makes community about video game arguments.

then makes community about not arguing with me.

Don’t underestimate the power of shitposting.

That said, the Fediverse products are still behind in features, polish and ease-of-use. The mainstream prizes these surface-level things more than any others. It will take years of development still to fully catch up in that regard. So, it’s the long-haul.

How about Venice?

I read it as scenery. Probably because the thread is about travel.

There’s a principle in alcoholics support groups called “fake it til you make it”.

Fake is a sort of meaningless word. You are the sum of your own choices, throughout your life. There is no such thing as some sort of “true” you that is inherent and unchangeable, all of your attitudes, emotions, likes/dislikes are like clothes you wear. They can be changed with a pattern of choices that fall under your overarching will.

It’s not easy, though, not by a long shot. So, one technique is to fake it til you make it. Pretend at first, fake whatever trait you are trying to establish. You’ll find over time your willpower turns that into the new “true you”. You can change various aspects of yourself, it’s all under your power.

It’s a hell of a steep hill to climb alone though, so you might want some help along the way. Addiction support groups serve this purpose for people trying to get past their addictions. You might need some pharmaceutical assistance though, if you have a chronic problem, so a doctor might be a wise move.

He’s how I caught up with the big, popular stories after dropping comic books years ago. His audio performance is simply superb, don’t even need the visuals.

RIP Ben. In memory:

https://youtu.be/4hZo5vi9bac

Going for a walk can sometimes scratch that itch. Instead of checking the news of a national or global scale, which you can’t ultimately do a lot about anyway, you’re checking “the news” of your immediate environment with your own eyeballs. It usually doesn’t change a lot, but what else is new?

Not a big fan.

Frankly though I think Snowden gets way too much credit. Anyone with any sense that looked at the Patriot Act knew what was going to happen, and people were raising alarm from the beginning. He just confirmed what already should have been very obvious.

https://youtube.com/@realryanchapman

This guy is pretty good.

Oh, is this the new Scientology doctrine now?

a^2 + b^2 = c^2???

Lies.

I think the term ethnic cleansing is underused. It’s a strong term with a clear, unambiguous meaning that people can still stand against. It does not run afoul of the fact that when many people hear “genocide”, they don’t think of formal definitions, they think of WW2, trains and gas chambers, and attempts at thorough extermination at a large scale.

Ethnic cleansing, on the other hand, begs simple questions, like, what is the ethnicity being cleansed from? Simple answer: their land. How are they being cleansed? Killed, driven away or assimilated into another culture. What, exactly, is being cleansed? That group of distinct people right there, their name is whatever.

It’s clear, concise, and very hard to argue with from any sort of semantic position.

You ask that … on the internet…?

…egg salad?

tbf, salad can come in many forms, and is often served in a bowl. Wrap is a bit of a grey area, but a salad in a wrap is a thing.

Anti-consumer rules…? What are those? Sounds like communist propaganda to me. All hail the corporate overlords job creators!

I don’t think you know very much about plexiglass.

If the concern is safety during an evacuation, just make them breakaway at a certain amount of pressure. They could just fold down and fall flat or something.

Also good to never underestimate human negativity bias, where the brain remembers bad things far more than it remembers positive things.

Look at air travel. We invented it over a century ago, and have made it safe enough that a single failure out of thousands of successful flights becomes newsworthy.

The statistical likelihood of stupid-yet-capable aliens happening to fuck up that badly is very small.

The universe is big enough that life probably exists in other places. Anything advanced enough to reach us (an extraordinarily difficult feat) would not be dumb and incompetent enough to fall under the control of people, and people just want to believe in something fun to compensate for how boring modern life can be.