In Japan, this is the norm. They'll throw each drug in its own zip lock bag but piecemeal like that is all you'll get. And people grow really old over here.

I don't find this mildly infuriating. I think this is a responsible way to deal with a precious resource.

I think it's a happy balance of them not wanting to federate and many of us not wanting them to federate with us. Let's not rock that apple cart.

... back button hijack is starting to rear its ugly head again.

Are you basing this statement on this alleged case alone? I don't get any of this behavior on this page on Vivaldi. Another person has done more of a deep dive and also came up short.

You can describe yourself any way you like. It's helpful to provide context, like you did here. Without it you may not be understood. So know who you're speaking to and provide it, especially when puzzled faces stare back at you.

The Anerican political theater has twice as many viable parties as North Korea. Contrast that with virtually any other democracy where there are at least a handful of parties fighting to be in charge. That doesn't mean though that you don't have enough different opinions to fill a party-political spectrum like that in the US. The dominance of the two parties just forces most people under one of the big tent roofs. So you have more conservative Democrats (and there used to be more liberal Republicans) in the party that are bigger in relative numbers compared to what you'll find in the social democrats in Germany (or among the conservatives in France). The Democrats are nominally the more left leaning party. But if you compared the party programs they would align more with the conservative parties of Scandinavia. Everything is further to the right in the US thanks largely to gun laws and lack of social security. And that explains why you have non-lefty people in the nominally lefty party. And while bigotry and hatred are certainly not a new thing, there is a culture that permeates down from the political leadership. And if name calling and pouring oil into the fire of social issues are the new MO, and admissions and convictions respectively of sexual assault don't keep candidates out of office, many people feel they are now also allowed to say the quiet part out loud.

... and can be replaced later down the line at the central bank.

I think there are countries in the world where that is not the case. India maybe 2 years ago removed one of their large denomination bills with like a week's notice to get it changed and after that you were SOL. I think (but am not sure) old Sterling notes may also no longer be more than paper.

Unless your schoolmate is here, I don't think you will get a definitive answer. And what people do on social media is not necessarily representative to what they would do in real life. So don't take this block personally.

A mixup of names has been suggested a a possible explanation. It could just as well simply be a mistaken touch on the app or a misplaced click on the site. That person may have their own ghosts of school life past to fend off and they've chosen to make a clean break and not keep in touch with people from that time for their own mental health. Or they are friends with the people who used to bully you and doesn't want them to spot you on their friends list. Or, while they treated you nicely and stood up for you, it's still possible they just don't like you regardless. There are many possible explanations.

You are applying the thinking of wholly owned platforms and how to judge their success. They have to grab a sizable and hopefully growing number of users who keep coming back to be successful. Because they need the data from their users and/or their eyeballs on ads for commercial success. None of that applies to the fediverse really. It can grow as slowly as it wants to or not grow at all. As long as there is a small percentage of people who spend time and money to keep the instances going. This laced corsage of economical necessities is much tighter for a centrally hosted platform which will have a thirsty boardroom to answer to. Popularity isn't so much the factor why reddit is/was more of a success, it is/was the quality of information others got from it and it definitely used to be the ease of getting to it. People who got pissed off at reddit will slowly add to our numbers here (or another iteration of a service like Lemmy) as the idea of becoming your own algorithm becomes more normal for the non-techy minded users as well. We're playing a long game that we don't even want to win.

Doctors can share the details of your genial warts as well as long as it doesn't become painfully clear they were taking about you. The same logic applies to therapists. They can share your story but not the fact that it is yours. And if they have a lot of patients they have a certain level of obscurity. And if they're clever they change a couple of things about the story to make it less obvious.

The distinction I would make here is the intent behind sharing the story. If it's a function of venting with other professionals, I get it. They're only human too. If it's meant as a sort of teachable moment to others present, I think that's alright. If it's a "get a load of this shit" story telling and I found out, I would change therapists.

I would say it isn't that stupid. The old humans picked one of the extremes, in this case the most complete absence of the sun (which includes the lowest point in the sky for some of the Vikings etc.) to mark this change. I think if they had picked midday we would have the same argument just about the daytime. And if they had picked any other time there would have to have been a "good" reason, like a religious one. It's the time of day Mohammed went to Medina or the Buddha looked at nirvana. Otherwise the old humans wouldn't have been onboard with that decision for centuries.

Time keeping is like the imperial system of measurements. It works but it doesn't make a lot of fucking sense.

Let's be realistic and not console ourselves with rosy fantasies.

Let's take the most pessimistic view instead and project we'll all get plugged into the Matrix.

It's not a foregone conclusion that so-called AI and automation will replace all of those jobs. It's also not a foregone conclusion that all these people will be destitute because they cannot be put in other positions. This is not the first time we as humanity have faced this big a structural change. We have largely gotten pretty good and are not dealing with a lot of bloodshed and poverty in the wake of such a big change. This transition will probably not be great for everybody but it won't be a big human tragedy of the proportions you imagined. Worry more about our climate. The bigger threat of mass destitution will come from that clusterfuck.

When reached for comment, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told the Daily Beast in a statement, “It’s sad that Daily Beast interns cannot grasp the concept of pro-growth policies that create jobs. Their minds are clearly warped after cheering on Joe Biden as he wrecked our economy for four years.”

The pettiness is unreal.