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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • There are a lot of analogies but they all fail in some way. I think PBS Spacetime does the best in general, with good graphics to back up the words.

    My layman’s explanation is probably all stuff you’ve heard before. Massive objects “warp” spacetime and things that get stuck in those “wells” eventually fall to the bottom due to drag (from a variety of sources).

    You’ve also probably seen the rubber sheet with a bowling ball in the middle used to represent that warping. To visualize that in 3D, I like to imagine a 3D grid of nodes and edges (like a jungle gym of joints and bars) where the whole thing is flexed inward towards a center point. More warped near the center, less warped further out. That kind of conveys the acceleration from gravity felt by things around that center mass.


  • I’m also a UBI layperson, but this is my understanding:

    Basic incomes don’t need to match or exceed the cost of living to provide some of their purported benefits. One of those benefits is replacing difficult to administer welfare services (of which there are some discussions in this thread). In that way the $2700 per person per year can be more efficiently allocated (towards an ideal national gross prosperity) by the individual.

    This might solve issues like the infamous “welfare cliff” that have arisen from difficulties in administration.


  • You’ve gotten some good answers already but I’d like to stress a point I haven’t seen mentioned: It’s easiest to make friends during downtime. By which I mean, time you spend with another person doing nothing in particular. Shared activities are not bad, but if they are too engaging (work, sport, even worship) there isn’t time to get bored and find entertainment in conversation, wherein you can discover shared interests and build comeraderie.

    You’ll find a lot of Americans formed their closest friendships while in school (usually high school or college). I argue that’s because there is a ton of downtime with your peers in those environments. Try to find similar environments where you are effectively “stuck” with a peer for an hour or more at a time. Hiking clubs are fantastic. Beginner art classes. Book clubs.

    Beyond that, don’t be discouraged. Some people will have a hard time getting over their own inhibitions about exposing themselves to new people. And many casual friends will fall by the wayside along the way. That is okay. The ones you keep will be worth it in the end.








  • Not the parent poster, but I am similarly concerned about tag spam. I find big tag blocks can ruin the reading experience on platforms that display them in-line with the body text.

    Another comment suggested that tags be put in a field separate from the body of the post (and they shouldn’t be parsed from the body, either). I think that’s the best way to facilitate Lemmy clients to (optionally) hide big tag blocks.