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What's something that's taken for granted that occasionally makes you think, wait wtf?
  • In the staff fridge at work someone used to label their milk as "breast milk" and people would go eeeww. Like it was snot or something. But from a cow's breasts? Fine! So weird.

  • The old ways
  • Catnip is their feel-good plant of choice. I planted some once and the local cats went wild for it. Killed it dead and then rolled around on the corpse.

  • 30,000 tons of food stuck in Houston port after Trump halts foreign aid
  • Presumably the farmers got paid for these surplus crops. And if USAID is dismantled, there'll be no-one buying the coming season's surplus. Lots of farmers must be feeling nervous. Shipping and port companies will also be hit.

    It's like when firms lay off workers to save money: those people are also customers, who now don't have money for new furniture, restaurant meals, a new car, whatever. There's a ripple effect from "saving money".

  • What's the closest you've been to a plane crash site?
  • This felt close, in a way: in May 2014 I flew UK to NZ on Malaysian Airlines. One of their planes had gone missing in March that year, so I came in for some joshing over my choice. I flew out of NZ on 22 July. The Kuala Lumpur-Amsterdam leg had a slight change of flight path because on the 17th a Malaysian plane on that route was shot down over Ukraine.

    (I felt so sorry for the air crew - some of them may have lost friends and colleagues on those flights, and here they were, smiling away and bringing us drinks.)

  • What's the longest you've gone without friends?
  • Good chunks of my youth. When I look back I think, those kids were not your friends.

  • Humans now give birth by laying an egg, it still takes 9 months to hatch, how is society now different?
  • Are unfertised human eggs a thing? Like, the chicken eggs we eat aren't fertilised. I'm imagining something like an ostrich egg. Lots of omelette in that ... um, definitely-not-a-baby.

  • Eggs are 10.99 in denver.
  • Egg colour is down to genetics - some breeds, eg leghorn, lay white eggs. Others lay various shades of brown. It's what's inside that counts, and that depends a lot on what you feed a chicken.

  • Google Forcing Gemini Down Our Throats Feels aLot Like Microsoft and Internet Explorer, But More Insidious
  • Some of my non-techie friends were complaining about how rubbish Google search is now and I suggested Duck Duck Go. They couldn't get past the name. I know it's based on some childhood game in the US but it makes no sense to anyone here in the UK.

  • What mis-stated phrases or words do you feel still need to be corrected (online or in person) in 2025?
  • "The proof is in the pudding."

    The actual phrase is: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

    It means that your dessert might look and smell delicious, but if you fucked up the recipe, say by using salt instead of sugar, then it will taste bad. You won't know for sure until you eat it. So, a plan might look good on paper but be a disaster when implemented.

    "The proof is in the pudding" doesn't mean anything.

  • Never trust a real estate agent
  • I can recommend the novel The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley about the Norse colony and their extra terrible life. It's a good read, if a bit grim.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greenlanders

  • Which movies are much darker when you rewatch them as an adult?
  • Breakfast at Tiffany's. The first revelation was that the romantic leads were pretty much BOTH prostitutes. And then that horrendous turn by Mickey Rooney as a Japanese man!

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany's_(film)

    Also the musical Gigi. More prostitution, this time with a mother grooming her daughter to enter the profession, while her client Maurice Chevalier croons "Thank heavens for little girls."

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigi_(1958_film)

    I saw both these films as a child and had no clue.

  • Where can I find a list of companies supporting Elon Musk?
  • I bet it's bacon. The siren song of sizzling bacon always drags me away from vegetarianism in the end.

  • This is a real thing in the Netherlands
  • Aquaducts aren't new. Granted this is a novel design, but it's still just an aquaduct. https://waterways.org.uk/about-us/news/canal-aqueducts

  • What is something you only experienced once and would like to experience again?
  • Everyone has sleep paralysis every time they dream. It's a mechanism that stops you acting out your dreams. What happens occasionally is that you come out of the dream state enough to become aware of being paralysed. You're not awake, so your unconscious mind is grappling with the horror of paralysis.

    My own experiences were nightmares where I was being threatened by an unseen figure, but couldn't move to escape. I had a lot of them, some really horrible. Then I read an article with the above explanation, and I haven't had one since. It was like once my unconscious knew what was going on, it stopped freaking out.

  • Sock blankets

    Thrilled to have found a Lemmy knitting group! I'm a sock obsessive, I just love knitting socks, so I've ended up with an staggering amount of "scrap" yarn. The solution - blankets. This is my second Cosiest Memories project and this time I have a Plan. The first one was truly random, with lots of placement errors. When it was finished I did a dark icord edge, and suddenly it was smart!

    !

    So for the second one I'm adding an inner border of that same colour and (eventually) will finish with icord. I might even knit some more socks!

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    My first post

    I'm a Reddit refugee and in all the years I was there I never made a single post. I'm very much enjoying the Fediverse, especially Lemmy, and thought I'd share my happy place with you all.

    21
    MrsDoyle MrsDoyle @sh.itjust.works

    Go on go on go on go on go on

    Posts 2
    Comments 273