A university is a typically a collection of colleges (or schools).

For example: Harvard University is made up of Harvard College, Harvard Business School, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School, Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, etc.

For all intents and purposes - we use the word “college” and “university” interchangeably because they’re the same level of education. Either can do associates through doctoral.

Community colleges, however, only focus on 2 year degrees and certain certifications.

I had a lot of good years on Fark.

You want to kill germs? Use mouthwash. There’s pretty much nothing beneficial about smoking cigarettes.

Even when you take the health considerations out of account, you will reek. I assure you, nobody wants to spend time around a partner that emits a nauseating scent. It’s a bad habit in every sense of the term.

Yes - nicotine can be a quick stress reliever. That’s about al it’s good for.

I understand that you need something to help you get through the days, but there are tons of other things that you could do.

Heck, even switching to vaping will improve your health outcomes considerably. And you won’t smell.

I don’t know why you’re fighting your girlfriend on this, it seems like she’s genuinely concerned and you’re being so stubborn as to look online to justify your addiction. Yes, you are addicted. You smoke more than a pack a week and refuse to quit or offer a compromising alternative. If I was her, I’d leave you.

Well, by that logic, Switzerland isn’t a democracy. The country that decides pretty much everything on referendum.

And Ireland only became a democracy 3 years ago.

For what it’s worth, Blasphemy laws can be compatible with democracy. Democracy is only about fair elections and rule of the people. If the people want blasphemy laws, that’s still democracy.

Freedom is a spectrum - and blasphemy laws just make a country less free. Not necessarily less Democratic.

Thanks for these recommendations! I actually never watched X-Files, and a friend of mine binge watched all of it earlier this year and was sending me funny clips. I should add it to the list.

LOVED Station Eleven. It might be a top 5 show of all time. The first episode felt like a slog until that last minute. Partially ‘cause we were kinda living that pandemic.

But I was absolutely hooked and psyched to see more. And every episode after was “holy crap!” moments through to the very end.

Some of the best storytelling I’ve seen on TV. Really rich character development and such a beautiful concept altogether. It made me really hopeful.

Same writer/creator as The Leftovers (which I also recommend, very cool show - 3 seasons with an ending, gets progressively weirder and wilder).

It’s wild to me when fans of the show disregard the first season. To me, that season is pretty much perfect. Three arcs - a detective story, a motley crew, a political thriller - pay off feels so great when it all comes together at the end. Season 2 was such a drastic change in pacing, concept and ‘feel’ that I didn’t want to keep watching. I felt a little betrayed that Miller wasn’t actually the main character.

Besides Amos, I don’t really care about the Roci crew. I had to wait until Ashford came along in Season 3 for a new favorite character.

All in all - Avasarala, Bobby and Drummer carried the series for me.

I’m always worried watching stuff that’s cancelled too early. Does it end in a decent place?

I have mixed feelings on AC. I really loved the first season. Beautiful cinematography, amazing acting (Joel Kinnaman is incredible), great concept and plot. Pacing could’ve been a little better, but it really evoked that Blade Runner vibe in a cool way.

Season 2 didn’t really resonate with me :/ Felt like a cheap Marvel movie.

An individual can sign up for a plan through their State’s health insurance exchange or the federal government’s HealthCare.gov website.

It is usually more expensive than getting it through an employer - but works to serve small business owners, freelancers, etc.

A few States (like Massachusetts) have semi-universal systems that cover all individuals that earn under 150% of poverty, independent students, newly unemployed, etc.

A lot of Americans are also covered under Medicare, Medicaid , Social Security and other programs.

Retirees aged 65 and older are eligible for Medicare - a semi-universal federal system that covers pretty much everything and accepted most places.

It’s been rough since 6/30. I can barely browse and leave comments in my .world account. I’m sticking to .ml for now.

YouTube is a bit of a different animal.

YouTube allows creators to monetize content - so there’s a sense of shared success. Channels from Tom Scott or Captain Disillusion are amazing, because their production in part relies on that revenue model.

YouTube also understands that without paying for popular content, you won’t get the consistent cavalcade of medium content from people that want to earn a living or notoriety through YouTube. And that include anything from videos of cats falling over, blogs about life in remote places, DIY home improvement or niche guitar technique lessons.

Meanwhile on Reddit, if a user gets thousands of upvotes and a million page views for a short story they wrote exclusively for the platform, Reddit won’t pay them a cent. The very thought is laughable.

The other thing to consider is that the technology just doesn’t exist for there to be a viable ‘federated’ YouTube. YouTube has 800 million videos - many in HD and many are hours long. That’s a big ask in terms of storage and maintenance - even several thousand videos.

Video compression has a long way to go before that changes. For now, it makes sense for leave that storage to the companies with resources.

Text, however… well, all of Wikipedia can fit on around 20 gigs - 60 million odd articles. And for the record, that can pretty much fit on an iPod from 2002.

I do wish that YouTube wasn’t a monopoly. Twitch is the only thing that’s close, and it has it’s own special lane for live streaming. Back in the old days, there was some competition - including Google Video. But that went away when Google bought YouTube. I guess there’s Vimeo, but they’ve got a very different approach.

I mean, the Justice Department is suing Google for monopolizing ad tech - and I think we could see antitrust laws used in the next few years to breakup YouTube. Maybe the successor companies would federate - like when Bell was broken up into what became Verizon and ATT - who now directly compete for customers.

Wikipedia is the 7th most visited website in the world, more popular than Amazon, TikTok, even PornHub. It’s not funded by advertisers or other bullshit - rather through reader donations.

With that said, Wikipedia is still centralized content whereas Lemmy isn’t. Meaning there’s fewer expenses and pressure on any one instance or server to succeed. And if one instance or server doesn’t succeed, your access to the Federation is far from over.

If you use lemmy.ml (the developer’s instance), I would recommend reading the front page sidebar. Under RULE #1 - “No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia”.

Here is a screenshot for reference, feel free to share with folks.

If the enemies of Nazis are religious, ethnic and sexual minorities - then lemmy.ml 's front page immediately puts to rest any notion they are associated with far-right ideologies.

That said, my best understanding is that one or more of the developers identify as communists/anticapitalist and are involved in lemmygrad.ml and /c/socialism.

And with that in mind, a platform like Lemmy is communist by nature: nobody owns it.
So it doesn’t matter who the developers are, really. What matter is who runs the server and instance you’re using. You, as a user, have a choice in how you wish to connect to the Federation.

Before Netflix, there was Blockbuster.
Before YouTube, there was Metacafe and janky websites hosting Flash or Quicktime Player.
Before Spotify, there was PeopleSound and iTunes gift cards.
Before Discord, there was IRC and AOL Chatrooms.
Before Facebook, there was MySpace and Friendster.
Before iPhone, I had an LG Dare and Palm Pre. Good god!
Before Reddit, there was Digg, Slashdot and Fark.

Something better always comes along. Especially if that “better” is tied to a streamlined, easy to use, easy to learn UI.

Reddit would’ve never gotten as big as it did without third party support. Not just apps like Apollo, RIF and Narwhal - but tools like Imgur and RES.

Lemmy and “The Federation” (I’m not quite yet sold calling it the Fediverse…) has a lot of potential to be that “better than Reddit” online space. Nobody owns all of it, so there’s safeguards against the things that we’re blacked out.

And it’s partially why its a fixer-upper.

We, the community, are going to need to make Lemmy the space we want it to be. That means competition between instances and servers, that means user generated tools and content. I read the RIF developer is working on a Tildes app for iOS and Android. Mlem iOS app is in early Beta, but are working hard to have a stable release for 6/30. Jerboa’s out on Android already and folks seems to like it so far.

Give it time. We’re all new. And whether it’s here or somewhere else - we always land on our feet. Maybe the only thing we have in common with u/spez : there’s nowhere to fail but up.

Yeah, the front page was a little intimidating and it took a little time for my to get the account confirmation email. But otherwise, this space feels and acts very similar to old.reddit and some customization (like night mode) … which is a good thing!