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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: December 16th, 2023

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  • I live in DFW, a large amalgamation of two cities and a bunch if suburban sprawl in Texas.
    I live in a neighborhood that is considered extremely walkable, as I am directly across the street from a university and less than a mile from city hall.

    Here are my walking distances:

    • To the nearest convenience store: 1.8km
    • To the nearest chain supermarket: 4.3 km (They have a monopoly though, so unless you can afford whole foods, the closest good one is like 22.5 km)
    • To the bus stop: Lol, we don’t have busses. A neighboring city does, so I guess 29 km?
    • To the nearest park: Nearest park is 2.8km. Nearest public space is only 1.5km because I live right next to city hall.
    • To the nearest big supermarket: 8.9 km to Walmart.
    • To the nearest library: 1.5km, again, I live right next to city hall.
    • To the nearest train station: 16km, unless you mean one for intercity travel. We don’t have one of those because Amtrak is slowly being killed.

    Straight-line distance to Big Ben: we don’t have a Big Ben, but we killed JFK and that’s 34km away.

    Bonus fun fact, I commute 42km each day. This is considered far by most people here, 32km would be much more reasonable.



  • “I don’t really get why people get so up in arms about discussing it, but Sex is fun. Be careful though, those swimmers are persistent little fuckers.”

    “Drugs feel good and you think everything is fine until one day you look up and realize it all went wrong years ago. I can’t stop you, but I really hope you’ll choose not to try them.”

    I think both worked out well. I’m sex positive and I generally avoid drugs because it just isn’t worth the risk of finding that one substance that totally ruins my life.



  • scoobford@lemmy.ziptoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldWhat. the. hell?
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    10 days ago

    This is all riot control gear. US universities usually have their own police departments, so by extension they usually have their own riot control gear as well.

    You wouldn’t use any of this stuff in war. It isn’t designed to kill people (although it can and will, especially if used improperly).


  • It depends. I think it’s definitely less common here because it just isn’t needed most of the time. Even a working class retiree should have a pension or 401k, social security, and some kind of savings from their life as a working adult.

    To require the support of your children, you’d have to be unable to work, not entitled to substantial amounts of social security, not have paid into a retirement plan, and not have saved any money from when you did work.

    I know a couple of people who support their parents, and they either spend their ENTIRE lives in poverty making sub-minimum wage (which is pretty uncommon), or they just straight up blew all their money because they assumed their kid would take care of them. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the second category.







  • What is your budget and needs? Used thinkpads from a certain time period are very hardy, but they’re getting old enough now for performance to be an issue for anything beyond basic web browsing and word processing.

    Framework also makes laptops with the explicit goal of being more repairable. Even if you decide not to work on it yourself, it would be trivial for a repair shop to fix most things that could go wrong.



  • It is true that nobody pays the cartoonishly high bills that you see posted online. It is also true that we spend way more on healthcare than basically anyone else.

    My company offers very good insurance. Anything “in network” is free after the first $3000 every year, and the monthly premium is around ~$330. Note that this is a company that intentionally offers very good health insurance so they can be less competitive when it comes to salary and time off. I’d say in a given year, I spend around $7,000.

    But really, one of the biggest practical issues with our healthcare system is its opacity. Most people are unable to figure out what most things will cost them before they consent to care.