First, I think it would be to your benefit to investigate whether this project of yours was even interesting to your grandparents. Youve shared your interpretation of the situation (they are practically homebound and may be missing out on some experience with the wider world), and it seems reasonable, but it does not account for their perspective. They may not be missing anything about the wider world. Or, maybe they are missing some aspect of it, but don’t view “digital tourism” as a valid substitute. Most likely though, they’re just pleased their grandchild is visiting and want to focus on that, rather than the TV or computer.

As an illustrative example, imagine an introvert and extrovert coworkers. The extrovert discovers the introvert has no weekend plans, and assumes that they must be lonely or sad. They, with the noblest of intentions, try to cajole their colleague into going out on Friday night. The introvert, who has been looking forward to finally being able to settle into their latest novel, is upset that the extrovert is projecting a void onto their lives that they don’t see as a void at all.

I’m not saying that that is what’s occurring here, and obviously you know your grandparents better than strangers on the internet, but I do think it’s a possibility that should be investigated before you commit to any plan.

Not an option for most, I’d wager. Federal employees are free to unionize, however it is a felony crime for a federal employee to strike against the government. Furthermore, it’s a felony to even assert that this is right you have, or to join an organization which asserts that right. The government’s HR department, the Office of Personnel Management, is able to bar any person who violates these provisions from federal employment for life.

Laws more or less to this effect have been on the books since the 40s and 50s, but the issue came to a head in the early 80s when thousands of air traffic controllers went on strike against the FAA after contract negotiations fell through. Reagan ordered the controllers back to work, and, when they refused, summarily fired them. Where they couldn’t be replaced be scabs, he activated the military to fill in, citing national security. According to the last article I read, of the 13,000 striking employees, 11,000 were fired and barred from future employment (though I think Clinton rolled some of that back in the 90s).

Considering it’s clear that the GOP benefits from government dysfunction, and does everything they can to erode public faith in institutions, striking postal workers would be a gift served on a silver platter for them. Trump will giddily fire every last one of the strikers, be praised for being a big strong man who doesn’t negotiate with plebs, and the postal service will be de facto shutter, even if it still exists in as diminished a form as they can get away with while still satisfying whatever requirements there are to have such an institution.

Obviously striking always carries risk, but asking someone to almost certainly throw away their livelihoods for a course of action that will likely only accelerate Trump et al.'s goals is unreasonable.

Haha I had a similar experience this year. I knew of Farscape when it was airing, but I was much more of a Stargate fan in my teens. Saw it was streaming earlier this year and proceeded through 2 seasons and some change before it was made unavailable on the streaming platform I was using. I need to obtain the rest of the series so I can begin cranking out the memes.

To be clear, the weirdos who prefer their sci Fi with Muppets and bondage gear is me. I’m weirdos.

That’s a little reductive. The Division is a primarily PVE looter shooter with MMO trappings. Rainbow 6 is a competitive hero shooter with emphasis on quick kills and gadgets. Ghost Recon is an open world action game with emphasis on stealth.

Don’t get me wrong, “Ubisoft game” could be its own genre at this point, considering the amount of mechanical overlap in some areas, but most of those products do offer generally distinct gameplay experiences. Though, it does seem like Rainbow 6 and xDefiant would be positioned as rivals in market share, upon reflection.

Man, it seems like it might fall to me to start carrying the torch for Farscape on this platform.

I know some of you weirdos prefer your scifi full of Muppets and bondage gear.

Losing money absolutely does provoke murderous rage, in some people. That’s how we wound up living in a reality with billionaires to begin with.

Well some smart arse put up a sign that said “1 robber occupancy max” and now they’re all queued up outside the urine depository. Haven’t moved in days .

They link their source in the article, and the source has a FAQ which has their methodology explained in the first question. You are capable of looking at market, you just need to, y’know…look.

In short, they are among the 867 partners on your favorite website who want to install cookies on your browser for analytics. OS info is included in what it reports back home.

But not impossible! Don’t let your dreams be dreams.

Whether it’s and advantage or not depends on your perspective. If you want the fediverse to supplant Big Tech, then no, having a culture which is not welcoming of outsiders is not an advantantage.

However, if you happen to be a part of Lemmy’s “in-group”, you probably don’t want a bunch of “normies” flooding in and cluttering up your feed with what you consider to be low effort shitposts, or starting drama in the comments. In that sense, maintaining a barrier to entry is an advantage because, in this mindset, if they can’t be bothered to wrap their head around a slightly more complex signup than usual, than they weren’t going to be good members of this community.

Perhaps some will disagree with my interpretation of the two popes (I meant poles, but I’m keeping the typo) of users here. To be clear, I’m not ascribing a value judgment to either position. I think both have valid points, and, frankly, I’m not sure where I come down on it.

I think Cormac McCarthy’s The Road may fit the bill a little bit as far as “hard post-apocalyptic”. I can’t say for sure, as I didn’t finish the book. I found it to be too depressing at the time. Which, duh, but it goes to show that the author is uninterested in the power fantasy that often accompanies the genre.

I mean bag on the pledge of allegiance all you like, but using the flag as a synecdoche of the nation as a whole doesn’t seem like it is as great a leap of logic as you are making it out to be.

Jeezy Creezy, I didn’t realize it was so important.

Why do I sound like James Mason…?

I’m speculating, but I believe that’s a portmanteau of “gut” and “cunt”…

I’m lucky enough to work for an organization which furnishes me with up to 4 hours of paid leave to vote. Plus, my polling place is on the road home, and I’ve never waited longer than a couple of minutes to vote. Finally, doing it in person feels more impactful, even if that’s just a perception thing.

I think you’ve got an admirably optimistic outlook. I hope you’re correct. However, I am afraid that you may be underestimating human greed and selfishness. Those aren’t unique traits to any generation. Maybe it’s human nature, maybe it’s learned through existence in a capitalistic / hierarchically organized society. In any case, I am not confident that youth alone will prevent people from seeing the kind of country and world that was left to them, as you put it, and not desire to possess as much of the remnants as possible in an outburst of self-interest.

For every person that sees the ice caps melting and wants to fix it somehow, I’m afraid there’s almost certainly at least one other person who thinks, “Hell yeah, new oceanfront property just dropped, how can I own/sell it?”

COULD be a big deal, assuming a lot of “ifs” wind up coming to pass. Nebraska awards it’s electoral college votes on a piecemeal basis. Each of the 3 congressional districts gets 1 vote awarded to the winner of the popular vote in that district, and 2 “at-large” electoral votes are given to the overall winner of the statewide popular vote. This has only been relevant in two elections, 2008 and 2020, when the second district (which is basically just the Omaha metropolitan area) awarded 1 blue vote among a sea of red. Now, the state Republican party (no doubt assisted by national) did their damnedest to try and make things Winner Take All to prevent this situation from occurring again, but were unable to court the votes necessary in the legislature prior to time running out. In fact, all around town I see folks with signs in their yards with either a 🔵 to represent our district, or a silhouette of the state all in red, to represent the electoral voice of this district being silenced (probably not how they look at it, but my biases are what they are).

I’m too far removed from electoral news to understand exactly how this all shakes out, but there is a possible path to it being decided by a singular electoral college votes, and the influx of 100,000 potential voters with a possible (I’m speculating, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable) blue bias in primarily CD-1 and CD-2 could help secure that vote.

I am highly skeptical that anyone expected this to make it’s budget back. Coppola financed it himself, and, apparently, marketed it himself. Honestly, were I in his position, I’d throw anyone seeking to provide “more oversight” off of my movie set. Not to say that that makes for better movies or anything, but when the artist provides the money, they get to oversee themselves for better or worse.

Continue to be thankful. I made some boneheaded choices in college which resulted in my throwing away a full ride, and I left school with like 80k in debt. Thankfully, I am much more fiscally responsible than I was academically responsible, and I managed to pay that off over the course of like 7 years (aided in no small part by the forbearance periods Biden forced through during COVID). Which is good, because more boneheaded choices were made which resulted in a significant change to my financial situation. If I were still making payments at this juncture, I would be in a position where I’d be moving back into mom’s basement just to make ends meet.

Not that there is anything inherently shameful in that (it’s fucking hard out here, and if that’s a resource that you have available, it should not be turned away simply because of pride), but it does cause me to wake every morning pleased I didn’t listen to any “financial gurus” out there who talk about shit like “good debt”.

As neat and tidy as your explanation is, I think you are vastly oversimplifying the concept.

You say the moon is real because you can see it, and you can prove it’s there by telling other people to just go look at it. Alrighty then, I’ve seen bigfoot. In fact, lots of people say they’ve seen bigfoot. Therefore he must exist too, right? The photos “prove” his existence just as much as you pointing to the sky saying the moon exists cause there it is.

Now, I realize that there’s probably some degree of hyperbole in your statement, so I’ll walk this back a little. If the defining metric of your separation between these concepts is whether the hypothesis can be proven through experimentation, that’s all well and good. However, I would argue that, in 99.9% of cases, it’s still a belief statement. Let’s continue with the moon example, but, rather than “seeing is knowing”, let’s apply the same standard that you applied to God. So, you “know” the moon exists, not just because you can see it, but because it’s existence can be empirically proven through experimentation. What sort of experiments would you conduct to do that, exactly? Have you done those experiments? Or, like the rest of the rational world, do you accept that scientists have done those experiments already and decided, yup, moon’s there? Cause, if you’re taking someone else’s word for it, do you personally “know” what they are saying is true, or do you believe them based upon their credentials, the credentials of those who support the argument, and your own personal beliefs/knowledge?

As another example, let’s imagine for a sec we’re philosophers/scientists of the ancient world. I have a theory that the heavier something is, the faster it will fall. You may know where I’m going with this if you remember your elementary school science classes. I believe in the power of experimental evidence, and so, to test my theory, I climb to the top of the Acropolis and drop a feather and a rock. The feather falls much more slowly than the rock. Eureka, I’ve proved my theory and therefore I now KNOW that an object’s weight affects its fall.

Now, anyone not born in 850 BC Athens in this thread will point out that it’s a flawed experiment, since I’m not controlling for air resistance, and if you conducted the same experiment in a vacuum chamber, both objects would fall at the the same rate. However, the technology to test my hypothesis with all of the salient variables controlled did not exist at that time. So, even though it’s now widely known that my experiment was flawed, it wouldn’t have been at the time, and I would have the data to back up my theory. I could simply say try it yourself, it’s a self-evident fact.

Finally, your statement about subjectivity of definition being an obstacle to functional language is so alarmist as to border on ridiculous. If this question were “how do you personally define the distinction between ‘yes’ and ‘no’”, then sure I can get on board a little bit more with your point. However this is much more like ‘twilight’ vs ‘dusk’. Crack open a dictionary and you’ll find that there is a stark, objective distinction between those terms, much as you pointed out that belief and knowledge have very different definitions. For the record, since I had to look it up to ensure I wasn’t telling tales here, sunset is the moment the sun finishes crossing the horizon, twilight is the period between sunset and dusk when light is still in the sky but the sun is not, and dusk is the moment the sun is 18 degrees below the horizon. So, I know that these are unique terms with specific, mutually exclusive definitions. But let me tell you something, I believe that if I randomly substituted one term for another based purely on my personal whimsy, people are gonna get what I mean regardless.