fireweed
@fireweed@lemmy.world
- Comment on Please critique this in terms of its raising awareness of the less aware. It's old news to us, but will it help people wake up a little? 1 hour ago:
Just from a graphic design perspective, it’s way too busy. Too many slogans; pick one or at most two messages (e.g. one at top as into and one at bottom as outro). The text is way too small to read on mobile. When everything is highlighted text, nothing is highlighted text. The art style for the icons is not consistent. The rightmost column has to go; either put the info at the bottom of the image or delete.
- Comment on the Home Alone house then and now 23 hours ago:
There’s a whole trove of portrayals of happy, loving single-child families out there! You just have to look to China’s one-child policy era.
“But Fireweed! This is literally propaganda!” It’s all propaganda, whether it’s “be content with one child” or “be fruitful and multiply.” Media depictions of large families appear fun and loving because the creators make it that way (the more kids the more you have to work with: there’s the jock kid, the geek kid, the uptight kid, the…). Even media about the difficulties of large families (e.g. Cheaper by the Dozen) still end with everyone being happy and loving because it makes for a feel-good ending; that doesn’t mean it reflects reality in the slightest. Society doesn’t like to talk about the darker sides of large families because of heteronormativity, but there’s some media out there portraying large families as hopelessly dysfunctional (Shameless for instance, or you can read about any of the large family “reality TV” shows that have ended in scandal).
Remember that we’re in unprecedented times; large families used to not only be the norm but were practically required (have lots of kids to work the farm, or because you don’t know how many are going to survive to adulthood, or because there’s no social safety net for when you become old/sick/injured except your family members). Nowadays it’s the opposite: more kids equals less resources to go around, and unchecked population growth combined with unchecked consumption is wrecking the planet. But media hasn’t caught up yet, and with influential, wealthy people out there screaming racist nonsense about “crashing birth rates” and “great replacement theory,” there’s pressure to continue to portray large families positively and small families poorly. It’s the same situation as the propaganda I linked above, but in reverse.
In other words, rejoice that you’ve eschewed the media narrative and done the right thing for your family! Also forget visual media (where creators use large families to portray the appearance of a happy family, because more kids = more hugs and smiling faces in the shot = more love, right?) and look to books, where there are plenty of depictions of loving, functional, single-child households.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
The bird on the left hand side is actually a shoebill, a fellow Pelecaniforme.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
I assume it wasn’t drilled into them by whoever taught them to drive. Using turn signals is so natural to me that I don’t think I could stop using them without an extended effort at deprogramming myself.
- Comment on Fr Fr on.... God 4 weeks ago:
What is this painting? A gay knockoff of The Last Supper?
- Comment on This Apple Lie at the grocery store 4 weeks ago:
I was planning to eat this pie as my sole food over the course of 2 days for my One-Meal-A-Day (OMAD)
???
- Comment on This Apple Lie at the grocery store 4 weeks ago:
You seen very focused on the “cost per calorie” measure. Have you never heard the phrase “empty calories”?
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
I’ve seen them at “classy” parties, such as for Christmas or new years, when there’s a lot of people expected, because you can write your name on them with a sharpie and prevent a million abandoned drinks from accumulating everywhere.
But usually I’d agree, I associate them with college dorm parties and house parties for teens-20-somethings, who don’t want to deal with the mess and/or may not own a sufficient number of glasses for all the guests.
- Comment on Flat Screen TV's are a waste of money 5 weeks ago:
*TVs
- Comment on Ez gg 5 weeks ago:
Oh no, that’s a separate treatment: salamander larvae. Fortunately they cohabitate with tadpoles quite harmoniously.
- Comment on Ez gg 5 weeks ago:
Tadpoles.
The ensuing frog plague upon the capital would be a nice little bonus.
- Comment on Growth 1 month ago:
Please see my edit.
- Comment on Growth 1 month ago:
Nope, that’s multilingual or polyglot.
- Comment on When foreign countries try to reproduce US brans 1 month ago:
US brans
OP is one of the foreign countries
- Comment on How do I re-establish peaceful relations with a family of crows? 1 month ago:
- Comment on 2 months ago:
Sold out to whom, though… customers or scalpers?
- Comment on My son job lowered their hiring wage instead of raising it. 2 months ago:
For reference, the highest state* minimum wage in the US is Washington State at $17.13 (in Seattle it’s $21.30).
*not counting Washington DC
Wage laws across the US are all over the place. Meanwhile the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009.
- Comment on According to an MIT study, relying on ChatGPT for stuff like essays and creativity leads to cognitive atrophy and such. What should I do when writing stories without ChatGPT and other AI chatbots? 3 months ago:
This is the second unhelpfully vague question you’ve posed today about writing.
So it would seem the first thing you need to do is to look up resources on effective communication and on accurately identifying problems/goals. Because I’m unclear as to whether the problem is that you don’t know what you’re looking for when asking these questions, or that you do know and for some reason assume that we can read your mind and know it too even without your properly describing it.
- Comment on How do people force themselves to write something, even if they're NOT inspired? 3 months ago:
Are we talking fiction or non-fiction? Obligated writing (school, work) or voluntary writing (journaling, fun)? Getting over a hump (dealing with writer’s block) or getting started in the first place?
It’s really hard to give advice without knowing the context of the problem.
- Comment on *Eagle screeches* 3 months ago:
Yes, that’s the point (it’s an edit of an image Trump posted to truth social, then deleted after backlash).
Normally I call out AI slop too, but this one has “official” precedence.
- Comment on No like really bro I’m just here for the silly shoes 3 months ago:
genuinely nothing worse than going bowling
with people who are actually good. like why are you doing all that - Comment on A handy reference guide for you 3 months ago:
There are fig wasps, of course. Plus other species like paper wasps that eradicate pests. The year I had a paper wasp family move in near my garden was a bumper year for my brassicas, because they absolutely annihilated the cabbage white caterpillar population.
- Comment on A handy reference guide for you 3 months ago:
Yes (but maybe you shouldn’t). See: lemmy.world/post/45251643/23076623
- Comment on A handy reference guide for you 3 months ago:
You can (very, very carefully!) pet the top of their thorax when they’re not flying, such as when preoccupied with feeding at a flower, although as TheTechnician27 outlined, it’s probably not good for them. Better is if you can find one that’s struggling to fly (semi-common this time of year, when things are still warming up) and then you can warm the little guy in your hands if they’re cold or chauffeur them from flower to flower if they’re hungry. Often this will help them regain the strength to keep flying, but sometimes they never do; I assume in these cases they’re dying, but at least I gave them some hospice care. It’s very strange to deposit a struggling bee on a flower, watch it feed, and then see it wiggle its little feet in the air like it’s calling the magic carpet back for another lift.
- Comment on A handy reference guide for you 3 months ago:
Asia, where they belong (and stay there!)
- Comment on A handy reference guide for you 3 months ago:
Wasps are pollinators too 🥺
- Comment on Giving credit to the responsible person 3 months ago:
Interesting, did not know it was a bank holiday. (Schools and such are still open.)
- Comment on Giving credit to the responsible person 3 months ago:
For as much as the US acts like a Christian theocracy, somehow Easter is just a regular weekend for us.
- Comment on Ex-Alex Jones employee reflects on job at Infowars: ‘It was nonsense. It was lies’ 3 months ago:
I’m curious what about this is “mildly” infuriating to OP?
- Comment on Jimmy's Rustled 3 months ago:
*Jimmies rustled (not “Jimmy’s”)