That sucks.
I don’t know if this is a thing anymore but “back in my day” your friends/family/coworkers/roommates would try to hook you up with other people that they know are single and might be a good match. Especially the older ladies in your life, that was like their mission in life. Aside from that, you might ask someone who runs in overlapping circles that you’ve seen a few times if they want to get coffee or lunch.

The closest thing to Tinder-type dating would have been “cruising” on a Friday and Saturday night, driving up and down the Main Street of your town, hanging out in parking lots to talk and make plans for the night. Even then, you would ask “where do/did you go to school” and “do you know ____” “are you related to” type questions to establish your “degrees of Kevin Bacon” relationship in the social network.

So there was no need to date total strangers. That would be considered kinda weird and suspicious, which is why online dating was heavily stigmatized in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. I went on a few match.com and eharmony dates but kept it secret, telling only my closest friends, out of shame. They thought I was crazy, meeting up with strangers like that.

A few horny guys would try to chat up every random stranger and it occasionally paid off for them, but that wasn’t really normal behavior.

I think we’re all more mobile now, moving from city to city for work, so those networks are probably shattered for most people.

I feel so incredibly lucky that I dodged the dating app bullet, it seems awful for guys to try and compete in that space. And for women, having creepy dudes be creepy with no repercussions, with no way to tell their mother/aunt/sister to smack some sense into them… not great.

1. There are plenty of tiny coffee places (and other small businesses) near me where the owner is there all day, every day with just one or two employees. You’ll get to know them if you want to. You might also bump into them around town. If they suck, patronize a different place.

2. Theoretically, most of the money that I spend there stays in town, helping to keep other businesses and families going. They probably sponsor the local animal shelter or little league team. I like that.

3. I’ve worked in small businesses and corporate America. In my experience corporate America always sucks, small business only sometimes suck. I don’t like supporting large corporations and especially not their admin and C-suite. Those vampires are why the wealth gap is growing so quickly.

4. Corporate food is boring.

5. Some people argue that all of the transportation involved in moving around product and people for multi-national corporations is worse for the environment. I don’t care about that personally but it seems like a reasonable conclusion.

Aright then, how about for a ladder? Do you want to drive a box truck or trailer around to hold one ladder and painting supplies or whatever?

In the US, all metal tubes/pipes/stock for metal-working related tasks (welding, plumbing, structural stuff) comes in 20ft sections. The three options that I know of for transporting them are: trailer, box truck or roof rack.
A 22foot truck with roof rack would be perfect for someone who works with metal e.g. a plumber. A smaller truck would work but then you’ve got a bunch of pipes hanging off like you’re in a jousting tournament.

I stand corrected!

Ruby is just one guy, Vermin Supreme

No issues for me using NextDNS. I’m a big fan. It blocks everything way upstream at the DNS level so I don’t need to worry about configuring my devices. It’s basically a lazy pihole. I used to run pihole but moved to a new place and couldn’t be bothered to set it up again. No regrets, one less thing to manage.

You’ll be fine. The average Texan isn’t even aware of this stupid shit and the cities you listed are way more left-leaning than a small town in whatever state you’re from.

This is a few hundred idiots in a state with a population of 30 million people. I saw more people at Costco yesterday.

Some articles have misrepresented it as 1,000 people, but that was a concert in Dripping Springs, a small town outside of Austin (not the border) with Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin. 1,000 people turning out for a musician with Top 40 hits is actually a very poor turnout for being near a city with 1,000,000 people.

This is all just media hype. Edit to add: And politician hype. I’m not sure which one I’m angrier at. They both suck for trying to “make fetch happen.”

IWantToFuckSpez (͡•_ ͡• )

bonk

Haha yeah, bacon always wins. Potato chips on a sandwich are nice for that same kinda fluffy crunch layer.

Cooked onions, I suppose I’d agree. They’re just kinda mushy. Raw onions on the other hand have a great crunchy texture to me.

Thick sliced raw onion rings on burgers fluffs the whole thing up a bit and adds some airy crunch.

They add a nice crunchy texture to Greek salad as well.

Cut into lengthwise strips, they’re similarly fun in stir-fry if you don’t cook them too long.

Diced on top of a tostada or taco or bagel with cream cheese and lox, they add a little crunchy something but admittedly this could be also be achieved with pretty much anything not-squishy.

“Just 63 people made it to the South in 2021, more than 90% down from 2019, when 1,047 arrived. The number stayed low in 2022, at just 67.”

So no rental properties at all? You either buy or you’re homeless? That doesn’t sound great to me. Owning is a lot of work, risk and commitment. If anything goes wrong, you better have thousands of dollars ready to dump into getting your roof fixed or your plumbing fixed or whatever. If you decide you want to go to a different school or accept a better job offer in another city, you’re probably gonna lose tens of thousands of dollars to the real estate agents when you sell. It’s not the right choice for a lot of people.

I’ve lived mostly in houses owned by landlords with less than ten properties and they were all pretty cool for the most part. Way better landlords than apartment complexes or property management companies. The biggest annoyance was surprise visits by them early on the weekend to plant flowers/bushes in the front yard, water the tree, replace edging, typical homeowner crap like that. I guess worse than that, a couple of times their situation changed and they decided to move back into the house, so they didn’t renew our lease and we had to move out. That kinda sucked but it’s their house, if they want to live in it and your lease is up, that’s the way contracts go.

All that said, property management companies and large landlords can get fucked. Regardless of housing cost, they’ve always been scumbags to deal with.

“ When combining closings between both larger, private equity and smaller, independent operations, investors accounted for 44% of the purchases of flips during the third quarter”

That figure is talking about only flipped (i.e. remodeled) houses bought in a specific quarter, October 2022. Most people (myself included) can’t afford freshly remodeled homes and brand new cars.
That figure also lumps small landlords together with big investors which really isn’t the same thing in my opinion but some people around here think that all landlords are evil so that’s somewhat subjective I guess.

Institutional investors “purchased 25% of the homes flipped” “as soaring mortgage rates push traditional buyers to the sidelines,”

That still sucks but it’s not 44% of all homes being bought by big corporations throughout 2023.

Here’s a recent Business Insider article that goes in depth on who’s been buying houses over time

I agree with most of what you said but that 44% number is wildly wrong. Article about it
Also, anecdotally, I’ve gone through a couple of houses in hot markets the last 5 years (had to move for work) as both buyer and seller. The vast majority of people looking weren’t corporate or institutions. Most were couples looking for a place to live. Cash buyers above asking are a real thing though and they suuuuuuuck for the poors like myself.

It’s not even close to true. Here’s an article about it

Is this also true for headless servers? I’ve been using Ubuntu via SSH for 15 years now and it’s always been fine for me but I’ve also never run the desktop version (for more than a few days anyway.)

I just installed it on a scavenged workstation last month to use as a media server and I didn’t notice anything unusual.

Edit:

While we’re at it, what does the hive mind think I should be using instead for turning old trash PCs into shitty servers? The only thing Lemmy has taught me so far is that Ubuntu sucks and the only truly honorable choice is to quit my job and stop speaking to my family so that I can devote my life to installing drivers on unstable Arch. Also, I’m supposed to buy some thigh-high stockings and learn to tuck apparently?

Why? Other than being an ugly fish, this is no different than stuffed crab, stuffed clams, oysters Rockefeller, lemon stuffed grilled branzino, etc.
These poor fish are just ugly as hell and the dish itself taken out of context and labeled “Tacos.” I’d never thought about it before your comment but it seems to me that including the whole animal on the plate is the least wasteful and most respectful way to eat it. When you can see its face, there’s no hiding that what you’re eating was once sentient. How much is wasted is left for the person holding the fork to decide.