It maybe depends on the particular culture/context around you. When I was growing up I was usually in explicitly Christian contexts, so it was probably more repressive than what some people experience. I think that toxic masculinity is pretty widespread, though.

I think the issue there is that male friendships in general and especially with females are culturally discouraged.

My personal experience might be taken with a grain of salt because I’m a trans female (and my wife clocked that before she started dating me, even though I didn’t realize it myself until later), but from my personal experience being raised as a male I had very few friendships with girls and women and I never dated until I developed a close friendship with the woman who is now my wife. She expressed interest in dating me, and eventually we committed to it.

So, I think that breaking that cultural norm and encouraging men to have more friendships would help a lot.

Karma on reddit tracks the accumulated likes and dislikes a user has gotten on all of their posts. Lemmy does not have a number like that.

Edit: What this means in practice is that on Reddit there are some users who make a lot of low-effort posts to get that karma number to go up and get a sense of accomplishment from that (even when they get a negative reputation among the other users), whereas on Lemmy that’s not really a thing. Lemmy has power-users that become well-known, but they’re more well-liked because they aim to gain actual reputation instead of just farming a karma number.

I am a big fan of cats. However, if they live outside, they are feral. And they should not be allowed to keep living outside.

My preferred solution would be for people to take them in and feed them, but you definitely should not be feeding them while they are still living outside. Outdoor cats cause a lot of destruction to the ecosystem by overhunting small animals such as songbirds, even to the point of extinction.

Blahaj!

That’s a narrower time period than the US. A decent number of people have Christmas decorations up already in the US, and Christmas stuff has been in stores for a while already.

So, in exchange for nothing. Because any “guarantee” with Trump involved is worthless.

Imagine if he waits for people to panic and sell off and then buys back into the market.

In this case, I expect that the market is due to tank for real soon, so that would maybe be a stupid move, but it seems like in general someone could literally trade on the perception that they’re an insider (regardless of whether they have real inside information or not) to manipulate the market in their favor.

The fact that “unlimited toilet paper” is a luxury for prisoners says a lot about the way we treat other prisoners.

Those two things are very different in sustainability.

Including gas as a renewable makes that classification worthless.

What it makes me inclined to do is never use the drive-thru, personally.

I think it’s because of societal expectations for men, which are generally broken down more in LGBTQ spaces. Maybe you could hang out with LGBTQ+ people (even as a cis het person). I think most would be accepting of you and care about you, as long as you are accepting of them.

You know what would reduce mistakes and speed up orders? Replacing the god-awful audio equipment that every drive thru seems to use. It wouldn’t cost much to install good audio equipment and it would quickly pay for itself in time savings since people could hear each other more clearly.

I don’t want to contribute content to support Reddit, Inc. They’ve demonstrated greedy corpo BS that I don’t want to support.

If it were government controlled, it would be accountable to the people, to the extent that the government is democratic (ideally, much more than it is now), and would also be run as a service rather than for profit.

In the short term, I think that collectively being Karens about it would be able to reverse the pressure, by steering the monopolists away from oppressing us. Because they are mainly motivated by money.

In the long term, take away their monopoly power.

I meant pressing the payment processors, like those prude activists are.

Just because they always have been doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s definitely not good for private companies to have monopoly power like that. That power will only be used for their gain (and our collective loss).

I am a strong believer in democracy. I don’t think that the answer to a bad government is to reduce the power of the government, because that power will inevitably go to undemocratic institutions. Only the government is accountable to the people. So even when the government is currently controlled by people I dislike, I still want more things to be brought under the power of the government rather than privatized.

The answer to bad government actions, in my view, is to fight for a more democratic government, and zealously advocate for good ideas among the voting population.

Since this is caused by activist pressure on the payment processors, perhaps a grassroots activist campaign of our own could change their mind. Especially if we threaten to stop using their services in favor of any competitor that allows all legal purchases.