Asklemmy

What is one of those: oh my god, I wish someone had explained THIS system to me when I was younger moments that really sticks out to you from your experience?

how do you boil prawns?

don’t want to stir fry them because I don’t want to make a mess with my kitchen.

don’t have an oven, so the easiest way to cook them is afaik boiling them.

Do I add salt and pepper while boiling or AFTER?

Do I peel em before boiling or boil them WITH the shell?

Do I need to boil them if I choose to prepare a soup with leeks and maybe potatoes?

Any Lemmings in Sapporo? Visiting this weekend/next week.

Hey all, I’m visiting Sapporo through August 5 (solo trip, driving around Hokkaido) and figured I’d test whether the fediverse has enough density here for an IRL meetup.

About me: maker, business systems, homelabber. Happy to talk travels, crafting, technology, nightlife, or whatever over beers.

Proposal: Beer Inn Mugishutei (Minami 9 Nishi 5, a basement beer bar), [8/2] at 7pm. I’ll be the white guy in a beanie. If that doesn’t work for you but you’re around, comment or DM and we’ll figure something out.

If literally nobody is in Sapporo, feel free to use this thread to tell me what I should eat while I’m here instead.

What is the best way to learn a second language in 2026?

I’d like to have books to study out of and maybe some types of slideshows. Something with a clear outline of the path ahead would be nice.

Why news channels use background music?

Why all the news channels we see today uses background musics and flashy animations instead of directly telecasting the news to it’s audience?

Is there any advantage on putting specific background musics on each clips they telecast? Isn’t a direct telecast without any added things is a more clean and direct way to broadcast news to the audience?

We all know of the subs like "You Should Know," but what something you SHOULDN'T know?

Should I go into freelance web development in 2026 in high-cost country?

I am thinking of doing freelance web development for money, but also at the same time I’m not really sure about it because, why would they hire me, a human in a high-cost (high cost of living but I don’t even think it looks like a 1st world country anymore and the conditions only seem to be getting worse) country rather than use AI to do most of the work for either cheaper or for free or hire someone in a low-wage/low-cost country like India or Pakistan?

I mean, I’ve even noticed that most of my “local” businesses are doing something similar - instead of hiring local people, they literally go out of their way to hire immigrants (to the point where the locals feel like they have no chance of getting a job, especially Gen Z), just simply because the government has made it cheaper for companies to hire these immigrants instead of the locals. I don’t think they even care about the fact that ever since they started doing this, their quality of service has gone down. Nothing against these immigrants themselves, but I’m just saying.

My father wants to pay for a family tomb so that when I die, I can be buried there as well. Do I let him or try to stop him?

my father is religious, I’m not and I don’t care what happens to my body after I die. Burn me, use me to feed stray cats.

To me, wasting money to buy a plot of land so I may be buried with them when I die is a stupid idea.

It is, however, his money. Who am I to disagree with him?

What are some things on preventive healthcare that you think more people should be aware of?

I saw an article on Cuba’s healthcare recently. It pointed to how they have very good life expectancy and low infant and maternal mortality rates, even subjected to decades of brutal blockade.

Thought about preventive healthcare

What's your most used reaction image?

I’m making a signal sticker pack of reaction images I and my friends use, and I’m looking for some to steal

App suggestions? Planner app with family sharing, iOS

My wife and I’s app of choice for sharing and storing is dying. The dev team was bought out by some corpo/VC and as a result their side project of a usable planner app is going sideways.

We currently use it for the following, and importantly they are updated on both our devices when one person makes a change.

• recipes
• needed groceries
• vehicle maintenance info
• to do list for home maintenance, such as changing air filters or cleaning gutters, etc.

What are some good keyboards brands?

Can anyone recommend a good keyboard brand? I’m looking for one that’s comfortable and has color and character and not boring. I saw some keyboards from a brand called Yunzii but I’ve read some mixed reviews on them. I also want to make sure I get a keyboard that doesn’t collect or share data, since everything collects data now. Doesn’t have to wireless, wired works.

Who is old enough to remember after 9-11 the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the possible usage of such department?

If my partner (biological-female) comes out as a trans-man. Wouldn't still being attracted to him make me (biological-male) homosexual?

Please be civil in the comments.

new here :)

ah I’m a new one here and I’d like if someone explains how this site works and how to use it cuz I feel lost :)

Any good couch co-op game recommendations?

Title. I’d like to play more with friends and family, and I’d like to do that IRL. It’s gotta be available on PC, though, I don’t own a console.

Were did the title 'czar' come from in current media?

Ai czar, border czar, health czar…

I see it mentioned all the time in the US media but also elsewhere recently, where does this come from?

Czar is historicly the title of Russian rulers. Which these people clearly aren’t, so why the use of this term?

Is it some sort of right wing dogwistle?

massively hyped up durians to my folks for their trip but they don't know about the smell. should I tell them or surprise them?

My cousin is getting scammed, and I don't know what to do

[SERIOUS REPLIES ONLY]

(I recorded this on voice and it came out like this, apologies for any incoherence or so)

Here we go, this is a doozy… My cousin called me. Let’s call her May. She’s… Highly intelligent And I think she genuinely has two master’s degrees. One in geography and the other in, I don’t remember. She’s Polish. She grew up in Poland. And like, she was a fantastic girl. She is a fantastic girl. She studied in Sweden, she studied everywhere, and she ended up as a bank director, and then she quit her job because she got burnt out. And for the past three and a half years, she has been living with her mom and her stepdad in Poland in a little, like, in a house out in the countryside in Poland, okay? And here’s the thing.

Our family history is kind of complicated, and, you know, I live elsewhere so we meet very, very rarely. And we’re getting on in age, you know, And she’s always been a very sharp kid, and she reached out to me today. I haven’t spoken to her in at least a year and a half or something like that. That’s about the, that’s about as often as we contact each other or communicate. It used to be more, but she’s just grown more distant. And she works from home 100% of the time. She has two cats. She lives with her stepdad, who is an asshole, and her mom, who is very happy to have her there. Okay.

And so here is the story. Like, she’s seen normal and all, and we just chatted and reminisced. She talks about like she’s a sailor, she’s a captain (for real), she’s like the captain of, she sails regattas and shit. And she keeps fit, like really fit. And all is going good and well. And out of the blue, she said like, yeah, I remember that you told me you had Lyme disease, which I have had, and I have still, and have had many times, and it will never go away because you need like antibiotics or whatever the fuck. And she said, like, yeah, I did that too, and I felt like shit, and I had no energy. But then I met this, and get this, she met a natural, natural therapist. I think she’s, she calls him a natural therapist. Yeah? All right, you follow?

And she starts telling me that since she went to this natural homeopathy or whatever the fuck, it’s not homeopathy, he calls him a naturopath, I suppose, or something like that. I have a link actually. Some guy who claims he is a neurologist from Ukraine, but he can’t practice neurology (for some reason), so now he does this. And she has, she bought, she bought a machine from him that she sits with for an hour every day for a year and a half now. And I asked, how much, how much is this machine? And it’s like a thousand dollars.

Wow. Ok. And what does this machine do exactly? I ask. And she says, yeah, it emits electromagnetic waves or some shit. (ofcourse.jpg) And she had a little trouble explaining it, like how it works, how it actually works, there’s frequencies involved. every human has a frequency. And I asked, what frequency is Lyme disease? And she… moved on. And I asked her, maybe you can send me the manual for the machine. Can you send me, like, what is the model number and the number and the serial number? I’ll go online. I just wanna check it out because it maybe can help me, wink wink, you know what the fuck I mean. And I’m getting such fucking bad vibes from this, and it’s obvious from the second she mentioned it. It’s a fucking scam. It’s such a fucking massive scam. She’s just been, you know, and she says like she feels perfect and she’s so happy and has so much energy and she’s been doing this for a year and a half, for an hour every day. And like, it’s so fucking weird seeing it because this is a rational, intelligent woman who I know studied a lot and read a lot, been through a lot. And she knows me, she knows I’m from an academic, intellectual family, and we are also Polaks, so we question everything, literally everything.

And I laughed at her in the beginning. I just like, like a cordial, very friendly laugh. Like, are you fucking serious about this shit? Like, are you being serious right now? You must have an idea of what I’m going to say to this, right? seriously? But she kept, she was adamant, and she said I should book an appointment. And I said, sure! I will do that. I wanna book an appointment with this guy, cost me like 20 bucks or something, in Warsaw. And I said, yeah, okay, we’ll go there together, you and I together, and we’ll talk to the guy. I will gladly pay. I will take the flight over to Warsaw, no problem, and I will. I’ll get that done. And we’ll go talk to this guy together. Is that okay? And she’s like, oh yeah, sure, maybe, um, you just have to check his schedule. And she was so avoidant about the whole fucking thing. Everything I asked about, i mean if she was trying to sell me on this thing, I was telling her straight up I was buying it. You know what I mean? Like sure, let’s try this! I’m game! No notes! This woman has been a bank director for a major bank with many branches all over the world, like, she, she’s not a dumb chicken.

And fairly early on in the conversation, I started recording it, because I wanted to check out all of her claims so I could remember everything and keep receipts (only for personal use and transcription- yes that is technically immoral but in this case I seriously just act as a cop), learn exactly who this guy is, where he works, what is what. I can do some background check on this dude. And because it’s like, it’s such an obvious scam, and he has obviously got her on the hook, and he obviously is milking her for money. It’s like a textbook scam, and it is just insane to me how some people fall for that. But that has also happened with another cousin of mine, who got involved in a multi-level marketing scheme without knowing. Poland is still very much behind the times, and will always stay behind the times because of what they went through, you know, for many, many centuries or whatever.

So anyway, I like, I just played along. I just pretended to be super interested and just ask her as many questions as I could and just, you know, prodded and poked. And I am very, very worried. I’m seriously worried about her. Something is, like, this is nuts. This is nuts. What do you do? I don’t know what to do. What do I do if I have a family member who gets caught up in an MLM scheme? What would one do? What can one do? How do I approach this? I got the facts, I got the recordings, and I’m gonna, like, just check everything she says. I’m gonna check out who this guy is, how, I’m gonna fucking find out everything about this. And then I need, once I have the information to act upon, I need to know how to act. And I need to know what to do now. Right now, shit is like the way it is, I’m not gonna touch it. I’m gonna prepare very carefully, tactically, strategically, to reach her. Because I know, I could tell, she had that glazed over eyes like she joined a cult or something. And she believes in this shit, it helps her find, she said that she’s feeling great and she has lots of energy, she’s doing shit. Good, I’m not gonna mess with that. But she is being rused, bamboozled, fucking tricked and scammed. She is being conned, and it’s my responsibility and my duty as her family to do something about it.

And this is my conundrum. I need help. What the fuck do I do?

Has realizing that our time on earth is finite changed how you see life?

Lately I’ve been thinking about death: it happens to all of us, it’s something normal, it will happen to me, I could even die tomorrow. Even if I don’t want it, I will die, like everyone else. I’m not exceptional just for being me. No matter how many gods I invent, no matter how many opportunistic preachers I pay because they promise to save me.

I’m just a monkey among 8 billion monkeys, I’m insignificant. Nothing wrong with that. It is what it is.

My life so far: take the path of least resistance. I have a job I don’t like much but I do it good enough so I don’t get fired, I enjoy cooking, fishing, poetry and drawing, hobbies that are cheap. I don’t need to keep up with the joneses.

There seems to be a perception that somebody like me is a loser, lazy, somebody who fails to live up to his potential, maybe I should try to do something exceptional with my finite time on earth, leave a legacy…

But that doesn’t appeal to me. After I die I won’t feel nothing, nor will I care about a legacy, so what’s the point?

Did realizing your time on earth is finite change how you see life?

Feel free to point out if this is me being depressed or if I need to snap out of my misanthropy, as somebody put it. I don’t consider myself depressed but after seeing and reading what humans do to other humans I don’t trust the better angels of our nature can make the world a better place.