Even my local supermarket has like ‘258 vendors and affiliates’ as their cookie listing.

Can you imagine shopping in person there, and the entire supermarket packed to the gills with dudes in trenchcoats and magnifying glasses, taking a peak at the exact product that I might consider buying? That’s what they’re doing. Fuck all that bullshit.

We’ll also welcome our Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica brethren, obviously :D

Only a fool or a 12 year old would think otherwise. Back in the late ‘90’s, the web had a great sense of community. On forums, IRC, places like Cybertown, etc. You had smaller communities where you could reasonably know most users. They had a human scale; like a friendly neighbourhood.

Modern social media is definitely terrible. It happened because we were too welcoming. Back in those days, the web was a nerd domain. We all shared the same sort of interests and optimism for the future of the web. You had to BE a nerd to get online. To WANT to be online.

But now that it’s too easy for everyone to get on, the idiots have taken over. We really should kick everyone off the web who can’t name at least three characters from either Star Wars or Star Trek.

It would also be great if devs added things during development that should simply be there at launch. Instead of that, shit gets rushed out the door with promises of future fixes and updates. And then devs get all huffy when people rightfully ask for things to be added that are supposed to be basic launch features…

I’ve owned a fair few Fisher Space Pens throughout the years. It’s an interesting bit of space memorabilia that’s functional and affordable. It’s an impressive bit of engineering.

As a space nerd, I love the pen. As a pen guy…. There’s better options. The cartridge just doesn’t write as smooth as I like, nor is it a really bold, saturated line. For daily actual writing use, I use a Lamy Safari rollerball or a Pilot B2P.

I’m in my early 40’s. I’m still mortified when the phone makes a sound when it shouldn’t. I always double check it’s on silent while going to a movie for example. Meanwhile there’s fuckheads three rows up playing TikTok at full volume while the trailers are running.

Honestly, you should legally be allowed to beat someone like that to death with their own device.

If someone actively plays loud shit in public transport, they should get a lifetime ban for it. Nobody likes being on public transport; I’d drive a car if I could. I’m basically forced to be there.

So if someone actively makes that worse, they should be forced to walk and contemplate their life choices.

It’s so fucking annoying. Your phone shouldn’t really make ANY sound as far as I’m concerned, but I’ll allow a low volume ring or single beep or bloop for a notification. But if your phone feels the need to make a sound every 20 seconds while you’re looking at the fucking thing, you need to turn that shit off.

At some point it’s gonna get dystopian enough that your phone will require a blood sample before it lets you online, to confirm that you are in fact a meat popsicle.

It was pretty obvious most Americans don’t care about Gaza, and didn’t let it influence their voting.

I’ve seen polling prior to the election that asked people about their most important issues when voting.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/651719/economy-important-issue-2024-presidential-vote.aspx

The Republican voter’s top issues were the economy, immigration, terrorism/nation security, crime and taxes.

Meanwhile, the Democrat top issues were US democracy, the supreme court, abortion, healthcare and education.

Basically, foreign policy was a non issue for voters. Gaza did not factor into most voter’s decisions at all. And of course it doesn’t. When you’re worried about putting food on the table, you can’t afford rent, your bodily autonomy is at stake and your country is going to shit… you’d be silly to vote based on Gaza. Because that’s directly voting against your own interests. Gaza should not have been a large talking point or even at all.

I think the reason a lot of Democrats stayed home was basically candidate fatigue. They just didn’t feel like voting for a candidate so boring and faceless. And she didn’t have nearly enough time to turn things around. Why bother voting when democratic leadership clearly isn’t taking voters and their actual issues seriously?

Look at history. The 2003 Iraq war and subsequent occupation resulted in at least 150.000 deaths, at the absolute lowest estimate. The biggest estimate is over a million.

Afghanistan? 176.000

Gulf War? 50.000

Yugoslav war? 130.000

Vietnam War? 970.000 to 3 million.

And those are conflicts that the US was directly involved in with boots on the ground. Few people lost sleep over any of those civilian casualties. Could you even point to Kosovo on a map?

What’s another 50.000 dead Palestinians you ask? A rounding error on a footnote of history. It’s a statistic. And that’s ignoring the fact that this is happening in another country with only indirect US support.

People SHOULD care about the Palestinians. But it’s just not relevant to the day to day lives of average Americans.

After it gets dark, they refill it with lighter fluid. Every morning they light it fresh with a big ‘ole Zippo.

Heck, between the media, The Donald on Reddit and the whole pandemic, people were rightfully getting burned out on everything. I don’t really have any active memories between march 2020 and early 2023. That whole time period feels like a big blur. And that’s just me as a European. I can imagine it’s way worse for people in the US…

I had to use mine as a desktop for two weeks while my PC was undergoing a repair. It was wholly uneventful: installed OpenOffice and had a wholly normal workweek. It’s perfectly fine to use as a regular, boring desktop if you need it to. Absolutely love the Steamdeck. Every gamer should have one.

Some works will outright lie about it. For example, the TV show and movie Fargo specifically tell you it’s a true story, and even that names have been changed but ‘the rest has been told exactly as it happened’.

To me that’s weird. It doesn’t really add to the end result in my opinion, but would breed distrust when people discovered it was wholly fictional.

Still, even with things that are meant to be accurate portrayal of an event, it’s always good to check the facts. Hollywood just can’t help but fiddle with reality to tell a more interesting story, even when it doesn’t need it.

“Oi, cunt!”

While I’m not fundamentally opposed to kids learning basic math, even at that time it was used (think 1990-1996) it was a bullshit argument to ban them. After all, they were already cheap enough that a kid could have one on their wrist!

Heck, you can now buy them for less than a dollar on Aliexpress. But why would you, since literally every smartphone has one built in. It was silly to ban them.

Those remote control watches were actually banned at the schools I went to as a kid. Along with other calculator watches, couldn’t have one of those either. ‘Because you need to know math and won’t always have a calculator on you when you grow up’ 😂

I hear the Mariana Trench is lovely this time of year.

Neat, I didn’t know that was a thing that they offered. Sounds like a good idea to keep people safe from stupid mistakes.