You can always talk and express yourself! Absolutely no one will be upset if you do, assuming you don’t have wildly unpopular opinions and/or aren’t interested in rehashing politically fraught issues for the upteenth time. Find a vaguely appropriate community here and go nuts.

Building an audience over time is exactly how blogs, and publishing in general, work unless you start off with a lot of advertising or endorsements. For better or worse, there’s far more content than there is time for a large audience to read it all.

This gives you three choices:

• specialize and post in an existing community that’s aligned with that specialization. People will nearly always engage, especially if the content is good
• specialize and start your own blog. You could even try seeding it by referring people to it from already existing specialized communities. People will know what to expect content wise and keep coming back if the subject you’re talking about is interesting to them and the content is good
• don’t specialize and strike out on your own. If the content is good and you stick with it your audience will eventually grow. This will probably take more time because your audience will initially be looking for content that relates to what they’ve seen in the past, but what you’re really offering is your personality, writing style, world view, etc

Personally, if I’m looking for engagement I choose the first option.

Believe me, no one here is going to be upset if you write some interesting content. The real challenge will be whether or not your content find traction with the masses.

Both Lemmy and Reddit also favor new content over existing content, so expect decreasing engagement with a post as time wears on. This is different than a traditional forum, where a new comment will bump the whole thread.

I’ve kicked off a few good conversations here with OC, granted my posts tend to be more project/image based than what you’re thinking.

Fun fact: user names are instance specific, so someone could grab any of our user names on a different instance. Think of it as having [email protected] and someone grabs [email protected].

/random tidbit

I used my move to Lemmy to switch to a different one after having the same cross-platform alias for something like 20 years. It was time for a bit more anonymity. Winamp kids might suspect it’s related to the music player and they wouldn’t be wrong.

I do somewhat regret not ending it with AMA, but such is life.

I am not sure if this applies in Canada, but make sure that the program offered by the school is accredited. For example, I’m an engineer in the US and one of the bigger accreditation agencies is ABET. Some companies won’t hire you unless the school you want to is accredited by ABET.

That’s interesting, I haven’t had that experience. I wonder what’s creating the difference between the two of us :(

I’m currently leaning toward YouTube music.

I’ve subscribed on and off from Pandora for years (remember their founder sending you an email thanking you for participating in his experiment?). I find that my stations quickly start playing the same set of songs over and over.

I’ve also given Spotify a shot, but it seems like you either have to make your own playlist or listen to someone else’s. I personally like the algorithm fuled rabbit hole.

YouTube music has a decent catalog and their suggestions have introduced me to a lot of good music. Their android auto experience kinda stinks, and most things are transitory (eg no stations you tweak to your preferences over time), but IMO the discovery it offers is worth it. I also like that it lets you actively manage your queue, add songs/albums to it, rearrange things, etc.

Haha, the poop post! I remembered commenting in that thing, but it might have been from my kbin account before I hopped to .world

No one that I know has whitened their teeth. The thought has never even crossed my mind. I am a heavy coffee drinker and brush 1x day with a sonic care toothbrush. I guess I do use whitening toothpaste, but that’s because it’s unbiquitious.

People have a lot of variation in what “looking good” means to them. I would argue that being well groomed is fairly universal, but even that’s not the case for everyone. Some people think presenting well is all about the brands you wear. Others think it’s about the type of clothes. Others think it’s about how well put together your outfit is.

To me, I value well fitting clothes over “fancy” clothes. It’s nice if the two go hand in hand, but I have a hard time looking past poorly fitting “nice” clothing. That said, even fit is subjective unless you’re talking about neck fit in a button down T-shirt.

This is all a long way of saying do what works for you. If that’s whitening your teeth, cool. If that’s not whitening your teeth, also cool. Be clean, be halfway well groomed, and be comfortable in your appearance. Do this and people will generally be comfortable about you. Yes, some may judge you about something that’s out of your norms, but you truly won’t be able to please everyone.

I don’t think you deserve downvotes for potentially missing world politics and power dynamics.

Extreme outcomes include a hot war with China, but more probable outcomes including messy trade outcomes for parties that aren’t directly involved.

For example, in the 1973 oil crisis OAPEC directly targeted Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This list was later expanded to include Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa. It wound up impacting global oil prices. For example.

A modern possibility might be metals needed for batteries. China processes 67% of global lithium supply, along with 73% of cobalt, 70% of graphite and 95% of manganese.

Others have hit on one possible reason - US policy tends to have global implications. Other possible reasons include morbid curiosity (it’s hard to look away from a disaster and there have certainly been some dramatic twists this year) or potentially liking (or being repunged) by one of the candidates.

How does he frame the conversation? Is it an intellectual curiosity, is he afraid of the ramifications, is it something he’s personally invested in?

Using California as an example, agriculture consumes 4x the water of everything else combined - business + industry + parks + homes.

Austerity at homes is generally more of a show than anything else. You can read about the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, but it looks like the legislation isn’t mandated to be implemented until the 2040s.

It certainly does show how many traditions, with their own sets of rules, English pulls from. That said, watching my poor kid learning how to spell and read has been painful. All the rules only exist to be broken. An example today was him trying to pronounce AMC. A fun word for spelling that came up recent was skool.

Related: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese-adoption-rates-majority-adult-men-a7524301.html

98% of all Japanese adoptions are employers adopting the adult men on their staff, not children

…

Some of Japan’s most famous companies have remained a “family-run” businesses because of “mukoyoshi,” such as carmaker Toyota, which was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937.

Suzuki is also famously run by adopted sons — in fact, the current chairman and CEO Osamu Suzuki is the fourth consecutively adopted son to run the group.

Subscribed to the second and link. I like to lurk/sort by subscribed and new and will try to comment when I have something to contribute. Niche communities are hard to form without a decent user base, but a general recommends community seems like a great idea.

I was generalizing about heirlooms not being very easy to grow to modern standards. I grow a decent verity of heirlooms and hybrids and the hybrids don’t split nearly as often.

And if you don’t grow tomatoes yourself you’ll never know the difference.

What do you mean? Once you have home grown, or even farm stand, produce you realize that the vast majority of grocery store stuff is picked before it’s really ripe.

haha. I swear, the quality of my writing on Lemmy is abysmal.

That sounds like a wild strawberry. The berries won’t get. Offer year over year.