They’re on Lemmy, why is that even a question?

Strippers or bartenders.

You aren’t over thinking it. For the reason(s) you stated, I would recommend against getting a dog right now until the underlying concerns are addressed.

Hopefully you will never have to experience a traumatic situation involving a larger dog, but if you do and you aren’t prepared, then you are at much higher risk of putting yourself or your companion animal in harm’s way or even making the situation worse than it would have been.

I’m a small dog owner. More than once I’ve had to kick or punch an out of control dog to keep my small dog safe. Running to safety is not always an option, and you cannot outrun a crazed monster singularly focused on murder when you’ve got to grab your dog first and/or carry it while running.

Honestly, a lot of pet owners are just plain terrible. The fact that you’re at least putting thought into this puts you orders of magnitude higher than sooooo many other potential pet owners. Unfortunately, those shitty owners seem to be everywhere.

I’m conflicted to call this the most terrifying thing I’ve experienced, just the first thing that comes to mind. And spooky just tends to be lame-ass fake ghost stories, but …

During a holiday break when I was in college, I was stalked by a bunch of guys who I’m pretty convinced were planning to harm me.

Campus was closed down for the holidays. I was stuck on campus. Aside from international students, almost nobody else was in the dorms. I decided to go for a walk and it turns out, so did one of my friends’ exes and some buddies of his who also stayed behind for the break.

As I was out walking, that dude and several other guys crested a hill ahead of me and started demanding I come talk to them. No polite language, just threats, slurs, and foul language. He’d dated my friend briefly, but during that time, found out I am gay. This was in the before times when LGBT+ folks were not widely accepted and this was considered to be acceptable behavior by large numbers of people.

I turned around and split off heading towards the campus cafeteria. Figured they wouldn’t follow me, but even if they did, I’d be heading towards safety. Well, they gave chase. Unbeknownst to me, the cafeteria was closed for the holidays. I was on my own. Too far away from my dorm to get to safety, and all the other buildings were locked up.

I ducked into the campus gardens and hid behind a bush. Those guys wandered around looking for me for quite a while, and then I stayed put for what felt like hours until I felt confident that they weren’t still lurking.

Learned my lesson, though, I guess. And at least I didn’t become a victim of violence.

It’s even more infuriating when I hard boil a bunch of eggs and about half of them peel pristinely clean, the other half end up looking like the surface of the moon. Ya’ll was in the same damn pot, what’s the excuse?

It’s Gremlins who cause the chaos in my household. But also, I’d like to find out more about this long lost and formerly unknown brother of mine.

I"m not sure of the context here, but literally since March 2020, there’s hardly a week or month that goes by where there’s not been some kind of shortage. Seems like it’s always something. Bird flu. Bad weather wiped out tomato crop. Fire at the mustard factory. Toilet paper shortage. Coffee fungus. And on and on and on.

Most recent in my area is spring onions. They have them in the stores, they look pitiful and have doubled or tripled in price.

Why not make it mandatory for 40 or 50 languages? Why not 100? Why not all languages?

In my poor, rural school district (growing up), Spanish was taught starting in kindergarten. In high school, grades 9 - 12, two semesters of foreign language were required to graduate (or you had to demonstrate you qualified for an exception such as that you were already at least bilingual). The school offered French and Spanish. The only reason French was even an option is because of one special teacher, whom we were lucky to have, had a degree in French language arts or something like that. Other schools in the area only had Spanish.

You’ll probably recognize this when you’re older, but nearly everything in life is a balance of constraints and concerns. Teaching languages costs money, often in short supply, and requires qualified educators, often in short supply.

But also, what the hell do you even mean “upper hand when traveling”? I’d be shocked if most non-bilingual Americans who went through the education system in the USA spend more than 1 or 2 weeks in their entire lives some place where being bilingual would give them some kind of upper hand.

One might argue that Spanish alone would probably cover an enormous amount of those who have spent more than 1 or 2 weeks outside of English speaking parts of the world. But it all seems like an enormous waste of time and energy and resources just to make sure the most privileged amongst us have “the upper hand” when they travel. That’s time and energy and resources that could probably be more wisely spent elsewhere to be honest, and for those privileged folks who have the luxury of traveling and need “the upper hand” – they can turn in their privilege bucks and pay for their own education to learn 3 or 4 languages, I would think? Perhaps they could cut back to only 4 trips to Italy this year and use the savings for some lessons on how to speak Italian.

I haven’t read all the comments in here, and probably won’t. But based on what I’ve seen so far, I’ll be the contrarian.

I first started actively participating on Lemmy maybe a few months before the API debacle, but I’d also been checking the place out a bit for a few months before even signing up.

This place was A LOT kinder then. Users were more apt to stand up for each other and call out bad behavior. Someone called another person a “fucking idiot” over an inconsequential difference of opinion and multiple people would be on top of that.

The API debacle itself meant a lot more users arriving at a faster pace, and they were mostly a good mix of all the different Reddit archetypes – the good and the bad. To me, it seems like it’s the in between Lemmy picks up the, shall I say, less appealing Rexitors. The ones that were permabanned for no reason at all they simply said they LOVE KITTENS – and then you see their toxicity here and that internal conflict strikes where you’re like “permabans shouldn’t be a thing, but in this case, I can kind of understand why it might’ve happened”.

Anyway, all this to say, back in the before times, the Fediverse felt a bit more distinct, like it had truly had its own generally amicable vibe and culture. Now, it feels like this is probably “Reddit-vibes” but from six months ago.

Not that I’m hating on Lemmy, obviously I’m still here, and it’s still currently the lesser of two evils.

Bee extinction means drastically fewer crops and less pollination, but not no crops. It would be devastating, but there would still be agriculture. Lots of staple crops are wind pollinated and don’t rely on insects at all. But for the rest of our food, that would all become very expensive and widely unavailable.

I’m sure things are different in different parts of the world, but where I’m from, pretty much none of the big crop farms let fields lay truly fallow. Most of them plant various cold season cover crops that include things like clover, brassicas, and legumes like vetch. Those all produce lots of flowers that feed the bees in the off season.

The issue with wildflower meadows, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that most of those wildflowers bloom at times when the fields would otherwise be needed for crop production. Of course, there are farmers who skip planting at all some years, but in my neck of the woods, nobody does that. They plant every year, at least once, they just rotate different crops in and out. Corn one year. Hay then soy, the next. And so on.

It’s Tweety https://scontent-iad3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.84726-6/654446445_1589516518970369_8484422416485531821_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s960x960_tt6&_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=92e707&_nc_ohc=HvKI8mJ011MQ7kNvwFgzqeP&_nc_oc=AdpcumPHZy2lHYbIzskH5FDG4Ar-4UAlWloHcuUCFADO4HZkIEoME3FLcGV-LKYvSFs&_nc_zt=14&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-2.xx&_nc_gid=jIBvg7pJbo6u_xg-c6l9lQ&_nc_ss=7a389&oh=00_AfwY2hUEtVv4AF7vBL8eo4K4WZCDZODCqIZKOD_KnAi27g&oe=69CA81C1

I can’t remember the last time I’ve had Pringles brand potato chips as we call them in the good ole USofA. I think in other countries they’re called CRISPRs or Jollysnots or something?

Can’t say I’ve had the pizza flavor. A few weeks ago I nearly gave into temptation as I was going down THAT isle in the grocery store and I saw some new to me flavors along the lines of loaded baked potato and loaded nachos. Sounded great in theory, and I was probably very hungry at the time, but I passed knowing they almost certainly taste … lame at best.

There was a time in my life when I liked some of the basic flavors like BBQ, but I feel like the shittification (which is different from enshittification) happened a long time ago, perhaps even before you were born.

A while back I was standing in line behind a few people when one of the people at the head of the line mentioned something about a “bum leg”.

The smooth brain behind them immediately seized on the opportunity to start a super sarcastic to the point of being aggressive spiel about how “you can’t say that anymore, that’s not politically correct” and then continued his butt hurt tirade calling out “liberal snowflakes”.

However, the grand finale and pièce de résistance of his rambling was a comment along the lines of “there’s only 2 pronouns, male and female”.

Anyway, this comic from 1994 kinda reminded me of that hilarious but also horrific little nugget.

Simple: People, in general, are terrible at coming up with dialog. And the machines are imitating us.

No, but yes. I was laid off. But, it was because my employer was a federal contractor in the USA who suffered at the hands of DOGE. We were doing good stuff, actively helping others, so I was quite proud of it. It was also important, important enough that people could literally be dying – other than the fact that the people who managed to stay behind and are now doing the job of 3 or more folks are managing to barely keep things going.

Cholesterol, perhaps.

Traveling to cities.

These days I can’t think of a time I haven’t gone into a city and seen people begging at intersections, signs with sad stories, etc. Really wish there was more I could do to help them get back on their feet but also have to be weary of the fact that some of them are just posing and scamming.

I was at an event where one of the vendors was selling “Pet Grass”. It was a little six pack of newly sprouted “grass” seedlings that’s intended for people to take home for their pets (ex: cats like to chew grass sometimes, bunnies and rodents like to eat the stuff).

The stall was the only convenient access to shade at the time, so I was hanging out beside it for a bit while cooling off. A particularly talkative woman walked over to the vendor and started molesting the grass, to the point where some of it was flattened or damaged. I don’t recall exactly what she was saying but the context was clear – she interpreted the “pet grass” signage as an invitation to pet the grass seedlings on display.

The vendor was being pretty chill about it and started talking to the lady, who responded along the lines of “No thanks, I’m just petting the grass”. A guy, whom the grass molester was hanging out with, then spoke up and said “They aren’t selling grass for you to pet, they’re selling grass for people to give to their pets.”

Based on her reaction, I don’t think the implications landed at that moment, but she did at least move along and spare the rest of the pet grass.

I’ve known many, many people who keep horses. All the time, effort, and money that goes into keeping them happy, healthy, and alive – horse ownership is not a good match for lazy people.

On the other hand, if the horse feels it’s lazy, who am I to deny his feelings on the matter. I’m not the one being ridden.