Hi everybody! Nice to meet you all. :D I’m over in Ottawa, and I’m completely new to Lemmy (immigrating from Reddit), so I hope I can learn the culture of this place okay!

First thing’s first: I’m going to figure out how to navigate this place, and then I’m going to start talking to folks. Wish me luck (or wish me a For Redditors help guide). :P

Edit: This is probably going to make the OG Lemmings (Lemmites?) cry, but I think this place makes easier sense if I go at it like:

• Instance = subreddit
• Community = post flair

Because each instance is its own website with its own admin, and each community is a group within that instance. I can join a community to chat about whatever the community’s about, but if I want to go to the communities in a different instance, it’s like going to a different subreddit; I can’t just find it by trying to ‘filter’ the communities by their ‘flair’ since that community isn’t ‘here’. It’s at a completely different subreddit/instance/website. :)

I skimmed some of the posts and saw ADHD mentioned a few times - damn, we’re crocheting ourselves a new stereotype. 😝

I have a friend who crochets a lot, and while we were at her house, she’d be working on a project of some kind. Eventually I got curious, so she handed me an old ball of yarn and showed me the double-stitch. That’s still the only one I know. I’ve made several blankets using just that one over and over and over.

I’ve learned how to change colours okay, so I can make patterns by strategically swapping to different yarn, but if I really want a certain pattern, I just crochet over the surface with another round of that double-stitch. It’s like a 3D thing. :D

And yes, it does keep my hands busy!

What’s a tankie?

I’d love for glass jars to be way more of a thing. Or even cardboard, as much as possible.

The devil’s advocate against glass is that it might be too heavy (which, well, that’s why we have carts, and most cities are so unwalkable that most people aren’t carrying them home in their hands). A really pushy plastic lobbyist could probably try some “Think of the children” take against broken jars, but some brands might be into the premium look of glass for their products.

But cardboard seems like the best thing. We don’t actually recycle enough of our paper, and having a stand of flat boxes that you can quickly put together with the same capacity as those fruit/vegetable bags could be another step forward. They can even replace the foam/plastic wrap packaging by just popping the top flap open to see the green beans inside or whatever. And aren’t we trying to boost our paper manufacturing industry in Canada? There ya go - it’s cardboard time

You’re right that it’s a complete misprioritization. It’d be one thing if this was in addition to what’s arriving to the store in the first place, but it always seems like this stuff is being used to completely distract from the real causes of that waste.

Well, that’s all true, but that’s very much based on trying to change things in a vacuum.

More carbon emissions? Yes, if we stick with today’s methods of transportation. So much progress keeps getting hamstrung to find cleaner ways of moving forward, in addition to the poor working conditions of those operating those modes of transportation. But through systemic changes, that could change. Carbon emissions might go up, but so could taxes or fines related to that pollution and inefficiencies. I know everybody rolls their eyes when that gets mentioned, but the lack of teeth behind it is often because those taxes or fines get hamstrung too. A larger transformation of shipping and transportation is well overdue, and the greater need to combat rising fuel costs to ship weightier products might lead to investments in more fuel efficient (or alternative fuel-based) vehicles on ground, water, or in the air. :)

And standardizing them - yes, absolutely! That’s the systemic transformation. Especially once the use of glass goes up and the need to more efficiently recycle it can’t be ignored any more, those are the changes you’d expect to see!

Was this something specific to cursive?

I’m not surprised that kids would’ve had awful experiences, especially because this is a skill that takes time to develop, and time is often the thing in the shortest supply when it comes to teaching kids.

But you wrote your post like there was something particularly unique to the awful experiences had with learning cursive writing. I wasn’t expecting that. Does it have to do with how you can ‘get away’ with messing handwriting in math or even in English, but when you’re being graded on the appearance of cursive letters, any fine motor skills a child is struggling with gets piled on?

It can also be nice to learn as an art form! But in the same way I wouldn’t expect mandatory calligraphy lessons - even though that seems like the more logical thing to introduce if we’re talking about developing fine skills and learning how to read or write cursive - I don’t really see the point of mandatory cursive lessons.

The option seems reasonable to have as an option. But kids are already so overworked in school, with homework and tests having increased exponentially over the last two decades, that getting to remove one thing off of their curriculum seemed like they were finally getting a break.

By not explaining it, sometimes that is the explanation. 😬

Well, the grass is greenest where we water it, so let’s keep an eye out for the warning signs we had over there.

Exactly!

A mix of different perspectives isn’t the issue.

A mix of different facts, with one sourced and cited and the other just being angry opinions, is the issue. Those shouldn’t be equated with each other - not just because that angry opinions are cheap to pump. They can easily drown out researched articles.

That’s not to say opinions aren’t important! Many, many real-life experiences get ignored, overlooked, or purposely cast aside, and anecdotal accounts and subjective experiences are all we have. But I take issue with something presenting itself as a factual source of information when it only has very shaky citations, or when it has no citations and brushes it off like, “Well, everyone should know this, and if you don’t, you’re in on it.”

NatPo is propaganda parading itself as news, and that’s dangerous to put on the same level as news outlets that actually research their stories.