Zink

I appreciate your concern for the quality of your contributions, and I think this place has a higher proportion of that type of user than just about any other platform.

This place is small and it's generally friendly and inclusive. Most comments won't get any replies, but the ones that do will generally be constructive. The users here are into the whole idea of the social contract and that we can have something nice if we are just excellent to one another.

I repeatedly say "generally" because this is an open platform and assholes are allowed to join. The assholes can even have their own instance dedicated to asshole topics! But fortunately the instances and communities are generally moderated by actual decent humans who are much like the users!

So let that knowledge help you comment more, not less! Even if you get no comments and like 5 upvotes, it actually feels like something of value even if it's just a nod from a few decent people.

Edit: part of the conclusion was supposed to be that you can consider comments more like a discussion with people and not some strict message board.

It's a very widespread problem, and I don't know how much to blame on media and culture vs human nature. Maybe some magical thinking too.

Basically, it's the issue of people being on autopilot and expecting the life they're supposed to have just happening to them. Interpersonal relationships are a huge part of it.

Yeah there is a real trend in conservative culture (at least where I grew up) that fits right in with the rest of the anti-intellectualism. And it's not taught explicitly but it permeates social interactions.

I'm trying to decide how to describe it... Basically, you look down on people who are trying to improve themselves.

And as a free bonus you get your characters in front of even more millions of impressionable faces than usual. They can tie their personal identity to your IP incrementally ever more. Hooray!

yes /s

Very much true in my specific limited experience.

I live in a nice little town here in the US, and I'm a well educated middle aged white guy. It's safe to say that I get to see a pretty nice version of America even as horrible shit is happening all over the place.

I've gotten to spend a few weeks in Sweden of all places over the past few years. Plus I got to see the insides of some airports in other places luke Belgium and Germany.

There's just something different in the air over there, in a good way. I thought of it as a kind of dignity that came from respect for others as well as oneself, but I like how you call it social cohesiveness.

I think some of the details around food and drink showed it best, and they make good examples because they apply to a mix of the general public.

The food itself is obviously much better over there. Even things like the hotel breakfast or the cafeteria at a workplace had a huge variety of fresh, real foods as opposed to ultraprocessed manufactured branded products.

But the dishes and utensils were some of the most interesting to me as an american. In places like an office cafe at work, or a local restaurant, or I think even an airport, they would have actual GLASSES, plates, and silverware. And on top of that, you would often return your dishes to the kitchen or even put them directly on to the dish washer rack waiting for you.

This breaks my american mind. Fragile non-disposable cups in a public place? Other than coffee mugs on people's desks or restaurant glasses being dropped off and picked up with at your table, I'm not sure I've ever seen that within these borders. If you could use glasses and silverware in public places here, I can't decide what would happen first: somebody would get cut on one of the immediately broken glasses, or so much of the stuff would get stolen that they'd close it down.

I like to call out their bathrooms too. The way we do it over here is big men's and women's restrooms with next to no privacy (it's one big room with flimsy floating dividers forming the toilet stalls) and stupid culture wars about who should and should not get their genitals inspected or whatever. Over there it's just several individual doors, each with a small bathroom. Much better privacy, no fodder for the bigots, and much better utilization of the resources.

American here living in a car-only area.

I didn't even raise an eyebrow at that previous comment. Sure most drivers are fine, but there are plenty of people who make me wonder what the hell combination of these issues (and others) is going on with them.

The most common example I get to see is the people speeding through the elementary school parking lot in their luxury SUVs. I especially love it when they start a phone call as they start driving, after they just finished standing around, collecting their kid, and walking back to the parking lot.

This is so stupid that it makes me think maybe the "great filter" (the reason we don't see space-faring civilizations everywhere) is actually that life forms who evolved by fighting for survival and going through natural selection cannot psychologically handle a post-scarcity society. It's like when the threats disappear everybody forgets they exist even if they are well documented historically.

Related: if you don't know about how horrifying a disease is, go search for some articles and copypasta about it. Congrats on being one of today's (un)lucky 10,000!

American here, and I was a little boy scout like 30 years ago so I actually learned some of the rules of the US flag code.

Ever since then I have constantly noticed many of the people who most need to display their patriotism also being ignorant of the official rules for showing respect to their favorite flag.

And to be clear, I don't care about the rules surrounding the flag. It's just amusing and/or sad to see how superficial people can be and how little effort they put into learning about anything, much less something that is core to their identity. See also: rules in the bible.

Fortunately my Mazda 3 is over a decade old and the headlights are actually too dim if anything. I need to polish the housings too. It sucks to hear that they are jumping on the annoying blinding headlight bandwagon along with some other brands though. They seem to do a lot of little things right in their designs.

I've posted a couple times about how I load 8' dimensional lumber into my Mazda3 as well, lol. Usually the people around me are driving their giant trucks and not loading jack shit into them.

I have definitely developed an appreciation for Mazda over the years. I keep toying with the idea of an MX-5 for my next car. (I live in suburban USA where driving is required, and I have a short twisty drive to work when I go into the office)

I find that this little program called Jellyfin really helps me separate the art from the artist, lol.

Not that I have any RHCP in my playlist or even on the server.

I thought of you all the other day when somebody in a newer pickup truck got behind me driving my Mazda 3. I didn't take a photo in my rear view mirror because safe driving and all that, but I felt like I was living in some kind of AI generated c/fuckcars meme.

In my mirror the front of the truck looked like a WALL the height of a grown adult with a little thin stripe of windshield above it. AND there was a big hood scoop on top of that. The little stripe of windshield was like 10'/3m behind the wall at the front of the truck too, just to make the visibility as dangerous as possible.