Indeed. I stopped going to general admission live music shows years and years ago, because no matter where I’d stand in the crowd, that’s the spot that people would choose to force their way through to the bathroom, or bar, or to smoke, or wherever drunk people at a show go. (And go they do, the shifting around never lets up.) There’s really only so much being elbowed in the side or shoved in the back constantly that one can take before it starts to feel personal.

Then I realized that when other people would scan the crowd for an opening, it’d seem like the spot where I stood was a good choice, because there was visually a gap. Above my head. Because I was usually the shortest man there. (Which is somewhat unusual for me, but the fact that it was always the case at shows should’ve been a hint.)

I did try to stand my ground a few times, but then just risked getting into fights with drunk people, and/or getting slapped with the bullshit Angry Short Man label. Best just not to go. Especially since I couldn’t see the band anyway, what with the 6’6" guys who’d decide to stand up front.

So yeah, really tall people do see things differently, and if you see others as figuratively beneath you, or as invisible, well, I hope you have to sit in a coach seat for a flight to New Zealand.

I’m not sure. What does everybody else think?

Ah, but if they get in on an existing system like Wero, how are they going to pay themselves for building it?

Just teasing my fellow straight men! Yes, 52% and 59% are pretty close, and men tend to enjoy receiving slightly more than women do, which could easily affect the numbers like that.

Straight women give oral sex an average of 5.14 times per month.

I did a web search on that phrase, and found a number of sources which cite it as the average number of times the average American gives oral sex. But they all leave out the definition of average: Does this number represent the number of blowjobs given in a year, divided by the number of straight women, divided by 12? These are infographic-type sites that cite each other, and I don’t have time to chase down the original source of that number, but it seems unlikely.

One of the pages that I found reported that 59% of women* give oral sex. So if 41% of women give 0 blowjobs in a month, those 59% have to pick up the slack. Then, subtract the proportion of women who would, but are not currently sexually active. That would leave a much smaller group giving a lot more oral sex, if that was the definition of average. (I guess the 28% of women who describe giving it as pleasurable are each doing it more than 20 times in a month?)

Instead, I suspect that that number describes the number of times that sexually-active Americans who engage in oral sex give it in a month, which makes for a very different total number. (Or, if it really is # of blowjobs / # of straight women, I’m going to be very upset with whomever is getting my share.)

* I learned from this research that 52% of straight men give oral sex. WTF, guys?

High explosives. At least I could go out with a good bang.

I feel it the other way 'round. I’ll wear the same jacket beyween 35 to 45°F, and add some layers for 15°F. But for 5°F, I’ll switch to the parka.

That’s great advice. I’ve joined a few hobby groups, made some good friends, and uhh, enjoyed doing hobbies with friends. No romantic success, but I did get out of the house and do fun stuff.

Not real great. I’ve always taken the advice to “just treat women like people,” and have had a lot of great friendships with women as a result. Then, for a few months some years ago, I decided to follow the “just be confident” advice, and forced myself to behave in ways that felt to me very transgressive and boundary-breaking. It worked stunningly well, but I just can’t keep it up. That’s not my personality, or my romantic style. I need some indication that a woman is interested in me, and pushing past her initial resistance makes me feel queasy. But, I’m not attractive enough to get those kinds of signals often, so, the single life it is.

Gin is basically alcohol flavored with various botanicals. Juniper berries are most prominent in the traditional gin flavor profile, so that may be what you don’t like. Some craft distilleries now make gin with other flavorings. For example, there’s one around here (Vikre) that makes a spruce gin which I quite like.

Check with the craft distillery, and find out what botanicals they use, then look for gins flavored similarly.

I’m slowly de-Google-ing. Today, I nuked one of two accounts. Next up is cutting off the Nest thermostat, and automating it with my local Home Assistant server. (I’ve never run Windows at home, so I can’t delete it.)

ETA: Forgot to note I’m switching to a European email provider.

Yeah, remember all those people killed in that e-bike ramming attack in, was it the Netherlands?

Ground-rolling cars as mass transportation. The engineering superb, but the technology inherently can’t scale. The storage requirements alone push many cities past the limits financial sustainability, and the spatial requirements for operation lead to massive network congestion as a matter of course. And yet, we keep throwing good money after bad trying to make the system work.

They’re obsessed with each other. I wish they’d finally just bang, so all the hate-flirting wouldn’t show up in my New feed so much.

The frustration here is that the common refrain whenever somebody proposes a bike lane anywhere is, “It’s bad for business! Where will their customers park?!”

It’s completely bogus, which a snowstorm makes manifest: Without the snow, we can pretend that these cars belong to the drivers allegedly stopping to patronize local businesses. With the snow, we see the truth that space is here used by three people to store their private property for a week. This example illustrates why experience shows, over and over, people walking and biking are better for business than people in cars. Hundreds, or even thousands, of potential customers who can easily stop in, versus drivers (non-customers) who are so close, but so far away.

In short, it’s not that people did what the city intended, it’s that the city is kneecapping itself.

Leave aside the issue of blame. Other nations have no leverage to change the U.S. government. It’s arguably even beyond our influence, but Americans have the best shot at changing it. All that others can do is to try to tear down the whole empire, and it’s in their existential self-interest to try. If that leaves us Americans caught in the middle, that’s just harsh reality. Denial is human, but if we want to escape it, we have to get organized.

Apparently not. ¯\(ツ)/¯

If you have the privilege to ignore “politics” while people are gravely suffering in real life, is it so hard to just ignore it in your Lemmy feed?

Yes. Very much so. Calling it a “virus” is an analogy to simplify the concept to a sound bite, and an author like Neal Stephenson made a “mind virus” central to the plot of his book, Snow Crash. But strip away the literary liberties, and it’s based on real neuroscience. See, for example, this article from a few years ago.

Quote:

It is well-documented that for example words like “reptiles” and “parasites” were used by the Nazi regime to compare outsiders and minorities to animals. Strongmen throughout history have referred to targeted social groups as “rats” or “pests” or “a plague.” And it’s effective regardless of whether the people who hear this language are predisposed to jump to extreme conclusions. Once someone is tuned into these metaphors, their brain actually changes in ways that make them more likely to believe bigger lies, even conspiracy theories.

I have this pet theory that the fact that some of the first TV broadcasts were Hitler’s speeches is more than just a historical curiosity. Broadcast media (i.e. radio) had come along just a few years before. Right after it provided a way for authoritarian leaders like Hitler to reach great numbers of people with their spoken words., the world saw an explosion of right-wing populism at a scale never seen before. I suspect it’s not just a coincidence. (The Nazis certainly understood the propaganda opportunity.)

It certainly resembled a viral outbreak.

I’m reasonably confident that the reason has a lot to do with social proof. I don’t think it has much to do with UX, or amount of content, because both of those reasons would require people to actually try the fediverse to find out. In my experience, people don’t cite reasons as to why they won’t try a lesser-known platform, they enter a low-key fight-or-flight mode and sort of go blank, shut down, and don’t engage with the idea either way. It’s kind of spooky once you notice it in person.

To speculate, I think perhaps centralized, corporate services have an immediate advantage, because a brand name and a logo inherently provides a certain amount of social proof, since corporate brands and logos are so central to Western culture.