Fondots

@Fondots@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨human geography⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  The town I grew up in has a longish name, most people in the area shorten it to just the first syllable with a y at the end, similar to how Philadelphia gets shortened to Philly

  But there’s a slight difference between how the people who are from town pronounce it and how everyone else does and you can pretty reliably pick out the townies based on that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  By 18, somewhere along the line you’ve hopefully had some kind of science/biology class where they talked about dominant and recessive genes, Punnett squares, and all of that

  But in case you didn’t, or it’s slipped your mind (honestly, given your age there’s a good chance they may have covered this while you were learning from home during the pandemic, so kind of understandable if you don’t remember) here’s a quick refresher

  You get one copy of each gene from both parents. Sometimes you get the same version of them from each parent, sometimes you get a different version.

  Let’s imagine there’s a single gene that determines if you’re going to be tall. There’s a tall version of that gene, that we’ll call “T” and a short version that we’ll call “t”

  We’ll say that “T” is the dominant version, and “t” is recessive.

  What that means is that if you carry the “T” gene, it will always be expressed. You’ll be tall as long as you have at least one copy of it.

  Remember, you get one copy of this gene from each parent. They each also have 2 copies of this gene.

  Your dad is tall, so he must be carrying at least one copy of the T gene. He might have one, or he might have two.

  Your mom is short, so she doesn’t have the T gene, she has 2 copies of the t gene.

  So if your dad has 2 copies, all of his children will be tall, because they’re all going to get a T from him.

  But if he only has 1, he could have short children if he passes along his t gene instead, and since your mom doesn’t have a T to pass on, she can only pass on the t gene

  We can illustrate this in something called a Punnett Square, which looks something like this (apologies for the lazy ASCII layout)

  _ | T | T
  t | Tt | Tt
  t | Tt | Tt

  or

  _ | T | t
  t | Tt | tt
  t | Tt | tt

  The top rows represent your father’s genes, with 1 or 2 copies of the T gene, and the column on the left represents your mothers with only the t gene

  And the rest of the squares represent the possible combination of genes you can have.

  So in this hypothetical, if your dad is a “Tt” and your mom is a “tt” you have a 50/50 shot of being tall.

  This is a very simplified version of it. In reality, there’s not just one gene that determines height, there’s actually about 10,000 genetic factors that have some impact on your height.

  And for shits and giggles, let’s imagine that both of your parents were tall so the punnet squares look like this

  _ | T | T
  T | TT | TT
  T | TT | TT

  Or

  _ | T | t
  T | TT | Tt
  t | Tt | tt

  In the first example, both your parents are tall, and all of their children will be tall. In the second example both parents are tall, both parents are tall, but there’s a 1 in 4 chance that their child will inherit the t gene from each of them and be short.

  And not all genes are purely dominant/recessive, some are incompletely dominant, so Tt might sort of split the difference in height between a TT and a tt person. Some genes kind of play off of other genes, so maybe in order for the “T” gene to make you tall you may also need to be carrying a “U” gene, for example.

  And on top of that, there’s environmental factors, nutrition, illness, injuries, etc. can have an impact on how tall you can be. People today are, on average, taller than people in the past because overall we’re better able to meet our nutritional needs and treat health issues than they were back then.

  And, while it’s unlikely that you’ll grow another foot to catch up with your dad’s height, at 18 you may still have a little bit of growing to do, some men continue to grow a little into their early 20s.

  So there’s a lot that goes into this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If they’re not part of the US, who are they part of? Because they’re not considered a sovereign nation on their own, and they’re not part of any other sovereign nation.

  The US president is their head of state, they have a resident commissioner who is a member of the US house of representatives and although they can’t vote on legislation they can introduce it.

  And as far as incorporation goes, although officially PR is considered to be unincorporated, there’s an argument to be made that various acts of congress over the years have effectively incorporated Puerto Rico, for example, Gustavo Gelpí argued just that in his opinion in CONSEJO DE SALUD PLAYA DE PONCE, et.al. Plaintiffs v. JOHNNY RULLAN, SECRETARY OF HEALTH OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  it’s not technically part of the United States,

  I feel like this is a really bad way to think of Puerto Rico

  There’s a lot of legal weirdness about their status, I get why people think of it that way, and I’m pretty sure that’s how it was explained to me almost verbatim back in like 4th grade.

  But I think it’s better to think of Puerto Rico as “part of The United States, but not one of the united states”

  That is, it’s part of the country known as the USA

  But it is not one of the states that are united that the country is named after.

  They’re US citizens, if they wanted to, a Puerto Rican could run for president and do anything that any other natural born US citizen could do, just the same as if they’d been born in Texas.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I stood on a precision scale and farted, would I get lighter or heavier?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Well your guts and skin and other tissues do have some elasticity, I suppose it is possible that a large gas bubble might be able to expand your abdomen slightly.

  We’re very much into spherical cows in a vacuum territory here. I don’t think there’s any way this would be realistically measurable,just fun to think about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I stood on a precision scale and farted, would I get lighter or heavier?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think that, theoretically, if someone’s flatus contained an abnormally high amount of lighter-than-air gases, like hydrogen and methane, they might get very slightly heavier. Having a gas like that inside of you would, I think, provide a bit of a buoyant force lifting you away from the scale that would make your weight read lower, and releasing that gas would sort of drop your full weight onto the scale.

  In practice, methane and hydrogen are only part of a fart, and other gases and such in the mix are heavier than air, so at best you might break even.

  Probably a few caveats to that about temperature and pressure and such, and it’s doubtful that anyone’s gut produces enough of the right kinds of gas for that to happen.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why aren't there many controllers with the ability to physically swap out the ABXY layout between Xbox/PC and Nintendo layout?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s basically what I had in mind. Steam has this as an option for the big picture mode UI and I like it a lot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why aren't there many controllers with the ability to physically swap out the ABXY layout between Xbox/PC and Nintendo layout?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Personally, I’d prefer if games and such would use universal face button glyphs on-screen.

  I’ve switched back and forth between Xbox, Nintendo, and PlayStation controllers so much that I really don’t have a mental map of which button is which, and in game I’m usually not looking at my controller to be able to tell.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, how much OP actually complains about this is kind of a big factor here.

  I run up against something similar with a few of my friends. They spend a lot of time complaining that they’re bored and lonely, but no matter how many invites you throw their way, they never seem to make any effort to follow through with any plans. They say they’re interested, but they never let you know when they’re available, or they don’t show up, or they come up with flimsy excuses, etc.

  And there are times I really wish I could force some of them to just show up to something so they’d stop complaining.

  Having a social life is hard, I get it, we all only have so much time, energy, money, etc. shit comes up, we have other obligations, we all like to just veg out on the couch sometimes

  But if you’re not willing to put forth even a little effort to follow through on plans, rearrange some things, inconvenience yourself a little, at some point you kind of lose the right to complain.

  And it’s not that you’re not allowed to complain about it once in a while. But at some point, it’s just not fair to the people you’re complaining to if you’re not actually making an effort to do something about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spyhoppin'⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve known muskies to do something similar- swim around at the surface with their head out of the water.

  I remember looking into it, and no it’s definitely a thing, but no one seems to know why exactly they do it. There’s a few theories that have to do with the oxygen concentration at the surface, regulating temperature, buoyancy, etc. but the one I personally like to subscribe to is the same as this, that they’re just looking around.

  It makes me feel a little less bad about not being able to catch one if they’re at least more intelligent and curious than the average bass or bluegill or whatever else I’m pulling out of their lake.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to get a new line in a post, but not two?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Two spaces at the end of the line
  Will give you what you’re looking for

  • Markdown also supports
  • Using asterisks followed by a space at the beginning of the line
  • To create bullet points like this

  1. Or numbered lists
  2. Like this one
  3. Which is pretty much just what-you-see-is-what-you-get
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨we must protect them from exotics⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you were able to target it properly to the right species, depending on where you are in the world, there’s a good chance that the rats and sparrows you’re thinking of are invasive.

  I know around me in the US I see a whole lot more house sparrows (native to Europe, Asia, and some parts of North Africa) than I do any native Sparrows.

  And the two most known rat species- the black and brown rats, originated in different parts of Asia and more-or-less spread around the world with human trade and migration.

  So getting rid of those would probably be a good thing to reduce competition for native animals.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How active is too active while being on lemmy?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it depends a lot on the community and what you’re posting.

  But in general, you’re posting good quality, relevant content and not just spamming with every article you come across, engaging with people in the comments, not x-posting things to a bunch of different communities, and of course not being a dick, I don’t think there’s an issue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Repairing Broken Sofa?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think we’re going to need some details on how your couch is constructed and how it broke to really answer this

  Since you mention unscrewing the other legs, could you just go out to home Depot (or local equivalent big hardware store) and purchase 4 of something like this and replace them?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Stop trying to make fetch happen”

  Everyone has their own verbal idiosyncrasies- local dialects, accents, words and phrases you picked up somewhere that have a nice ring to them, in-jokes with your friends and family, etc.

  You’ll come by them organically, no need to force it.

  Inevitably, when you try to force them, at best people just won’t notice, or more likely they will notice and think you’re a weirdo, or a pretentious asshole, and at worse they might actually have a hard time understanding you which kind of defeats the purpose of speaking in the first place.

  Seek out new experiences, acquire knowledge at every opportunity, meet people, go places, do things. Without even trying your speech will acquire plenty of interesting character and you won’t have to expend any effort to do so.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Guess I'm banned by Know Your Meme now. [yippee.wav]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I was recently reading some Wikipedia article on my phone and when I was scrolling I accidentally hit a button to edit it and was greeted by a message that my IP was banned from editing for the next 10 months.

  I haven’t even attempted to edit Wikipedia in probably 20 years. Admittedly last time I did I was probably about 14 years old, and it may have been some juvenile vandalism, but somehow I don’t think that they managed to trace me from a computer in my high school library to my current cell phone, or that anything I did warranted a 21 year ban

  So obviously it’s because phones using cellular Internet go through IP addresses only slightly less often than most people breathe.

  It feels like that sort of IP ban really isn’t particularly useful. The vandals probably aren’t usually on that address and most of the time it’s getting used by random people who probably don’t even think about editing Wikipedia.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  My guess, and I’m just kind of spitballing here, is that it fermented

  Lollipops are basically just sugar and sugar is hygroscopic - it readily pulls moisture from the air. Eventually if it’s humid enough it could pull enough moisture from the air and start dissolving, so the goo is basically sugar-water

  There’s a lot of natural yeast and bacteria and such all around you in the air and on just about every surface you could imagine, some was in the jar and found the sugar and started doing it’s thing fermenting the sugars

  Fermentation takes sugars and turns them into alcohol and carbon dioxide (bit of a simplification)

  Carbon dioxide is a gas, so there’s the bubbling, and the whistling noise was probably gas escaping from the jar as the pressure built up too high for the seal on the container to handle. The bubbling may have also picked up a bit when the gas started escaping too because under pressure some of it probably dissolved into the sugar goo, like it does into a can of soda, then when you crack the can open the pressure drops and the gas comes out of solution and bubbles.

  And of course hand sanitizer is alcohol, so there’s the smell.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Yeah failed successfully⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Kind of reminds me of the daisyworld simulation.

  It’s been a long time since I read about it, so I may possibly miss some details.

  Daisyworld simulates a planet entirely covered by 2 species of daisy- black ones and white ones.

  The black ones are better able to absorb the suns rays, so initially outcompete the white ones, however because they’re absorbing more of the rays, that leads to the planet warming up.

  At a certain point the planets temperature gets too warm and the black daisies start dying off. Since the white daisies are better able to reflect the sun’s rays, they’re less effected by the increased temperature and start to outcompete the black ones.

  After a while the white daisies are dominant, and since most of the planet is now reflecting the sun’s rays the temperature starts to drop, until it gets to a point where it’s too cold for the white daisies but since the black daisies can absorb more of the sun they start to outcompete the black ones again

  Rather rinse, repeat until they reach a sort of equilibrium.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you have to wake up to to be considered a heavy/light/normal sleeper?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My all accounts, I’m a heavy sleeper, there are basically only 3 things that will reliably wake me up

  My alarm clock
  Having to pee
  My dog throwing up or whining to go out (usually an indication that she’s gonna have diarrhea)

  I sleep through my wife’s alarm going off (usually several alarms, she like to hit snooze,) showering, turning lights on, listening to podcasts while she gets ready, the sun coming up (I work partially overnight, I’m usually in bed by about 4 or 5 AM,) landscapers mowing the lawn outside my window, kids screaming at the nearby playground and school, fireworks, thunderstorms, construction (although I was not able to sleep through the siding repair I had done with a guy hammering on the wall directly behind my bed)

  One time my wife was able to get me out of bed and stand me up so she could fix the sheets without me being fully awake.

  When I was a kid my mom could vacuum in my room without waking me up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have/had a good friend who is a devout Muslim, was born in Egypt but moved to the US when he was very young. His father was from there, his mother was American, white, and I’m not totally clear whether or not she converted but was definitely not Muslim when they met. From what I understand his father got a lot of shit from his family over that.

  Over the years, my friend butted heads with dad a lot. At one point his dad wanted to move the family to Egypt, basically because he never fully adjusted to life in the US. My friend stood up to him, because all of his younger siblings had only ever lived here, they had friends and lives here and it would be kind of shitty to uproot all of that, so he kicked my friend out of the house, and wouldn’t let him see his siblings for probably over a year.

  So that was always a threat he kept dangling over my friends head- Fall in line or I’ll move the family back to Egypt and cut you off from your siblings.

  He also disapproved of any sort of american style dating, and forced my friend to break up with several girlfriends, even if they were Muslim.

  One day my friend just totally ghosted all of us. Unfriended everyone on Facebook, leaving pretty much only people with middle Eastern names, stopped replying to calls or texts, etc. a couple of us went to his house to check on him, and did actually make contact with him there but he refused to answer any questions, basically just leaving it at her wasn’t going to be friends with any of us anymore.

  We know at that point he’d been seeing a girl he’d been keeping secret from his dad, she later reached out to us because he also ghosted her.

  We’re pretty sure what happened is that his father found out that he was dating her and had another blow-up, threatening to kick him out and cut him off from his siblings for good.

  Not every Muslim family is the same of course, some wouldn’t have any issues with this sort of situation, in some it will cause varying degrees of family drama, in some it can even get physically abusive, and in a small handful of cases we might even be talking about honor killings.

  Where you have different cultures and religions coming into play, this kind of thing can get complicated, it’s not always so simple as “it’s a free country” although it should be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My mom tells me I should cut dad off for cheating on her, am I a bad person for not wanting to do so?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Mist people cheat,

  Assuming that’s supposed to be “most people”

  There have been a lot of studies on this over the years, and the data is of course easy to skew because a lot of people are going to be reluctant to admit to their cheating, or people having different ideas about what constitutes “cheating” but every study I can find that seems credible, it seems to hover at more like 25% of people cheat, give or take maybe about 10%

  Even when you look for people who have experienced a partner cheating on them most of the studies I can find have it at below 50%

  You can get into the weeds and probably find some cases where most people in certain demographics cheat if you want to cherry-pick your data a bit.

  So no, most people don’t cheat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can deliberate noise harassment still be a crime if it's done every day from 7:30 AM till 10:30-11:30 PM?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And I do want to just reiterate that the harassment angle is really what you want to play up with the police.

  I don’t know the specifics of how policing and such works in your area, but there’s a pretty big difference between “my neighborhood is an inconsiderate jerk who plays his music too loud” and “my neighbor is intentionally targeting me with loud music and sirens to disturb our sleep”

  The first one is a noise complaint, that’s low priority for the police and depending on where you are maybe not even a police issue but something like code enforcement.

  The second one is a police issue, it’s harassment. This will vary from one jurisdiction to another, but where I work depending on some of the details I might enter that as “suspicious activity” or even a “disturbance” (basically a fight) which should get police there with some urgency.

  And some of the other things you’ve said, like him walking around outside with a frying pan, I could definitely make an argument for putting in those calls as a “wellbeing check” or “suspicious person,” and if he’s acting particularly threatening maybe even “armed subject,” or possibly as a psych emergency to also send EMS to hopefully get him taken to a hospital for a psych eval.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to get to Santa Claus beard status⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a long, bushy beard (and curly handlebar moustache)

  First of all, the hard truth is that not everyone can grow a decent beard. Vitamins, diet, etc. certainly won’t hurt, but at a certain point you’re up against genetics, and if your DNA says your beard is going to be thin and patchy, there’s not much you can do about that except maybe hair transplants.

  Age plays a factor, I have a friend who couldn’t grow a decent beard until he was about 30.

  Now assuming you’ve actually got enough hair growing in the right places

  Most important is keeping it trimmed and neat-looking.

  Until you’ve got a couple inches of beard going, I think it’s best to keep your neck shaved, pick a point maybe an inch or two above your Adams apple, and keep everything below that shaved. Once you’ve got some beard going you can stop doing that, no one can see it anyway and at some point the neckbeard just becomes more beard.

  Similarly, clean up your cheeks. You probably have a few scraggly hairs growing up above the rest of your beard, shave those off.

  If you’re a little brave, a straight razor is pretty nice for making some clean lines, you can be really precise with them. They make ones that use a disposable Blade if you’re not into all the sharpening and stopping that goes with a traditional straight razor, I have one that uses a double edge blade snapped in half (they break very cleanly) but most of the time I just use a regular safety razor, or a disposable or cartridge razor would do the trick just fine

  Especially when you’re starting off, a beard trimmer or hair clippers are gonna be your best friend so you can trim it all down to an even length.

  Figure out what you’re doing with your sideburns. I shave my head, and ideally I like to have them fade into that, but I’m cheap and lazy so I only go to my barber to have that done a couple times a year when I need to look good for a wedding or whatever. Most of the time I just take my clippers to them and try to make them shorter up top and longer towards the bottom, it takes some practice and playing with the guards and such, and I’ve actually gotten pretty good at freehanding it, but it’s not the fancy fade my barber can manage.

  Once you’ve got some length, things get kind of easy, I tend to go for a longer, sort rectangular shape to my beard, I brush it out, and basically just cut off anything that isn’t where I want it to be and any split ends d notice.

  For soap/shampoo/conditioner/beard oil/balm, etc. you kind of need to figure out what works for you and your hair/skin type. My hair and skin are pretty forgiving, I could probably just about shower in acetone and be none the worse for it. I shower with doctor bronners for no particular reason other than I find their peppermint to be refreshing and I can buy it in a gallon jug, and since it’s pretty concentrated a little goes a long way and I don’t have to buy soap for a couple years, and I don’t personally find any need to use any conditioner or beard balm/oil, etc. Other people find that Dr Bronners it really dries out their skin/hair so YMMV. I also find that it’s pretty good at stripping the wax out of my moustache.

  I do sometimes use beard balm/oil for special occasions to help tame my beard and give it a little extra shine. I rarely buy it for myself, I find that once you have a beard it tends to be one of those things people gift you at Christmas or whatever.

  I use Firehouse Moustache Wax (specifically their Wacky Tacky) to curl my moustache. That’s a very stiff wax if you don’t intend to curl it. I haven’t tried their other waxes but I’m sure they work fine for general styling. It’s the second wax I’ve tried, I find it works well, and I haven’t felt the need to experiment further. The first one I tried because it was readily available at CVS at the time was Clubman, that stuff is garbage. Doesn’t hold well, and if you get even the slightest bit wet or sweaty it washes right out. I also remember it having some sort of scent, which I’m not particularly a fan of for something that lives right below my nose.

  If you’re not going for a full Snidely Whiplash curl, some other lighter wax or maybe pomade is probably worth keeping around to help tame and style it a bit. I have a tin of Murray’s pomade I keep around for that purpose though rarely use it. A little goes a long way with that, otherwise your beard gets kind of greasy and sticky.

  I spend very little time on my beard. I brush it every day, wash it when I shower (usually every day, but I’ve been known to skip a day or two here and there,) clean up my cheeks when I shave my head (once or twice a week) and style my moustache mostly every day (it only takes a couple minutes, the Wacky Tacky is very stiff, I rub some into my 'stache, run a comb through it to help distribute it through a little better, and then pretty much just mold it into place with my fingers,) and do a little trimming maybe every couple weeks or when I notice it’s getting a bit wild looking.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can deliberate noise harassment still be a crime if it's done every day from 7:30 AM till 10:30-11:30 PM?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know the laws or systems in place in the UK for this, but I work in 911 dispatch in the US, and I can’t imagine that something like this is too radically different across the pond

  As long as the cops in your area are fairly responsive (I know a couple departments in my county will take their sweet-ass time responding to a noise complaints) call every time he does something.

  Yes, you’re going to get sick of it, but more importantly the cops are going to get sick of it too. They really don’t want to be out at your neighbors house over this every day/week/month/8moths, or however often he does it. Before too long he’s going to get hit with fines and other consequences. Once or twice they might issue a warning

  Speak to the officers every time. Make sure they’re seeing and hearing what you’re seeing and hearing, get it on video if you have to, don’t give them an opportunity to write it off because they drove by the house and “didn’t hear anything.”

  Tell them he’s schizophrenic, refusing to take his meds, tell them he’s harassing you, that last part is important, tell them you want to file a report for harassment, discuss what your options are- pressing changes, restraining orders, whatever they may be, and pursue them. You’ll probably have paperwork and court dates and such, it sucks, but that’s how the process works.

  Be prepared for retaliation from him in some form. Get security cameras, try to avoid any contact with him if you can avoid it. He already has delusions that you’re conspiring against him, and having the cops show up at his door repeatedly are going to feed right into that, it’s not out of the question that he might get violent, or start vandalizing your property.

  Continue to report anything he says and does to you, no matter how small, each incident you document builds a stronger case for more consequences. Every time he accuses your brother of making wolf noises, or hacking his phone, any weird interaction at all, make sure you’re documenting it with the police.

  Try to catch his niece when she’s over, explain the situation, explain that you’re going to have to take legal action if it doesn’t stop, see if she can possibly talk sense into him, or possibly if she or other family might be able to pursue some sort of involuntary commitment for him (read up on your local laws about that, I have no idea what they’re like in the UK except that I think it’s called “sectioning” over there, I suspect that you wouldn’t be able to start that process, it would probably need to be done by a relative, the police, or a medical/mental health professional)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WTF is a rural town in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a few other weird situations that can come into play too, like mailing addresses, census designated places, neighborhoods, etc.

  My town doesn’t have its own post office, so my mail gets handled by the post office in a neighboring town, so my mailing address says that town instead of the municipality I actually live in, so more often than not if I have to give out my address that’s what I’m saying.

  I also live in a 'census designated place" basically an area that’s officially recognized as having its own identity. It’s basically just a fancy nickname for my neighborhood, so some people in this area will say that instead of the name of the municipality or the mailing address.

  It’s actually pretty rare for anyone to give the name of my municipality when asked for what town they live in unless we’re talking about local politics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WTF is a rural town in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of this is going to be subjective and depend on your personal frame of reference, as well as local laws and customs that can vary a lot around the country

  In general, in normal casual conversation, most Americans are going to refer to a municipality as a “town” unless they’re in a big city. Legally, that municipality might be considered a city, town, township, borough, home rule municipality, village, etc. but unless it’s a big city we’re probably going to refer to it as a town most of the time

  There’s also, in some areas, unincorporated communities that don’t have an actual municipal government, but if there’s a relatively dense area, we might go ahead and refer to that area as a town.

  Some parts of the US do have some sort of legal definition for “village,” in others it might be used informally to refer to a small “quaint” town, or part of the town.

  There’s also the distinction of, for example, being “in a town” vs “in town” or “downtown”

  Most of us who don’t live in a big city would say that we live in a town, meaning the municipality we live in. Somewhat less of us live “in town” meaning something more like the denser, more “urban” parts of town, probably resembling what you think of as a village, and “downtown” would refer to something like the area around the main street or main commercial area where you might find stores, restaurants, bars, etc.

  So a “rural town” is basically any sort of town in a rural area. I’m not sure if there’s any sort of a legal definition for a rural town, but in general I’d say that if a town is surrounded by woods and/or farmland and you can’t trace an unbroken path of suburban sprawl from it back to a major city it’s rural.

  Some of those rural towns can actually be fairly big and urbanized, but they’re otherwise in a rural area in their own little bubble so we’d still consider it to be a rural town.

  As far as town vs “small town” that’s kind of subjective.

  The town I grew up in is often referred to as a small town, largely because it’s physically pretty small, almost exactly 1 square mile, but that 1 mile is pretty densely populated, I think the population is around 9-10k people currently, it’s just a couple miles outside of the nearest major city, and pretty well-urbanized itself, connected to several major highways, was once a big manufacturing town but is now pretty gentrified, with a solid handful of 10+ floor office buildings. People from more rural areas probably wouldn’t agree that it’s a “small town” but people from a bit city probably would think so, and for those of us “townies” whose families have lived here for a few generations still feel like it has a small town feel, even if the newer transplants don’t all share that feeling.

  The town I currently live in isn’t quite rural, but it’s getting there. I’m towards the edge of the suburbs now, maybe even into the exurbs. The town is physically much larger, but only has about half the population. That small, less dense population makes it still feel kind of small-towny.

  Also worth noting, my town doesn’t really have any sort of a “downtown” area, no real main street to go walking around or anything. We have a few businesses and stores and such roughly clustered in the same area, but it’s not a cohesive thing that feels like a “town” or what you might recognize as a “village.” I would normally may this, but if I said I was going “into town” for something, most people around me would probably understand that I’m going to one of our neighboring towns that are a bit more built-up

  So some combination of physical size, population, population density, and a curtain je ne sais quoi are what makes a town a small town.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where does technology come from in Star Wars?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In the Lord of the Rings, what is the explanation for swords and other metal goods?

  At some point in the past, the arts of smelting, smithing, casting were discovered, refined over the centuries, different races and cultures advanced them in different ways, and eventually led to swords, within shirts, magic rings, etc.

  Same thing with star wars, in-universe they have tens of thousands of years of history, I think canonically the old Republic was founded 25-or-so thousand years ago, if you go back that far in real earth human history and you’re pretty much at the point where a handful of weird wolves are starting to get comfortable enough with humans to let us start domesticating them.

  And at that point in the star wars timeline, space travel and other advanced technology is already pretty well-established, so there’s probably at least that long again of incremental technological advancements leading up to that point.

  Basically they just got a massive head-start on us

  As far as how and where the technology is made, we get little glimpses of it here and there, droid factories on Geonosis, corelian shipyards, various mechanics, scrapyards, tinkerers, etc.

  But that’s all just kind of backdrop. Star wars is a space opera adventure thing, not a mockumentary about the history of lightsabers and hyperspace drives, or a how-its-made for blaster pistols and gonk droids. It wouldn’t make sense for most star wars media to really go into depth about that kind of stuff and probably would piss people off if they did (not that most star wars fans don’t exist in a perpetual state of being angry at star wars about something anyway)

  You wouldn’t go into a Fast and Furious movie expecting a whole history and mechanics lesson on automobiles, the movies are focusing on a handful of people who (race cars? Fight terrorists with cars? I really don’t know I’ve actually never seen any of them) there’s a whole in-universe world around them where all of those things happened/are happening out of sight and out of mind but it’s not directly relevant to the plot so it gets kind of glossed over, you can just assume most of the history and engineering stuff has been handled by people somewhere off-screen at some point in time.

  Same with star wars, there’s untold trillions or more people scattered across millions of inhabited planets working dead-end jobs making widgets that have built on millennia of science and technology, but the stories focus on a handful of freedom fighters, smugglers, soldiers, warrior monks, etc. who mostly just use those things and probably don’t have much more idea how their hyperdrive works than you do about the alternator in your car.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Catholic dating culture often mistaken for incel-style pessimistic desperation?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this is going to depend a lot on where in the world you are.

  I’m from the mid Atlantic/northeast US, and was raised catholic, overall I wouldn’t say that around me there was ever a separate “Catholic dating culture” it was just catholics dating other people who may or may not have also been Catholic. Not any more problematic than the rest of the general dating pool in any particular way

  In other parts of the country or world I suspect that may be different

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What purpose do carbohydrates OTHER than sugars serve in the body?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  True, I did think about mentioning that but decided to skip over it to keep things simple.

  Animals like cows for example, can get by almost entirely on fiber. Stuff like grass doesn’t have much in the way of carbs we can use, but it contains a ton of fiber, and cows digestive systems are set up to actually do something with them.

  The extra “stomachs” they have allow for some extra fermentation and such to happen so they can break down that fiber into simpler carbs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What purpose do carbohydrates OTHER than sugars serve in the body?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Gonna try to give a very general ELI5 sort of answer

  There’s basically 3 main types of carbohydrates

  Simple carbs- basically sugars (mono- and di-saccharides)

  Complex carbs- starches, whole grains, etc. (polysaccharides)

  Fiber- arguably these are just really complex carbs that your body can’t really break down

  In general, sugars are the source of energy your body actually runs on, especially glucose.

  Your body can pretty much use simple sugars as-is or can easily break them down into a form it can use. There’s some variation just how quick and easy it is for your body to use different sugars, but in general your body will start to feel the effects of eating sugar in the space of a few minutes, and the effects will peak within about an hour or two.

  Complex carbs take a little more digesting to break down into a form your body can make use of. They’re basically being turned into simpler sugars, but that process takes a while. You might hear about athletes carbo-loading with a big spaghetti dinner or something the night before a big competition. The idea there is that the energy from that big, complex carb-heavy dinner won’t really hit them for a few hours or even until the next day, and it will keep providing that energy for a longer period of time.

  Fiber is, for the most part, indigestible, your body can’t really break it down into simpler sugars that it can make use of. It goes in your mouth, through your digestive tract, and out the other end relatively unchanged. That doesn’t mean it’s useless though, it still plays an important role in digestion. It takes up space in your stomach helping you feel more full. It absorbs water and helps keep your stool soft and helps waste move through your intestines, and it minds to things like bile acids and cholesterol so that they can be passed as waste.

  Again, this is meant to be a very general answer, there’s a lot of details I’m glossing over both just to keep things simple, and because I’m not a doctor or anything of the sort and I’m not 100% sure myself.