A university is a typically a collection of colleges (or schools).

For example: Harvard University is made up of Harvard College, Harvard Business School, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School, Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, etc.

For all intents and purposes - we use the word “college” and “university” interchangeably because they’re the same level of education. Either can do associates through doctoral.

Community colleges, however, only focus on 2 year degrees and certain certifications.

I had a lot of good years on Fark.

You want to kill germs? Use mouthwash. There’s pretty much nothing beneficial about smoking cigarettes.

Even when you take the health considerations out of account, you will reek. I assure you, nobody wants to spend time around a partner that emits a nauseating scent. It’s a bad habit in every sense of the term.

Yes - nicotine can be a quick stress reliever. That’s about al it’s good for.

I understand that you need something to help you get through the days, but there are tons of other things that you could do.

Heck, even switching to vaping will improve your health outcomes considerably. And you won’t smell.

I don’t know why you’re fighting your girlfriend on this, it seems like she’s genuinely concerned and you’re being so stubborn as to look online to justify your addiction. Yes, you are addicted. You smoke more than a pack a week and refuse to quit or offer a compromising alternative. If I was her, I’d leave you.

Well, by that logic, Switzerland isn’t a democracy. The country that decides pretty much everything on referendum.

And Ireland only became a democracy 3 years ago.

For what it’s worth, Blasphemy laws can be compatible with democracy. Democracy is only about fair elections and rule of the people. If the people want blasphemy laws, that’s still democracy.

Freedom is a spectrum - and blasphemy laws just make a country less free. Not necessarily less Democratic.

…Spiiiriiiit……

I heard ‘Congregation’ in the show Devs (loved it), and was surprised I never listened to them before. Went back and listened to the whole catalog… several times over. It’s the best airplane music.

I listen to a bit of everything. Bands in my recent rotation include Low, 3rd Secret, Motörhead, Rick James, L7 and Joji, Aimee Mann, Mdou Moctar, Aphex Twin, Beastie Boys. Donny Benet

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s PetroDragon Apocalypse is my favorite album all year.

My favorite all time genre is industrial. So stuff like The Young Gods, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, KMFDM, Ministry, Filter, Mulitple Man, Meat Beat Manifesto, Pig, Emptyset, Youth Code, Atari Teenage Riot / Alec Empire, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Download…

The PetroDragronic Apocalypse is one of the best records I’ve heard in some time, from any band, in any genre.

I can’t stop listening to it. To add, I’m not really a fan of any of their other records. They’re clearly good, just doesn’t resonate with me as much as this one does.

Indeed. Prior to 2010 - it was a roll of the dice. If insurance wasn’t provided through your work, you had to be lucky enough to live in a State with decent laws preventing some of these predatory insurance practices. Back then, the uninsured rate was close to 19%. Almost 1 in 5 Americans.

Today, that rate is 8.4%. Which hails the victory of the ACA because “91.6% of Americans have insurance” sounds nice. And compared to where we were 13 years ago, it is nice.

In reality, we have 28 million uninsured people, many of whom are children. There’s a long way to go.

While I’m personally satisfied with my level of coverage and standard of care, I don’t understand how we can comfortably accept a society that bankrupts our most vulnerable residents for being sick. I’m baffled how this wasn’t already solved or mostly resolved in my lifetime. Or at least seeing more states take on the Hawaii or Massachusetts health care models.

An individual can sign up for a plan through their State’s health insurance exchange or the federal government’s HealthCare.gov website.

It is usually more expensive than getting it through an employer - but works to serve small business owners, freelancers, etc.

A few States (like Massachusetts) have semi-universal systems that cover all individuals that earn under 150% of poverty, independent students, newly unemployed, etc.

A lot of Americans are also covered under Medicare, Medicaid , Social Security and other programs.

Retirees aged 65 and older are eligible for Medicare - a semi-universal federal system that covers pretty much everything and accepted most places.

It’s been rough since 6/30. I can barely browse and leave comments in my .world account. I’m sticking to .ml for now.

I’ve got two for Lemmy.

mlem is currently being developed for iOS with around ~20 contributors. It’s in early open beta, and I’m psyched because there’s supposed to be a massive update between now and tomorrow.

memmy for iOS looks promising. Really intuitive ‘swipe to upvote/downvote/reply’ feature and browses similarly to Apollo. It’s very barebones right now, the project is just a few days old and there’s one developer (as far as I know).

It would’ve made the users happy, but ultimately Apollo is not profitable for Reddit. It would need to be retooled and redesigned to extract data and push advertisers. as a free version…

Of course, Reddit could sell it as a “$2/mo Premium Reddit Experience” app that keeps what it is. And I’m sure there’s a ton of folks that’ll pay the benefit of that, particularly mods and power users.

Apollo’s paid subscriber base is 50K. Assuming they maintain that, it’s $1.2M/year revenue. The question is… is that worth it to a billion dollar company? To maintain and support all that?

My gut would say ‘yes’. Although goodwill is unquantifiable, keeping the community of volunteers placated is an investment in Reddit’s longterm health. Same reason the Mafia bought turkeys for uninvolved neighborhood families on Thanksgiving - so they’d look the other way when shady happenings go down.

But Reddit doesn’t want to spend money on turkeys. So we’ll see how well that works out for them. I’m not optimistic.

My city’s subreddit is/was a prime source of local politics, infrastructure projects, restaurant openings and closures, activity recommendations, and even making friends. I also loved popping in to give tourism advice and steer people to the best of what the region has to offer. I got a lot of value out of it.

While there is a city community here, there is no engagement or any posts really. So this is why l’ll probably be using both Reddy and Lemmy for a while.

Lemmy also isn’t super diverse… yet. I think this is going to be an advantage for Reddit for a long time.

That is, Lemmy is an early emerging technology - and users are disproportionately young middle class white men interested in tinkering with unfinished tech. To be clear, that’s not the criticism. That’s me (except maybe not young anymore)!

It does, however, mean communities will steer towards Technology and Gaming… and less Relationship_Advice or AITA or something. Less human interest stuff.

The mobile apps will be key to building this place into a better Reddit. And that’s if the developers can make a streamlined, simple experience that doesn’t overwhelm new users with jargon like “instances” or “servers”. Just sign in, quickly find a community and join a conversation.

The day I get to read something like, “Hi Lemmy, I’m a 75 year old Venetian gondolier. Ask me anything!” would be the mile marker for a dead Reddit.

If Subreddit -> Sub…
Then Community -> Commune ?

Seems apt given the developer’s political leanings. But it wouldn’t be as inviting to neutral users, so ‘sub’ seems to be fine to me.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be patreon pages for servers & instances you support, which is enough to keep the lights on. Especially if it unlocks a little cosmetic token or icon.

Wikipedia is the 7th most visited website in the world, more popular than Amazon, TikTok, even PornHub. It’s not funded by advertisers or other bullshit - rather through reader donations.

With that said, Wikipedia is still centralized content whereas Lemmy isn’t. Meaning there’s fewer expenses and pressure on any one instance or server to succeed. And if one instance or server doesn’t succeed, your access to the Federation is far from over.

If you use lemmy.ml (the developer’s instance), I would recommend reading the front page sidebar. Under RULE #1 - “No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia”.

Here is a screenshot for reference, feel free to share with folks.

If the enemies of Nazis are religious, ethnic and sexual minorities - then lemmy.ml 's front page immediately puts to rest any notion they are associated with far-right ideologies.

That said, my best understanding is that one or more of the developers identify as communists/anticapitalist and are involved in lemmygrad.ml and /c/socialism.

And with that in mind, a platform like Lemmy is communist by nature: nobody owns it.
So it doesn’t matter who the developers are, really. What matter is who runs the server and instance you’re using. You, as a user, have a choice in how you wish to connect to the Federation.

Accidentally opened Apollo a few times just out of muscular memory and habit. Immediately closed each time. I decided to move the app of the way so it won’t happen again, and put the beta for mlem in its place.

Otherwise, I had a full day of work - then went out with the wife for a nice dinner with drinks. We’re gonna watch the Nuggets/Heat game in a bit.

So… pretty much a normal day. But with less Reddit.

Quite literally, the developer for RIF is working on a Tildes app, part of the Fediverse. Tildes is invite only for now, however - that might change down the line.