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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • Rachelhazideas@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldWho is this for?
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    6 days ago

    Every is talking about how the headrest it’s made this way for crash safety when it’s blatantly untrue.

    The headrest is designed to protect the heads and neck of the average man, not woman. Decades of crash test dummies have all been modeled on the average height and weight of the male body. This is why women are 47% likelier to sustain a serious injury in a crash.

    Think of the where the headrest is in the optimal position to protect the driver, and then move that a few inches lower. Adjustable headrest often doesn’t even go low enough to accommodate for many women. There is an actual cutoff height where you are just screwed and expected to die more. Not to mention the user error of forgetting to adjust the headrest from the factory setting of accommodating to the average male height.

    This is why so many people are curled up like a shrimp. They are either: short, a woman, or the statistically deadliest of all, both.




  • I think these kinds of comments are harmful to the discourse because there a good deal of nuance missing.

    For one, it’s pretty reductive to call them ‘Japanese who’ve done bad things’ when who you’re talking about is dead or on their death beds. That’s not who the monument is for or about.

    Historical monuments aren’t for attributing the sins of grandparents to their grandchildren. It’s about humanzing the victims and teaching people of this generation what was allowed to happen in the past. It’s about teaching them the dangers of complacency and the complicit nature of being a bystander.

    If it’s worth anything, 4,300 people signed a petition against the removal and many protested in person.

    Yes, Japanese people as a whole are severely lacking when it comes to acknowledging the atrocities committed by their country. No, Japanese people today are not personally responsible for them. The better we are at separating acknowledgement from responsibility, the easier time we will have convincing people to remember them.




  • This greentext is probably fake, but as someone dealing with memory loss and brain fog, I feel that I need to speak up about the last line.

    It’s jarring to see people comment on how saying ‘forgot two weeks later’ makes everything a lie. ‘Forget’ and ‘permanently forget’ are two different things. With memory loss, some memories can feel like a book that randomly checks out and checks into the library.



  • PSA: It is possible to get stomach ulcers if you consistently take ibuprofen for too long. This is dangerous because these ulcers have a risk of becoming cancerous.

    I was ulcerated because of undiagnosed chronic pain that was not taken seriously until I fucked up my stomach by taking max dose of ibuprofen for months to deal with the unending pain and suffering. Don’t do that. Instead, find a doctor who gives a shit if you can afford it, or take CBD or marijuana if you can’t.






  • I grew up abroad and lived in high density public housing with walkable neighborhoods and universal healthcare care. That is as good as it can get and how it should be.

    When I moved to the US I accepted that this country is fucked in ways that can’t be fixed by just deleting landlords. The system that you have in mind isn’t functional for the low density urban sprawl that is vastly separated by inhospitable zoning, high ways, and red lining.

    You can’t copy what works in some places and expect it to work the same way in others. Publicly own and co-owned housing needs constant attention and that can only work when it is high density because you can’t expect a single property manager to walk a hundred miles taking care of the concerns of each house hold. You can’t hire a property manager for each household because that would be insanely expensive. Not to mention how much more the upkeep is for single family housing compared to apartments.

    People on Reddit and Lemmy have a visceral reaction towards landlords with an absurd understanding of how property management, the housing market, urban planning, and zoning works.

    There are systemic barriers beyond just landlords that make widespread publicly owned housing non-viable. When you start out with an impossible goal, you get nothing done. Actually advocate for things that make a difference like increasing mixed used and high density zones in your local area. Saying ‘get rid of landlords’ is about as lackadaisical as saying ‘abolish jobs’. As nice as that would be, it’s not realistic in this economy and you’re not getting anywhere by sounding like a nut job to the socially regression crowd.

    People on Lemmy and Reddit are young and quixotic. I get it, it’s great to dream big. But when all you do is dream, nothing will come out of it. Be realistic and make a difference. Visit the countries that you see these ideal housing situations in, understand the history, the culture, and how they got to where they are. The economy and housing market is path dependent. You can’t jump from A-Z and expect the same outcome.




  • Because having one plumber fix 10 houses is fundamentally different from having a landlord oversee fixing 10 things in the same house.

    Imagine if every mechanic only fixed one part of the car and you had to go to 10 different ones to fix 10 different things. No mechanic would be able to point to what’s wrong with the whole car and can only tell you what’s wrong with each part.

    There is a degree of vertical integration needed to maintain a single dwelling. As an example, I wanted to replace my stove that had a broken oven. In order to do so, I needed to fix the gas line. However, I need to finish removing an old gas furnace and installing a heat pump. In order to do that, I needed to repair the broken sewer lines under the unit, and in order to do that, I needed to resolve a dispute with the city over sewer line maintenance (they admitted fault eventually).

    This wasn’t just a bunch of small projects that 10 people could each do one of. There were a myriad of dependencies and choices to make that would affect other parts of the house.

    Funny enough, the same principle is part of why the US healthcare system is so shit because the lack of vertical integration due to the insurance system is why patients have such a hard time getting the diagnosis and medications they need. If you or a family member has multiple health issues, you may be familiar with this.

    My point is, keeping a house alive isn’t some group project that you can get 10 people to each do a little bit of. At the end of the day there are executive decisions that will determine the outcome of other parts of the house.


  • I didn’t say ownership is labor. I said maintenance is labor.

    Seriously. Have you tried: re-painting a house, replacing drywall, installing new floor boards, replacing light fixtures, redoing baseboards, hooking up new washer/dryers, replacing doors knobs, fixing broken ceiling fans, installing security cameras, vetting and hiring handymen, plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, getting permits with the city, installing a new faucet, cleaning up sewer leaks, cleaning up mold, fixing stucco, dealing with bedbugs and termite extermination, get HERS testing, spec out a new electrical panel, debug for nuisance tripping, and so much more shit that I don’t have time to list them all.

    This stuff doesn’t do it self. I live in my own home now and I had to learn how to do most of these things, at least the ones that don’t require certification. Handymen are expensive, and right fully so because doing maintenance well is not an easy job. If I can’t learn to do it right, I’ll need to pay someone else to do it.

    My point is that owning a home is kind of like owning a pet. You need to be fully prepared for shit over the house and know how to deal with it when it happens. Unless you’re some property conglomerate, owning a house isn’t just a deed transfer, it’s practically a living thing that you need to take care of.


  • Like I said, this was something I’ve observed across public schools without and without uniforms, and they were of similar socioeconomic backgrounds.

    I think we are going in circles here. You seem to be adamant in your stance of “I didn’t see the bullying and therefore it wasn’t a problem”. I can’t convince you that a problem exists if this stance overrides any evidence presented to you.

    The best I can do is make my point and hope that someone else can empathize with it. Have a nice day.


  • There’s a lot to unpack out of this reddit moment.

    If we want people to take us seriously about advocating for reform in this housing crisis, this ain’t it. Stripping nuance out of the conversation isn’t helping the cause, it just makes us look uninformed.

    Yes, the vast majority of landlords charge too much and do to little. But claiming that no work is required to be landlord does two things:

    1. It absolves the landlord of the responsibility to maintain the property

    2. It diminishes the scope of the work required to provide people with affordable housing and doesn’t set clear goals to accomplish

    There is a rule of thumb called the unrecoverable costs to owning which is typically 5% of the property’s value. This goes towards plumbing, electrical work, landscaping, HVAC repairs, roof work, pest control, interior upkeep, and much more. The reality is that a property doesn’t take care of it self and someone has to.

    Yes, the system is broken, rent is unaffordable, and home owner is neigh impossible these days. What we need is regulation on the housing market, getting rid of speculators, reform zoning laws for high density housing, public transit and good urban planning, more subsidized and public housing, etc.

    Even when you have all of that you will still need landlords, just not the kind that we have today. Because for housing to exist there is an inherent risk that somebody has to carry to guarantee the mortgage is paid for and that it will not go up in flames.