• 0 Posts
  • 747 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 18th, 2023

help-circle
  • People just like to complain.

    I complain about speed traps because ACAB. I don’t blame drivers for speeding- I blame bad civil engineering for roads that always seem to optimize high-speed vehicle traffic first and then slap a much lower “speed limit” sign on the side of that road.

    If having safer roads was truly the goal, the government responsible would use proper traffic-calming designs. Narrower streets, tighter turns, raised pedestrian walkways. Trees and other barriers at the roadside to make drivers uncomfortable speeding.


    1. This is one of the most shower-related shower thoughts of all time. Kudos!

    2. A lot of people clean their bathrooms regularly. CLR or generic knock-offs are great for mineral buildup on faucets, drains, handles, etc.

    3. My local water company regularly takes the main treatment system offline for maintenance and switches to the backup system. I don’t know all the details but every time they do it the water is heavily chlorinated for a week or so, and this happens roughly every 6 months. So until I can afford to get a full-home filtration system installed, I bought a shower filter that goes between the water pipe and shower head. It needs changed every 6 months so I might as well clean everything while I’m at it.




  • I can build a better PC for less money

    Maybe we should wait until we know the price before making memes about this?

    Especially with how RAM and SSD prices are increasing. A huge part of the Steam Deck’s success was because they partnered with AMD to get a great price-to-performance APU in a market where GPU prices were inflated by crypto, and now AI.

    Of course if RAM and SSD prices get too high these machines might get bought up and scrapped for parts anyways, but let’s at least see if that happens first.



  • Something along the lines of “well I actually don’t like anime!”. And started talking about how people expect him to be an anime fan, and how he lived in Japan for a while and liked manga a lot but not so much anime.

    It was a a party with a lot of “alternative” people, most of whom probably would just say “yeah I like anime”. I think the guy was expecting me to say that so that he could that he could then subvert expectations, but my more neutral response kind of derailed things.



    1. Bigotry and prejudice is always bad, even if it’s not against a “protected class”. Hating on white people, straight people, cis people, men, or anyone else for the way they were born, what their ancestors did makes the world a worse place. Heck, “white” itself is a nebulous concept that changes over time and is different depending on which racist you’re talking to. Just because someone resembles your oppressor does not make them your enemy.

    2. Kind of related, but I don’t broadly judge categories of things. I was at a party recently and someone asked me if I liked anime, and I responded that I like some anime. Most of it I don’t like, but that’s not specific to anime. In my experience, roughly 80-90% of all media is somewhere between “garbage” and “mediocre”, and it’s the 10-20% at the top that I look for. A lot of my favorite bands happen to be metal, but I’m not going to like every band that uses distorted guitars.

    Perhaps another way of phrasing it is that I usually find that the parameters which define genre are often separate from the parameters that determine my personal enjoyment.

    My theory is that most people are more concerned with the social groups around media than the media itself.



  • I would expand that to body modification in general. Tattoos, piercings, hair loss/removal treatments, shoe lifts, fake nails. Heck, you could even expand it to clothing and fashion.

    For me it comes down to cost-benefit analysis. For me personally I find it pretty easy to change my mind, so that’s usually “cheaper” than trying to change my body. Or you could say that I don’t see much “benefit” to such changes to my appearance. To let go of my desire to appear a certain way, to stop caring about how others see me. Some might call that cis privelege, but I would argue it’s something most cis people (at least in the US) struggle with too.

    With the people I hang out with, i’m usually the only one without piercings to tattoos. Often I’m the only person with naturally colored hair (I do hope I go grey before losing it because it would be pretty cool to look like an old wizard, but if I lose my hair first I’ll just embrace it).

    At the same time, you could extend the conversation the other way to things like prosthetics. I just saw a meme on Lemmy yesterday about a closeted trans person who had a car accident with a moose and needed extensive surgery afterwords. So rather than restoring how they used to look they took the opportunity to fully transition. From my perspective, the opportunity cost of transitioning was lowered in that case.

    I want to see humanity continue to pursue technology to reduce these costs though. People have been writing fiction for centuries about gender-swapping, even just for a couple of days. If there really was some magical pill that could swap your gender for a day or two, or was easily reversible, or if you could just transfer your brain between artificial bodies, I could see that leading to a lot more empathy in the world.



  • I visited Boston 2 months ago for a wedding. Spent almost a whole week making a vacation of it with my wife. Can confirm all of this is accurate.

    And yes, I went to the famous Italian district in the North End. It was way overpriced and it was fine but not particularly memorable. Just generic american-italian fare you can find in any city in America. The only notable food I had was the absolute worst Pad Thai I’ve ever had in my life.

    I’m a white guy who has lived my whole life in the northeast US, and even I was shocked at the lack of spices or flavor in everything. Even my Dunkin Donuts coffee seemed blander than how it was at home.

    Well, I did get some edibles from the dispensary which included some incredible white chocolate with espresso beans. Not sure if I would count that as “food” though.

    If you do have to eat in downtown Boston I would recommend the South Street Diner. The food itself was just the stuff you would expect from any diner in America, but it was executed well and almost reasonably priced.


  • This can result in support for hardware and software being upwards of two to three YEARS out of date. Which for gamers for example is unacceptable and causes issues more often then not.

    I think your perspective might be a bit biased towards your own bubble here. People are still buying Nintendo Switch’s. People are still buying Steam Decks.

    I am getting close to 600 games in my Steam Library, but only 2 were released this year. Both were Indie games (Fragrance Point and Tower Wizard).

    Ram is costing hundreds of dollars. GPU’s are costing thousands. Desktop gaming, heck desktop ownership in general, has been falling off. If people are still on x86, they are more likely to be on laptops.

    For the average person, the idea that you need your OS to be updated every couple of weeks so that you can check your email and play Minecraft with your kids is insane.



  • Don’t get me wrong: I hate how consumerist Christmas is and how stores have started stocking Christmas decorations in September.

    BUT

    Living in America, the cutoff is Thanksgiving. Which does indeed cede part of the end of November to Christmas.

    However, Halloween has encroached forward, pushed on by the goths. What started as merely Tim Burton fans has evolved. Krampusnacht has started to catch on as a more horror-themed holiday. So a lot of our Halloween decorations just stay up. And there’s no point on making a trip to the attic just to put stuff away so they stay out until the end of December with everything else.