Unpopular Opinion

I hate people who treat them like some toys and fantasize about them. That makes me think they are in some sort of death cult. That they found socially acceptable way to love violence.

I would still get one for safety but it is a tool made for specifically one thing. To pierce the skin and rip through the inner organs of a person.

They can serve a good purpose but they are fundamentally grim tools of pain and suffering. They shouldn’t be celebrated and glorified in their own right, that is sick. They can be used to preserve something precious but at a price to pay.

I havent used any type of straw in quite some time. Plastic or paper.

They do nothing for me and I think they are one of the most pointless disposal food packaging items to exist.

Edit: there are many useful applications for straws I simply didn’t think about when posting this. Thanks for the commenters for pointing this out.

... if it is confirmed someone died while using it. Especially when advising against chemotherapy and/or operations.

Comparisons:

• Does most things; does none of them particularly well
• Comes with the system
• Most people think that's just how the platform is
• Annoying bugs take forever to get fixed
• Only wears 15 pieces of flair
• Extremely annoying to use after using a better system for any amount of time

I've seen very few 3rd party clients that are not miles ahead of Lemmy-UI. Of those that weren't ahead of L-UI, most of them weren't even finished, so it's hardly a fair comparison.

If you're reading this on Lemmy-UI, you might want to check out https://lemmyapps.com and see what you've been missing. I'm not affiliated with that, it's just a good resource.

I know why this is: it's because my mom, the only family member that I was close with, smoked a whole bunch, and so I have positive childhood associations.

Whether it be the active smell of somebody who's smoking nearby or the lingering scent that's left or that sticks around in place where people smoke frequently, such as bars or hallways or similar, I like it a lot.

Yet even so, I was actually stunned when I found that there are very few people who agree, and many are the folks who think that it smells bad.

For decades white people have been mocked for their dancing skills and then this shit is somehow considered good? Squatting, shuffling your feet, and swinging your arms up and down requires even less skill and coordination than the chicken dance.

Up front and center: I was appalled when I first learned the term "tradwife", made me ill, still does. The word is mainly used by childish men who want a hot, submissive, mommy wife, while not understanding that they have responsibilities.

I say "sorta" tradwife because she has a job, but otherwise I think she fits the bill.

She does almost all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. I do a bit because I always have and sometimes want it my way. (I'm better at laundry dammit!) Her reaction falls between offended, like I'm taking her job or saying she didn't do it well, and ecstatic, "because no man has done this for me!"

She's mostly submissive, lets me make the decisions. If she does put her foot down, yeah, she fucking means it, that thing is going to go that way. Rare, and a bit uncomfortable for me, probably means I fucked up.

She's always pretty, made up and stylishly dressed. Always. After being together 2 years, I still stare at her every day, always something new.

She's Filipino and I'm American. This is normal for her, weird for adult me, but... I was raised by my Silent Gen grandparents, Beaver Cleaver style. Go watch a 50's sitcom, that was my childhood in the 70s.

There's much to be said about such an arrangement. My parents had zero arguments because they each filled various roles, never ever stepped on one another's feet. It was never dad's turn to do the dishes, never mom's turn to mow the yard. Dad made the money, mom scrimped and saved and shopped. Dad helped me with my math homework (he was an engineer), mom helped me with English (the one thing she excelled at). Maybe most important, neither questioned the results of one another's work. They had their jobs to do and it wasn't any of their damned business how the other did theirs. (I'm sure they talked when I wasn't around, but not much, at least some would have leaked.)

Obviously traditional gender roles can be swapped, mixed up, dealer's choice. But for a child, or an adult, it's damned nice to know who is doing what, no questions asked, stable situation for everyone involved. Say what you will, but imagine a childhood with no parental strife.

Now, come tell me how wrong I am. :)

I fully understand the man is controversial to say the least, I'm not a huge fan myself, but I think that if he was legitimately a Nazi, that he's smart enough to not outright advertise it.

Socially awkward, autistic, right winger - Yes

Literally a Nazi - No

Bring on the downvotes 🤣

Edit 2025-01-13: LW has indicated they will be clarifying these rules soon. In the mean time, the community will remain locked until those are updated and deemed acceptable.

So the LW Team put out an announcement on new, site-wide moderation policy (see post link). I've defended, to many a downvote, pretty much every major decision they've made, but I absolutely cannot defend this one. In short, mods are expected to counter pretty much every batshit claim rather than mod it as misinformation, trolling, attack on groups, etc.

My rebuttal (using my main account) to the announcement: https://dubvee.org/comment/3541322

We're going to allow some "flat earth" comments. We're going to force some moderators to accept some "flat earth" comments. The point of this is that you should be able to counter those comments with words, and not need moderation/admin tools to do so.

(emphases mine)

Me: What if, to use the recent example from Meta, someone comes into a LGBT+ community and says they think being gay is a mental illness and /or link some quack study? Is that an attack on a group or is it "respectful dissent"?

LW: A lot of attacks like that are common and worth refuting once in awhile anyway. It can be valuable to show the response on occasion

I understand what they're trying to address here (highly encourage you to read the linked post), but the way they're going about it is heavy handed and reeks of "both sides"-ing every community, removing agency from the community moderators who work like hell to keep these spaces safe and civil, and opening the floodgates for misinformation and "civil" hate speech. How this new policy fits with their Terms of Service is completely lost to me.

I'll leave the speculation as to whether Musk dropped LW a big check as an exercise to the reader.

For now, this community is going dark in protest and I encourage other communities who may disagree with this new policy to join. Again, I understand the problem that is trying to be addressed, but this new policy, as-written, is not the way to do it.

So hear me out. If there's a company that's willing to invest in controlling everything, and is willing and able to handle it at a reasonable cost for the consumer, then it should be allowed. It's not like it's any different today anyway. You have these super corporations that own the smaller corporations that handle various industries. Take Johnson & Johnson for example. They 275 subsidiaries. Meaning that J&J get money for every new product that occurs in the subsidiaries. You don't even know some of the things they're involved with.

And stunning number for a company is Nestlé which has around 2000 subsidiaries. So what's the point of anti monopoly laws anymore? They found a way, so why should they be allowed to hide who they own? The everyday Joe and Jane have already figured out that things aren't the way they appear, so I think we're on the cusp of a full truth era where subsidiaries are going to start being involved in monopolization. These companies skirted the truth for too long, and we as individual citizens should put focus on and shut down subsidiaries

Not saying that this is the only cause of divorce, or even the leading cause. I'm just saying that there are a lot of women out there who romanticise the wedding itself. Almost like the relationship, the wedding itself, is irrelevant.

Which totally misses the conceptual point of getting married in the first place. Some women just like the idea of having a big party, with all their friends and family, making them the center of attention for a day.

Which is FINE. If women want to have that happen, I feel like maybe we SHOULD make that a whole seperate other thing. Like a new holiday or maybe we combine the concept with their birthday.

It's just the concept we have now, the average wedding from the time the man thinks "I'm going to marry her" all the way through the first day they get back from their honeymoon......that entire process costs an average of $100,000. From the dress, to the ring, to the hall rental, to the wedding planner, to the catering, to the flight, and hotel, and rental car, and everything else that comes with the wedding, average cost is $100,000.

And the second you call anything a "wedding" anything, it skyrockets in price. Want a cake? Ok, sure, $30. Want a "wedding cake"? Yeah, $250.

You want a big poofy white dress? Hey is this a wedding dress? No. This is a wedding dress replica. It's being used to shoot a wedding scene in an independant movie. We're just buying the material. Yeah, ok. $70.

Oh, this dress is actually in a wedding? $2,000.

And I know this just seems like I'm just complaining about money. But it all ties together. Because if you ask most women what they dream about when they think about their dream wedding, they have this long list of things, and everything needs to be perfect, and the planning itself, the wedding party and appearance becomes an extention of themselves. If this is the womans first wedding, it really becomes a mirror of who they are are a person. This is why you should NEVER trust a guy with the wedding planning. At all. Unless you're willing to give up total control. Instead of your favorite flowers creating an arch that you walk under to get into the building? What if we instead had flame throwers that CONSTANTLY spewed flames which prevented you from getting in. And to stop the flames, you need to answer 3 riddles about the couple getting married. And if you get it wrong, a bunch of royal knights in platemail armor stab you with haberts until you get it right......or bleed out. And once you get inside the hall, all the hall vendors are cosplaying as classic pro wrestlers. Imagine coming in, and seeing Macho Man Randy Savage holding a plate of cheeses, and saying "OOOOH YEAH! TRY THE SWISS, IT'S AS GOOD AS MISS!!! ELIZABETH THAT IS! OR TRY THE CHEDDER! IT'LL KNOCK YOU OUT OF YOUR SWEATER!!! DIG IT!!!" Then he snaps into a slim jim.

See to me, that sounds awesome, and just as expensive as whatever the fuck would have been planned otherwise. But I also realize every woman who's in the current process of planning a wedding, read what I just wrote how I'd plan it, and they physically recoiled in cringe. And you're remembering that last week you asked your boyfriend what he wants at the wedding. And he said "whatever you want". And you tried to fight him about it, saying he needs to include his ideas.

No the fuck he doesn't. THESE are the ideas we create, and we know they aren't going to happen. Our ideas are not "good" from your perspective. Our ideas will cause fights. Because at the end of the day, you already know exactly what you want. You've been planning it since you were 5 years old, and you don't need any input from us. We're just going to screw it up. You just want to ask what we envision at the wedding, and you're under the delusional idea that we're going to say "White roses on every table, and all the groomsmen have green pockets on their suit vests." Or whatever the fuck is in your head. We're not going to say that. We've never in our lives had THAT vision. We know the wedding is going to look like how you want it to look. So we just say "Whatever you want to do, that's it." We stay out of it, because we don't want to start a fight over something we know we're going to lose anyways. That's a dumb fight. Telling a woman how to plan their wedding.

Well. I'm a dumb guy. Let me have a go.

The reason a decent percentage of these weddings end the relationships is because the money involved has no benefit to the couples long term happyness, and adds nothing to their lives. It's a big expensive party for the sake of a big expensive party. Nothing more.

And I hear you saying "But it's to celebrate the love between two people, and create a bond that will last a lifetime!"

No. Believe it or not, you can get married without all that stuff. The whole idea of a marriage, if you simplify it to it's core concept, is that you both have signed a paper informing the government that you are now a legalized couple within the country of residence that you got married. That's IT. You can both go down to the courthouse right now, fill out a form, sign it, and now you're married. I don't know what those forms cost, but I would assume about $100. And then you'd both go home to where you already live.

So you're saying "That sounds like a terrible wedding". And the issue here is, you're confusing the wedding PARTY with the idea of MARRIAGE.

So if you get proposed to, ask yourself this. Would you still marry this man if he insisted there were no party. No flowers. No big hall. No poofy white dress, no dancing, no family or friends, no big cake, no big vacation afterwards. Just you, him, city hall, a pen, and a form. Maybe a minister if the idea of religion is important to your marriage.

If you are in love with the person you're marrying, it might be disappointing, but it shouldn't be a deal breaker. If it's a deal breaker, you don't love the man. You love the idea of being the center of attention. And that, plus the huge amount of savings you're blowing, is the reason for the divorces. The party has ended. The party has brought you hard financial times, and you were never in love with the person to begin with. So now, they have nothing left to offer you.

Again, I'm not claiming this is the only reason, or even the leading reason for divorce. I'm just saying it's a significant percentage.

I will rate these people on this scale:

1 (I hope you step on a lego) to 5 (I hope you fall in a pit of Lego)

Scale

1- Share a direct link to a YouTube/TikTok/etc as conversation starter or reply

2 - the above, but without a summary or timestamps.

3 - the above, but the video is longer than 5 minutes and "dude wait until the end".

4 - the above, but no context. It's just the direct link.

5 - the above, but the video is part of some "influencer" bait and you "have to understand their lore about why it's funny"

I find the AI Art debate very interesting. Should it be praised as art? Is it a cheap ripoff that cheapens the "real deal"?

I don't know. All I know is I've seen AI art so beautiful and unique that I can't bring myself to condemn it. I like what I'm seeing. I still respect the commitment to "real" art. I like both. Is it wrong to like both?

Why publish something claiming to cover the entire year if the year isn't even over yet??

remember the posters for Episode I, when we all thought we would see the character development and learn to understand and even empathize with pure evil? The movie Wicked pulled that off.

Nintendo, while aggressively litigious, do so to maintain the value and exclusivity of their IP.

Their games also never go on sale, and all sell really well over time, unlike many releases from other publishers.

The result is that Nintendo are able to release a solid cadence of high quality, first party games free of other forms of aggressive monetisation, maintaining the value of the games as art.

I keep reading reviews of how horrible it is they switched the guy who did the songs in Moana 1 for the 2 girls who did the songs in Moana 2. After listening to alot, NUH UH. It is exactly what the Moana2 composers said about their songs growing on people. The specific difference is Energy. The Moana2 songs are Good and Empowering. The Moana1 songs are not except the Horizon one, which is beautiful. But I don't identify as a murderous giant crab addicted to shiny nor a deceptive braggart, so, while they may sound audibly well put together, the energy is off in Moana1 songs. I can almost smell the gender stereotype identity stuff with middle aged famous male composer songs being 'i need shiny things and will attack you' and 'youre welcome for being this awesome whilIe i decieve u', while the 2 up and coming girls have purely songs for protagonists that are like "destined for greatness go!" "think different to get extra far" and "you can do it x2". So to me, being a protagonist, I can find the first Moana songs wellwritten, but only the Horizon one repeatable. Moana2 does not have this problem and whichever song someone attaches to is healthy. I personally love "Get Lost".

But also I know the norm is to not care about that stuff and people say horrific movies done well are "good" while, to me, that they are horrific makes them "bad". I assume it's this same difference in values that causes the majority of reviews to say Moana2 songs are worse than Moana1 while I think the opposite. Moana 1 songs could be way darker and reviewers would still say they are better than Moana2. Meanwhile, I think about myself or the child singing them, listening to them repeatedly, and Moana2 is 100% healthy while Moana1 has some healthy ingredients but also artificial colors known to cause cancer. Thus Moana2 songs > Moana1.

Most of the posts that are frequently featured in the homepage are about social problems or styles of life common to that country (or most first world countries), and even limit to only United-Statesian media discussion. They do not appeal to someone like me, who has different thoughts, different people, different problems. It's hard to find something relatable in (most) non-local communities, because it's just about this style of culture. It doesn't helps with the poor website discorverability, making me limited to these same repetitive and unfunny posts.

Voting has concluded on whether the community wants to remove the "Vote the opposite of the norm" voting guidelines.

As you can see in the screenshot below (or in the post), the results are a tie (only upvotes are counted, not the score). I abstained from the vote, leaving it entirely to the community, and I do not wish to cast the tie-breaking vote.

Since it is a tie, I'll treat that as a non-majority vote and, as such, we will keep the voting guidelines as they are.

I think most people say that it's not because it's popular to do so. The series has some genuinely funny bits.