Meta doesn’t need to bother with back-channel influence peddling of existing instances. If Meta simply opened its own Lemmy instance it would immediately be the largest Lemmy instance by orders of magnitude.

This is why kbin exists. It’s a Lemmy/Mastodon combo service.

“English is not a language, it’s three languages wearing a trench coat pretending to be one.”

For more fun, right about the time the printing press came into widespread use and English spelling became standardized, the language was in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift.

Similar to how Subaru brags about their “zero landfill” production. Manufacturing a car absolutely generates waste. They just juggle the supply chain to have all the waste happen at their suppliers.

The end-of-year numbers aren’t in yet, but 2023 should be the year that wind and solar finally generate more electricity than coal here in the US.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/BTL/2023/02-genmix/article.php

For new generation projects coming online in 2023, 86% of the electricity is from non-fossil sources. The generation capacity that was retired in 2023 was all fossil based.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1304-august-21-2023-2023-non-fossil-fuel-sources-will-account-86-new

Dracunculiasis (disease caused by Guinea worm infection in humans) is almost eradicated. We hit a new all-time low for known cases: 13 last year, and now only 3 in the first half of 2023.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7245a4.htm

https://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/index.html

I forgot to include this one:

In a 1954 speech, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was quoting Dr J. Roscoe Miller, president of Northwestern University, said: “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”

I have always taken this to mean that we should focus on long-term goals and not get distracted by today’s minor crises.

Agree 100%

Oof, the list of hard-earned lessons is long. These two stand out the most:

• Deliberately choose and cultivate your relationships. Close friendships and family relationships can be massively beneficial throughout your life.
• Money comes and goes, but time only goes. Don’t waste time at a job you hate. Actually, don’t waste time in general.

I know Hanukkah/Chanukah doesn’t start until tomorrow, but I couldn’t wait.

If you can, put in at least as much as your company will match. The match is bonus pay for future you.

Invest all the money in an index fund that tracks the S&P 500 and has the lowest expense ratio possible. Vanguard VFIAX is one example among many. Over many years that should give you an average return; not amazingly good, but also not terrible.

If you are earlier in your career, contributing more money now can be very beneficial when you are in your 60’s. Though don’t put in too much that you become short on cash. For example, I was overly aggressive with 401k contributions early in my career and missed the chance to buy an affordable house in 2008 because I did not have enough cash remaining for a down payment.

Ditto. Eliminating monthly debt payments would totally change the household finances.

I think it’s also about being predictable and consistent. Generally, slow traffic stays to the right and fast traffic stays to the left. Breaking convention increases the chance of surprises and accidents.

That is the correct response.

Prior to June 2023, Lemmy was holding steady around 1,000 monthly active accounts. So it’s still up more than 30x from that baseline.

Since this graph shows active accounts and not active users, I’ll bet a significant contributor to the drop is people not using all the alt accounts they initially created.

I don’t know how it would be received in Spanish culture, but in the US this is common. I know several people with Chinese, Vietnamese, and Polish names who have either adopted Anglo-American names, or changed the spelling and pronunciation of their name to make life easier. In my opinion it’s not a big deal. Also, it’s fun when you get to know someone well enough to learn their “real” name.

“Outlaw country” - Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kristoffer Kristofferson and the like - is solid music all around.

Some of my electricity comes from magic rocks. Hold them close together and they get hot enough to make steam. Take them apart and they cool off. Just don’t hold them too close together or bad things happen.

Gravitational force is proportional to mass, so yes.

And the mods usually leave a comment so you know why your post/comment was removed or your account banned. It’s a nice system.