USA, Minnesota. People hug but ask if you’re a hugger first.
I think it’s funny that only 2 options were given. In India the norm is clasping your own hands together and saying namaste, nomoshkar or some other greeting. No touching. In east Asia a very slight bow is incredibly common.
Yeah meeting new people isn’t easy once you’re out of school. If you are outgoing there are definitely avenues though. There are meetup groups for everything. You might not have hobbies, but you still do things. You bike? Go to the local riding meetup. You like boardgames? Sign up for your local open play at a boardgame store. You cook? Take a cooking class at a kitchen store or co-op. Anything you do, there is probably already a local group meeting up to do it.
I should try and find new friends, but I feel like most people act like this, honestly.
I don’t know anyone like this. All, my friends, and my friends friends, do normal things like go out to eat, do something outdoors, play games, just talk, sit around a fire pit, etc. On a rare occasion a few will get drunk or high, but it is not a regular thing for any of us, sounds like you just surround yourself with 1 dimensional people with little to offer.
For much of my adult life I’ve smelled good with or without deodorant and rarely sweat much. Lately whether because of a hormonal change or something wrong I’m unaware of, my smell has changed completely. No amount of deodorant helps, no amount of showering helps. In fact, I often end up using deodorant as a last resort, because whatever bacteria is taking over seams to turn all types of deodorant into vinegar & onions in a matter of minutes, as if it’s feeding off the deodorant. The smell seems to be improving over time, according to other people, not just me. But it has given me additional sympathy for people going through this. When its bad, I can lather my body head to toe in the shower 4 times and come out smelling the same as I went in. Sometimes smells are hard to tackle. You shouldn’t assume it’s a hygiene thing.
Having been around melting ice a lot I think this is closer to the right answer. Also decomposing things give off heat. Any vegetation that is decomposing will accelerate ice melting.
Also remove the restrictions on multi use zoning. Housing scarcity is entirely artificial in most locations. If the pressure valve was released prices would stabilize.
Both of which appear to also be dropping in severity with time. If you were to say, people should still be careful and wear masks in a crowd, and generally take covid seriously because it’s still dangerous, I completely agree with you. But at some point continuing to call something a pandemic is abusing the word a little, once it’s being fully managed and generally under control then it’s no longer a pandemic. Our own policy places us somewhere between a pandemic and an endemic, so I suppose it really depends on your definitions of the words and how squishy our perceptions of those words really are.
While I haven’t look at recent data, my understanding is that new covid strains are, on average, getting less deadly and but more contagious as time moves forward. If that is still the case, then what we are really looking at now is an manageable endemic virus instead of a pandemic emergency, it’s becoming more and more like the flu. It’s important to remember that the flu was originally a pandemic that killed millions world wide and then became manageable and endemic. The prevailing scientific belief is that most viruses will slowly become more contagious and less deadly over time as those are the mutations most likely to survive. As the death rates continue to drop over time it’s hard to really call it a pandemic anymore.
And what happens in the unlikely event of system collapse? If some major cataclysmic event wiped out the world economy and half the worlds population, what happens when suddenly thousands of nuclear plants are abandoned and melt down world wide? Nuclear is safer in a vacuum, but we don’t exist in a vacuum. Anything that can happen, will eventually happen. Even if those power plants are able to be shut down safely, in a post stable world, the storage of the spent waste would be incredibly problematic as we would no longer have the capacity or knowledge to bury it 4 miles down. I would say that nuclear power is far more risky long term than people give it credit for. We are evaluating it’s risk only based on the present stability and regulations of our current systems. Modern technological stability is really a tiny blip in earths history, we really can’t guarantee a future that will know what to do with spent nuclear waste. Nuclear power is really an all-in bet on our own technological dominance of the future.
I say this as someone that is not against nuclear power, but I think people view it as some sort of quick fix when it just presents it’s own problems. The truth is, you don’t get something for nothing. All energy costs something and that cost should be distributed between several systems and our consumption should be reduced.
I’ve known people, myself included, that have had negative health impacts from coffee, so that could be biasing my perspective. My father nearly died from heart complications after coffee, I bleed at the exit 100% of the time I drink coffee. I love coffee, but I can’t drink it. There’s probably something genetic that makes my line intolerant. I know people that end up in a migraine caffeine withdrawal cycle on a regular basis. Obviously these are person specific, so you really just need to know your body and act accordingly.
I was going to link the same wiki to argue the opposite. Twice as much as tiny is still small. What that wiki article shows to me is that tobacco use is way way down, the 12th country on that list only has double the tobacco use of the US. Considering 60 years ago about half of adults smoked in the westernized world it’s way down and it’s been on a constant decline. Several European countries are only marginally higher than the US and ~4 are lower.
Though I must admit, looking at more data, it’s still higher than I would have guessed, about 12% in the USA when I would have guessed 5%. I live in a city.
I mean lets not pretend it’s risk free, it raises blood pressure, causes headaches, can trigger arrhythmia in those at risk, etc. As far as drugs go it is probably the least risky, but it’s not like it comes with zero health impacts.
I think people want to do things they are not allowed to. They will go through the effort to find a way. In a lot of states that legalized Marijuana, its use went down after legalization. Once it was normalized, some people lost interest. I think the opposite happens when you make it illegal, you’re basically making it cool again. This isn’t just drug use, it’s with a lot of things, if you forbid it, people will suddenly want that thing more than they did before. Religion comes to mind. Authoritarian countries that want to stamp out a religion or all religion often cause a religious resurgence. There’s nothing quite like being told you can’t do something to make you want to do it or visa versa. People are naturally oppositional.
I keep hearing this and yet when I’m in Europe the amount of people smoking seems to go from tiny to slightly less tiny. Sure there are more smokers, but it’s not a significant portion of the population anymore in most places. I just traveled all over France, which I thought was famous for being a smoking country and I noticed how seldom I was even around a smoker. Outside of Belarus I don’t think smoking is even that significant anymore in Europe.
Accept it’s been the case for decades, this isn’t just lately. The republican party in the modern era has like 10 times the convictions than the democratic party.
I’ve never much cared for the details of a lot of communities/subs outside of very specialized ones. I’m going to participate if the topic is interesting and learn about the rules as I go. There being multiple communities for the same thing was pretty common on reddit.
Related question, why the fuck do some people feel it necessary to grunt, moan, pant, and otherwise loudly vocalize while shitting? Zero people want to hear you, shut the fuck up, you are gross.
I just don’t feel like Reddit management remembers what the point of their system is. If they have such contempt for the mods and the users, what even is the point anymore. I get that they need to make money, but they need to do it in a way that keeps reddits positive aspects. This can’t end well, the only hope for them is if enough people leave and they readjust their perspective and become a little more self aware. I’m not holding my breath…
The problem is that it’s easy for the interested parties to equate it to antisemitism when intermixed with legitimate protest of Israel’s horrendous actions are actual antisemites coopting the conversation for their own purposes. Antisemitism is at it’s highest point in my entire lifetime. Things to note: Muslim Israelis (about 20% of their population) support Israel’s wartime actions at about the same rate as Jewish Israelis. Also, the language used in opposition to, or in support of, Israel in this conflict is different than in comparable one sided wars.
To be clear I want to reiterate that i think what Israel is doing is undeniably awful, but I think antisemitism, and anti Muslim sentiments, color how people interpret and talk about what is happening irrespective of government officials agendas. It’s absolutely part of the conversation whether we like it or not, and we have to navigate that as part of the larger conversation. This isn’t to say I don’t agree with you, it is bullshit to just paint everything as antisemitism.