It really depends on how you define it. There have always been locations and groups where things were terrible and there have been locations and groups where things were good. Often the locations were the same but the groups were different.

In the US, there was a general sense that things were gradually improving that may have gone back as far as World War II and lasted through the 70’s. Not that there weren’t a lot of problems, just that society seemed to be recognizing and working on them. The conservative resurgence in 1980, lead by Ronald Reagan and Newt Gringrich, pretty much ended that positive trend. Since then we’ve seen active efforts to divide people, to encourage prejudices, and, especially, to destroy the education system. That last is critical, because it makes propaganda and other forms of social manipulation far more effective.

The US is now living with the result of allowing those changes. There are vast disparities in education, wealth, and power across the population. Many people on the low end of those distributions have been convinced to blame other groups that are also on the low end. That has allowed those at the high end to corrupt our political and economic systems to their advantage.

The current situation is not sustainable, but it will do incalculable damage to hundreds of millions of people while it exists. And we don’t know what will follow it.

There is strong evidence that humans became successful as a species because of their ability to put interests of the group before their own. Those instincts have been subverted, but they are not dead. That is what gives me hope for the future.

My big dog understands this principle. He often carries around a stuffed Koala with him and cuddles with it. When anyone, human or animal, is having rough time, he bring it to them and tucks it in next to them.

He is everything a dog should be. Greatness combined with all the of cute.

Orange cats are going to save us from the zombie apocalypse.

My main charities are the Humane Society, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, my local church (which supports all kinds of local needs), a local food bank, and the ACLU. I also donate to various organizations that do serious journalism, including NPR, PBS, ProPublica, Common Dreams, and the Guardian. And finally, I always try to donate to projects that produce things I use, like Fedican, PieFed, Voyager, Signal, Meshtastic firmware and Android app, and Thunderbird. Most of the donations are small, but I do what I can.

Hypocrisy. It’s at the root of refusing to take responsibility for your own words and actions. It used to be considered a serious failure and now we just assume it.

Fair enough.

In England, Pitbulls (known as Staffordshires or Staffies) are often referred to as Nanny Dogs. They are not naturally hostile or aggressive. They tend to see their jobs as looking after people, especially children. The problem is that they were used for dogfighting in the US, which is where the “Pit” in the name came from. That image is what most people here have in their heads.

Dogs are very good at adapting to what is expected of them. If you expect a vicious attack dog you are more likely to end up with that. Bad training or mistreatment can make almost any dog vicious. If you raise a Pitbull like any other dog, you are likely to end up with a personality more like a Golden Retriever.

I much prefer metric, but I live in the US so the Imperial units are what I grew up with and can work with most easily. The rest of the world uses metric, so I end up dealing with metric units quite a lot too. I have gotten to the point where I have a fairly good intuitive grasp of most metric units. I almost always use metric when I’m measuring things for my own use.

I do prefer Celsius to Fahrenheit for temperature. Fahrenheit may have made sense in the era and location where it was created, but in the larger world, where climate change is well underway, it no longer fits. The idea that the normal range of temperature fit into 0 F to 100 F was never true outside of the temperate zones. Just within the lower 48 states in the US we regularly experience temperatures above 110 F in the south and below 0 F in the north.

Also, it has always been true that the temperature that matters most is the freezing point. Putting that at 32 has never made any sense.

It frustrates me that the US came so close to adopting metric, then backed away, while the rest of the world moved forward. Now we’re stuck with the worst of both systems.

It’s unfortunate that Zuckerberg, like Musk, is too wealthy to ever suffer from his own incompetence. He’s doing all the right things to cripple or destroy his company. He may even succeed. It just won’t affect him personally.

That level of wealth should not be allowed to exist.

You understand your cat and you are a good person.

Chocolate is poisonous to dogs! They usually love to eat it, but enough will kill them.

Please, for the sake of your dog, check with your vet for details.

I agree. If that happens, things will change, but there’s no telling in what way. All I can do is cross my fingers and make sure the filters in my painting mask are current.

You’re still assuming that legality means anything to them. So far, they have been trying to maintain a fig leaf of legitimacy, but that could change at any point. If the military obeys Trump’s illegal orders, he can override or ignore any law, up to and including the Constitution. Laws only have meaning if they are enforced. That has not been happening for a while now.

Trump has the capability to send troops to seize state capitals, or to bomb them, or to arrest state governors and legislators. We all hope he won’t, but what is going to prevent it if he tries?

Adversity builds character. Or it results in psychological trauma that can be crippling for life. :-)

It’s too bad they discontinued it. I have several of those that I have used on my dogs’ collars at night and they’ve been perfect for that.

I think they on/off function is stiff enough not to be activated by accident under most circumstances, but a slide switch would be better.

It turns out that the real solution to “the immigration crisis” was to turn the US into a place where no one wants to live.

I am sorry you have to deal with that. I assume there are reasons for it, but I hope you are eventually able to be more comfortable with them. Either way, most dogs will still love you.

That kind of seems like a win-win to me.

I’m 65 and I hate the generation labels. I genuinely think they were originally pushed as another propaganda mechanism to create further artificial divisions between people. There is no doubt that people of significantly different ages are often different in various ways, but the over simplicity of the named generations just provides another convenient way to stereotype people instead of understanding them as individuals.

I think I joined reddit in 2008. I’ve been involved in social media since the days of dial-up bulletin board systems in the late 70’s. (And I ran one of my own in the mid-80’s.) I had an email address on Bitnet in 1983 and was on Usenet in its early days. reddit was an interesting and open place for a while there and I enjoyed the variety, but most of it was becoming too cynical and tribal for me by the early 20’s. I discovered Lemmy a couple years before reddit’s API debacle, but that is what convinced me to drop reddit and focus on the Fediverse.

I like the decentralized model of the Fediverse. I think the idea that different servers can have different rules is healthy. I stay away from parts of it, but I have found plenty of communities that are friendly and interesting to me. After hanging out on several different servers, I joined Fedican and have been happy here. It’s a nice place to call my home online.