I dressed like a cowboy for awhile as a preteen. I try not to think about it too much. Though I still have a hat tucked away in my closet. Just in case.
If you lived south of the Mason Dixon no one would have noticed. It's so ubiquitous people forget how ridiculous it is: men who take themselves very seriously attending the office in the same outfit they wore to go trick-or-treating when they were six. I don't mean it as any kind of condemnation. I love the ridiculous, delight in the passion of people grooving in their niche, and absurdity aside western wear can be a good look. But I feel the same way about all kinds of theatrical clothes, while the stetson crowd tends to ridicule the other.
You say that. But I was south of the Mason Dixon line and I definitely stood out. Even at some country music concerts. Because I was dressing as if I was the one on-stage at any given concert. I saved and eventually had my white Stetson, quite the rotation of Garth Brooks-style (sometimes literally!) Western shirts, Wrangler jeans, boots, belt buckles, the whole nine yards.
Your average concert-goer was in a t-shirt (IF THAT) and a ball cap with a fishing hook on it.
To say nothing of dressing like that in other, still-less appropriate, non-concert settings.
New rule I have adopted - going forward, any time I struggle to find good search results on something and find myself wanting to append "reddit" onto the query, I will instead be creating the thread on an applicable forum on a federated site. I recommend others do the same.
It may not give me the immediate answer I'm looking for, but with a bit of patience we can hopefully rebuild a library of knowledge in a more stable way, not vulnerable to the whims of corporate profit.
I don't think that your experience is the standard norm. I've never heard of swing dancing in my city, let alone friends that are all off swing dancing at night. Not sure if you're in a much older demographic but the younger generations are not into that sort of stuff? I think COVID may have also affected a lot of group socializing growth in general too.
But if I had to guess it would be one of two things, one: people just aren't really into it, socially or culturally. Two: you may have meant well but it comes across very negative, and I'd assume many people don't dance because of people like you and your opinions and judgements in regards to gatekeeping what is dancing and what isn't. If I went out on a dancefloor and looked over and saw disapproval and judgement from your eyes I'd feel pretty uncomfortable and remove myself from that situation.
The younger people are totally into that kind of stuff where I am (Seattle). Go to any dance class, and there will be as many young people as old. Well, except waltz. That's still mostly older people.
I just graduated college, so I'm in my very early twenties.
When I went to the first of my friends' weddings, one or two years ago, they announced the start of the dance, and no-one participated for the first two or three songs. I was kind of disappointed, because I was looking forward to dancing the night away. Luckily, some of my friends from swing dancing night were there and we helped get people comfortable on the floor. At one point we even organized a line dance! But at first, it was like pulling teeth.
The next wedding I went to didn't have a dance at all.
I guess I'm just sad at the perceived loss of culture I never got to experience, which is a negative emotion, correct.
I highly doubt were about to have a sad ending to Footloose take over everywhere. People probably dance more when they are happy or maybe when things are really bad as a way to cope. Things haven't really been great for a giant portion of the population. Inflation, food/gas prices going up, interest rates etc. If things improve people will be happy and go dance. In the meantime I think people are pretty stressed and drained from day to day life. End of the day I just think you may have confirmation bias mixed with maybe a narrower world view on why people might not want to dance like you expect as well as many people feel completely opposite to you personally. To each their own.
Yeah because tbh if I went anywhere and someone went "let's have a line dance!" I take that as my cue to leave. I think there just may be less people into swing and line dancing then op wants to admit. I mean go to a club or the right type of bar and you can find dancing no problem, even line.
Though every wedding I have been to there was at least some dancing, though I would guess it depends on the size and the people, if they don't wanna dance they don't gotta dance. Not to mention that in most weddings I have been to the music is more intended for couples dancing, which makes dancing even more awkward if you don't have said couple to dance with, excluding a portion of people I would assume.
I agree with you. Also an observation (not positive or negative in any way) a lot of the younger people I see under 20 persay are seemingly very quiet and reserved, that might be just a social thing and they are much more outgoing in other situations. I've heard that drinking alcohol is also much lower, so if you have quite a few people that don't feel comfortable dancing, are more used to being social online, and drink less then I would assume that dancing might be a little more rare. I think op might just have been in a bit of a bubble growing up where culturally it's was more open to dancing.
I'm late 30s, and formal dancing like this isn't something I'm into or have any close friends who are into - so this isn't something that's just happened suddenly with your generation. I don't think my parents know how to dance in any formal way either. This isn't some sudden loss of culture.
Most of the Western weddings I've gone to have a 'first dance' (where often the couple may have taken some lessons beforehand and which will therefore be more formal) but then after that the band or DJ will play pop/rock/hip-hop/disco music and everyone else will dance along to that. But that's dancing in the sense of how the vast majority of people (who have never taken lessons) know how to dance - i.e. the informal way we all learnt to dance at school discos or student parties or nightclubs - not the more structured dancing styles you're describing.
It sounds like you're quite into dancing as a hobby, given you mention having friends from swing dancing nights - but most people aren't, it's a bit of a niche. So you're disappointed that your hobby isn't more mainstream, but I wouldn't go blaming that on your fellow wedding guests. I'm quite into Star Trek, but when I go to weddings I don't grumble that the bride didn't walk down the aisle to the TNG theme.
My advice would be to accept that your hobby isn't something that most people are in to and not to judge other people for that. Instead seek out clubs and societies for people who do share you interest, where you can ballroom dance the night away together.
Don't worry, there's no blame or judgment or anger. There is simply a misalignment of expectations, and I am trying to derive the source of that discontinuity.
Or any kind of oil. Even WD-40, if you have it. Put oil on the adhesive residue, then scrub it off with a cloth. You can then remove the oily residue with soap.
Someone has a discomfort with blurring certain boundaries in society, and they express it as violent eliminationism — especially after being encouraged to do so as an "acceptable target" by bullies, propagandists, or other haters.
Just as with drag costuming & performance, furry is not itself a sex practice — but it's often closely connected with queer sexualities.
Furrydom also applies queerness to things that many folks feel protective of, such as cute animals, and characters that are (or appear to be) from children's media. That triggers the "queers are pedophiles" delusion, which is not new — look up Anita Bryant but has been heavily popularized by fascists of late.
Easy. I'm building a low-income non-equity housing co-op. It'll have very small homes built from sustainable materials, distributed throughout a permaculture-based native plants food forest. In the middle there will be a big central space that functions as a community kitchen, storage space, and venue. The buildings will all be connected through a series of raised, fenced-in, roofed walkways that allow animal life to pass underneath, but also are accessibly designed for (provided) wheelchair/scooter use. We'll run all the wiring through these as well. It'll be powered by solar/etc and we'll have our own self-hosted municipal wifi with free email addresses and storage for residents. And etc, etc lol, obviously this is a very long standing pipe dream for me.
My husband and I had a similar idea but for ourselves and friends versus your purpose-built need. With a billion dollars we can do both and then some so I'll build my commune and pay for yours to exist in multiple areas globally.
An excess of single family housing is a major contributor to homelessness. We need denser housing. I'd rather work towards building something like a dense arcology. Somewhere for people to live that makes efficient use of the space to grow plants.
I knew about this problem, the whole issue with the tradeoffs/advantages/disadvantages between having denser housing vs having adequate green space. However, I didn't know there were any reasonably well developed potential solutions! Thank you for introducing me to the concept of Arcology, this is awesome.
What if my proposed setup was more like tall dense multifamily buildings instead? Maybe something like how Pueblo housing worked?
Yeah exactly. I feel like it might be more kind of "doable" on a smaller community-level scale, which appeals to me because anarchy. I don't know how well it actually threads that needle though, and whether it introduces its own problems
My first thought was reaching out to a property developer I know, and paying them to take care of the housing crisis in the state… housing first. I would then shame the absolute living fuck out of the people here that are more interested in children’s genitals, on behalf of some asshole god they worship.
Not quite as environmentally friendly- there would be efforts, but, then I would also use a substantial chunk of it to invest into things like solar or batteries, and energy grid development.
I would also buy myself the Lego venator kit. (Star Wars, Vader’s flagship from ESB).
So Meta’s plan is to make a twitter-alike that spies on its users and manipulates them into being the hate fueled engagement engine, and then inflict that on the fediverse?
What’s to stop everyone from pointing out as often as possible that users can still talk to Zuck’s twits without the spying and manipulation by simply doing so from a non-Meta instance, and then defederating Meta once they are no longer dominant?
So Meta’s plan is to make a twitter-alike that spies on its users and manipulates them into being the hate fueled engagement engine, and then inflict that on the fediverse?
No one outside their boardroom knows what Meta's plan is, but I doubt they care much about fedi. They are trying to kill off Twitter and take that marketshare of ~500M users. The fediverse with a total of 9M users (and no advertising revenue) isn't very important in that scheme.
They are in deep legal trouble with EU privacy regulations and need to show to EU they are "taking things seriously". ActivityPub was most likely a nice "freebie" they can use and point out they offer interoperability. The whole fediverse bit is just to escape further GDPR trouble with EU.
What’s to stop everyone from pointing out as often as possible that users can still talk to Zuck’s twits without the spying and manipulation by simply doing so from a non-Meta instance, and then defederating Meta once they are no longer dominant?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean? That people would migrate away from Threads if they knew they only knew can access their followers from somewhere else? Why on earth would that ever happen? The opposite is more likely.
That’s an interesting angle that I completely failed to notice. I thought this whole experiment is for Facebook/Meta to get a headstart in a new tech space, like they’re been trying to do with VR and the whole crypto craze.
While I never assumed their intentions were pure with any of this, I clearly was not nearly as cynical as one has to be with these people.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean? That people would migrate away from Threads if they knew they only knew can access their followers from somewhere else? Why on earth would that ever happen?
I mean, that’s what happened when people left myspace for facebook. Facebook provided tools that let them use facebook while still communicating with myspace users until enough people switched and myspace became irrelevant. Myspace’s dominance was unassailable until it wasn’t.
What’s to stop everyone from pointing out as often as possible that users can still talk to Zuck’s twits without the spying and manipulation by simply doing so from a non-Meta instance
Facebook users are stupid, network effects ensure that most people go to a single provider and then minor incompatibilities between threads and the fediverse slowly cuts off the fediverse and ensures it dies.
What does "dies" mean in this circumstance? We already only have 1% of their users. Are we afraid that access toore content here will cause users to leave for Facebook?
I'm hoping the large majority of people here on the fediverse are here because they prefer an outlet away from soul sucking corps like Meta and won't want to touch their forked version.
Ah yes, I'm sure talking about how stupid the average person is what we need to do in order to promote the Fediverse as a positive and welcoming platform.
Given the fediverse is pretty open by design, meta doesn't even need to be part of it to spy if they wanted. It's the EEE strategy that people are more worried about.
Given the fediverse is pretty open by design, meta doesn’t even need to be part of it to spy if they wanted.
They can’t gather all the same information that they could from a phone app, and we’ve seen what permissions they ask for on that. They also can’t manipulate the feed to drive engagement by fostering hate like they can with their own site/app.
It’s the EEE strategy that people are more worried about.
Hence the “get them off meta and onto other instances and then defederate” thing.
I mean, you have the right attitude. I also feel like everything these days is a scam. It used to be that someone was just trying to get a fair shake for the value of their labor. Buy a refrigerator you get a quality, supported, and long term product worth the money. Now, it feels like I am getting something specifically designed to squeeze as much money from me as possible.
My two cents on ways to avoid the swindle.
Abandon brand loyalty of any kind. A good brand will become a hollowed out shell only focused on profit
Buy tech that is relatively new. The first few years of a new production product are usually the best engineered. The best VHS tapes were made when the tech was new. Same thing for new laptop designs, or M.2 Ssd, etc. Later in tech cycle they cheapen everything to make more profit and design in failure to keep you buying.
Assume money and greed is the reason for company behavior above all else. That will properly contextualize and answer most questions you have for why things are the way they are.
This is a great point but just to add, if its a brand product you can get common issues that don't crop up for 6 months (e.g. xbox 360's red ring of death). So buy new but not on 1st day release, and do a quick research on issues people often have.
Consumer Reports is also a great source for good info on product reliability.
If you're making a large purchase like a car or if you have a handful of smaller purchases to make, a month or a year subscription is a drop in the bucket.
As of the last time I purchased a car, it seems to be the one holdout that realizes if you sell out to ads and corporate interests, you undermine your own reputation.
Right like I was searching around reviews for emergency generators and I see apopular mechanics site. A magazine I used to enjoy when I was younger, I thought I might find some insight. It had zero real breakdown of products it was straight ad push for amazon. It seemed to just be their product descriptions copy and pasted.
I think if a good person were to amass half a billion dollars they would spent enough of it on charity that they could never become a billionaire. So there are no good billionaires, but perhaps a few good millionaires moving to ex-millionaire.
My thoughts as well, pretty much exactly what I meant in my post.
if you're a good person, you wouldn't be rich.
Hardly any millionaires become ex-millionaires by choice, it's that difference that can help distinguish the 'good ones' from the 'not good ones'. If they chose that route through donation, charity, whatever it may be, they are good. If it had to be ripped away from them through just natural shitty circumstances, and otherwise would keep being hoarded, not so much.
I think that's still far too low. If you own even a moderately successful small-medium sized business then you can get to the point where you have more than that.
In personal wealth? Or does the wealth belong to the business?
Business investments or cash reserves or whatever are waaay beyond the scope of this discussion. That would have more to do with antitrust law and what a fair C suite compensation is.
If you started a small business and are wildly successful to the point that you, personally, have $7 million dollars? Then yes, you have too much money.
It's not "this is the amount of money a person starting from nothing can achieve".
It's "this is more money than any one person ever needs, regardless of where it came from".
$7 million really isn't obscene money. If someone has a successful business and retires at 50 years old with $7 million in the bank, assuming they live to 90 that's only $175k per year. Depending on where you live that can range anywhere from very comfortable to barely getting by. Of course, you could invest it and assuming 4% annual yield that's $280k per year, which is the right way to do it. I personally have no issue with someone reaping the rewards of their success. I also think that the rich people hate is misplaced. Why are people mad at the wealthy for not picking up the government's slack, instead of being mad at the government for slacking in the first place?
An aspect of the government not slacking is taxing wealth people and high earners more.
$280k per year
More money than any one person needs. Obviously not as obscene as the ultra wealthy, but there's a cutoff point somewhere in the $150k-200k range where you don't get any extra happiness out of money, it's just pure greed amassing more.
Tax them how though? Honestly, most billionaires don't take a massive salary, many of them have an official salary that is wholly unimpressive. I think Bezos' official salary as CEO of Amazon was under $100k. And I am firmly against the idea of a wealth tax because that means you're taxing someone on money that they don't have. If I find a painting at goodwill that turns out to be worth $100 million, should I be expected to pay taxes on that $100 million even though I only make $20/hour? That would be totally unfair, you'd be taxing me on money I don't have.
If I find a painting at goodwill that turns out to be worth $100 million, should I be expected to pay taxes on that $100 million even though I only make $20/hour?
Obviously you sell the painting to pay the taxes on it. Then you still have $80 million or whatever. Sounds fair to me.
I simply disagree with taxing someone on the perceived value of an asset. I know that's how property taxes work, and yes, I disagree with that too. You shouldn't tax someone on simply owning an asset.
I think the focus on rich people is misguided. You would get way more tax money by properly taxing corporations than you would by taxing billionaires. The personal income of even top level billionaires is still peanuts compared to corporate profits, which can be hundreds of billions per year. I don't care if Musk of Bezos has a personal wealth of hundreds of billions, that money doesn't exist, it's the hypothetical market value of their stock holdings. But major corporations do actually have hundreds of billions of actual liquid income every year, so to me that's fair game for taxing. If Walmart profits $150 billion in a year, then sure, go to town and heavily tax that, because that is actual money and not just value.
I think the focus on rich people is misguided. You would get way more tax money by properly taxing corporations than you would by taxing billionaires. The personal income of even top level billionaires is still peanuts compared to corporate profits, which can be hundreds of billions per year. I don't care if Musk or Bezos has a personal wealth of hundreds of billions, that money doesn't exist, it's the hypothetical market value of their stock holdings. But major corporations do actually have hundreds of billions of actual liquid income every year, so to me that's fair game for taxing. If Walmart profits $150 billion in a year, then sure, go to town and heavily tax that, because that is actual money and not just value.
I donate $5 every time I get paid (weekly). It's worth it. I'm only on disability, but I like to donate to worthy causes. I also donate to a lot of animal sanctuaries.
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