I’m curious if anyone else is able to provide an example here. Personally, I grew up in an extremely right-wing, very isolated, very culty version of the southern baptist church. I was around young-earthers, anti-vaxxers, anti-evolution folks, dinosaur/man co-existence, believing black people are black because they’re cursed—all sorts of crazy whackadoodle shit. I never once met someone who didn’t believe in space. I think you’re right that this was a YouTube Fact™ that she picked up somewhere.

Ugh what is wrong with people

America is such a strange place—I know a lot of conservatives will probably cheer in response to this doctor leaving the state. The resulting huge void in the ladder of pediatric care and the poor health outcomes for children are just collateral damages in the struggle for republicans to be able to openly hate and discriminate against the queer community again. It’s ironic (or maybe just hypocritical?) that the republicans have pivoted all their messaging to “we have to protect the children,” while directly creating situations like this that hurt children.

All true. It definitely feels like there’s at least a shred of schadenfreude driving the behavior, but its hard to be sure. I read this piece last night in case you’re interested in learning more:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-lying-flat-movement-standing-in-the-way-of-chinas-innovation-drive/

It doesn’t estimate exactly how large this movement is (which is the main thing I was hoping to learn), but it’s apparently at least large enough to garner state-sponsored propaganda against it.

Hang in there! I highly recommend using something like https://lemmyverse.net/communities to search for communities. Lemmy (and most other parts of the fediverse) are a double-edged sword: you’re not being algorithmically fed content, so you’re able consciously curate what you devote your attention to, you’re not being surveilled for marketing, etc. However, because of this, it’s harder to accidentally find an interesting community because they’re not actively presented to you.

I just started using the search above to type in keywords of interest. I’ve found some established Lemmy communities I don’t think I would have stumbled across otherwise.

Although I totally agree with “the kind traveller” that downtime, boredom, and other forms of “lying flat” are good, I agree with you: I wonder if depression is a factor here.

Disclaimer: He is born and raised in totally different culture, so maybe there’s some innate understanding that I’m lacking here.

I feel like a lot of times, the goal (or at least the ideal outcome) of this sort of lifestyle is to have your time back so you can focus on what matters: family, friends, charity, hobbies, learning, spirituality (if you’re into that), nature, new experiences, conquering fears, etc. There wasn’t any specific endorsement or rejection of these things, so maybe his thoughts on that just don’t appear in this selection of translated posts—but I agree that it sounds a little like ennui, malaise, and lethargy associated with depression. Depression runs in my family, so I’ve lived and witnessed a similar lifestyle before, and it’s certainly not conducive to a joyful existence.

I had the same opinion about Lemmy until I took the time to find the same wide assortment of communities that I subbed to on Reddit. Now that there’s a wider variety of content to read, I don’t have that “please stop talking about the fediverse” thought anymore. I will say that tech and tech-adjacent communities on here are still really heavy on the meta discussions (i.e. as in posting on Lemmy about Lemmy—not about Zuck’s website).

This is a beautiful quote—thank you for sharing.

Thank you for this! I was literally about to google this because I wasn’t sure.

In my part of the US, I believe it’s 3 ft (0.91 meters), so unfortunately even a legal pass feels like a close pass. I imagine the 1.5 meters still feels close too. I agree that’s super hard to measure from a car—I’m a cyclist and a driver, so I get it. In many parts of the US that aren’t as backward as mine, the minimum distance is 6ft, which seems a little more reasonable.

The polyester pillow stuffing bills are becoming unmanageable 😭😭😭

I think it’s kind of a mix. Often these types of purchases are enabled by financial grants from federal or state governments. Our governments actively encourage this type of police militarization because we have so many mass shootings. But as we’ve found out time and time again, even with all this equipment and staffing in the world, they either arrive after everyone is dead or wait outside while the people (usually children) get murdered. But don’t worry, we’ve tried doing nothing to fix it, so we’re hoping things will change very soon. We’re doing great! Best country ever 🫡🇺🇸

I would wager that most of the “cyclists are so entitled” folks haven’t ridden a bike since they were children in large part because they know how scary it would be to bike on a stroad getting close passed by a bunch of people monitoring their phones first, their cars second, the road third, and you not at all.

For a large portion of people, it’s not a lack of understanding how harrowing the experience is—rather, they just want cyclists to suffer because of mob mentality. But I agree that every driver should have to experience the close pass as a cyclist so they can hopefully empathize a little more.

Kinda related: I think everyone should have to experience what it’s like to have an Uber driver with their hazards on parked in the middle of the road, blocking both directions of travel—but it’s okay because they’ll “only be a minute”

Father, I want to see the face of VBA god

Love it! I’ve never done it unless I’m feeling really sick or really sad, but it’s so nice—why not every day?

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You’re a lemmy legend.