Non-Americans who have been to the US.. What is the weirdest thing about America that Americans don't realize is weird?
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    Oh boy, if you'd named just about any other cheese, this sentiment would make sense, but Colby gets its orange color from the annatto added to it. Without the annatto, it's very similar to Monterrey Jack.

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    Trump Made Crass Dinner Jokes About Death of Rally Attendee
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    Hmm, not projection exactly, but trying to soothe his ego by pretending it's normal how Melania feels about him?

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    Every goddamn time
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    Thanks for saving me the effort of pointing this out.

    "Yeah, I don't agree with his racism, but I can't support post-partum abortions by feeding babies to coyotes so we can afford to pay for 25 billion illegals to stay in the Ritz Carlton like the Democrats do. #BothSides"

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  • What's an obscure song you like?
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    First thing that came to mind is a song by a band that I can't even find online. I have the song as an .mp2 file. How's that for obscure?

    Here's one that is online: Technical Jelly (Live) - Honor Among Thieves

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  • US ports strike causes first shutdown in 50 years
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    Glad to see that Pres. Biden isn't (yet) forcing the workers back on the job this time. Perhaps he should mitigate the effects on the economy by temporarily nationalizing the ports for the 80-day negotiation period, and hiring the longshoremen to work them?

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  • Letters to the Editor: Your 'protest vote' for Jill Stein is really a vote for Donald Trump
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    Thanks! I knew what kind of replies I'd get, and did. Essentially, doubling-down on the electoral calculus argument, and not considering that other people have different motivations.

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  • Letters to the Editor: Your 'protest vote' for Jill Stein is really a vote for Donald Trump
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    Let's break down this bullshit: A vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Jill Stein. The election clerks count ballots marked for Stein and report the vote totals that Stein received. A vote for Jill Stein is literally a vote for Jill Stein.

    The statement that a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump is, of course, metaphorical. It's asserting that a vote for Stein is morally equivalent to a vote for Trump by the speaker's moral reckoning. It's a rhetorical shortcut. This shortcut rests on the notion that either the voter would have voted for Harris, or that it is a moral imperative to stop Trump above all else.

    That's a moral judgement call. Other people may judge differently. Flatly stating that a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump so vehemently and absolutely elides any possibility of discourse and clearly tells the Stein voter that the speaker will not listen to or consider any of their views, or reasons to vote for Stein.

    Fine, you believe that, but when has telling people more or less directly that you do not have any intention of considering their political beliefs won them over to your side? How is that a good tactic? If it worked, then why not employ it on Trump supporters? Go ahead, tell them that the party you support will ignore what they think and want, and demand they vote for your candidate.

    If it doesn't work on them, why should it work on Stein voters?

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  • Kyle Rittenhouse texts pledging to ‘murder’ shoplifters disillusion his ex-spokesperson
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    This is how Wisconsin's law is so fucked up: The three men he shot were not working together, were not coordinated, did not know each other. So, on the one hand, Rittenhouse may have subjectively felt under coordinated attack, he was not, but the subjective feeling is what matters for the law.

    From Huber:s POV, he was trying to disarm a murderer. Maybe he felt threatened, too? But the law is so fucked, his POV doesn't matter because he's dead. In Grosskreutz's POV, he was approaching an active shooter who'd just killed two men and trying to defuse the situation. When Rittenhouse pointed his gun, Grosskreutz would have been justified under the same law in blowing him away.

    In short, the law incentivizes shooting first.

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  • People older than 35: do you remember the first time you used a GPS device to get somewhere?
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    I couldn't tell you the specifics, but back in the 1990's, we had GPS devices that just had an LCD read-out of your latitude and longitude, so you could find your position on a paper map. They were on the market as survey devices, but were also useful for wilderness travelers.

    It's hard to recall exact dates, because the devices developed incrementally, and navigation mode on Google Maps didn't spring into existence ask at once.

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    Teach the children.
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    Sometimes I write just for the fun of it, not trying to convince anybody. In this case, I was just matching the tone of the meme text.

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  • Need a lift?
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    Love it!

    Gotta point out that, though, that most primates don't eat a lot of bananas. The species that really seems to love bananas is homo sapiens. I worked at a grocery store for several years, and saw the sales numbers. Bananas are the biggest seller, and it's not even close. They outsell whole categories of other products.

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    Couch menace
    The Arctic ocean photographed in the same place, 107 years ago vs today.
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    The boat in the old photo (from 1928, apparently) is casting a pretty good wake, and the man aboard is holding a tiller attached to a rudder. It's impossible to tell for certain with the low-res image, but entirely likely that one of those shapes in the boat ahead of him is an inboard engine.

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  • Insanity
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    Seriously, tho!

    Madison, WI just launched Bus Rapid Transit only on one route so far. But that route goes right past the stadium and arenas where the UW Badgers play their games, the city and university performing arts centers, the state Capitol, many popular music venues, and the State Street pedestrian mall. It has free park-and-ride lots at each end of the route. Lots of people say that they will ride in for events at these venues, so BRT hasn't solved all our issues, but it's lessening congestion and helping even drivers get around more quickly.

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    Teach the children.
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    Oh, dear child, you have already succumbed, you're part of the machine, and you don't even know it. 😔 "This form of the Internet" == you are a consumer, passively ingesting the content created by the few, big players who gatekeep the marketplace of ideas. This is the Internet the capitalists want; you're just grousing about the details of paying for it.

    The old promise of revolutionary change on the Internet was the idea that it would be an all-to-all media, that the users would create the content, and shape the message. So if you want to fight what the Internet is becoming, stop fighting the capitalists on their own turf. They don't care if some people pirate their stuff, as long as the money rolls in from the masses.

    The best the can possibly happen if you teach everybody to pirate is to destroy the funding for content creation. Then all that will be left is the propaganda, the political ads, the messages pushed by somebody for ulterior motives. Unless...

    Unless we teach the children to break that paradigm altogether. A person can live a happy life without any Hulu shows, or YouTube algorithms, or AAA games. Really. Become the creators. Leave the corporate walled gardens for the open, peer-to-peer Internet.

    Or don't. It's hard, I know. Just don't pretend that your Jellyfin server means you've broken free of the system.

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  • https://wapo.st/3XNUip0

    CNN and ProPublica found that Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz is the owner of an active account on the website HotOrNotDish.net, where he posts under the anonymous username DarthTater, according to an investigative analysis of comments on the forum. The user DarthTater has for more than a decade offered compliments (sometimes accompanied by a flame emoji) under every single photo uploaded to the site for hot dish appreciators. The account also mentioned the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in one post, in which it wished other HotOrNotDish.net users a “happy MLK weekend!” and hoped they would get to “spend it with family, eating hot dish.” Walz appears to have been active under the same username for years on a variety of HotOrNotDish.net’s subforums for other hot dish-related issues, including once posting 24 times in a thread dedicated to the question of “Is hot dish casserole?” DarthTater ultimately concluded, “Sorry, friends. I’ve got to hit the hay. A lot of good points. Food for thought (almost as delicious as hot dish).” Posts going back years include statements such as “That hot dish looks delicious” and “My only note? Try it with Schell’s beer. But what you have going looks good too!” and “Hope you’re enjoying that delicious dish with your beautiful family! Cherish your family! I know I cherish mine!” DarthTater also expressed some viewpoints that matched with Walz’s public persona. In one instance, the user wrote, “National Coming Out Day is around the corner and I need to be on my A-game with snacks (I’m a GSA club sponsor). Any suggestions, hot dish friends?” adding, “Goes without saying, but, just in case, I disapprove of slavery.” DarthTater was also the name Walz appears to have used on Quora, where that user often posted detailed replies to queries about the best snow tires to purchase. Walz admitted that the account might be his, adding that he hoped he had not said anything that would offend anyone. “Those hot dishes all looked delicious,” he noted. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think that their hot dish didn’t pass muster.” Another HotOrNotDish.net user, MarkRobinsonIsMyLegalNameAndThisIsMyRealEmailPleaseAskMeAboutNazismIAmForIt, complained about DarthTater’s posts being dragged into the news. “Why is it fair to bring in the things that people post anonymously on forums in their spare time?” the mystery poster asked. “Especially if, frankly, they’re not all that surprising.” (On the record, the legally named Mark Robinson denied engaging in any such behavior.) MarkRobinsonIsMyLegalName was a less active HotOrNotDish.net poster, having left only one comment, “some folks need killing,” under a picture of a hot dish that had used cream of mushroom soup as its base.

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    https://www.npr.org/2024/04/23/1246623204/housing-experts-say-there-just-arent-enough-homes-in-the-u-s

    >**Kelly:** Is there a downside? I'm thinking of people trying to find a parking place, for starters. >**Horowitz:** So we see that in places that have actually eliminated parking minimums, that we see fewer people driving at all and having cars and we see vehicle miles traveled decrease because people can get around via other mechanisms. Well, now, would you look at that?! If we change the incentives, if we stop incentivizing driving by law, people change their behavior. In this case, they can save a ton of money by not needing a car.

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    soundcloud.com

    Madison, WI's Honor Among Thieves, live at The Harmony Bar and Grill. Recorded by Steve Gotcher for the 105.5 radio show "Mad City Live" Halloween 1997. Some of the tunes were on the band's 1998 album, "Primordial Soup du Jour", but not this wild and crazy one.

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    A crane lifts pads for the hands-free mooring system at the Welland Canal locks into place. Credit: Michel Gosselin. Video and more photos [here](https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid028dq4Xo466khEePgNsELNLzCZMcsVcc8TYmBf7KJSmtyJ6563L5NeF4LEqnwgAE91l&id=1419282569).

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    Yeah, basically that. I'm back at work in Windows land on a Monday morning, and pondering what sadist at Microsoft included these features. It's not hyperbole to say that the startup repair, and the troubleshooters in settings, have never fixed an issue I've encountered with Windows. Not even once. Is this typical? ETA: I've learned from reading the responses that the Windows troubleshooters primarily look for missing or broken drivers, and sometimes fix things just by restarting a service, so they're useful if you have troublesome hardware.

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    Comments not propagating to other instances.

    In the past several days, I've noticed that comments that I make on this instance to cross-instance communities started to take up to several hours to propagate to the community's home instance, and now do not seem to propagate at all. I've noticed the issue on lemmy.world, lemmynsfw.com, and lemmy.ml. Several comments I made today in a programming.dev community went through more or less instantly, though. Has anyone else noticed this?

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    Last week on the UW-Madison campus.

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    It's just a photo from a budget phone, but I figured I'd share this Sunday afternoon scene from the middle of Madison.

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    www.channel3000.com

    They say that if you want to get away with murder, use a car as the weapon. By the way, Wisconsin has no jaywalking law, so they're letting a killer off the hook for, like, reasons?

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    www.vox.com

    "There’s probably nothing that we do that causes more suffering to wild animals than driving."

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    www.facebook.com

    Lost cause or not, this is still typical of the traffic infrastructure we're building. Notice, this is a designated "bicycle boulevard."

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    www.nbcnews.com

    You paying attention, Josh Kaul? Let's go, already.

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    SwingingTheLamp

    midwest.social