I remember plenty of pre-Reddit forums also being exactly the same way.

If anything, the big difference was that whoever was in charge tended to end up just banning whoever disagreed with them. So most people either learned not to contradict “what was known”, or got kicked out. (In fairness, Reddit also had that problem, but subjectively not as often.)

Small horses, like small dogs, are herd animals, are utterly convinced they are ten times their actual size, and will show this off at any opportunity.

“Blame England” is basically the “Blame Canada!” of history discussions.

Like the other comment says, concrete is rocks of various sizes (called “aggregate”) mixed with a cement and other additives to change its particular properties.

The cement is the really important point, because once water is added to the cement, it undergoes a chemical reaction which hardens it. Saying cement “dries” isn’t quite correct - yes, it stops being wet, but some of the water actually ends up incorporated into the molecules of the final cement. This is also why cement is really hard to recycle - you have to undo that chemical reaction, as opposed to asphalt which stays the same material.

Fun fact: When concrete is mixed at a big plant, it begins curing immediately. Concrete being carried in those big mixer trucks needs to be delivered before it cures in the truck!

I’m not honestly sure. Asphalt (or, more properly, asphalt and gravel as a mixture, which is what is mostly used as a road surface) and concrete both are pretty ‘hard’ materials.

Specifically talking about asphalt vs. concrete:

• Asphalt is relatively cheap vs. concrete. This is partly because asphalt is a whole lot easier to recycle than concrete, which is almost un-recyclable, but also because asphalt is a relatively “simple” material - it’s mostly petroleum byproducts and gravel.

• Concrete doesn’t grip very well, compared to the relatively textured surface of asphalt. Especially when wet! This is why you often see concrete formed with “ridges” or “bumps” cast into it. However…

• This also makes concrete noisier and bumpier to drive over, making drivers less happy. It’s why it’s often used for short, low-speed uses like driveways, parking lots, or side streets.

Just about the only thing concrete has going for it is it’s endurance, which it definitely wins handily.

Every few years another engineered road solution is conceived - I’ve seen variations that would use glass which could be ‘re-fused’, concepts for recycling plastic waste, and many more. Most of these run into the issue that they’re either less ‘grippy’, or that they simply cost more even accounting for the longer lifespan.

I’ve been here since that time, and I’m pretty sure your guide to the Fediverse was a huge help in understanding how the Fediverse works. Thank you very much for it.

Politics-wise, I still frankly see some frankly rather alarming takes on here, but that just makes me more committed to building this up to be a better place. I’m certainly glad to see another friend here as well!

This is a big thing killing my interaction with Lemmy as well. I want to like it, but I drop into a discussion thread and the top-engaged/boosted comments are spicy and almost designed to promote maximum anger. And I feel like, “Do I really, really want to spend significant time writing out a deeper comment to engage with this community…?”

Eh. That seems more like typical out-of-control jargon and labeling ideology than any admin malfeasance. It’s unfortunately something I’ve seen a few times - I had several debates with people who likewise insisted that even using it in the sense of ‘to slow something down’ was improper, or that using potentially insulting words in any context caused “harm”. It’s a mindset that goes beyond any Reddit issues.

Back when I used to mod Reddit, starting maybe a year or so ago we’d occasionally get users who would be inexplicably targeted by the auto-filter.

The accounts weren’t new, weren’t shadowbanned, weren’t using any filter-triggering words (that I could guess at), and an examination via Pushshift didn’t reveal any kind of spammy behavior. Nonetheless, their posts would get silently removed by the site-wide filter, and frequently we wouldn’t even know until they modmailed us.

Now I can’t help but wonder if this was a result of a beta-test of something like this. Something they had done had invisibly lowered their “Reddit credit”, leaving us as confused as them.