One thing alone would help shift the Overton Window MASSIVELY in a country like the USA - mandatory voting. If everyone who had the right to vote actually voted, Republicans would never hold federal government ever again and would only be able to hold onto a couple of states and a few dozen local governments across the nation.

Without mandatory voting, Republicans can become more and more egregious in seeking to rally voters while simultaneously painting the whole establishment as broken which essentially disenfranchises the non-voting centre. With it, they’d have to seriously moderate their platforms to have any hope of forming government ever again. It would likely cause a party split that would then coalesce again into a two-party coalition on the right, starting the efforts to break down the two-party system.

If you introduce ranked choice voting as well, that’ll speed up the dismantling of the two-party system, but just mandatory voting alone would prevent Trump and his ilk from ever being in power again.

It’s ridiculous and stupid, I know, but it comes from some pretty basic biology.

Depending upon size/thickness of a person’s thighs, it can be pretty impossible to put one knee over the other without squishing your dick and balls either on top of your legs or tucked underneath them. Wearing tight brief-style underwear, this can lead to situations where someone tries to cross their legs like this and inadvertently squishes their balls - a pretty uncomfortable circumstance in my own experience. Thus people with male genitalia (usually men) tend to prefer to cross their legs with the ankle over the knee to allow their genitals to ‘breathe’ and not be all squished up.

People with vaginas (usually women) in Western societies are also far more likely to wear skirts or dresses. In order to prevent someone having a peek at their underwear (or lack thereof) while wearing a skirt/dresses and sitting, these people are more likely to put one knee over the other.

Again, attempting to measure masculinity or femininity by this one preference is utterly stupid, but there are reasons why this behavioural pattern has become commonplace in Western societies. I (cis man) tend to do both in different circumstances; usually dependent upon weather, underwear and outer clothing I’m wearing.

Weapon degradation seems to be a serious and genuine complaint that a lot of people have with BotW and TotK but for some reason it never seemed to bother me as it has others. I totally understand the criticism but frankly I always had a full stock of good quality weapons - particularly with the Fuse function in TotK - and never ran low or out of decent weapons on hand.

I think they were implemented to try to force gamers to think about other options to take down enemies rather than brute-forcing every battle which appeals to me, but it seems to have angered a significant proportion of people. From my perspective, it helps to engender the puzzler aspect of Zelda games in a novel way - viewing battles as a puzzle to be solved for maximum efficiency rather than how well you can strike and dodge.

Yeah I’ve heard that a fair bit too - thankfully I’m a high-tolerance Coeliac meaning my body can handle very small amounts of cross contamination but for those whose bodies can’t process a single iota of gluten this has become a significant issue for them. I find that when I order gluten free a lot of servers will ask me “is that for preference or are you Coeliac” and that gives me confidence that when I tell them I’m Coeliac they’ll take extra precautions.

Can I just say though, as someone who does have diagnosed Coeliac Disease, the gluten free fad really helped to open up my options both for products to buy and restaurants I can eat at and for that I’m thankful. It does suck that there aren’t more/better vegetarian and vegan options at mainstream restaurants though.

Which leads in perfectly to another joke from the US version of The Office where Dwight claims that Kelly, of Indian heritage, doesn’t qualify for their parent company Sabre’s “Print in All Colours” initiative because Indian people are technically Caucasian

And herein lies a big issue - only a minority of men are creeps towards women, but because they’re creeps towards so many women it means that women ubiquitously experience creepy dudes. That causes women to become (understandably) more guarded and jaded and makes things harder for the majority of men who aren’t creeps.

Having previously worked in child protection for almost a decade I can tell you that children with these kind of misspelled names are over-represented in the children we received reports about. I worked at a report intake and assessment hub and did over 5000 reports in my tenure there, and I saw SO MANY of these kinds of names.

Not all kids with these names end up being abused or neglected, but a lot of abused or neglected kids have these names.

The beauty of the fediverse is that no one platform should become omnipresent but that interconnection between platforms is possible. It’s a user-directed service. If Lemmy isn’t meeting your personal standards then there are other options.

Yes, Lemmy is quite political. If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, you’re more than welcome to try a different service. Lemmy’s purpose is not to become the next Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok in size - it’s to provide an alternative to them. Growth for growth’s sake isn’t usually a great idea.

That depends - am I only physically attracted to them? The answer is no, whether or not they’re trans. Am I also attracted to their personality? Then yes, whether or not they’re trans.

It helps that I’m bi.

We were taught a similar trick in physics - point your right-hand thumb in the direction that current (or electrons, same same) is travelling and the curling of your fingers shows the direction of the resultant magnetic field that the current creates.

Many forget that a meme is simply a concept or idea that grabs hold within a human community and is propagated and promulgated. Patriarchy is a meme. Capitalism is a meme. Doing ‘bunny ears’ behind someone’s head in a photo is a meme (h/t Parker and Stone). Doing cave paintings of animals is a meme. Fashion of an era is a meme. Our entire social structure runs on memes.

I donate regularly to a charity and don’t try to dictate how they spend that money, because I have faith that they’ll responsibly use my donations.

And their venom HURTS. They’re not particularly deadly or anything but their venom will land you in the hospital or at least laid up in bed for a while. My stepmother grew up out in the bush in NSW the ‘70s and received one of the few recorded platypus envenomations and she described it as the most painful experience of her life. She said childbirth was a breeze compared to the platypus sting!

It’s the political extremism ouroboros - any political ideology that is based upon hate inevitably ends up eating itself as they need to keep inventing things to hate and eventually turn inwards. I love to see it.

You guys can use €0.50 coins?! Over here in Australia it’s either a $1 or $2 coin. I wish I could chuck a 50¢ piece in the trolley.

And that edit can be as minute as changing a single bit of data that is imperceptible to the human ear. As long as a human being has put input into it, they’ve edited it, and there’s copyright that can be protected.

It’s really sad to me that Americans get put in the awful position of choosing between tipping, which supports the low wages, and taking responsibility for ensuring another human being has a living wage. It’s just such a terrible position for a consumer to be placed in, having to make ethical and moral choices about how much money to pay for goods and services.

They’ve been doing that for a long time - ever heard of Apple Pay?

https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/apple-pay-costs-for-australian-banks-revealed-20221209-p5c527

The NRLW in Australia is an awesome comp and is growing rapidly in viewership too! It’s a great game to watch and young female athletes are finally getting some serious role models they can aspire to as well. I’m not much into rugby union being a New South Welshman but the league games are intense.