squaresinger

This.

Just from the features and the convenience, Reddit is better. It's bigger, it's got more content, it's easier, it's more stable (or at least used to be). You don't have to worry about your instance going under or anything like that.

The reason for the devs to invest their time to make lemmy and the apps and for admins to invest money and time into hosting and running the instances and for users to use this instead of Reddit is mainly the politics of wanting to have your own space with your own data.

Yeah, could totally be a regional difference.

I had the same thing when negotiating for salaries too, so it wasn't just when talking to people, but it was in a more official way as well, and I even got it in my contract like that.

When I was working as a tutor, my contract listed my pay in hourly pay, because I worked varying hours and I was paid by the hour. On my entry-level job my contract was in monthly before-tax pay, but negotiations were with monthly after-tax pay. And my later jobs were all in yearly before-tax pay, which might also have been relevant that way because in some of these jobs I had yearly bonuses and/or part of the payment in stock I got once a year. So with these yearly figures in there, probably it just made sense make everything yearly.

Remember when mail was useful? When you opened the letter box hoping to see a letter from a friend who moved to a different city?

Now mail is just like email. Or to put it differently, email became like it's physical predecessor.

Remember that until 1871, there was no such thing as Germany. There was the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, but that was about as much a country as the commonwealth is a country nowadays. It was a loose connection of about a dozen or so smaller nations that were in constant struggle and conflict with each other.

It was only in 1871 that Germany as a country was formed, more specifically, the German Empire. From 1871 to 1918 it was a monarchy, and after WW1 was lost, they reformed as a somewhat democratic country, the Weimarer Republic, which existed until 1933 when the Nazis took over and created the Third Empire, aka nazi Germany. After that it was reformed as the Second Republic, which lasts until today.

So at the time when Hitler came to power, Bavaria had only been part of Germany for 62 years. So at that time there were lots of older Bavarians who grew up in the independent Kingdom of Bavaria. Gaining "independence" wasn't about an oppressed local minority gaining their freedom as it was about old people longing for their childhood.

Cause it isn't an actual castle. It's just as much of a real castle as the Disney castle. It's some rich dude's attempt at larping as a medieval king. (Well, he was an actual king, just not a medieval one.)

There are tons of buildings like that all over Europe, like e.g. Cyfarthfa Castle or the Emichsburg.

In Europe people use annual gross salary when they earn enough too.

Monthly after-tax is usually used by lower income people, where low short-term numbers really matter ("Can I make my rent this month?", "Can I afford to buy/do this small thing this month?"), while annual gross salary is used by people who make a lot of money, where the day-to-day financials don't matter, but long-term stuff does, and where you also generally have much higher tax pay backs.

I used per-hour salary when I was in university and only worked a few hours per week. I switched to monthly after-tax when I got into an entry-level job that paid quite little, and when I got to higher-paying senior/expert level jobs, I started using yearly figures.

The problem is that people just accept a continuous drop in quality.

I once had a conversation with an old woman who told me that it would be unheard off for someone with some level of status or self respect to wear ill-fitting off-the-shelf clothing back in the 50s, and nowadays even TV news anchors are wearing cheap off-the-shelf suits.

The same thing applies for everything. When I was a kid, the transition from small, independently owned shops with qualified stuff who'd give you proper consultation to chain stores in malls was just under way. Old people would complain all day that the staff in chain stores had no clue about the stuff they were selling. And yet everyone went to the chain stores in the mall because they had a bigger selection and were cheaper.

And now there's the same thing happening with the chain stores in malls getting replaced by online shopping, and now not only is there no one to consult you on your purchase, you can't even trust the product listings because they are riddled with errors.

For a while you could trust reviews, but that time is long gone, but still everyone just happily shops and consumes away, because online shopping is cheaper, there's a bigger selection and it's more convenient.

The same process is happening all the time everywhere. Stuff just gets gradually shittier, but we just accept it, because we get used to it.

Yeah, especially in peace time. When war heats up and resources get scarce, you use the cheapest thing that does the job. But in peace time you feed your military contractors to keep them happy and to keep them researching and developing so you don't lose out on modern technology development.

(For clarification, with "war time" I mean "being in a war that actually threatens the country". The US hasn't been in a war like that for a very long time. They've essentially being in "peace time" while having military training and testing facilities in the middle east.)

Jus soli is important for former colonies, especially those with large permanent colonist populations. It's an easy way to build an immigrant-based citizenship.

And adding to that: Depending on the flight you might be hours away from a suitable landing location with usually no medical personell or medical supplies beyond some band-aids available.

If something goes wrong, even unrelated to pressure, oxygen or cramped environment, you might be stuck up there for a very long time before you can get to a hospital.

This.

People keep confusing "can sue" with "be successful in court".

You can sue anyone for anything at any time. I can sue you because I don't like your default avatar. But that doesn't mean that I would have any chance in a courtroom.

And this is exactly how it should be. The decision whether a lawsuit has merit or not should be taken in court, not somewhere before court. Because that would mean that some police man or someone else with only cursory knowledge of the law would have to decide whether a lawsuit has merit and that would be catastrophic.

No, anyone should be able to sue for anything. And garbage lawsuits should be thrown out of court by a judge and/or jury.

Well, you said you only have experience from the outside.