Are you saying the we were the monkeys at the typewriters all along?

His full name is Charles Entertainment Cheese!

I don't know about anyone else, but I hope to never be interesting enough to be honeypotted

There's a difference between blocking a constant feed of toxicity and doomerism and not paying attention to what's going on for the world. Tons of people around the world have been trying to find the right balance for their mental health

Ehh Mastodon manages to avoid a lot of that where Lemmy falls flat

The depressing thing is a lot of these wonderful regional accents are slowly dying off thanks to the significant exposure to national and international media that people consume. Like you'll still encounter older individuals with these regional Midwestern accents, particularly in smaller and more remote communities, but the accents are slowly disappearing (or more accurately, speakers are slowly subconsciously moving to a more generic Midwestern accent that's more widely understood)

Mexico is even technically a US of A, because they're the officially (when translated to English) the United Mexican States, and in America

Yes $200/week for groceries is plenty for one person who spends carefully. I don’t spend anywhere near that much.

That's a heck of a lot more than I spend on my family of 4 for groceries! Even with an added allergy that means some of the stuff that's normally $2-3 we have to get ~$10 variants of

They were surprisingly edible. Honestly the chocolate chips provided the needed reprieve from the cumin, but we did end up tossing about half of it after a week of nibbling at it and laughing anew about the mistake

My wife was making banana bread and a similar disaster was waiting to happen as the Cinnamon and Cumin are sold in nearly identical-looking containers. The inevitable happened and we ended up with banana bread that tasted like it was seasoned with taco seasoning!

You better know I'm a million times more humble than thou art!

Energy has historically been much cheaper in the US than the rest of the world. I remember hearing somewhere that in cost per unit of gasoline the US is something like 30-40% cheaper than Europe. During this gasoline price spike and the last one, I did find a part of me hoping it would sustain so that lifestyles would adjust to be a bit less careless about fuel consumption.

What I've observed, living in a rural area of a rural state is that once gas prices get up to around $4 per gallon, people start making small changes to save fuel. If they have a gas gusling truck and a comparably more fuel efficient SUV they might drive the SUV more. Workplaces become more thoughtful about making their employees drive in unnecessarily. Car dealerships start advertising fuel efficiency rather than hauling capacity. People will think twice about extra trips out, or select closer trips.

Once the higher prices are sustained for a few months, I expect that super commuters will start recalculating if they can still afford their commute or need to change jobs. Folks in the market for a new vehicle may buy a more fuel efficient vehicle, and new lifestyles will bed in with a bit less driving for most people

Once the higher prices are sustained for a year or more is when I expect more noticable changes to take effect. Sales of fuel efficient vehicles will likely tick up, electric vehicle sales may also increase, solar panel installations will likely increase, and the most inefficient vehicles on the road will become a bit less common. This is the timeline I've observed and expect respectively for gas prices remaining around $4/gallon.

Now if they go really insane and get up to $6-8 per gallon average for over a year, that's when I'd expect a big uptick in people choosing to go car-free or car-lite, I'd expect to see a lot of new companies starting up to try to capitalize on the demand created by the fuel crisis, and I'd expect established companies to begin investing in more R&D into more financially risky and exotic solutions that can be expected to save energy