I live in DFW, a large amalgamation of two cities and a bunch if suburban sprawl in Texas.
I live in a neighborhood that is considered extremely walkable, as I am directly across the street from a university and less than a mile from city hall.

Here are my walking distances:

• To the nearest convenience store: 1.8km
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 4.3 km (They have a monopoly though, so unless you can afford whole foods, the closest good one is like 22.5 km)
• To the bus stop: Lol, we don’t have busses. A neighboring city does, so I guess 29 km?
• To the nearest park: Nearest park is 2.8km. Nearest public space is only 1.5km because I live right next to city hall.
• To the nearest big supermarket: 8.9 km to Walmart.
• To the nearest library: 1.5km, again, I live right next to city hall.
• To the nearest train station: 16km, unless you mean one for intercity travel. We don’t have one of those because Amtrak is slowly being killed.

Straight-line distance to Big Ben: we don’t have a Big Ben, but we killed JFK and that’s 34km away.

Bonus fun fact, I commute 42km each day. This is considered far by most people here, 32km would be much more reasonable.

Oh, god. I remember how it ran on a stripped down gingerbread ROM lol.

I gave up and bought a new phone after that.

“I don’t really get why people get so up in arms about discussing it, but Sex is fun. Be careful though, those swimmers are persistent little fuckers.”

“Drugs feel good and you think everything is fine until one day you look up and realize it all went wrong years ago. I can’t stop you, but I really hope you’ll choose not to try them.”

I think both worked out well. I’m sex positive and I generally avoid drugs because it just isn’t worth the risk of finding that one substance that totally ruins my life.

I think it varies a lot by the user. I think (hope) most people are just joking, but I’m sure we have a number of people who aren’t joking.

But also keep in mind we absolutely have propaganda bots and trolls here. They’re quite good at directing the hivemind, even without the assistance of complete loons.

Many of them, yes. They’re among the most radical of the leftist instances, which means that they attract a lot of propagandists and tankies. They have some perfectly reasonable people too, but you know, vocal minority. Its the main thing most people notice about those instances.

Many people block hexbear, Lemmy.ml, and lemmygrad for these reasons.

What is your budget and needs? Used thinkpads from a certain time period are very hardy, but they’re getting old enough now for performance to be an issue for anything beyond basic web browsing and word processing.

Framework also makes laptops with the explicit goal of being more repairable. Even if you decide not to work on it yourself, it would be trivial for a repair shop to fix most things that could go wrong.

Yes, but if they refuse coverage you can appeal, ans if they refuse to honer the details of your policy you can sue or report them to regulators. Not that it isnt a problem regardless.

And the in network facility/out of network doctor loophole was patched recently under the Biden admin :)

It is true that nobody pays the cartoonishly high bills that you see posted online. It is also true that we spend way more on healthcare than basically anyone else.

My company offers very good insurance. Anything “in network” is free after the first $3000 every year, and the monthly premium is around ~$330. Note that this is a company that intentionally offers very good health insurance so they can be less competitive when it comes to salary and time off. I’d say in a given year, I spend around $7,000.

But really, one of the biggest practical issues with our healthcare system is its opacity. Most people are unable to figure out what most things will cost them before they consent to care.

I know a couple people who have broken teeth on less imposing foods.

Keep in mind that harder usually means more brittle. If you have bad teeth, you might break them on a carrot.

Except violence, supposedly.

I’m american, so I obviously wouldn’t know. Overseas travel is fuckin expensive…

I’d say stock pixel Roms are a better experience than most custom Roms. That being said, if you have privacy concerns, grapheneOS is right there.

Personal choice, IMO. I don’t miss any of the features I gave up except for AI call screening.

It’s fairly common where I live, but dentists recommend against it because it weakens tour enamel.

I’ve never done it. Reasonably healthy teeth can be quite stained before they become noticeable to a random stranger while you’re talking of whatever.

I don’t think so. People need homes, but not all people can buy homes. If you can afford to maintain the property to a reasonable level without completely gouging your tenants, I think you’re providing a valuable service to your fellow citizens.

We don’t get along, but my landlord is an old lady who bought 2-3 blocks of apartments after her husband left her a bunch of oil money. She keeps up the grounds (for the most part) and my rent has been pegged to inflation since I moved in. If people like her didn’t exist, people like me would be stuck renting from a big property company.

They want the right kind of babies.

“Welfare babies” are babies born to poor and working class parents.

They want middle class white people breeding like rabbits, though.

Most of us do. A few people do sign up for variable rate plans, and they did get astronomical bills during the snowpocalypse. IIRC they didn’t get any aid or anything, it was a small enough number of people that they just got hung out to dry.

I’m not saying its totally useless, I’m saying gets harder and harder the larger the group gets. The commonalities get fewer and less universal as group size increases.

I don’t get out a lot period, but my friend is black. They live out of state, but we talk on the phone a couple times a week.

Now, on one hand, its a sample size of 1. On the other hand, that’s a solid 50% of my social circle.

That being said, “black culture” varies just as much as “white culture”. You’re trying to generalize a massive number of people, and you’d probably be surprised how hard that is. I don’t think you could pin down any single cultural element as being ubiquitous among black Americans.

Nice bar: whatever menu cocktail or specialty product looks good.

Okay bar: Amaro/mezcal if they have it, gin/rum if they don’t.

Not very good bar: beer or cider

Bad bar: bottle beer. No cans, mixers, or taps, and well pours only if truly desperate.

9-5 is definitely no longer standard, although traffic does get noticeably worse here after 8am.

That being said, what is their justification for 7-5? Unless you’re taking a 2 hour unpaid lunch, that’s mandatory overtime, which most companies aren’t super fond of paying.

I love it. It’s a shame it’s as abusive and shitty as it is, but I love it regardless.

Unfortunately, my body can’t support it. If it could, that’s what I’d be doing with my life.