pedz

Actually, Canada is a leader in high speed rail studies.

I can't tell for BlueSky because I have not joined yet, but I did create a Mastodon account months ago and I'm not sure what to do with it or how to interact with others. I find it confusing.

On Twitter I was mostly following a bunch of like minded people, liking their stuff, and I could see what they liked too. But on Mastodon there's uuh, boosts and favorites?! I'm not sure of how it works or what I'm doing. I can't just "like" posts? I have to boost them?! I found the people I liked that were on Twitter, but on Mastodon I feel like there's nothing I can do aside from seeing posts and it's just not attractive.

I can't stand ads. It's even worse on TV when they yell them at you. So I actually stopped watching TV in 2009 because I couldn't stop the ads, and I was tired to have the TV trying to convince me to buy a car every 15 minutes.

If I want to watch something that was on TV, I download it from... * the internet *.

My parents still watch TV and just let the ads blast in the background, and we need to yell over them to talk. I hate it. Then they're like "oh it's just like in the ad". I don't know how they can tolerate this. I did when I was younger but when I realized that the TV was trying to sell me twice a car in 15 minutes, or about 8 times an hour, I couldn't help but notice and it's just really annoying.

Then you can stay on forums that needs to be refreshed, or uuuh.. isn't there a proprietary IRC like thing for young people, something like Disco? Or Discom. Or Discord? Apparently it's much like IRC but without the freedom.

I use TheLounge which saves and display history for me.

Convos also does that.

I am still on IRC, have my own server, and use TheLounge as a client. We can paste mp3s, mp4s and images on the channels. It just works fine for us.

What? It's hard to hear anything with all that noise.

IRC still exists. There's nothing stopping anyone from joining a server and a few channels.

Meanwhile I've always been the one that takes the smallest possible meal at McDonald's, and would think that 5 nuggets with fries and drinks is just enough. In fact I hate going to restaurants in general because portions are always much too big for me. I can't usually take doggy bags, and I feel like I'm wasting most of what I'm served. I can't recall even finishing a plate in a (real) restaurant; there's always too much. I'm always like "oh it was really tasty but I can't eat much more!"

Why do you see it as targeting Trump voters? I'm in Canada and we also have people driving giant SUVs in McMansions whining about gas and energy prices. It's fair and legitimate to bitch about the price of food, however it's also easy to see that the average North American car is now more like a tank, and that people whining about gas prices don't seem to be able to look into a mirror.

Yes, most of the people owning monster trucks will also vote Conservative here, or for a conservative party, I guess it's a political statement on its own. But it's also very easy to find liberals (as in neo-liberals, not "the left") with gas guzzlers bitch about gas prices.

Hey, that's me. More or less.

I have been living paycheck to paycheck for about two decades but things changed during the pandemic. I got a substantial raise, stopped smoking, and kept the same micro apartment in a high rise for years. I also live alone, refuse to pay for a car, and don't have any children.

So I was able to put some money aside in the last years and now, I take extended vacations (I took 8 weeks this year), I travel, and treat myself with what I want.

My sister wonders how I can afford to take that much time off work to go to different countries and think that I just recently found interest in traveling but really, it's just because I can afford it now.

The slow death of the American empire. It may push the rest of the world to a geopolitical realignment that excludes the US. This could allow international organizations to proceed without having the US veto human rights, actions against climate change, or things like that.