And this is in 2015, after we’d recovered from the great recession but before the housing/rental market forced a lot of families back into multi-generational housing situations.

Minnesota is probably the most famous example at the moment, but they’re far from alone!

https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/states-with-universal-free-school-meals-so-far-update/

Red states are not okay, because all they have left in their value system is cruelty toward people they see as not “pulling their weight,” as if we still live in some resource-scarce era of yore where if you don’t work, you don’t eat (and even if you do work, eating is not guaranteed, better work harder!).

Blue states are increasingly providing lunches, and sometimes even breakfast, for all students free of charge. It used to be income-based (you’d get free or half-priced lunch based on your family’s income), but even that system is getting ditched because of the associated stigma and the problem of some needy students falling between the cracks.

The difference is if the primary (sometimes only) admin of your instance loses interest, goes to jail, or gets hit by a truck, your entire instance could be dead in the water, whereas there are way more safeguards to “established” social media like Reddit and Twitter. Plus the issue of “well shit my instance got defederated from most of the fediverse because it turns out the admin is an asshat” is completely nonsensical on platforms without instances. Example: before I knew that Lemmy had a tankie problem, I almost signed up on lemmygrad because I thought it was just a witty pun…

Plus when you say “point them to lem.ee” what scenario are you imagining? Because “you should join reddit” or “our business is on Facebook” or “Twitter is a great resource for artists” are all straightforward and easy pieces of information to convey and pick up. “Join Lemmy, a subset of the fediverse, I signed up via lemmy.world although I hear lem.ee is also good, but don’t let that stop you from picking another instance” is like… Dude, people just want to go to [site].com, click on “sign up”, enter a username and password (and maybe email) and that’s it. Just having to explain to people that “lemmy.com” isn’t a thing is already too complicated for most folks.

Lemmy (or at least lemmy.world) was bonkers levels of buggy last summer during the reddit blackout. Like, literally unusable levels of buggy. Getting the word out that it’s (mostly) bug-free now would probably be good, because I’m sure there were many redditors who tried it and quickly swore it off as a pile of shit.

Otherwise I’m in agreement that the instance-selection part of sign-up is a huge barrier, because what instance you choose is actually really important but it’s overwhelming when you’re just getting started. Plus not being able to migrate your account/communities/posts to another instance if yours goes to shit/shuts down/turns out to not fit your needs makes the fediverse feel really unstable.

There’s a through-wall box fan just outside another shower.

Especially intense for the wave genre! Great find.

I wasn’t able to participate in canvas this year due to real life stuff, but oh wow, I’m so impressed, everyone!

Wow I’d never heard of seapunk, thanks for the link!

I’ll admit, I was on autopilot when making the first round of posts to populate this community and included this channel without thinking it through completely. As you’ve observed it’s an EDM channel, not synthwave. Despite my mistake I’m leaving the post up because 1) there’s a good amount of overlap between fans of synthwave and fans of EDM, and 2) the DJ seems to be trying hard to make good videos despite his lack of audience, and I want to direct more folks to his channel.

Great album! Solid all the way through; I think my favorite songs were actually toward the end. Thanks for posting!

My favorite sub-genre is probably Cyberwave, but of the niche genres I’ve come across, I’ve gotta give props to Simpsonwave (which even has its own Know Your Meme page)

Make a post about it and let’s find out!

I don’t see why not

Important to note this is based on “median home values,” not “housing affordability.”

This map does not take into consideration many directly-related-to-housing costs such as: utilities cost, natural disaster-related costs, insurance rates, property tax rates, etc. It also does not take into consideration other cost-of-living factors such as: transportation costs (how much are you spending on gas every month if you live 50 miles from anything?), necessities costs (e.g. food and other essentials), and opportunity costs (for everything else).

I signed up during the Rexodus, which happened to be a lovely summer day so I was hanging out outside at the time of sign-up. I glanced around my yard looking for inspiration, saw my fireweed patch, and figured that was as good a name as any.

Fireweed is a hardy plant native to much of North America, with beautiful pink flowers that native bees love, and it requires little maintenance once established. It is also edible and has medicinal properties! Please consider planting it (or seed-bombing it in an empty lot) if you live in its native range! More info here

Yeah Lemmy’s definitely got a few kinks still to work out (but at least it’s no longer the bug-riddled mess it was last summer)

Also, TIL about the Soviet Concorde!

Well damn, the image url seems to have overwritten the hyperlink. I’ve added the link to the body text. Thanks for the heads up!

Coming from someone who has seen all of the older (pre-Discovery) stuff but only a smattering of the newer stuff:

This is such a difficult question because I think TNG and DS9 were peak Star Trek (along with movie IV) and are where I would point newbies, but both series have such off-putting starts. I grew up on TNG, so it was easy to get past the rough edges of the early seasons on my start-to-finish watch. However I hated DS9 when I started watching it, and only powered through because I was on a “watch all of the franchise” mission (this was back in 2015). Having finished it though, DS9 is now my favorite series in the franchise.

I think my recommendation for newbies is a curated list of a handful of TNG’s standout episodes, followed by “if you liked this, start TNG from the beginning,” followed by “if you liked this, watch DS9 but PROMISE ME you’ll watch the first three seasons before giving up, yes I know it’s a lot to ask but trust me,” followed by “if you’re still with me, start from the franchise beginning and watch in air order, although feel free to give up on TOS if it’s not your thing and skip to movies II+.”

I would actively dissuade anyone who hasn’t watched at least 20 seasons of Star Trek (any series) from starting Lower Decks. Even I feel like half the jokes and references go over my head.