but those are the first that come to mind.

Average American man is 5’9.3" (and has been around for a long time). So not only is the graph misleading it’s just wrong.

In case anyone was wondering, within America: White 5’10", Black 5’ 9", Asian and Hispanic around 5’7".

Don’t mention landlords, unless followed by “… deserve the guillotine.”

My wife and I laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe when creating a now-persistent universe with a rivalry between Fart U and Fart Tech.

And in case you were wondering where I stand…those damn ivy league farters would rather sit around and study farts than get out there and actually create. Fart Tech woo!

Hear hear! The government should completely get out of marriage and leave it to religion, or completely go in on encouraging marriage (actually domestic partnerships) between whoever if we think it’s going to be good for communities. Before Obergefell I would’ve said marriage is old, let religions have it. Encouraging people to take part in their community, have close ties with benefits like hospital visitation, tax breaks, etc should all be domestic partnership based, and we should’ve made everyone get domestic partnered - marriage should have conferred no civic benefits. As is, we have a weird hybrid religious and civic thing called marriage but at least everyone has access now.

But yeah as far as encouraging families we should do the same incentive wise with having kids and immigration to help with our birth rate problems, and continue trying to make home ownership more affordable (and more varied - looking at you missing middle housing) and encouraging it to again, incentivize investing in local communities. Civic policy like this stuff gets jumbled and we should be more clear about what we want to incentivize and why.

I am shocked I had to scroll this far to find someone saying this stuff exists. Literally look around on Lemmy, check the comment section of the Washington Post, like half of TikTok, a huge portion of twitter, etc. All of it full of angry radical liberals, actual communists, people crying for guillotines, deriding uneducated hicks and rednecks. Mocking all christians instead of just the fundamentalists, constantly deriding white men for existing, even just dumb infantile names (e.g. Repug-licans). Literally last night at my local college, some portion of protestors started calling for lynching college administrators. Now I’m not saying pro-palestinian protests are full of those people, just like the average liberal would be pretty ok with universal healthcare but miiiight not favor seizing the means of production or banning landlords. But even though these people are a minority, they’re just like the crazy right wingers - they are loud, and paint with the same wide brush that hardcore conservatives do, just using a different color.

And I want to be clear, this isn’t some enlightened centrism bullshit where I’m saying “both sides suck.” I am actually very, very left wing (though on Lemmy sometimes it seems like that makes me a moderate because I’m not calling for guillotining the rich, but I digress), and I probably agree with 90% of the angry people’s actual policy views. But at least anger and vitriol wise, and even a tiny portion of radical policy-wise, the fringe of “both sides” do kind of suck. Not everyone who is angry fits that profile (certainly I get angry thinking about climate change, but I’m not out there telling everyone who drives a truck they’re evil). But many people like that absolutely exist, and OP not seeing them likely is a result of our fractured echo chamber world, certainly not because they aren’t there and angry.

For weird shaped waves like this you can also visit Lake Erie any time of year. Shallows and shore shape and wind combine and you get some absolutely wild waves.

I was mad at you for calling me a boomer but then I saw my wife’s boobs so I feel better.