hraegsvelmir

I mean, even refugees and people on other exceptional visas should, after a certain point. Obviously, they'll have more immediately pressing matters than language classes, but unless you wind up in some sort of ethnic enclave that permits you to be self-sufficient with just your native language, it's ultimately in your best interests to learn the local language.

but I think Americans just aren’t sure which plan will work.

I don't even think it's that complicated. Look at the overlap between Trump voters and AOC or Mamdani voters, or Obama->Bernie->Trump guys. From my perspective, it seems like there are a lot of people who want massive change in how things operate in the US, and a good number of them are willing to vote for whoever says they'll really shake things up in office, regardless of the details of said shaking or the candidate's political affiliation.

The Democrats' problem isn't messaging, it's their message. They destroy their credibility with voters when they claim they'll be able to fix things and make life better on the campaign trail, yet once in office, they work tirelessly to maintain the status quo voters are already so unhappy with. And when they do have a candidate come along who promises the sort of change people are looking for, who people actually believe are being sincere when they say they'll change things and deliver for the working class, the Democrats and DNC have shown they'll do everything they can to prevent that person from actually winning and sideline them as much as possible in the event they do win. The politically engaged are tired of busting their asses to get people elected or promote their policies, only to see the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot, rolling over and watering down their goals in the name of bipartisanship, often before the Republicans even ask for it. If a Democratic Senator told me they were campaigning on free ice cream for everyone, I'd expect to be brought down to "One cup of skim milk for everyone at or below the federal poverty line, provided they can complete 20 pages of paperwork to prove they really deserve it, and submit this documentation on a website that's only operating between 1-3pm on February 29th, but closed every other day during leap years and completely inoperable in regular calendar years," by the time a draft materializes, much less after Republican obstruction and pushback.

It's no wonder people have soured on them.

It's a standard letter in Icelandic, so there are probably plenty of fonts incorporating thorn, even if not everyone uses them. Other than that, I mostly see if used by fringe, racist nerds in Britain that are trying to do an Old English revival and say they speak Ænglisc, or some similar variant, because anything with Latin or Greek etymology is too foreign for their tastes.

Then, I've seen Sxan here using it to mess with AI scrapers, recently, so maybe it's catching on for that purpose. Though it does kind of annoy me when I see it used as a general replacement for any sound that might be anglicized as a 'th' and I see thorn used where it should really be ð.

I can't really answer for anything other than ebikes, but that's mostly because ebikes have attracted the same group of inconsiderate assholes that dirtbikes and quads in urban areas have attracted in the past. I'm sure there are plenty of people on ebikes that just ride them around as they're meant to, and I'm all for using them for replacing cars and stuff for commutes. But if you ask me what I think of them, the first things that come to mind are assholes riding them at high speeds in the dark with no lights, cutting through grass, trails and anything else in the parks in my city and nearly running people down. Or people whipping around corners on crowded sidewalks on them. Or delivery drivers running red lights on them and taking people out in crosswalks that had the right of way.

None of these things are the fault of ebikes themselves, but when a huge portion of the ridership that someone comes in contact with consist of either inconsiderate assholes or desperate people whose livelihoods are determined by inconsiderate assholes, it shouldn't be a shocker that it leads to an overall negative impression of people using them.

Depending on the state, you could also easily record the calls for documentation. Look up state laws, and if you happen to be in a one party consent state, have at it with the phone calls, too.

I don’t think I’ve ever followed that workflow to be honest. Except for when doing something niche and way above and beyond something a casual user would do.

I don't think I've ever actually done that after maybe 2010. Package managers are awesome, and package availability is better than ever. Linux has improved massively in this regard since then, but its reputation still seems to be stuck in the "Well, if you're serious about using Linux, you're wasting your time with Ubuntu. You should install Gentoo and build everything yourself!" era.

Even on the odd occasion that I'm unable to find something in the repos, I'd sooner just find the project's git repo, clone it and build it. Most of the time now, they have some sort of automated helper script that will build and install the package for you, and when they don't, you've gone way off the beaten path and left behind any semblance of pretending to be an average user. But, hey, at least make isn't a terribly difficult command to use.

If someone is already informed enough to care about having a local account under Windows, seek out ways to circumvent the normal account procedure and feels comfortable applying edits to the registry, I think they have already excluded themselves from the category of people who are unwilling to invest time and effort to get their computer/OS running how they want.

What you wrote may apply to the general public, but not for the circumstances discussed in the post you're replying to.

Yeah, and you get all sorts of weird pronoun use in Brazil, anyway, once you branch off from formal speech. I've heard people using tu with the você conjugations, people trying to act like gangsters using nós instead of a gente, Brazil is a weird place. On the plus side, it makes it a bit easier for non-natives, since you can mess up most things in terms of pronunciation and conjugations, and still find someone that will go "Ai, meu deus, mas você fala igual às pessoas da minha cidade."

I would think this needs the regional classification. There are big chunks of Brazil where tu may as well not exist as a pronoun. I also wouldn't necessarily say that addressing someone by their name would be universally taken as a sign of respect. Plenty of people will just use names like that in informal speech, like "Você não vai acreditar o que falou o João ontem."

For Spanish, I pretty much only use it with customers at work, and nice, elderly people. I guess I would use it if I were in a court for something in Spanish, but otherwise, I don't really use it at all.

I don't know about Venezuelans, but there are a lot of Cubans who would vote for a guy running on closing public schools, libraries and hospitals if you showed them a quote where Fidel said anything remotely positive about them.

There are two other things that also ought to have made this less of a surprise. For a lot of older, first-generation immigrants from all over Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, they still really buy into a politician who presents themselves as a strong man that gets stuff done, and will be tough on crime. I heard it from coworkers from Mexico, DR, Peru, Ecuador and plenty of other places. The other part of it is also key in keeping them like this. Spanish-language media in the US presents itself as neutral and professional, but is pretty far-right, and manages to put a more respectable dressing on crazy, conspiratorial shenanigans than Fox do in English. They also know that a large chunk of their audience isn't going to be able to fact-check English sources when they publish lies.

If I go over and watch the news with my mother-in-law, they're always very deliberate with pretending to faithfully translate, while tending to take non-Republicans' statements and changing a key word or two from an indisputably better translation of the English, to a related word with much more negative connotations. I've also seen them present a translation as being a full translation of the English audio, while omitting key parts that provide crucial context to the bits they do decide to translate. They also love to keep on airing debunked right-wing conspiracies, weeks or months after they've fallen out of the English news cycle and have been accepted as debunked. It's really annoying to watch.

I'm fine with finding my own way, but taking directions from people in my hometown is impossible. They'll use things like the main grocery store, but call it by a name it hasn't had since going out of business 25 years ago, with two other companies giving it a go between now and then.