SwingingTheLamp @ SwingingTheLamp @midwest.social

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2 yr. ago

*French influence. Most of the prominent differences between American and British English (such as -er/-re and -or/-our) occurred because the British preserved (or changed spellings to add) French influence.

No. There's no hard-and-fast definition of the working class that everybody agrees upon, but there are some common ones. She's certainly not part of the Marxist proletariat, since I'm certain that she and her management team are smart enough to have invested her money so that she never need work again, if she so desired. Also, she employs a small army of people to put on tours. Similarly, she has far too much money to be part of the working class as loosely defined by people who must sell their labor to survive. From what I understand, she came from an upper-middle class family, so she's not even working class by culture.

I can sort of see an argument that she puts on a very physically-demanding show, exchanging her labor for money, but performers traditionally haven't been considered working class.

I suggest reading the book Running on Empty by Dr. Jonice Webb. Maybe it will explain some things. (Or maybe it won't. I'm no expert.)

ETA: The drama-queen mother and the "something is missing and I don't know what" feeling make me think it will.)

Just by random chance, I saw a Toynbee tile in the street in St. Louis. I'd heard about the mystery on the Internet, and was quite excited to see one in person.

Oh, I also saw Thong Cape Scooter Man several times.

Reminds me of this webcomic about the Oenophile's Quandry.

Very few food products have an expiration date printed on them. A lot of them have a "Sell by" date, which is not an expiration date. We have a local milk producer that prints a "Sell by" date on their bottles. The rule of thumb is that if it's stored in proper refrigeration, unopened, it'll keep for 2 more weeks. (Plus another week to use it up.) But it's impossible to explain that people. The disgust reflex is strong, and you can almost watch it on their faces as it overrides people's rational faculties. (Honestly, that experience helps me understand the recent election results.) As a result, the store that I worked in would as a rule of thumb take the milk off the shelf 3 days before the "Sell by" date, even though it'd be good for another 3 weeks. Milk that didn't sell, we had to pour down the drain.

One time when I was working there, I had to deal with an irate customer who returned some fancy cheese hors d'oeuvres that she'd received as part of her pick-up order because the package had a "Sell by" date on it that was a couple days past. I refunded the cost of the item, and when I took it back to the cheese department, our cheese monger explained that the date was really only useful for the store to keep its stock rotated. The product didn't spoil after that date; in fact, it got better for several months as the cheese aged. But, we agreed, it's impossible to explain that to people.

So, to the question, also while working there, I made a delivery to an elderly woman whose son ordered groceries for her. She had a number of items that she didn't use before the "Use by" date, and asked if I'd take them. One of them was a container of plain yogurt. I don't use a lot of yogurt, mainly as a condiment for Indian dishes, so I didn't even open it until about a month after the "Use by" date, and finally finished it probably 3 months after. (Just don't let it warm up, open only briefly, and always use a clean utensil to scoop it out.) It still tasted fresh and enjoyable.

I still have butter in the refrigerator with a "Use by" date in 2023, because I bought a lot of it when it was cheap (on sale and employee discount), and put it in the freezer. I have eaten canned food several years after the "Best by" date. The heuristic is easy: It it smells good, it's edible. If it smells off, toss it. But I know that there are plenty of people out there with a hair-trigger disgust response, who are convinced that the moment the clock ticks over to the date printed on the package, the contents turn to poison. This heuristic probably grosses them out. Oh well, people aren't rational.

Along those lines, monarchist is bad, too. The wealthy in the U.S. are notoriously touchy about being called aristocracy, and I maintain that it's because nobility not only punctures the meritocracy myth, but also carries with it the idea of noblesse oblige. They don't want any obligations to the peasants. (Won't be lauded as a great philanthropist for the dribs and drabs they give to charity, if it's expected!)

I can't consciously change my body temperature, but I do find that my thoughts and attitude about the heat or cold do affect it quite a bit.

You're not the only one! I think it's worth noting that back then, "social media" was a new model in which the viewers provided the content, a democratizing force which broke the hold of a small priesthood of editors, producers, and owners over the message we hear.

Now, so-called social media is synonymous with The Algorithm. That is, the powerful and connected have figured out how to tame it and gatekeep information again, this time in a far more insidious way. It still has the veneer of populism, but scratch the surface, and the owners largely control what you see.

It's darkly hilarious to read discussions on here in which people deny that Lemmy is social media at all, rather than an example of the ur-social media, the good kind.

Take a look at the finances of automobile-oriented development. "Highly unsustainable" and "heavy debt" are the bywords there. As long as we're spending that kind of money, shouldn't we at least make ourselves happy?

Hardly. Both sides can say the the prosecution was politically-motivated, but that's where the similarity ends. One side has a long history of just saying things that sound good to them, and when called on it, falling silent and disengaging from discussion. The other side has evidence, or at least a strong argument that they are able to articulate. It's not objective justice to ignore that.

The biggest shock for me was Vera Lynn. She recorded her biggest hit song in 1939, and I was most familiar with it from the ending of Dr. Strangelove from 1964, and the Pink Floyd song, "Vera", from 1982. I guess people in the UK would've known better, but the song implied a long-bygone time, so of course she had to be dead by the '90s, right?

Imagine my shock when she released a new compilation album in 2014, while still very much kicking.

And Joe pardoned Hunter for whatever they "find" next on that laptop, so, y'know, both sides.

/s

Liberals (which I'm taking to mean Democrats) didn't "fix" gay marriage. Right up until the Iowa Supreme Court decision, in the early 2000's, the argument in Democratic circles was that gay-rights organizations should pipe down, settle for civil unions, and stop making gay marriage an issue. They were afraid of handing the Republicans a weapon. It was the gay-rights organizations that pushed it through the courts, and prominent Democratic politicians like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden "evolved" their positions to support it. I mean no criticism by the use of quotes. Kudos to them for changing their minds, but it wasn't liberals that made it happen.

Can confirm. Never saw the episode, still know the gag.

Those dead-eyed monstrosities stare deep into my soul and give me a case of the howling fantods, so yes, agree.

If we don't change our lifestyle, new companies would spring up to replace them. But yeah, that's my point, no matter how it happens, our lifestyle has to change if we want a sustainable society. Production and consumption are two sides of the same coin.

It's kind of like asking whether the vital piece of a table is the tabletop or the legs, when you don't have a functional table without either one. We don't have a functional market system without supply and demand.

In a weird way, blaming the corporations is philosophically aligned with supply-side dogma, where the corporations ("job creators") have an intrinsic motivation to produce. As if they just churn stuff out all day long, because that's what they do when the government doesn't get in their way, and it's the duty of people to consume so the output doesn't all just pile up in some great heap outside the factory.

There's a reason some call that "voodoo economics." Whatever their influence today, all corporations producing things evolved in a symbiotic relationship with consumer demand. We could guillotine all of the CEOs, and revoke every corporate charter, but it'd do jack for the environment, unless unless we also all change our lifestyle.

Blaming the corporations makes as much sense as them blaming us. It's time to move past who's to blame, and instead start fixing things.

What? The DEA is needlessly cruel, while also corrupt and ineffective. The new administration might increase its funding.

The cruelty is the point.

First thing I thought of was the "Elementary School Musical" episode of South Park.