That’s really interesting! In the Australian content, we would only ever call a strip of shops a ‘mall’ if they weren’t connected by some interior structure. In fact, our ‘malls’ are almost all outdoor connections of shops. So interesting how our vocabularies vary!
Out of curiosity; where are your grocery stores, pharmacies and post offices? Because here in Australia, most of them are in shopping centres (Aussie for ‘mall’). The vast majority of us go to do our weekly shop, grab medication, send back returns from our online shopping etc. so they’re still very much alive and well.
Speaking from an outside perspective; malls (what we call shopping centres) in Australia didn’t die anywhere near what has happened in the US. We have a very different geographic landscape (hyper-concentration of population in city centres) and definitely don’t have the same level of penetration that companies like Amazon do, but we have shared a lot of the same economic headwinds that the US has. From my armchair perspective, this would generally suggest that it’s less to do with economic position and more to do with idiosyncrasies of the US, but I have absolutely no data to back that up.
Depending on your definition of ‘sidekick’, these may also count:
There might be more I’m forgetting.
And it’s also only banned on work devices. There’s no ban on government employees having TikTok on their personal phones, although I personally don’t.
If this Biden feeling ‘jacked up’, I shudder to think what he’s like when he’s not. He’s not doing a great job of spruiking his own achievements and his answers are devoid of stats or figures - likely because they weren’t able to bring notes in. He’s sadly making trump look more coherent and lively by comparison.
As a child protection caseworker, I’m right here with you. The amount of children and young people I’m working with who are self-harming and experiencing suicidal ideation over this stuff is quite prevalent. Sadly, it’s almost all girls who are targeted by this and it’s just another way to push misogyny into the next generation. Desensitisation isn’t the way; it will absolutely cause too much harm before it equalises.
Conversations on a public platform aren’t just for those who speak; they’re also for those who listen. Many people are simply reading these exchanges without engaging in them. I think this discourse is most valuable for them, far more valuable than for someone whose opinion is so ingrained that they’re the one arguing about it.
I would love for more of this work to be done in my country too - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have so much lore, history and knowledge that we’ve been losing with each passing generation due to the ongoing effects of colonialism. I agree that video is the most appropriate way to preserve oral traditions and knowledge, and that we should be creating massive publicly-accessible databases to store and view them.
I always used to use a 3PA that had no ads or recommendations, just my own curated sub list, and I honestly loved that. There were definitely echo chambers but things worked well for me as long as I stayed conscious to that. Then when the APIpocalypse happened I browsed reddit on the web and in their official app for the first time in almost ten years and just noped right the fuck off.
At one point in my feed it went:
Like, only 1/6 items were things I had actually asked to see. It was atrocious. Default reddit is absolutely cancer now, and I really struggle to empathise with people who are still using it vanilla without any extensions or domain changes.
Yeah, if “toxic + toxic = toxic” made sense then table salt would be extremely dangerous.
Sodium = extremely volatile and usually explosive metal when interacting with water (more than half of what makes us)
Chlorine = gas at room temperature that can kill you in minutes at concentrations of 1000ppm or more
Sodium + Chlorine = Sodium Chloride = delicious table salt that makes food yummy and helps power our neurons
It’s also just generally not a good train of thought regardless of the quality of the media or the individual person’s enjoyment.
For instance - my wife struggles to maintain an understanding of the story of whatever she’s watching unless she focuses completely on it, meaning if we want to discuss what we’re watching we pause the TV to discuss and then press play again. If we talk throughout something or she’s on her phone, she misses out entire pieces of critical dialogue or visuals that carry the story and so she ends up not being able to follow it and then therefore doesn’t enjoy it at all, or alternatively she has to ask what’s going on which kinds ruins it for both of us.
It makes no sense to make some weird inference that because of that, she’s somehow more susceptible to marketing or doesn’t know how to spend time with groups of people. Both are definitely untrue. I think it is fair, however, to assume that she probably wouldn’t be good friends with someone who is as judgmental as the previous poster, so at least they got that one right.
That’s a fair call mate, but I would like to remind you that Autism is a spectrum, and many different people have many different presentations and symptomatology associated with their conditions. I’m sorry that you’re not able to drive due to your condition, but many others are able to including some of my close family members.
My bad if what I wrote made you feel like a prop - it wasn’t my intention. I was genuinely trying to spark conversation about disability accommodations in car-free world.
Serious question: are you concerned that banning all cars will negatively impact some groups more than others - for instance, people living with disability? Cars are a far more preferable mode of transport for someone who has a physical disability; someone who has autism and struggles with sensory overload; or someone who is morbidly obese and struggles to walk even short distances. What are your thoughts on how their needs can be accommodated if we take all cars off the road overnight tonight?
That’s interesting, because “the apple doesn’t/didn’t fall far from the tree” is a known Anglophonic saying that basically means that a child turned out a lot like a parent (gender not necessarily specified). I wonder if one is a calque of the other.
That’s totally fair, but I generally don’t like to ascribe to the idea that we as individuals need to take on responsibility for solving issues that are systemic in nature. I think anyone doing anything they can to make an impact is great and should absolutely be lauded, but we should never be placing or accepting responsibility for solving these issues onto individuals.
I have coeliac disease, which makes most plant-based meat alternatives off-the-menu because of the use of wheat or barley, so I don’t tend to feel so bad for consuming meat a few nights a week. My body struggles to maintain healthy vitamin levels at the best of times, so I have to compensate how I can and balance the ethics of the matter. I’m also not rich, which means I can’t afford a high-quality vegetarian or vegan diet right now. For someone like me, waiting for cultured meats is the best I can do right now unless a cure for autoimmune diseases is found.
I’m really looking forward to cultured meats for similar reasons. I take no issue with one animal (human) hunting another wild animal to eat its meat for sustenance - that’s just biology bro - but our farming practices have just become insanely abhorrent with regards to animal ethics. I can’t wait until some bioengineer makes my minced meat in a lab with no animal cruelty involved because while I hate torturing animals, I love me some meat.
Hamas ≠ Palestinian civilians
Such an interesting perspective, thanks for your contribution! I guess our ‘shopping centres’ are essentially the first condition you’ve described that also have grocery stores attached, and it’s likely the grocery store (in Australia this basically means one of 3-4 companies) that are keeping these structures going in the modern age. Our shopping centres tend to be built ‘up’ rather than ‘out’, with 3-5 storey shopping centres (with up to 7 storey parking lots) being fairly common within city limits that are closely accessible to more than 50% of the population.
That being said though, I live fairly equidistant between two of the largest shopping centres in Sydney and still choose to go to my local, smaller, single-storey shopping centre which is very small by Australian standards (<40 stores) which feels much more like a ‘mall’.
Do you guys have a lot of standalone grocery stores that you can drive right up to, park, shop and leave? Because that’s definitely the minority here!