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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Plus the reporting on it.

    At a certain point, people start saying things like “X is supposed to be bad now, but give it 5 years and it’ll probably be healthy again!” or “they say you’re not supposed to do Y anymore…”.

    Because, of course, most people get their information from news sources who are always trying to find the next superfood or poison that we’ve all been consuming for hundreds of years. And often, many of the things were taught when we’re younger are no longer considered correct, or at least fully correct, anymore.

    So at a point people just get tired, ignore all of it, and just do whatever they were going to do anyway, because from their perspective, scientists can’t make their mind up anyway.





  • Weirdly it’s the other way for me. I love Cyberpunk and am trying to replay it, and my favourite games have always been long and story driven, I love turning over the rocks and seeing how deep it all goes, playing KOTOR as a kid was just fascinating.

    But, they’re a slow burn that take some engagement to really enjoy. When I’m tired I miss all the details and nuance, find I’ve not been listening to dialogue and stuff.

    But I can fire up something like Overwatch and can play well effortlessly almost instinctually. I often don’t get much time to game, so the fact its full-on actually helps, whereas in an RPG, you can easily burn half an hour on what’s basically just dialogue and travel. It’s hard to take your time to enjoy it when you don’t have time.

    But it’s fine, it’s something to look forward to occasionally. You don’t watch a movie every night, and ultimately I could find time, but I feel better spending that time on other things usually, or just letting off steam on a less thinky game.



  • It’s the kind of meaningless vague posting that rightoids are rightly criticised for when they post shit about the people they consider to be the ‘problem’. It’s vaguely shaped like the way they see the world, but really this is about as substantial as the ‘immigrant benefit fraud’ posts your shitty uncle posts.

    I don’t even know what this is referencing, or how this would work, but everyone is in here saying ‘Omg so true’ and believing that this is the reason that things are shitty.

    Like, everyone’s quick to jump on bollocks conspiracy theories, and consider such things as flat-earthers to be significant in any way, but you’ll constantly see vague shit implying these enormous, unlikely conspiracies between multiple competing companies, the government, involving the collusion and silence of thousands of people, and they get up voted because people believe it’s the sort of thing that could happen.

    What bothers me is that it ends up coming to ‘someone should do something about this!’, but exaggerating constantly makes extreme options look reasonable or even necessary.

    Very few people can actually say what they’d want the new status-quo to look like though, outside of vague slogans or utopian ideas that those in power will somehow do things wisely, justly and selflessly, like they never have before. We can’t compare to any other attempt at communism, and even the most prosperous socialist state would be considered ‘neolib’. Because the thing is, it’s really not clear how communism is the silver bullet many think it is, but also, the vagueness and disparity about the end goal means that we can’t really look at our current situation, look at the proposed one, look at what it will take to get there, and make an informed decision on which is likely to actually make things better.




  • German government procurement is horrendously inefficient, but it’s because of incredible levels of transparency to try to prevent corruption.

    It means that even the most minute purchases come with lots of beurocracy attached.

    You can look at it almost as its own kind of corruption, that syphons money into the beurocracy, but it does mean that things aren’t happing without people knowing, and that, for an extreme example, when you decide to invade another country isn’t the moment when you discover that you discover that most of your equipment had been sold for vodka money a decade ago!



  • Can someone fill me in on wtf is going on with drag in the US?

    I’m from the UK, drag is like our longest running joke, and families go to pantomimes all the time. Recently theres been a more direct association with the LGBT community in the popular understanding of it. I’d say that most people’s view on drag here is:

    • not necessarily an LGBT thing, though it very often is
    • kinda traditional
    • can be funny, or just a fun performance
    • pretty lighthearted
    • not expected to be overtly sexual by default, depends on context

    Some of the stuff I see out of the US is bizzare. I realise that the weirder stuff is always going to be amplified in the news, and people are not necessarily trying to show the full context in photos. But I’ve seen shit like

    • rightoids getting so worked up that the pickets outside resemble the Gaza Strip or, as I’m reliabily told, the average us abortion clinic
    • performances in weird places like libraries
    • people watching a clearly sexual show in dive bars with their kids in tow that look like they’re starting at a painting in a gallery pondering the meaning of nothingness and looking way out of place

    Like, wtf? Drag isn’t the problem, it’s the weird-ass way that people seem to be responding to it. Go to a show if you think you might enjoy it, read up on the performance or use context ques to understand what kind of drag performance it’s going to be. Certainly don’t go for political reasons and ruin the fun for performers who are just trying to have a good time. But equally, don’t plan shows that are meant to provoke a reaction for political reasons, for the same reason.

    And why the right wingers care so much if fucking beyond me. Imagine having enough free time to consider that important enough to spend your precious free time protesting it rather than doing literally anything else.

    Just chill, it’s a fucking stage show. It’s like the whole toilet thing again, just hysterics over something inconcequential. I’m trans and fabulous as fuck and don’t seem to consider these issues nearly as important than a middle-aged cishet blue collar dude from Texas who may never have met a single trans person or encountered anything like this outside of the Internet.

    Is only fun show, why you heff to be mad?