Stop spending all your money on microtransactions!

The suburbs are bad enough but what really gets me when play Geoguessr type games is how much of towns are just a highway with a strip mall and parking lots. Gives me a weird dread-like feeling, kinda like being inside a dying mall right before it's closing.

I am an American, and I once found myself far from home traveling through what I later learned was a ‘bedroom community’ in New Jersey just trying to find a place where we could all pull over and eat something, but apparently “restaurants” were just supremely exotic anywhere within in those, Idk, 300 sq miles.

It was EXTREMELY unsettling… even for an American!

No noises sound like heaven.

Even in the deepest suburbs it's not that hard to form community and connection with your neighbors. Hold a few yard sales, make small talk, greet people walking their dogs, get to know who lives where. That's literally all it takes, that and actually going out.

We complain endlessly, particularly on sites like Lemmy, about the US's lack of "walkable cities" and other systemic obstacles to having better sense of community and social contact, but we hardly ever see people doing something about it.

I get that it's less "fun" to go out and make friends if you don't got a riverwalk and cafes, but the most important ingredient is still there, which is other people you just need to step up and make things happen.

the aetheric monotonous nightmare of commie blocks, with absolutely zero advantages, high cost, and HOA control

You ever seen Vivarium?

Need space to park all those ridiculous cars

Yes, the tiny backyard compared to the big front yard doesn't make sense to me

I can only speak for the Southern US but, developers want to build front-loaded units in subdivisions because they are more profitable. A rear-loaded garage costs a shit ton more in materials and labor, not to mention getting into impervious surface maximums vs lot size etc. I work in permitting/zoning, it's always money, always. Heads up, y'all, don't buy a D.R. Horton house if you can possibly avoid it, the more you know✨️

If you play/hang out in the front area as a sort of almost communal space, it could make sense.

Well you are in luck, in this case they are literally endless.

I like my bugs fried in coconut batter.

Really, I see a lot of people act absolutely revolted at the idea of eating cricket cakes and the like, but will absolutely destroy fried krill patties and similar dishes.

But there are a lot of places in the world where crickets are just part of the cuisine even when they have other food available

Aren't crickets predators? They can be really good. I'm sure they weren't great to your mom though, sorry.

No, the Red Lobster insolvency was driven by declining sales and increasing debt, amid some shady corporate shenanigans with their finances. When they filed, they were about $30 million in the hole (even assuming their high valuations for their intangible assets).

Private equity owners (Golden Gate) made them sell off the land they owned, only to lease it back at above market rates. Then sold the chain to its biggest seafood supplier (Thai Union), who used the restaurant as an outlet for their wholesale seafood rather than as a standalone profitable business (which resulted in huge quality drop off and declining sales).

They were headed in the wrong direction, and the $11 million they lost on endless shrimp didn't make a big difference. It was circling the drain anyway, based on big strategic errors (or just plain old private equity fuckery).

the "bug hate" meme is entirely a product of meat industries worried about people actually embracing alternatives.

I can describe cow and chicken meat with equally disgusting terminology, eating living things in any capacity is objectively weird and gross, we're just more used to eating some living things over others.

Sooner or later we're all going to be eating things like cultured meats and processed insects, it's just a matter of how many people are going to resist and struggle against changes to the way we stay alive.

Imagine calling one of those pods a "home"

Imagine calling a pod a house.