“This thing is a Thneed. A Thneed’s a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need! It’s a shirt. It’s a sock. It’s a glove. It’s a hat. But it has other uses. Yes, far beyond that. You can use it for carpets. For pillows! For sheets! Or curtains! Or covers for bicycle seats!”

The Lorax said, “Sir! You are crazy with greed. There is no one on earth who would buy that fool Thneed!”

But the very next minute I proved he was wrong. For, just at that minute, a chap came along, and he thought that the Thneed I had knitted was great. He happily bought it for three ninety-eight. I laughed at the Lorax, “You poor stupid guy! You never can tell what some people will buy.”

Oooo, that’s a neat site!

Thanks! This has become a January tradition with my kids. We are trying a different winter camp location in 2026, and I really hope there will be enough snow to do this again!

Pile the snow into a big mound, pack it down, then hollow out the middle. Camping overnight is optional.

Yep. Working clothing retail on a slow day? Time to fold and refold a lot of shirts just to do something other than stand behind the counter looking dumb.

Odd-numbered years are relatively quiet in US elections. Very few things are on our ballots, and most of them are state and local issues like judges and city council seats. The Democrats won the few high-profile races: NYC mayor, two state governors, and a referendum in California about redrawing electoral district maps.

The next big election will be in November 2026. Most of the seats in the national legislature will be up for election (all 435 House seats, and 33 of 100 Senate seats). Also 36 state governors, and many seats in the state legislatures.

1: @Skavau@piefed.social is right.

2, 7, 8: What’s the goal here? Is Reddit the gold standard we’re aiming for? I’m not convinced Lemmy needs millions of daily active users to keep a plethora of niche communities active, and to store a massive backlog for posterity. It’s fine if Lemmy is smaller and narrower in scope.

3: Reddit has duplicate/overlapping communities, too. I’m not sure how to avoid this without either (a) top-down control of community creation by admins, or (b) constant pruning of communities by admins. Neither are desirable, IMO.

4, 5, somewhat 7: Adjust expectations to reality, and appreciate what we have. Lemmy isn’t Reddit 2.0 and it never will be. There isn’t big venture capital money sloshing around. But Lemmy has come along way without it. Hundreds of instances hum along reliably, day-in and day-out. There are surprisingly good browser UI’s (look at Photon/Tesseract/Alexandrite) mobile apps. Not bad for an open-source project that runs on volunteer time and user donations!

6: The complaint about moderation tools is legit. I really want a better reports queue, among other things. But I don’t have the time and energy to contribute code, so I wait patiently.

I wonder what the alternate timeline is like where Ho Chi Minh’s letters to President Truman were properly delivered. The US could have sided with Vietnam, and the second half of the 20th century would have looked so, so different.

TIL about the Battle of Cherbourg. The Wikipedia page for the CSS Alabama has a nice write-up of the battle.

The captain of CSS Alabama issued a cocky challenge to the Union ship Kearsarge, which was waiting outside the harbor:

my intention is to fight the Kearsarge as soon as I can make the necessary arrangements. I hope these will not detain me more than until to-morrow or the morrow morning at farthest. I beg she will not depart until I am ready to go out. I have the honor to be Your obedient servant, R. Semmes, Captain.

When the time comes for battle, CSS Alabama proceeded to get shot to pieces in an hour. Then, the cherry on top:

As Alabama sank, the injured Semmes threw his sword into the sea, depriving Kearsarge’s commander, Winslow, of the traditional surrender of the sword (an act which was seen as dishonorable by many at the time).

Lol, get rekt Semmes, you sore loser.

Getting an engineering degree is generally a good thing. Demand and pay tend to be above average. A certificate can be helpful, but I have watched people hit a “paper ceiling” in their careers; people stuck with the title of “designer” doing an engineer’s work without an engineering degree, and never getting an engineer’s salary for it.

Whether a bachelor’s degree is beneficial for you personally will depend on a lot of things, not all of which are within your control. 20 years ago a BS in computer science was a golden ticket. Now the industry has shifted and the job placement rates for new CS grads are awful. It’s hard to predict the future.

I agree with the other commenter that going to university is good for the whole self. I was exposed to people, ideas, and experiences that I would never have encountered elsewhere. That alone made the effort worthwhile.

Most jeans are sewn from Sanforized (pre-shrunk) fabric. Wearing them damp won’t do much.

Raw, non-Sanfordized “shrink-to-fit” denim is a whole different story. For example: https://thighsbiggerthanyourhead.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-to-shrink-to-fit-stf-your-levis.html

She looks like he just said, “You would be pretty if you smiled more.”

The catch is that it’s very low-quality oil. And a lot of it is inaccessible, in the form of oil sands that are too thick to pump but too deep to reach with surface mining. Not that those facts will deter those in power from attempting regime change.

T

Hell yeah. There’s an unassuming restaurant in my town that hosts local all-ages punk and metal shows after the kitchen closes. The underground scene is alive and well. I’m looking forward to having your experience myself as my kids grow up.

The sun’s shining bright
Everything seems all right
When we’re poisoning pigeons in the park

Wrong community. You need to ask in !perchance@lemmy.world

Why do we even have this lever truck?

I still remember a Burger King with smoking and non-smoking seating areas. As if anything ever kept the smoke on the smoking side of the room.