How so?

America’s relationship with guns is darkly fascinating for those of us in other ‘western’ countries. The cliche of the right-wing gun-nut is seemingly way off the mark. You guys have absolutely normalised gun ownership. It’s deeply entrenched in your culture and is married to civil liberty in a way that is alien to most other developed nations.

It seems that the state tempering gun ownership is widely viewed as an intrusive and sinister overreach, whereas for us allowing everyday people to own assault rifles etc would be viewed as a dangerous dereliction of duty by the government.

I totally get the appeal of firearms. We go “clay pigeon shooting” where I lived in the UK. It’s fun. But the idea that the average citizen could legally own a gun is wild to us.

Thoughts and prayers, brother. That is heartbreaking.

Hey! I have a tiny dick and a tiny car. Do I get a prize?

I just find these reductive generalisations a bit silly and divisive. As if anyone born between arbitrary years x and y is part of some sort of united collective that can reasonably critique everyone born between years v and w.

Just sucks me right back to a time in my teens. Such a seductive vibe, those discordant intro notes and that beat is almost psychodelic. Plus she’s so cool and attractive it hurts.

We did this ‘baby led weening’ stuff and, for a while, the sprogs would reach for the broccoli and other veggies. However, as soon as they were exposed to chicken dippers by the grand parents, all bets were off. To be fair, it wasn’t just them - society as a whole is not geared to providing nutritional meals to youngsters. We, of course, try to present them with balanced meals and sometimes they’ll grudgingly eat some of their veggies, but it feels like a loosing battle.

It really does. I had fried frog legs in Malaysia. Just like tiny chicken wings.

True. Of course, there are plenty of good traditions. Birthday cakes. Halloween. Christmas. Sometimes OCD can be useful.

I agree. In my case it was a necessity, so I spent a bit of time actively looking for a Reddit alternative.

I half-heartedly joined Lemmy on a random instance (is that what they’re called? I forget). Anyway, it was Lemmy.pl and it went offline for a bit before I could get anywhere with it.

I tried again with lemmy.world and then stumbled across Boost, which was my favourite app for Reddit before they locked everything down and forced everyone on to the inferior Reddit app.

Anyway, the experience now is great. Just like old times. I confess I’ve no real interest in the fediverse as such, although I’m of course greatful that others do and that it exists. I’m just glad to be able to easily interact with communities that seems to be free from oppressive moderation and cold, automated admins that ban longtime users for accidental missteps.

The slow but inevitable murder of platforms by their paymasters is a real pisser.

Feels like every platform starts well, expands and just gradually mutates into unusable corporate dogshit.

I think ‘that guy’ is phenomenally successful due to the weird and wildly superficial dating world tech has created.

I’m quite fortunate as I met my wife before the apps had taken over. Other than being reasonably tall and having a pulse, I am far from being that handsome dude.

But I did ok as I was brought up around women and have always used humour as a crutch since I was a kid, which I found women were responsive to when I grew up.

I doubt I’d have attracted any attention in the online dating world with my beer belly and average face.

Yeah, I was pretty vexed at first. I really tried. But then I figured I’d seen them back in the day and they likely wouldn’t have been as good. Of course, it turns out that they were better than anyone expected and the atmosphere at the gigs was apparently unparalleled.

There’s a lot of musical snobbery around and I get that people might find them derivative - they’re not insanely talented musicians and they’re lyrics aren’t the best. But some of those tunes are timeless and to be there belting them out with thousands of people just loving it would have been great.

Next time I’m definitely getting a ticket.

I have gout, which runs in my family (but I doubt the 90s pints helped). Therefore I was eating Ibuprofen like skittles for way too long to take the pain away. I finally relented and got on the meds after the diet and exercise didn’t fix it. Now I never take ibuprofen, and it makes me worry about how much damage I did to my organs and stomach lining while I was using it.