This is me during warm weather. During winter the phone and wallet go into coat pockets. Sitting down is more comfortable with empty pants pockets.

Between the ticket prices and the, ah, challenging political climate in the US, I am really curious what game attendance will be.

Mine is a video. In my memory it’s a well-produced, fast-paced, choreographed fight scene featuring the Power Rangers battling a band of generic goons for possession of some MacGuffin: a crystal or orb or whatever. The twist is, the whole thing is set to the song Run by Ghostface Killah. Every few years I look for it, and always come up empty-handed.

Know when the museums have free or discounted events for the locals.

Know that the library probably has free passes to the museums, too!

And if you’re in a city with a decent sized college, there are lots of cheap or free interesting things to do related to it: public lectures, music performances, theater, sports…

I missed that, my bad.

This also occurred in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift, a period when spoken English pronunciation was changing significantly.

I don’t even try to hide it anymore. My manager and I send each other memes during the work day.

I Am A Rock by Simon and Garfunkel

A winter's day  
In a deep and dark December

I am alone  
Gazing from my window to the streets below  
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow
I am a rock I am an island

I've built walls
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate
I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain
I am a rock I am an island

Don't talk of love
Well I've heard the word before
It's sleeping in my memory
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died
If I never loved I never would have cried
I am a rock I am an island

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me
I am shielded in my armor
Hiding in my room safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me
I am a rock I am an island

And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries

As far as dealing with reports and removing inappropriate content, it scales exponentially with the popularity of the community and the contentiousness of the topic. Most communities require little or no effort on this front. A community like !jazz@lemmy.world might get a couple reports per year as people argue about whether specific posts fit the genre. A larger community like !games@sh.itjust.works gets a few reports per month due to users bickering. Really big communities like !technology@lemmy.world or !world@lemmy.world get targeted by trolls and spammers and are a daily chore.

You should look at the community modlogs for a few communities that are similar to the ones you want to start. That will give you a feel for how busy you may be.

The bigger burden is going to be keeping your new communities fresh with new posts. That work is much harder than moderation, in my experience. Look at !superbowl@lemmy.world: it has 4.9k subscribers but most of the content comes from a single user with a passion for the topic. Same with !science_memes@mander.xyz and many others.

Inflation means cash is losing value, so prices will rise. You don’t want to have a pile of cash sitting in your bank. Here are some possible options. (I am not a professional, do your own research, etc. What works in one situation may not work in another.)

• Convert your cash into more stable stores of value. Buy physical property (homes and land), invest in gold or other precious metals, invest in agricultural commodities, etc. People always need places to live, food to eat, wood to build, clothing to wear. These sorts of things tend to stay in demand.

• Convert your cash to a more stable currency. You could buy a foreign country’s sovereign bonds, or exchange some of your cash for Euros or whatever. Over the past 80 years US dollars and US government bonds have been popular for this, but those feel a bit risky at the moment.

• Spend your cash now on quality, durable goods that will last a long time. The new roof you need on your house will only be more expensive after inflation has eroded your purchasing power.

• Buy investments that (hopefully) return an interest rate greater than the inflation rate. Stock funds can sometimes do this, but not always.

• If you have stable income and are confident that it will remain stable, you can gamble with debt. For example, borrow money today at X% interest, and if future inflation is >X% then you benefit by repaying the debt with cheaper future money.

!whatcouldgowrong@lemmy.world

Though it has been dead for two years. Maybe you can be the person to start posting and bring it back to life.

When making small talk, ask for opinions farther down someone’s list. Like, “What was the third best trip you ever took?” It catches people off guard in a good way, and garners better answers than asking for their top choice.

You can do it the other way, too. Saying, “that was the fourth funniest thing I have ever seen” immediately prompts questions from your audience. Just be ready with a good follow-up story if you try this.

Another option is to learn little party tricks that don’t require much talking. Learn to fold simple origami, or some coin tricks, or whatever. When you’re with a group of people and you don’t know what to add to the conversation, you quietly do your thing until someone notices. Suddenly a banal moment becomes a memorable moment and you didn’t have to say anything.

That is an amazing little ad hoc study!

That’s Austin 3:16

It’s better, but still horrible in its own special way.

Black and gray flags are used by the US military on some uniforms. Civilians also sometimes display them as “no quarter” flags, meaning the person displaying the flag will show no mercy to any perceived enemies. For both of these reasons the right-wing nationalist crowd likes them.

iPhones are actually designed in the US. My point is that the phrase is almost certainly a lie in this case.

Another commented mentioned this is from a US distributor that repackages Baofeng products.

But to be honest, there are so many Baofeng/BTech radios for sale on the internet I was never confident about which were legit and which were knock-offs. I just went for it and hoped for the best. They seem to work fine, at least so far.

Yeah. I have seen the monochromatic flag referred to as a “no quarter” flag, and initially wondered if that was the intent. Or maybe they just wanted to minimize colors to reduce printing costs.

That’s really interesting! I had no idea, but I am not surprised.