@claralistensprechen5th

I mean, sometimes I don't want to just ignore and block because every now and then someone will tell me "there's no racism on the fediverse" and well it's not true.

However it's generally very effective to just ignore and block and or mute.

@Grumbleshroom

I hope someday you can look back on how you spent your time on a nice Saturday (trying to be a jackass on the internet) and you can have the maturity and perspective to feel regret about not doing something better with this limited time we each have on this earth. You could be learning about nature! Studying math! Calling a friend! Falling in love! Writing a book!

But instead you did this.

I want that kind of growth for you. This is really pathetic.

The bitter irony of the "family is being destroyed" crowd destroying families by trying to ban gay marriage, scapegoating and persecuting trans people, deporting parts of perfectly happy families over minor paperwork errors or nothing...

I almost don't like to point out hypocrisy any more because to do so implies some set of shared vales and a capacity for caring that simply isn't there.

But I am very upset about all of these "attacks on the family" and how "the family is being destroyed"

I wonder, if like crime, if you asked people if divorce is a big problem if people would still overestimate it?

The fall in the divorce rate presents a problem for conservatives who want to talk about how "the family is being destroyed" (which family? how?)

But I wonder if people still think that a large number of marriages are ending in divorce.

All through the 80s and early 90s the news was dominated by stories about the "divorce epidemic" and "single moms" also "latch-key kids"

Then something shifted and I think people are less likely to get married due to outside pressure and social expectations, and more likely to do it because they just really like being married. (That's why I did it. 10/10 best choice ever.)

In fact the "young people are having less sex" stat is normally reported alongside similar stats showing smoking tobacco and drinking are less popular.

I've only once seen it alongside the marriage stat... which is odd isn't it? At least if you were expecting reporting to reflect "traditional values."

I also suspect some young people aren't dating or getting married or even going on vacation or having a drink ... because they are BROKE and working their fingers to the bone to survive.

This is a question for the younger adults. Those in your 20s and 30s. There have been a few surveys and articles about how "young people are having less sex" and "young people aren't getting married"

And then some people will say there is a "loneliness epidemic"

How real is this? Are these things even connected?

There are fewer marriages but also far fewer divorces which, to me, kind of sounds like a good thing?

But I rarely hear about the low divorce rate in this context.

Writing up the report in my new job as head of labor statistics in the USA, then adding 1 to the job loss number just before I turn it in because I know how it's gonna go for me.

How much do you think it cost automakers to add seat-belts to their cars? Probably not that much, when compared with the overall cost of the car. This made it seem incredible to some of the public, for a time, that car manufacturers would be fighting legislation to force them to add seat-belts in bad faith.

But, there was, and always is, a lager issue at hand. To the auto industry seat belts represented public responsibility for the overall safety of their product.

The most frequent shoppers on Temu are over 59 years old. That wasn't what I expected. Based mostly on their marketing, which often seems to involve younger female influencers I would have thought they were selling to young people, but this isn't the case.

The people they are making money from are old. Much like those "dial 1800 commercials" for civil war chess sets from decades ago.

Consider the alternate history where fungi never evolved the ability to digest lignin, the tough woody material found in many plants.

The period of time where plants could produce lignin, but fungi couldn't break it down resulted in the massive coal deposits found in the earth.

Some bacteria can break down lignin, but they require wet conditions to do this. This is what happens in the gut of termites.

So, of course, we can imagine an alternate history where termites rule the earth.