No Stupid Questions

Hey everyone,

I'm taking my first international vacation next week. I am going to the Philippines, but I have a layover in South Korea. I just got an email from my airline and it says I might need to fill customs declaration. This is kind of confusing me, because the Website says you have to declare goods that exceed $800 US. But it doesn't specify if goods means everything you're bringing, or just 1 item exceeding $800. The most expensive things I'm bringing are my phone, steam deck and a tablet. Everything else is just clothes. But all that together would be over $800, (my phone was $799.99 brand new). So I'm just not sure if I need to fill out a declaration or not. I tried looking for the answer but was unsuccessful.

EDIT: thanks everyone for the responses. It is clear now that by "goods" they mean items intended for sale. I will not need to sign a declaration form. Thanks!

Thanks!

or just a 'poof'?

I just tried to look up a specific video of a Nick Swardson stand up bit. All I searched was "Nick Swardson loitering". There were 5 fucking ads before an actual user posted video, then one real human posted video that barely had anything to do with Nick, then 5 more fucking ads.

I knew they were forcing ads into videos but clogging the entire search feed with ads is unfuckingbelievable.

Is this really what it's come to? Ads are more important than what I'm actually looking for? Are people really okay with this?

Reddit is starting to suck more and more everyday so here I am. A couple of questions -

1. I created my account at lemmy.ca, but most people I have seen have lemmy.world accounts. Am I missing out on anything by not having a lemmy.world account?

2. Reddit has an offical subreddit for Reddit news. Does Lemmy have any offical communities?

3. On Reddit, you can't post on some subreddits if you do not have enough karma or if your account is not old enough. Are there any rules like that on Lemmy?

Thank you!

Recently, within the last month or two, here was a very thorough lemmy post, maybe from a community called fediverse? It compared lots of lemmy clients, one comparison, maybe the main comparison? Was how the clients displayed markup and then gave a rating to each client. I remember jerboa and voyager being one of the top performers. Can someone help me find this post? Or advise me on how to search for it better? I already looked st the mentioned community but didn't find anything.
I'd appreciate any help.

I just kind of wonder with how casually people express these thoughts. It's a little disturbing how normalized it is to entertain such notions, given how other types of fantasies are very stigmatized.

Like when discussing char.ai, acting out sexual or romantic fantasies is something a lot of people do, but it's considered embarrassing. While people freely discuss violent roleplays without any shame.

And then there's the cliche of fantasizing about killing one's boss or coworkers.

Are these really common thoughts for mentally sound people to have?

I think I've heard that the USA federal gov is bigger than in the past, as in controlling more of an American's life than in its history. Is it like government revenue divided by gdp? What about minting?

I should clarify I wasn't a upper level sys admin managing those servers, I just used them or maintained accounts being a rank and file technician

While I get the fundamental concept of DNS as a phonebook for your IPs. I am not sure why it is joked around if something goes haywire or someone breaks something.

Is it because if you get no DNS, people can't log in through their AD accounts, browse the Internet?

Afaik DNS is a bit of a rabbit hole topic, maybe that's why people joke about it due to DNS being this "No one really knows how this magic name matching box works"?

Please correct me, I'd genuinely like to know why this is prevalent from you guys.

Idk, when you look at the entire picture, does Trump not have the far easier path to 270 this year? He only has to win 2 states (PA & GA) and that’s it, he wins. Kamala has to win at the minimum 3, and if she loses PA, it becomes even harder for her. Trump could just spend all of his money campaigning in those 2 states and get back in the White House. Yet these odds seem to disagree with me.

Am I trippin?

I'm creating a Durable Power of Attorney, and I can choose whether to grant my Agent the power to deal with my taxes. My question is: does granting the Agent this power also make them responsible for my taxes? E.g., if I owed the IRS $100,000, would my Agent suddenly be responsible for paying the IRS $100,000 if I didn't have enough funds? Or if they made a decision that got me in trouble, would they be in trouble?

I don't expect legal advice, but I'd like to ask you not to share your opinion. I'm looking for something in between: anecdotes of your experiences.

Thanks for sharing!

FYI, here's the phrasing I'm currently planning to use, though this isn't set in stone:

In regards to taxes, the Principal authorizes the Agent to:

Prepare, sign, and file federal, state, local, and foreign income, gift, payroll, property, Federal Insurance Contributions Act, and other tax returns, claims for refunds, requests for extension of time, petitions regarding tax matters, and any other tax-related documents, including receipts, offers, waivers, consents, including consents and agreements under Internal Revenue Code Section 2032A, 26 U.S.C. Section 2032A, as amended, closing agreements, and any power of attorney required by the Internal Revenue Service or other taxing authority with respect to a tax year upon which the statute of limitations has not run and the following 25 tax years;

Pay taxes due, collect refunds, post bonds, receive confidential information, and contest deficiencies determined by the Internal Revenue Service or other taxing authority;

Exercise any election available to the Principal under federal, state, local, or foreign tax law; and

Act for the Principal in all tax matters for all periods before the Internal Revenue Service, or other taxing authority.

Seemingly the functionality for setting languages is never used, and a large portion of my new feed is from instances that are language specific (and not the language I speak).

I have set my language to English + Undefined, but it seems no one else can/will set their languages for their posts (leaving them as undefined).

I would like to bulk add these to my blocked instance. I know how to do this.

My question is just - is there a list of instance + language covering the main federated instances?

Just thinking about how I've read that humans are the only animals on the planet that can throw objects with a degree of accuracy. But could a dog or other animal be taught, and trained to throw things to hit a target? I mean, it's not like a human can throw well without guidance and practice, either.

I thought I wanted to study piano, which means at least a bachelor. To this end I started saving and 6 months ago spent $40K on a small grand piano that I only play sometimes. I always relied on school and church pianos to play, but these are old, overplayed, cannot be properly tuned (old), the sound is awful and the mechanic too hard. Now at least I have my own grand.

The next logical step would be to stop working full time, work 20 to 30 hours a week to free time to practice, hire a teacher to prepare repertoire and music theory for a year, pass an admission exam, keep working part time and studying piano, end the bachelor, then rethink my life.

But I'm blocked: I'm scared of wasting money (teachers for instrument and music theory would cost at least $4.5K for the whole year, 2 hours each week).

I'm also not really sure I want to work part time: I'd earn half what I do now and while it would still be enough to cover my monthly costs, I've grown used to sleep, go to work, work, buy groceries, go back home, cook, eat and relax. I've grown lazy and sometimes don't recognize myself.

The easy way here would be to forget about studying piano, play my instrument exclusively as a hobby, keep working full time a job I'm not passionate about but it's solid and pays my bills and that would be it. I'm also in a union, so I'd have to do something outrageous to be fired.

But I sometimes hate myself for being so lazy and wonder, how come I cannot step out of this rut?

In my country, two states (Kerala and Karnataka) sued each other to get exclusive rights over an acronym. They spent 7 years engaged in a legal battle and eventually they went back to square one with the courts permitting both states to use the acronym.

Both of them probably spent millions on the case just to get nothing. They are both states in the same country so why are they allowed to sue other for bs reasons? What a waste of tax payer money.

I just spent the last hour typing up a post to put in [email protected] about how I observed a beautiful moment with a father and his 3 year old son.

The son was a fan of a wrestler named L.A. Knight. And he was set to make his grand entrance, and have his match, live in front of 57k people.

We were in the stadium, in line for merchandise. The line was really long. So the dad realized they would miss L.A Knight's match.

Logically the smart thing to do is bring your son back to your seats. Give up your place in line, and try later. Or evdn online later.

Instead, this dad, who was clearly also a fan of L.A Knight, and wanted to see him asked his son: "Do you want to stay in line? Or go see L.A Knight?"

And the kid picked staying in line. The dad confirmed with him "If you stay in line, you'll miss L.A Knight in the ring. He's coming out now."

And the kid chose to stay in line to get L.A Knight merch.

And the whole moment was beautiful to me. The idea of a dad respecting his kids opinion is foreign to me.

I grew up with my dad telling me to shut up and do it his way. Always his way. Still to this day, it's always his way. My mom left him because he was controlling. My sisters (who are not his kids, but he helped raise them) don't talk to him because of how he treated them.

I'm 40, and now he's elderly, and I barely talk to him. Sometimes I feel guilty until moments like this. Where I'm reminded that still to this day I don't speak up when I should. I don't ask for help when I need it. I just suffer in silence, just as I always do.

There have even been times in the past where calling 911 for someone else having an emergancy was the right thing to do. Hearing gunshots on your street. Seeing a woman hanging out of a car screaming for help. But not calling 911, because nobody wants to hear what I have to say. Nobody wants to hear from me.

And at Summerslam, I see this kid saying he wants to stay in line. And the dad just confirms, and explains the consequences that he'll miss L.A Knight, but the kid insisted on staying in line. Despite it not being the smart choice. It was the "wrong" choice. If I were in that position, my dad would have ended it with zero input on my end. But here this dad was respecting his sons choice. His three year old son.

And as I typed to a wrestling community what I intended to be a beautiful story, I realized it's only beautiful to me because of my own repressed perspective. Everybody else just would hear a story about a normal dad doing normal dad things. Loving his son. Respecting his son.

And nobody would get why that would make me cry.

So I deleted the story before I posted it, and began to realize that even though I'm 40, and should be past all this, it still hurts, and I'm a deeply broken person.

And now I'm wondering, has anyone else had these moments where they realize that they've just been repressing pain for 30 years to the point where a normal loving relationship can cause jealousy, but also an intense heartwarming moment?

I don't know how to describe it. That moment was just 10 minutes out of this kids life that he'll not remember. The dad won't deem it important, so he won't remember this by now. It was a meaningless moment that in a loving relationship happens everyday. But to me, the idea of a dad respecting his son making a "wrong decision" had me supressing anger, sadness, and heartwarming joy, but also knowing how weird I was for that. And so I shut up, and repressed it. Only in trying to retell a heartwarming story did I realize it was coming across as bitter and jealous, and thats when I realized thats MY issue. And I don't know where to go from here.

Have you ever had a moment like this?

I'm trying to lose weight and was told that hwo I eat about 800-1000 calories a day is too low and lowers my metobolism which will prevent weight loss. I've looked up some meal plans and can't really afford stuff like chicken breast, steak, or salmon every week. So that is why I'm wondering how I can eat 1500 calories a day. Are there some alternatives that I can do?

Also I'd like to ask, say I exercise and burn say 500 calories would I have to eat those calories back or no? I ask cuz I've been told yes and told no.

What I am looking for specifically is, is there a community for like /ihadanidea? Like a shower thought but not, like a place where I can just go and post out into the void that I had a cool idea about something and it's just free use for anyone to do with what they will, and then once corporate hears of it, they can make it half as real for twice the price? I feel like it's too good of an idea, that someone must have already taken action on something like that? Does anyone know of a community already designed for questions of this type? And does such a community for random cool ideas already exist?

People (including me) complain about monopolies all the time for various reasons. At the same time, I've noticed a ton of complaints about the existence of multiple streaming platforms. But isn't that a good thing at the end of the day? If streaming platforms consolidated into 2-3 companies, there wouldn't be much stopping them from raising prices even more.

I'll be playing a game, and then one day it won't work. After updating my graphics drivers, it works again. But the game didn't receive an update, so why does it just break?