They might be eating the loss this time (we don't know either way), but even if they did, there's an implicit warning there, sort of a "we're letting you off this time, but if you keep pulling this shit, we're not going to let you get off Scot free"
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Yeah, I relate to this so hard.
I find it weird that your wife pushes you on this to the extent that you need to explain. I don't mean this in a judgemental way at all — I'm just confused and wondering whether people like your wife don't experience this same kind of decision fatigue, which would suggest that our experience isn't universal. I've also known people who similarly seem to not understand how it feels to literally be unable to make decisions due to exhaustion. Those people are baffling to me, but I seem to be equally baffling to them
I wish I had some useful advice to give, but I confess I say this out of a sense of selfishness; if I had some wisdom to offer you, it would surely mean I'd not be languishing in the no-motivation pit beside you. Alas, I have no bright ideas on how to get out of this myself, so I have little to offer besides solidarity. For my part, I'm glad to have good company in my misery, at least. Makes me feel less broken when I see how many of us are struggling together
I've read that the reason why holidays are so exhausting is because when you're on holiday, you have to make loads of decisions about everything — you don't have your regular routine to rely on, and this leads to decision fatigue. Even though regular life isn't as bad as this, it's still way more than what most students have to deal with. The little tasks can really drain your executive function if there's enough of them
It certainly should be. Anyone who thinks of sex as not a team sport is just setting themselves up for mediocre experiences
Equally, I've hooked up with some guys who struggle to get off during sex itself (which may be because the grip one uses while masturbating may be firmer than what one experiences during sex).
Having slept with both women and men, I feel like the pressure to reach orgasm seems like it's bad for everyone. One dude I knew felt super insecure about not getting off, which stemmed from a previous partner taking it personally. It's certainly the case that for some men, it can feel uncomfortable to have sex and not reach orgasm. However, I think that everyone would have a better time if people decoupled satisfaction from orgasm.
If I wanted to be certain that I'd get off, then the use of a vibrator helps a lot. That's not necessarily my goal though; some of the best sex I've ever had didn't result in me reaching orgasm, and I find it frustrating when people don't understand that this is possible (I find this problem more common with men). Of course, that's just personal to me — some people may consider reaching orgasm to be an essential part of "good sex", but that's why good communication is the best skill one can develop for better sex.
Personally, I find it useful to distinguish between government and governance. All that infrastructure you describe would be impossible without systems of governance. Government (as most people understand it) isn't the only form of governance.
I'm not sure what a world without government would look like, but to me, that's the big challenge — how do governance (in a manner that's actually democratic without being overly bogged down in bureaucracy). I don't think it's impossible though, and even if we're unfathomably far away from actually getting to a point where we could do away with government, it's useful to ask the question.
"We had a lot of margarine growing up because it was cheap, but by my teenage years we could afford butter, which is a massive upgrade."
My experience was similar. Weirdly, it makes me sort of grateful for growing up in poverty, because there's so many things I got to try as an adult that were huge upgrades, like you describe with butter. The biggest example I can think of is actual parmesan cheese — it blew my mind when I first tried it.
I tend to buy the posher ham, and I always find it funny how some people believe that this fancier stuff is somehow exempt from this kind of processing. It obviously is less processed (I find that cheap ham is bad for making panini because it releases too much water), but it's still an extremely processed product
Basically yeah. But when it comes to startups, actually making something of value is optional. Hell, I know people who have had legitimately good ideas with working proof of concept, but have struggled to get funding because when it comes to venture capital, the main test is one's ability to peddle the right kind of bullshit.
Because you're not having enough interesting arguments now. Perhaps you have an instinct to want to grow and improve, but you're not able to easily access that in the here and now.
I sympathise. Sometimes it's not necessarily even about "winning" an argument, but just articulating your point well enough that things can move forwards. I find I am more likely to dwell on arguments where the other person was arguing against a point different than the one I was trying to make. In those cases, going over the argument in my head is usually me trying to think about how I could have better communicated my point in a manner that would allow the other person to engage with my actual points; perhaps then we could move forward productively and some change happens: either one of us causes the other to yield some ground, or I'm able to fortify my stance and come up with responses to new arguments. Either way, lack of closure sucks, especially when it feels stagnant.
Dwelling on past arguments isn't healthy, but I suspect you already know that, or you wouldn't have asked this question. Try not to beat yourself up about it too much though. Everyone ruminates sometimes, and trying to force yourself to not think of something is doomed to fail. It's more effective to find new things to focus on to help you to move forward, but that's an ongoing effort, and easier said than done.
I think so, yes. It sounds like your stance is similar to my own. My reasoning is that the internet is so ubiquitous in countries like my own, and for all its ills, I am so glad that I was born in a time where my voracious appetite for learning can put me in contact with an abundance of free learning resources and people who are just like me.
Acknowledging the internet as a basic human right would require addressing the severely uneven distribution of its access; I can't ignore the fact that I'm only able to access all this cool stuff because I live in a country that colonised and oppressed a significant chunk of the world. It's no wonder that it's becoming harder to find worthwhile knowledge and community online when the internet and all the technology that supports it is borne of historic injustices. If we want the internet to do something besides serve the interests of capital, we need to address the structural inequalities regarding its access. It's fucked up that there are so many places in the global South that only have access to internet because companies like Meta went in pretending to be charitable, so they could create and capture a new chunk of the market. Apparently in Brazil, it's not abnormal for official government communication to use WhatsApp. Sometimes it makes me feel hopeless for the future
However, I am bolstered by reflecting on the history of other technologies. I was reading recently about how the printing press disrupted society, by giving far more regular people the opportunity to access written ideas, as well as share their own thoughts with the world. This was not a straightforwardly positive thing. There were (and indeed, still are) many privileged people who were of the sentiment that regular people having wider access to the written word was harmful to society, and to those regular people. Whilst I vehemently disagree with the classist sentiment they espoused, I do see some of their point — someone having the ability to read something doesn't necessarily mean they have the skills to understand it. Widespread misinterpretation and misinformation were side effects of the printing press, and it reminds me of some of the harms of the internet that we're experiencing today.
I've read a lot of scholarly works on the question of "what the fuck should we do about all this online misinformation?", and it seems that we don't really have an answer to that right now. It's too late to close Pandora's box now though, so we'll have to figure that out. I think that working towards equitable access to the internet is an important step towards collectively solving that problem, because the internet is something that affects everyone nowadays — even those who can't access it themselves.
I feel like this kind of thing is sort of Steam making a political stance against the publisher. If Steam didn't give refunds, then I imagine that they wouldn't get much flack for that — it'd instead be directed at the publisher. However, if this became more commonplace, then it would end up eroding Steam's reputation. It reminds me of how credit card chargebacks work: you get the refund quite quickly, and then the payment processor/bank chases it up with the merchant (especially if there are lots of chargebacks for that merchant).
That is all to say that from the players perspective, it is indeed nice of them to offer refunds. Also, I respect them drawing this line against this kind of bullshit. Corporations aren't our friends, even when they seem to be working in our favour. However, if a corporation is acting in our favor, against a worse corporation, then I'm here for that, while it exists.
I've been doing a complete rewatch of Deep Space 9, and it really underscored why I didn't enjoy Discovery and Picard. My favourite parts of DS9 are the character driven moments, whether they're big and dramatic, or lightweight and silly. I like that the show has enough space for that. The show has more Plot than previous Star Trek, but that Plot still serves the characters. Discovery is not nearly as bad as Picard on this front, but I still found myself wishing for more opportunity to get to know the characters.
- Jump
New "symbolic image compressor" posted in r/computerscience turns out to be AI hallucinated nonsense
Wow, that's super impressive. The compression is so efficient that it's like I can see the original image in my head. Truly, we are living in the future.
Mass surveillance was definitely okay with them though, as long as they could hide behind flimsy plausible deniability; I remember one of the early 972mag pieces about this that called bullshit on their claim that they have no knowledge that they are supporting mass surveillance — if military/intelligence services come to you and say "hey, we need servers to store terabytes of audio files", then it's bloody obvious what the point
I feel this. I've found that a good response in those circumstances is to say "sorry, can we put a pin in this? I feel like I don't have the capacity to properly process what you're telling me right now, so I'd rather we resume this conversation at a later point. Thanks for helping me figure out [bool question] though."
It's a useful response if one genuinely is interested to learn, but not at that moment.
Sometimes, (amongst friends who accept how thoroughly weird I am) I will actually say "XOR" when I want to make my intentions clear. It means that when they give the silly OR answer, I can jokingly chastise them for poor listening. The downside is that they relish the opportunity to give OR answers when I am not sufficiently specific in my question. I reap what I sow ¯(ツ)_/¯
As others have said, Fitgirl is a major player in the games piracy scene. She doesn't crack the games, but she does repack cracked games (compresses them in clever ways). It's quite common for people to impersonate her or her site to try to fool people into downloading malware. This seems to be another one of those.
She warns against this quite frequently. From her faq, for example:
(Note: this comment is not an endorsement of games piracy, and this community is not the appropriate venue for discussions of that nature. Anyone interested should go to relevant communities like the ones hosted on the db0 Lemmy instance )