Sorry I edited my comment to be clearer. But you’re not wrong that most famous fictional owls are male.

Which makes me wonder, are there literally no alternatives in South America itself? I know Argentina has gone to shit, but what of the other countries?

If children’s animation has taught me anything, it’s that this owl is clearly female

(Edit for clarity)

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This may have something to do with which states do all-mail voting:

Eight states—California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington and the District of Columbia—allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail.

Utah is deep red, but the others are quite blue. Especially with California in there, that’s a pretty good chunk of the US that votes early by default (there are same-day options in these states, but I suspect that option is often utilized due to procrastination rather than intentionally waiting until election day to vote).

To your “edit” point: Don’t take a handful of downvotes personally; it’s pretty easy to do accidentally on mobile so they may have been unintentional

Easy, NASA sends you up with one hundred tampons

Outer Wilds

Reviews of the game are fantastic (“this is the best game I’ve ever​ played” - everybody) but trying to fly that damn spaceship is so hard. I also heard there’s tricky platforming later on, and if you mess up you gotta start waaaay back. I did not grow up with video games so I’m terrible at that kind of thing. I should just give up and watch a playthrough but apparently that defeats the whole point of the “incredible” story, which is the only thing I’m here for in the first place.

I guess I’m just holding out for someone to release an assist mode or something.

Seven on 7 is a series of TV news shorts and commercials from The Boys universe. It’s a delightful little parody of Fox News. The whole series is available free on YouTube.

In Washington State (where most voting is done by mail) it doesn’t matter when officials receive your ballot, all that matters is that it’s postmarked by election day. This does mean that any race that’s even remotely close can take days to call (as ballots continue to arrive days after election day), but you never have to worry about how long the post office is going to take to get your ballot delivered.

In neighboring Oregon on the other hand (also primarily mail-in voting) they won’t count your ballot if it’s not received by election day, so every election they have to throw out stacks of otherwise legitimate ballots just because the voter either underestimated how long it would take for them to arrive, or because all they heard was “XX is election day” and didn’t know to consider mailing time.

I think Washington’s system is superior, and should be how it’s done everywhere. Washington also has same-day registration for the super-procrastinators! Literally no excuse to not vote here.

I mean, obviously it’s not for everyone, but it’s important to actually experience urban living for yourself before deciding you hate cities. Especially given the political situation in the United States right now, where so many suburban and rural residents are bashing cities and urban living without having properly experienced it for themselves; I think there would be a huge bite taken out of the urban/rural divide if more people had experience living in cities, and got to personally see the good and the bad for themselves. Plus your twenties is a great time to learn street smarts, because that way you’ll be less likely to have a bad experience when you do visit a big city in the future, whether it’s for something fun like a concert or something serious like going to a medical specialist. There are a lot of basic lessons like “never ever leave anything visible in your unattended parked car”, how to use public transportation, being able to firmly say “no”, and general situational awareness that are just good life skills that city living forces you to pick up.

I’m not at a point in my life where I want to live in a big city anymore, but I’m so, so grateful that I did in my youth.

Travel, live abroad if possible, and experience living in a big, culture-rich city. Unfortunately the economic realities of the 2020s are making this increasingly out of reach for many youth, but if you have the resources and opportunity, absolutely go for it. As you get older, responsibilities and lack of energy will likely sap much of your ability/desire to move around as much (this isn’t true for everyone, but it’s extremely common). Even if traditional travel is impractical for you, there still exists cheaper opportunities for exploration that are a bit off the beaten path, such as the WWOOF program.

Regardless of your situation/location, one thing that basically anyone can do is get involved in a cause. Find something you’re passionate about and throw yourself into it. Make sure it’s something that you can do in-person and not virtually… as in, there are local groups you can join for this cause, although if there aren’t you can always try making one or forming a local chapter of a larger org. With the right networking you’d be surprised how many other people will join you, especially for causes that involve your local community. This is a great way to meet other people, get to know the issues facing your neighborhood/city better, and learn to navigate your local government/NGOs. Again, as you get older responsibilities/exhaustion can make this sort of thing a lot harder.

Minnesota is probably the most famous example at the moment, but they’re far from alone!

https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/states-with-universal-free-school-meals-so-far-update/

Red states are not okay, because all they have left in their value system is cruelty toward people they see as not “pulling their weight,” as if we still live in some resource-scarce era of yore where if you don’t work, you don’t eat (and even if you do work, eating is not guaranteed, better work harder!).

Blue states are increasingly providing lunches, and sometimes even breakfast, for all students free of charge. It used to be income-based (you’d get free or half-priced lunch based on your family’s income), but even that system is getting ditched because of the associated stigma and the problem of some needy students falling between the cracks.

Agree with everyone else that this isn’t normal for someone your age and get a second opinion.

However addressing your other questions: you’re at an age where lifestyle starts to really matter. Diet, exercise, ergonomics, environmental exposure to pollution/toxins, alcohol/drug use, sleep habits: these are all things that many healthy young adults can avoid having to worry about… until suddenly they can’t anymore. It is common, especially starting around age 30, to find there’s unhealthy behaviors from your teens and 20s that you just can’t do or do to excess anymore. It’s different for everyone; for some people it’s that they can’t sleep on a crappy mattress anymore, or drink certain types of liquor, or pull all nighters, or eat garbage, etc etc.

So while it sounds like you have some personal health issues outside of what’s “normal,” you still are at an age where the cumulative effects of a poor lifestyle can start to catch up to you. I think a lot of people greatly underestimate how sedentary their lifestyles are in particular, and of all the behaviors to change for the better as you age, going from sedentary to active is probably the hardest, given that our world is built to keep us sitting: sitting in our cars, sitting at our desks, sitting on our couches, basically sitting from the moment we wake until we go to sleep. Humans never lived like this until very recently: basically every decade since the personal automobile became the standard mode of transportation it’s steadily gotten worse. So yes, definitely do some doctor shopping, but now is also a great age to take stock in your lifestyle and how you’re treating your body. Because yes, it does get a little harder each year, but the speed of which it gets harder is at least partially up to you.

I think all mowers except non-motorized push mowers should be illegal for home use. You want a big, manicured lawn? Well then you gotta work for it, buddy.

Most properties where I live have huge grass lawns, but I almost never see anyone actually using them. The only time anyone is out on their lawn is to mow it, and they all use these low-effort riding mowers. Every single nice day (and I live in the maritime Pacific Northwest, so warm and sunny days are precious things) is always filled with the din of mowers, leaf blowers, hedge trimmers, and other gas-powered tools of ornamental landscaping. And for what? An ecologically-devoid patch of land that even the landowner isn’t utilizing.

There are vegan blood meal alternatives out there to resolve this exact conundrum.

But the reality is, unless your plants are being grown hydroponically in a sealed warehouse or similar, chances are real good that they are feeding on decaying animals (either directly or indirectly) whether you like it or not. They’re mostly insects and annelids and such, but still animals.

I think the issue for vegans is more about whether animal slaughter was involved in making their fertilizer. Dead pillbugs in the soil is just nature doing its cycle of life thing.

Given how humans have been running things, I, for one, welcome our new mycelial overlords

The difference is if the primary (sometimes only) admin of your instance loses interest, goes to jail, or gets hit by a truck, your entire instance could be dead in the water, whereas there are way more safeguards to “established” social media like Reddit and Twitter. Plus the issue of “well shit my instance got defederated from most of the fediverse because it turns out the admin is an asshat” is completely nonsensical on platforms without instances. Example: before I knew that Lemmy had a tankie problem, I almost signed up on lemmygrad because I thought it was just a witty pun…

Plus when you say “point them to lem.ee” what scenario are you imagining? Because “you should join reddit” or “our business is on Facebook” or “Twitter is a great resource for artists” are all straightforward and easy pieces of information to convey and pick up. “Join Lemmy, a subset of the fediverse, I signed up via lemmy.world although I hear lem.ee is also good, but don’t let that stop you from picking another instance” is like… Dude, people just want to go to [site].com, click on “sign up”, enter a username and password (and maybe email) and that’s it. Just having to explain to people that “lemmy.com” isn’t a thing is already too complicated for most folks.

Lemmy (or at least lemmy.world) was bonkers levels of buggy last summer during the reddit blackout. Like, literally unusable levels of buggy. Getting the word out that it’s (mostly) bug-free now would probably be good, because I’m sure there were many redditors who tried it and quickly swore it off as a pile of shit.

Otherwise I’m in agreement that the instance-selection part of sign-up is a huge barrier, because what instance you choose is actually really important but it’s overwhelming when you’re just getting started. Plus not being able to migrate your account/communities/posts to another instance if yours goes to shit/shuts down/turns out to not fit your needs makes the fediverse feel really unstable.