If an acquaintance tried to pass off a joke from TV or movies as if they had made it up themselves, would you point it out?

#EvanPoll #poll

That is some disgusting meat grinder math, and I'm sorry I did it.

I did some back of the envelope calculations. They are dark; I'm sorry. But according to the best official figures available, about 47K people had died in Gaza by Jan 2025; the number in November is about 71K. So, about 3100 people per month died since Oct 7 in Gaza under Biden; about 2500 per month under Trump.

But the question seems to keep coming up, and it probably will more as we head into the 2026 midterm election season in the US. Are Arab Americans right or wrong to pressure Democrats to more vigorously oppose the genocide in Gaza? One aspect that comes up in discourse is whether things have been worse or better since Trump took office.

Thanks, everyone, for responses and replies.

I think this is a hard question; it might even be an obscene question. Tens of thousands died before and after Trump took office. As one commenter put it, there is no "better" in a genocide.

Has Gaza done better with Donald Trump or Joseph Biden as President of the United States?

#EvanPoll #poll

Hey, all. I need to find some examples of small (like, Raspberry-Pi-small) Fediverse instances that shut down because the traffic was too much for them. Do you know of any examples? Blog posts or other URLs with explanations would be helpful.

(Note that this is somewhat different from the thundering herd problem when someone shares a link on the Fediverse to a non-Fediverse site.)

So, culture aside, there are some other aspects to consider. One is simple economics; if you make the dish at home, you are somewhat or even very much less likely to go buy it at the restaurant. Someone has either invented or adapted a very nice dish that you liked, and you're cutting them off from the benefit of your own business. If we want practitioners of the craft and art of cooking to keep doing it, it's good to support them financially.

Whether it's Indonesian food in Amsterdam, Southeast Asian food in Paris or Central American food in the USA, the pattern of colonial cultures extracting now intangible resources from invaded and colonised peoples continues.

There are also relative power dynamics at stake. When your country has invaded and colonised another, extracting resources and labour over centuries, there is a particularly vampiric quality to appropriating culture from the people there, too. The fact that formerly colonised people often migrate to the metropole, and that migrants often set up restaurants with their home cuisine, confounds the issue.

Again, there's a big difference between making food for yourself at home and selling it to others.

But there are ways to appropriate culture even if you're not selling it. I mentioned in replies the practice of publishing recipes in blog posts, either naming the restaurant or just the dish. Even sharing the recipe with friends and family is performative. Making the food for dinner guests can be, too.

A good story about reverse engineering is the Portland food cart where the creators literally spied on Oaxacan women making tortillas to learn their secrets.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/portland-burrito-cart-closes-after-owners-are-accused-of-cultural-appropriation_n_5926ef7ee4b062f96a348181

I mentioned in replies that as a member of the Palestinian diaspora, I make our food for friends and colleagues when they come to my house, but I don't normally give out family recipes. Those are for my kids, niblings, and future generations.

I recognise that this is different than running a restaurant. And that not all diaspora cultures hold onto recipes this way. Palestinian food culture has been particularly plundered in a conscious campaign of erasure, so it's a very sensitive one.

First and foremost is cultural appropriation. Food culture is an important part of retaining culture in diaspora communities, and different communities have different standards for sharing that culture outside the community. Especially when dishes are part of a cohesive whole, decontextualizing and commodifying those dishes can feel disrespectful and appropriative.

Wow, what a poll! Thanks to everyone who responded or replied. I thought about this topic as I was reverse engineering the blueberry pancakes from a cafe in Halifax that I really liked. My answer is yes, but. I'll give my reasoning.

Is it OK to reverse engineer the recipes for restaurant dishes so you can make them at home?

#EvanPoll #poll

We watched the first season over the last couple of weeks. It was a really fun watch; I was completely unspoiled, so it was completely fresh.

Most of the time was spent absolutely howling at the TV. The Faithful have only one possible path to success: forming coalitions and voting in blocs. Waiting until the Round Table to make decisions within the bloc is catastrophic; the bloc has to come to the table with a decision and stick with it.

This was a crazy one. Many of the replies assumed that "AI" meant a cloud based consumer LLM, and there were concerns about providing your friends' and colleagues' posts and profiles as training data without their permission.

Is it OK for people to use AI to analyze their own Fediverse data like their home timeline, friends, and followers?

#EvanPoll #poll

@jon @Vivaldi Thank you for it! It means a lot to the Fediverse to have your support.