It’s funny, the “zoomers”/teen audience is not even a bother to me - I genuinely feel like it’s a lot of the more 40-50s demographic which makes any form of conversation a nightmare.

Reddit, especially the bigger subs - feels really, really stupid lately. And I hate to say that because it sounds so insulting, but it really does feel like the average “IQ” on the site has gone from being this kind of tech/nerd culture of reasonably well educated people to like… old ladies complaining about their ‘entitled’ DoorDash drivers. It often feels like Facebook.

Don’t get me wrong, Lemmy isn’t 100% geniuses or anything and there are some smart people on Reddit, but on Lemmy I’ll actually have back and forth conversations with people and it feels like more people are acting like human beings

Turns out food inflation as a portion of income is currently sitting at about 1% since 2000, and maybe 2% since 1990.

Ignorance is bliss though right?

Oh sir…? I speak jive :)

This image is a pretty good example of AI art being pretty bad at doing what it should.

Because this isn’t the style of H.R. Giger. Like… not at all. It’s black and white? It has… details? This is just 5 or so different “robot detective” pieces blended together and it turns into sludge.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pbyCT2mmlwg

It’s not really “shilling for a company” to understand that price increases for products (especially “value” products) do not often perfectly follow country-wide overall inflation percentages

No just one side tends to have very complex figures backed by large independent teams of experts in the field and the other has McChicken prices and vibes.

If the other side had like… any real data I would be on board with it

I don’t think you’re a threat to anyone. I just think it’s kind of baby brained and an overall bad trend for society to think like that

See I get that, and that’s absolutely fine. There’s just a gigantic difference between saying “hmm, it seems like inflation for ‘budget’ items used by poorer individuals has gone up at a higher rate than other items, let me see if I can find some info on that” and “nope! The government is lying, actually! I can tell from the vibes.”

One is very solution and truth oriented and the other is impatience that only sets them up to fall for further conspiracy theories and emotional arguement

Can you provide… anything to actually substantiate that? Maybe some food items like fast food value options have gone up 100%. Maybe some homes in particular, extremely high demand areas have gone up.

When you make these gigantic sweeping claims with nothing but vibes and the McChicken to point to it just feels like bad faith

Feels… vaguely racist.

Maybe not even vaguely. Like I really cannot think of what the distinguishing line between “rugby players” and “American football players” is that would make one group ‘thugs’ other than “one of them is predominantly black”

They might not “lose money” per McChicken sold but if they’re not gaining a certain dollar amount per hour/week/month/etc that particular McDonalds restaurant might lose money over time.

Take two burger places, one of them makes 20 cents on every burger, while the other makes a dollar and 20 cents on every burger. Even if the latter one gets a bit less traffic it’s absolutely going to out perform the former.

This can suck but… if can also be the reality of the situation. A sandwich (even a small one) being a single dollar is likely way below McDonalds usual margin, and unless you’re demanding an immediate People’s Revolution of fast food restaurants they’re going to run the numbers and make the most profitable locations they can.

Are McDonalds dollar menu items so absolutely pivotal to your life that it completely breaks down when they raise in price?

Do you understand what the overall inflation figure means though? You can’t just say “no, that figure about overall inflation in the economy isn’t true, my double whopper supreme is way more than that!!”

Wasn’t Lemmy supposed to be the somewhat “smarter” Reddit where people had taken a basic stats class at some point in their life? I just really don’t get this thinking.

Definitely. I really don’t like posts like this, as they really just feed into a false, conspiratorial narrative wherein somehow every single federal agency and employee, no matter how bureaucratic, monitored, and independent - is under the direct control of whoever happens to be the sitting president at the time.

It’s just fundamentally really not how government (or data collection) works, and it reeks of that dangerous “midwit” territory wherein people feel like they can cite one or two examples of the data seeming off or the government being a bit opaque and they think they’re experts on the subject.

You end up creating a society in which people can’t trust/believe basic facts because everyone keeps convincing eachother that only the vibes of a situation matter

Kind of hate posts like this. Yes! Inflation is happening and bad. And yes! The McChicken (and a lot of fast food value options) have soared in price in recent years. But trying to take that and frame it as “look at this… it’s so obvious the government is lying to us and overall inflation is actually over 100%” Is just ignorant nonsense and it tends to play into conspiratorial minds who don’t actually have any experience in economics or data collection.

You can hate the federal government all you want. Really. I totally get it. But they are unfortunately really good at data collection.

Arduino is the best place to start imo. Get an LED to blink and youve got your intro to intro to electrical engineering done. Teaches you coding, basics of voltage and wiring, etc. You can scale it up and get pretty advanced and go from there.

As a general word of caution though, as someone who does enjoy hobby electronics, please understand that like 95% of what you can make is going to be something that could these days be bought from Amazon or whatever for $15 or less. It can be a fun hobby, but I think it can sometimes feel like you’re essentially just making Knick knacks and toys and overengineered whoozywhats.

This isn’t a bad thing per se, but something to keep in mind.

Modern Trek (by which I mean SNW) is very very close to being good to me. Something about the dialogue just throws me off though, along with the hour long episodes not really suiting the subgenre imo.

I think people are genuinely trying to make SNW good, just kind of a lightning in a bottle scenario

At least to me, I find it pretty aspirational. But I can see how others would differ on that regard.

Regardless, I appreciate that this is still seen through a few different lenses. The Klingon for example are like… notably emotional. A Klingon being quick to anger is one of their defining traits. Yet they’re still very “respectful” in their own way, with that code of honor being very key to their society.