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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2024

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  • I once read a fairly interesting take on this: Historical settings are often chosen to wrap the story in a certain context in order to allow the reader to picture the style and theme without having to establish and explain a new setting first, so basically you skip on world building. If you read an analogy to Zeus you will immediately have an image in mind as well as a bunch of characteristics, no need to establish that beforehand.

    Now, considering this it makes sense to choose a setting people already know - the 16th centruy Ottoman Empire is certainly interesting, but the average reader might know next to nothing about it and you have to explain everything first.

    Why are these three settings used so much? Well, it’s positive feedback! Literature, Theatres and Video Games will select something well known and it receives popularity. In addition, a piece of media using a less-popular setting will have to a) compete with other media to become popular and b) provide plenty of worldbuilding in order to have the setting make sense. A piece of media that both establishes a “new” setting AND is very popular is going to be rare, making the entry of a new mythology/historical setting into mainstream difficult.


  • Blowing into an enclosed space is chaotic, the fan has to push against air currents being deflected. Blowing into an open space (aka sucking out of you dishwasher) is much more orderly, the fan can simply pull the air out and there are much fewer air currents running orthogonal.

    This is as far as my very basic knowledge goes here. You can try this effect by exhaling and inhaling air through a barely open mouth or a straw.

    EDIT: On a related note, never “blow” during fellatio.








  • I’d like to add that there are good versions of “microloans”! I learned that there used to be (or still are, didn’t check) non-profit " banks" in some parts of India (and South africa I think) that would give out small loans of a few dollars to a few hundred dollars (which can be quite a lot of money in India). There was no collateral and low interest, but a group of people had to apply for a loan together. Until the first loan was paid back, the rest of the group couldn’t apply again. It was meant to provide financial backing and capital to microbusinesses (e.g. fishers, farmers, peddlers) that would otherwise be excluded from the financial market due to a lack of collateral and otherwise be forced to take high-interest loans.




  • Checking your comments you seem to have had a run-in with the ML-crowd. Lemmy generally has a plethora of “leftist” (if you restrict your political compass to one dimension) communities, although the variety is immense. Let’s just say there is some … unfriendly turf here on the Fediverse. Plenty of people on the German communities avoid .ml communities.

    I consider it to be the price of diversity. Due to the lack of central moderation (except on authoritarianism-loving instances), communities are much more self-regulating. On better (aka not US-politics) communities people tend to simply disagree or discuss, but rarely go beyond that.