In this same house, in the 1980s, Nonna Fiore once served some English guests lasagna, per my uncle’s request. The lasagna was cooked from frozen, her story goes. Life was busy and, anyway, she had no qualms about serving a supermarket ready meal; people could only dream of such a luxury during the war. None of the guests suspected that she hadn’t made it from scratch and everyone was delighted, her Italian son included. She reminds me of this, then looks up at me and winks.
cutting back spending is hard when it's one of the main ways to feel joy; you already have to spend on groceries and bills anyway, and it feels that much more stark and grim denying yourself the fun foods and nice convenience items to save like $10, then your rent goes up $50 because they said so, and so what's the point anyhow...
lemmy rules. i wish there were less memes and porn on the front page, and/or that the front page refreshed quicker and with more variety. but in recent months it's been bug free for me. and what's huge is that i actually feel good posting here. i'm not giving my effort to a shitty shitty corporate hellhole, it's doing some small part to expand the fediverse.
Plus building it is kind of the easy part -- the hard part is getting people to migrate over and having enough active posts / users that people feel it's worth their time to stay and post as well. Migration will inevitably splinter communities as well, especially small ones, where not enough people move over (or don't move quickly enough). I've seen so many alternatives where the userbase was too small or not posting enough or just right wing trolls or the site was unusably buggy. lemmy managed to be good enough in all those categories at the perfect time - when reddit spat in the face of their users.
If a (K)N95 mask is making breathing “more challenging” then you need to mask up immediately and go see a doctor because you already have serious respiratory issues and any illness is that much more dangerous.
Sure, it's not Very Challenging like the right wing loons kept saying, but it is objectively more uncomfortable, having fabric right next to your nose and mouth, getting soggy from the condensation. Having to do that all day, especially four years later when most of society has decided this is over and wants zero reminders of 2020, isn't going to win a lot of fans. I think it's human nature that you'd rather just get sick at some point than do something every day, indefinitely, that you [the royal you] find uncomfortable.
Regarding speaking (BS)
Some people have quiet voices, some people have speech impediments, some people have to work in loud environments where they already had to strain to be heard. Asking someone to put up with that all day at work shouldn't be treated trivially.
But… they already do have to wear them in a lot of situations and you kind of learn how to communicate.
Are you really having those long and heartfelt conversations in a hospital waiting room?
In a hospital at least. Some of the worst stories I read in 2020 were the ones about people who had to say goodbye to loved ones through a plastic sheet -- or who weren't allowed in the room at all, due to arbitrary protocol. I guarantee 100% of people would rather get COVID for a few weeks if it meant they could say a proper goodbye to a parent.
Sure, they're effective devices when worn properly. But people aren't going to want to wear them properly, in year four of this, when they present so many irritating little barriers to normal human life. It's fatiguing to the mind and spirit having to do this day in, day out, especially if you've already got a shot and/or gotten sick already anyway. People in general would rather just take their chances and hope their immune system is strong.
because masks are that uncomfortable to the point where people would rather risk illness than constantly wear a thing on their face that makes breathing and talking and emoting more challenging
i remember growing up I'd literally get a buzz off a good thread or from reeling off a good post. it felt so incredible being able to communicate with people across the world and be taken seriously, evaluated on the merits of my words rather than dismissed due to age or race or anything. and most of all, it felt like this special secret between you and other dorks. now everyone has phones in their pocket. going on twitter is like going to mcdonals.
somehow this makes it more fucked up. like having this pristine attribute and clear headedness and still doing all the incredible evil and harm. mark of a true psychopath. you could maybe maybe make sense of it a tiny bit if it was like 'oh he did lots of meth and cooked his brain' but NO this fucking sicko was stone cold sober throughout all that shit. unreal.
Some 8.4 million Americans rely on insulin to survive, and as many as 1 in 4 patients have been unable to afford their medicine, leading them to ration doses – sometimes with fatal ramifications, according to the association.
imagine reading this in a history textbook. what would you think about this empire
fr fr i feel like such a horrible loser whenever i throw out groceries, esp produce. how do people plan their lives out perfectly such that it seems like this never happens to a proper adult
i used ynab for a while but am now realizing it's probably worse for my mental health to keep track of things that granularly. need to go back to a more zoomed out, normal person sort of management scheme
very important article about how italian food snobbery is completely made up: https://www.ft.com/content/6ac009d5-dbfd-4a86-839e-28bb44b2b64c