i just moved and had to test out the oven... can't wait to get a new stone that actually fits!
i am old and cis but trans shitposters are the best shitposters, this is indisputable. you have my support
This is kind of subjective... what kind of loaf are you trying to make? There's a million different viable scoring patterns depending on the shape. If you're trying to make a traditional demibaguette you'd want to have maybe 3 diagonal cuts overlapping each other by about a third going down the loaf, but there's really no hard and fast rules there.
They mean 30 degrees from horizonal, or compared to the cutting surface. You want to hold the lame parallel to the surface and then lift the edge that's further from the loaf by about 30 degrees.
It also helps to start the cut with the corner of the lame. I personally got better ears by going in a second time to reinforce the same cuts.
Americans especially are trained from a young age to distrust anything that can't be capitalized upon or used to generate profit. They can understand video games or TV shows, but don't have the background in arts or literature to understand where the character designs or plot devices came from. Students looking to enter university are almost universally discouraged from entering the arts because it (probably) won't make them any money as compared to a doctor or lawyer, and the social safety net and arts funding are so underpowered that it's hard to blame anyone for taking a safer path.
Even with scientific research, something much more familiar to techies, there's a distrust or disdain in the general public around research that isn't immediately applicable to profit. Why do astronomy at all when you could be doing cancer research? Why do pure maths when you could be an engineer?
Honestly I think it's just a natural result of living in a hypercapitalist society ruled by a caste of billionaires who are able to influence government policy more and more every year. They can't profit from art or culture (except to use it as a money laundering device), so why should it exist at all? Better that we all are forced to work for them in order to pay our bills and get health insurance for our families. I think a lot of us have internalized this and feel like there's no alternative. I hope there's a backlash.
If you want to be taken seriously online, don't use stupid colloquialisms like "way more seriously." Use grammatically correct phrasing like "far more seriously." Start writing like an adult.