I think e-bikes are such a problem in the US because we have such a car-sentric culture and the majority of people who are riding them seem to be people who lost their drivers licenses due to poor life decisions (AKA, dangerous driving or DUI) or are too young to get a drivers license in the first place. They take the same dangerous, stupid mentality and transfer it into their riding of the e-bikes. I drive an ambulance and every single day I see a suicidal idiot blitzing through traffic at top speed on an e-bike, running red lights and stop signs without even slowing down or looking, going the wrong way up one way roads in the middle of the lane, driving at 3am down the middle of the road with no lights (almost always going the wrong way and running stop signs), ignoring the blocked off bike lanes on the roads that do have them, or just generally being an absolute menace and an idiot. We have so many bikers getting seriously hurt or killed because of their antisocial behavior. I’ve almost hit a couple in my ambulance because they’re constantly pulling out right in front of me or simply trying to bike right into the side of my rig as I’m driving down the road doing the speed limit, forcing me to either swerve or possibly end their entire existence. They just assume that car drivers will get out of their way, which is a dumb assumption when most of the drivers are just as dumb and are fucking around on their phones. Suicidal fucking idiots with zero survival instincts. I have zero problems whatsoever with the ones who are responsible and follow traffic laws, but they seem to be in the low minority around here.

I’m not at all religious now, but I was raised Christian. There’s some awful, awful shit in the Bible, but Jesus was such a chill dude. If everyone acted like Jesus, the world would be an awesome place. He was just a hippie who drank wine and hung out with his bros and made friends with prostitutes and outcasts and condemned the church leaders who abused their positions. According to legend he was the legit son of God and yet when he was asked to judge sinners he was like yo dudes that’s not my place only my dad can do that I’m not worthy and neither are any of you, maybe instead of worrying about what other people are doing you should deal with your own issues, ok? Can you imagine if people actually lived like that? I’m not as familiar with other religions, but from what I know other major prophets were pretty chill, cool dudes too. If people actually followed the prophets of their religions instead of being assholes, religion would be great. Instead we have poor people being exploited, women and children being abused, and the entire system is fucked and corrupted because of human nature run amok.

Came here to comment on the religion part. Humans are biologically programmed to be in a tribe and we need an “other” and we need a bad guy. On its own religion could be a neutral or a good thing, but it fits that need for tribalism and a common enemy and feeling superior. It’s the same mindset as nationalism or racism or when fans of sports teams riot and beat the shit out of each other for no reason. If religion never existed humanity would have just discovered some other way to segregate ourselves, feel superior, order each other around with arbitrary rules even the in group can’t agree on, and isolate and kill those who don’t comply. Add in manipulative people who are all too eager to hop into leadership roles and use them for their own power and selfish gain and you have pure evil, but it’s the system, not the religion, that’s a distraction.

FYI, if that ever happens again and you have nail polish remover handy, it dissolves it with no filing required :)

Loneliness. Lima beans. The smell of weed.

This is such a good answer and I hate that it’s true.

I also am a one income household and also am no stranger to having to choose “rent or groceries” on a regular basis. I hate that you can’t get food assistance unless you make minimum wage, but where I live they release analysis every year that a single adult needs to make at least 3x minimum wage just to be able to afford to exist with a one bedroom apartment at market rates and that’s without having extra money for savings, hobbies, or going out.

I have fucked up so many things in my life but I will always be eternally grateful that I never fucked up and got pregnant.

DnD nerds freaking out at the thought of Thieves Cant becoming a legitimate skill.

That’s incredibly unfair. Everyone says we don’t, but I just checked my timesheet and it’s listed as a 13 hour shift (instead of 12) with a notation marking it as happening during a time shift.

I work night shift. I got to watch the time on my phone reset and then relive the hour again while stuck on shift.

This. I use FOSS apps for as much as possible, have all my privacy settings carefully curated, don’t use Gmail or other Google apps for anything that matters, and have everything related to AI, social media apps, or services I don’t use disabled in the system apps, plus I use Mullvad’s DNS server to block ads and social media traffic from my phone itself, not just browsers. I work a lot of hours and don’t get much time to just chill. While I’m more tech savvy than the average person I’m far less tech savvy than the average Lemmy user. I don’t want to spend what little free time I have trying to install a different OS on my phone hoping I don’t brick it, or figuring out if I can get things to work with my phone carrier, my work apps, or my banking apps, and the convenience of having those apps outweighs the cons.

If it’s cold my nose is like a leaky faucet.

My nose also runs nonstop if I’m tired enough, which is embarrassing and disgusting. Like I will literally just have snot dripping out of my nose if my hands are full and I’m not constantly blowing or wiping it. I feel like a toddler.

I remember a little while ago when it was in the news for a very short time that they found several mass graves in PA of Irish who were brought over to be indentured servants. I don’t remember if they had determined what the cause of death was, whether it was illness or murder, but it stopped being news pretty quickly because no one really cared.

This is my random uninformed opinion, and I’m well aware that there are problems with it and it’s not the solution, I merely throw it out there as food for thought. I think every worker should make a living wage as base pay, but as a teenager I worked a job that was a tipped job (not food service).

It was in the late 2000s and early 2010s I made about $5.50 hr base pay, which was twice what my employer was legally allowed to pay me as a tipped employee, although by law at the end of the week if my tips didn’t get me up to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 they had to make up the difference.

I loved it. I did it for several years and at the end of every year I averaged $12+ an hour, and I was one of the employees who worked a larger chunk of slow shifts which obviously skewed my hourly average downwards. For a 15, 16, 17 year old teen in 2008 when the economy had crashed that was REALLY good money. Every other job was either a minimum wage job, or waitressing for tips. If I worked a busy shift I could work 4 hours and leave $100 in tips richer, plus my base pay. I don’t make $30 an hour now working in healthcare.

Anyway, all of that lengthy word salad to say that while I understand and agree with the arguments that tipping culture allows companies to not pay living wages, for teens and college students, who are probably always going to struggle, rightly or wrongly to get a well paying job, finding a job where they are mostly paid in tips can be a life changer. I worked hard in high school and stashed my tips away and when I turned 18 I had a (very) used car that I purchased myself and almost 10k in savings that I used to sustain myself through my 20s when I was trying to launch myself into adulthood through lower paying jobs that didn’t pay a living wage. I do not come from a privileged background, my parents didn’t help me with anything and in fact from the time I was in elementary school I had to work for basic life needs, so having that savings from my own work was a safety net that would have been almost impossible to build up $7.25 an hour.

This sounds like something you would do if you have already robbed a bank and you need to get rid of the dyed money. Buy your own dye, withdraw your own money, dye cash that you can prove is legally obtained, spend it in a bunch of places and make it a “thing”, become known around town as the “crazy dyed cash dude” then start throwing your illegal cash into the mix.