I guess it doesn’t take very many to make the map if there are no/few other identifiable naming conventions. Fair strategy scrolling municipalities on Wikipedia - thanks for that.

This map makes zero sense. I need to see the data to understand I think. I’m unfamiliar with the apparently majority of Hawaiian cities with the name “Hawaiian” in them? In fact, there isn’t a single one to my knowledge.

And while Kansas City and Souix City or NYC all have city in the name, I’m scrolling around Georgia for instance, and there isn’t a single “______ City” in the state that I can see.

The problem is unfettered capitalism. Our leaders are far more concerned about enriching themselves than acting on behalf of their constituents, so we’ve got this really jaded electorate.

And then as a dominant super power in the world, we’ve been targeted with enormous misinformation campaigns, both from our own “news sources” (Fox News is NOT real news, it’s lies and half truths and proliferation of hatred!) and fake internet trolls. All of that on top of decades of political corruption, decades of businesses lobbying in their own best interest and spreading lies to support their position (“tobacco is safe and very cool!” “guns don’t kill people”, “weed is the root of all evil!”, “pEoPlE ARe tERMinatInG 9 mOnTh oLd feTUseS anD bORn bABiEs!”).

Conservatives have always been the temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and once they get theirs, fuck everyone else. Generations bought homes at affordable prices, then pulled the ladder up behind them and fuck all future generations. “Pull yourself up by your boot straps!” is sort of bullshit you get from them, but they didn’t do that at all and they’ve broken the whole system in their favor.

Now conservatives are trying to break our educational system by banning books, banning subject discussion like evolution or slavery, foregoing sex education in favor of the provably bad “abstinence education”. A country founded on “separation of church and state” is pushing harder and harder to make a “Christian nation” that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. They want a stupid electorate making tons of babies who also grow up stupid and vote for them. The majority of Americans are liberal and have genuine sympathy and compassion for others, so before they wake up and actually get involved, the conservatives have to breed up a bunch of idiots they can convince real easily to vote their way.

All that to say… I don’t think it’s going to get any better anytime soon. Get me the fuck out of this place.

I agree that it shouldn’t die, but evolve. It has been fascinating to see Tik Tok during interesting moments in time act as a boots on the ground view of a major incident. But wrongdoers just trying to stir up ad revenue or trying to sew mistrust and disinformation are always going to be a huge problem. Not to mention dipshits like in the op just making things up, whatever their motivation was.

Freedom of speech in the United States is freedom from repercussions from the government for your speech, but all of these platforms removing moderation and leaning in to this free speech ethos are lying about their motivation and hiding behind these free speech implications. And now they are all, predictably, absolutely riddled with misinformation.

It is my hope that the next big social media platform is one that is very open to moderation and aggressively removes hate speech and misinformation. I just don’t know how you do that without throwing out the baby with the bathwater, taking too aggressive an approach to content moderation could catch legitimate posts and is going to piss users off and make them leave the platform. These companies did try for a while, before they went full “actively contributing to the destruction of humanity” capitalist dystopia.

They’re in spring right now, and Tazmania is below freezing and snowing in some areas literally this very moment. So I guess it does. It is VERY far south, almost as far south as the tip of Argentina.

I’m pretty sure that bridge is a portal to another world.

Source: the documentary Nos4atu

Yeah, that could be the difference - I definitely lived in a right to work state. But they certainly sold it even there as if you must join.

I’m sure the union rep made it sound like you must, but I wonder if you were actually required. The major US grocery chain I worked for, the union shoved themselves down your throat but it was NOT required. It felt to me that their negotiations amounted more to collusion than actually fighting for the workers. I hope they’re the weakest union in the history of the world and that they don’t all suck as badly.

They know my tax liability based on the income reported to the IRS by my employer - but you’re right that something they don’t necessarily know is the variety of valid deductions you might be eligible to take. Part of the process of filing is also calculating your tax liability though - and that part of it they know precisely and rather than TELLING you, you’re expected to determine your own liability and heaven help you if it’s wrong.

They also know precisely how much we owe in taxes, but instead of telling us and we pay it, they allowed a multi billion dollar industry to pop up around it and dictate tax law.

Just Google meatspin - it’ll be easier that way than explaining it here I think. One of those things you just have to see to understand.

Nice, got it figured out then?

Well that’s not classically how DND works - it certainly didn’t on my Note 20 Ultra. Maybe you had Google digital wellbeing settings turned on? Or focus mode or something of that nature, such that when the office is in DND notifications are held?

I went to school in Hawai’i and discovered strawberry guava - the plant is an invasive species that chokes the life out of everything it can, but it bears the most delicious fruit.

I have had exclusively Bluetooth headphones for almost a decade at this point. I keep a backup pair of wired usb-c earbuds in my glove box in case I don’t foresee needing my wireless buds.

Controversial take - sometimes you’ve just got to adapt to the times. I’ll never forgive everyone for removing SD expansion in phones, because there’s absolutely no replacement except “buy our expensive cloud storage and own nothing ever!” or “spend SIGNIFICANTLY MORE THAN THE ACTUAL COST OF FLASH STORAGE to increase your onboard storage!” which are both unacceptable. But wireless headphones are perfectly acceptable. If I want an audiophile experience, I’m absolutely not using my phone anyways.

I’ve always pronounced it as written, not Febuary.

For me it’s Starbucks and Chipotle - they both discontinued the best thing on their menu, chorizo. I’ve had other things I liked at both restaurants, but I’m not going to waste my money with either for what they’ve done.

When I was in high school, they added 25 minutes to every day to build in snow days. If we did not use them, school just ended earlier than scheduled. This could serve basically the same function, to shorten the school year.

However, that’s not even necessarily a good thing for learning… I think year-round school is generally accepted to be the best way to learn having many shorter gaps rather than one long summer. I suppose it could build in an extra week or two of breaks normally not present in a year-round school schedule.

People on the internet have gotten so stupid, I’m not entirely sure whether this was meant as /s or not. Really an indictment on the internet as a whole.