Bobbysocks - La det svinge!. 1985, Eurovision, nothing but good vibes. 🎶

What's the point of that?

If you don't want wool, just leave wild species to graze there instead. Then congratulations, you successfully achieve nothing and you can rest easy wearing your polyester shirt.

I'm just here because I hate capitalists.

I also hate stalinists, so the joke is on me I guess.

In my city cycling is faster even if you're not stuck in traffic because you can take one way streets and shortcuts. During rush hour it's not even comparable.

I have a pretty comfy saddle, and if it's too bumpy I prefer cycling standing up anyway. Don't really get why people insist so much on sitting down all the time.

It's not reasonable, but it is understandable. This is why FOSS is the only viable alternative for sustainable computing.

My favourite type of posts is the ones by people signed up in one instance, posting in a community hosted by another instance about how they don't understand how they are supposed to make use of federation. And then often still not getting it when people from all over the web tell them that they already are.

It makes sense though - federation is sold as a feature for users, but when done right the users should hardly notice it at all. So of course people end up a bit confused.

Seems like a community that has it's natural home at programming.dev.

That's an interesting point. I guess the mental trauma soldiers faced on the battlefield didn't really gain attention before Vietnam, maybe because of the general agreement that their sacrifice was worth it no matter how terrible.

I would love to learn more about all of it. It seems PTSD was not really understood back then, with shell shock being the preferred diagnosis. But what about war zones before shelling? Were they so much less traumatizing? How was PTSD understood before the modern era, and why were we so unprepared for it following the advance of modern warfare?

There's a genocide going on with what appears to be more or less the full support of the countries that make up the defence union my country is a part of.

There's war in Europe.

I find those topics worthy of discussion, and any social media where this is not actively discussed seems to me to be a smokescreen more than anything.

Of course tragic realities like the genocide we are complacent in, climate change, war in Europe, Russian propaganda and the rise of the far right is going to be actively discussed. It concerns more or less everyone who uses this platform, and they are the most important issues of our time. It's not about negativity, it's about coming to terms with reality and seeking to understand it.

That said, the communities I follow are largely apolitical stuff that interests me. Woodworking, knitting, gardening, owls, art, and the Fediverse. With the exception of [email protected] and [email protected], I let the political stuff come through the cracks rather than actively following it.

I also have a Piefed account on which I follow news communities but actively filter out Trump and Musk. I can see how Amercians still feel the need to talk about these men, but at the end of the day they're just fascist attention whores.

I think everybody agrees that this shouldn't be an issue.

The threat of war feels a little bit more real when you live just a few miles from the Ukrainian border in Poland then when you read about it in the news in a country outside of what Russia considers their sphere of interest.

Donald Tusk is not threatening with war here. He's just informing of uncomfortable political realities.

At some point recognisability is also worth something. I can immediately read this graph, I understand it, it's good.

Occasionally it's used in a confusing way where people assume it starts at zero despite it not being the case, and sometimes intentionally so. But that's just the case here.

Well, it does make sense, doesn't it?

What we're interested in is not the number of users, but the trends: whether the number is increasing or decreasing over time. Starting the axis at 0 would not be useful in this regard, as the trend would be almost completely obscured.

It varies everywhere, even from state to state in the US.

The US system is kind of broken - they ask you to vote for way too many things. Where I'm from I just vote for a party - I basically say "yeah, the green party are cool", and then the party decides who to put in which position should they get enough votes. I can give a +1 to candidates I like personally, but I don't have to.

In the US you might be asked to vote for school boards, a sheriff, and a bunch of weird positions. There's no realistic chance you'll make an informed decision for all of them.

Sadly, it's very important you still vote, because the republicans are using this broken system to fill these positions with far-right lunatics. So basically seek out information as much as you can, but at the end of the day just vote for whichever Democrat is on the ballot whenever in doubt. They're not guaranteed to be good - in fact they're likely to be pretty bad - but they're pretty much guaranteed to be the lesser of two evils.

Still might vary though - local politics are weird, and there are no rules set in stones. Some places you still have decent republicans on the local level (or so I've heard).

I guess nobody ever argued indigenous wisdom wasn't wise, we just found it way too difficult to monetize.

True! I'm also lucky enough to come from the countryside with a father who is an avid tool collector, so whenever I'm on holiday back home I have a lot of things available, including a lathe and a band saw. I really should make more active use of it, even though I live too far away for it to be practical to build anything big.

I do some woodcarving now and then of smaller stuff like knives and cups, but I live in cities and move around a lot, so it's not all that convenient to get into proper woodworking. I did create a couple of outdoor benches once (that a friend still has on his balcony around a decade later), but they're more sturdy than they are good looking!

I recently moved into a more spacious unfurnished apartment and started a three-year contract with work, and my partner and I have been discussing maybe building some furniture for it. Nothing yet though - so far just making it liveable has been the priority. :)

I think it's a good size, any smaller and it would seem off balance with the wider bottom of the shelf.

Yeah, I think the problem here is a lack of distinction between different types of bike paths. All things considered it could have been a lot worse than this.

How bad is it when you end up cycling into a pit like this, potentially at some speed? Has the water made the soil soft in the road leading the front wheel potentially getting stuck and throwing you off, or will you most likely cycle through with a significant splash and be on your way?

I guess a huge part of it might be the problem of not being able to see so well what's under the water, in case the road has been damaged?