I’ve been reflecting on this a lot lately, especially after watching a video by an internet funny man I enjoy (Eddie Burback) about him locking his phone away for a month (not a feasible strategy for most people.)

I also enjoy pretty much anything online much more on the desktop. When things started pivoting to app-only it felt very weird at the time - the phone access was always the clunkier secondary backup nice-to-have.

That said, 80% of my browsing happens on my phone. It’s less fun and it’s more mindless, but that’s the truth. I think I’ll hit a point where I find my phone just too magnetic but as a dopamine crutch it’s cripplingly convenient.

It’s because the latest Reddit refugee wave have been exposed to uncensored news for more than five days, breaking a personal best.

When one side unironically complains that the other has kidnapped a soldier from his tank… We’ve been conditioned to ignore atrocities I think, as humans, because those of us who survive still have to live. And further out, people have no sympathy for people they’ve never been shown are people too. But the tank soldier kidnapping thing is just making fun of their own sympathizers to their face. I’m sure there’s a kind of person who picks up on these things and goes from being a “reasonable” “centrist” to looking at both sides and understanding what they’re really looking at. It’s really not complicated

Proud of you, new joiners, I see you.

I learned it maybe this week and I’m now upset that I can’t remember from where.

Edit: I have bikeshedded my way into finding where I heard it instead of doing something else. It’s this Zack Freedman video, and here’s a transcript screenshot.

I thought about that as I was writing but it would be a little contrived to a general audience, maybe.

I’ve commented about this link before. The gym bro thing is what made me wrap my mind around some things myself.

Honestly that could actually be interesting. Would probably be able to discuss some nuances and make the mainstream a bit more comfortable with some currently uncomfortable conversations. People can remember complicated things if they’re invested in the narrative.

I’m a cis-het potato. If any of this sounds insensitive, I can fix it:

Guy who doesn’t meet the stereotype of a “drug guy” has to cook up drugs to make ends meet. <Narrative device> makes him start making <common drug> for <uncontroversial illness>, which turns out to also be used by <some queer people> for <hormoney things>. At first he sees them as nothing more than the users he was profiting from in an hour of desperation, people who twist their sad lives around acquiring and consuming a substance, but over time as he gets further down this path he begins to understand them in a way that he (and most people) has never had to. “Upstanding-man-who-is-a-secret-chemical-man ally” can go in so many directions.

With all its many many faults, I remember seeing Dallas Buyers Club as a judgmental kid, and it was successfully able to split “queer identity” from “sexual perversion” for me. I think this understanding was beginning to spread before a tipping point in the past decade. Personally I think people saw a lot of (Western) companies really go all in on rainbow marketing, going directly from “queer identities exist” to “these are being celebrated openly” without the critical middle “this isn’t a sex thing”.

If you think it’s bad in the US or Europe (and it’s not always great, it’s not a competition) let me assure you the heightened negative attention has also made people who were able to be themselves under the radar here in the Middle East face more bullshit. The average person around me has gone from “This person gives me the ick but it has no effect on my life really, just stay away from me and my kids, it’s between them and God” to “This person should be fixed immediately before they shove their perversion down everyone’s throats.” The former is abysmal, but at that point they weren’t really seen as an active, growing threat. Unfortunately it’s not just “this isn’t a sex thing” that’s missing here, historically most people have thought “queer” = “perversion” = “pedophilia”, and this was fading slowly before being supercharged by all this torrent of negative attention.

One day I’ll get around to playing Nomifactory CE. I’ve somehow played the base one twice over the past five years.

I’ve been so alienated from friends playing the most popular game on the planet in multiplayer because I can’t play Vanilla for shit. Not since 1.2.5 probably.

I’ll play no Minecraft for two years and then immediately nolife a modpack for two months.

Good shit. The best value game I have ever bought, no question about it.

I’ve also wondered if there’s varieties. Maybe where I live, they’re different tasting and smelling? Broccoli has only ever been one of the vegetables to me. Nothing repulsive (or even noteworthy).

Even as a kid it was weird to see cartoon characters complain about specifically broccoli while I literally munched it while watching.

Now when it spoils, yes, it can get a little sulfury, as can cauliflower, its cousin. But fresh broccoli?

Just off the top of my head:

Steven Wilson, one of the most influential artists in my creative life. Turns out even some of the songs were even recorded there. I don’t even think he has a familial claim to benefit from Zionism, I think he’s just gotten roped in. At least I tell myself that.

Sacha Baron Cohen, IMO one of the most brilliant comedians. I don’t think he’s necessarily an extremist to the extent that Natenyahu is, knowing his politics, but that is the logical conclusion of Zionism and just being on that path is all the red flags in the world.

Quentin Tarantino, bro why

I actually can’t think of many. I’m from Lebanon and if it’s even a small part of someone’s public life we just avoid them, it’s been that way for very long. So there’s an extent to which these people are filtered out.

I also don’t use traditional social media at all so something like the Sarah Silverman meltdown you mention would be completely off my radar.

This is exactly why I’d want a GPU in a home server.

That and transcoding. Wonder what the best option would be without breaking the bank/wasting too much idle power. All the GPU talk online seems to be for gaming.

Sending soyjacks to your father is a choice.

Not necessarily a bad choice just not one I’d make.

Always interesting to see the American boomer perspective from the front lines.

This photo makes my skin crawl.

Never got into Splatoon but it looked like great fun and kind of perfect for low-stakes competition.

Fucks sake Nintendo

Unexpected Babbdi

10K is a home solar investment. Where I live, people tend to live in multi-family buildings about 3-6 floors high, often split between siblings and their families. Depending on how many are in the country year-round, that might even be enough for the whole building with careful management. Obviously wouldn’t be the same if the neighbors are strangers. (I appreciate that the familial emphasis might seem a bit random in your culture). Ideally 10K might just be enough for one or two households.

The much more interesting prompt is 10B, imo.

10B? Oh man. I’m in Lebanon. We’ve effortlessly squandered more generous fortunes than a measly 10B grant, but here’s how I’d do it:

1B: buses, trams and parking garages to decongest some of the nicer (and underperforming, touristy) old town areas. Should give them a sorely needed boost 3B: modern seaside train running from north to south, with a small number of branches into the interior. Mostly freight. 3B: start phase of a Beirut metro. It’s not enough for a full metro system especially with our geological conditions, but the core city isn’t too big and one line should be feasible? 2B: functional army so we still have civilian infrastructure next time our noisy neighbor gets a hissy fit (infrastructure is worthless if it’s destroyed) 1B: modern fossil fuel power plant. Yeah it’s not green, but we generate a fraction of our needed power, meaning most people have to pay off a local generator mob for electricity. They use diesel and relatively inefficient smaller generators. Our existing ancient power plants use dogshit-tier diesel. I insist that some kind of LNG plant maybe would actually make the situation more green. As it stands the convenience of combustible fuel is more pertinent than the environmental cost

My understanding of the tech is that there are virtually no scenarios where having the 3D cache on the second CCD would actually help right now, unless I’ve got something wrong? Like even applications with enough threads to saturate the 3D CCD couldn’t possibly need that many threads that that

Unless you’re running multiple high-thread-count programs that benefit from the lower latency, and I don’t know what a realistic scenario for that would be. Some kind of multi-user scenario.

Granted I would have liked to see identical CCDs. I’m sure asymmetry is something they’ve figured out by now, but for the $$$ they’re asking for, a few extra overkill headroom can’t be a ridiculous ask.

The souls games weren’t on sale, but I’ve passed the message along about the mods. I think he’s taking a break after pushing those games to the absolute limit but I’m glad something like that exists.

Avant-garde is my jam, it’s just hard to convince people who aren’t into that kind of game to play. I love the Cosmo D games, for example, but I know most of my friends wouldn’t enjoy them if I recommended them.

I went with Ultrakill! I might get it myself. I think older style graphics boomer shooters are a core part of the current wave of PC games.

Unfortunately he’s never been able to get into Outer Wilds despite it being one of my favorite games that I always shill. I’ll still push for him to play it.

I thought he was pretty middle of the road as far as fitness bros go, but I’m not surprised the bullshit-du-jour brought some cringe to the surface. Unfortunate. With these guys I can only hope they aren’t too far down the drain. I’ve watched a lot of insightful videos from this guy, even if they didn’t apply to me. I can only hope that some of the other guys I’ve gotten helpful advice from in the past (namely Mario Tomic and Sean Nalewanyj and James Nippard) aren’t like that.

You’d think bodybuilders could be the most empathetic people towards gender nonconforming folks, given their daily physical and mental effort re: body dysphoria. As someone outside the queer community it was ironically cis dude fitness talk that helped me wrap my head around the kind of thing trans people especially have to worry about on a daily basis.

Sometimes your body just can’t do what your mind says it must do and that’s a pretty crazy experience! Sometimes it’s a hormone or chemical thing. Sometimes people around you are dicks about things that they really shouldn’t be about. You bust your ass and sometimes go to extreme lengths to narrow the gap. The theoretical bodybuilder bro - transgender axis of solidarity seems very rational to me. It feels like the disconnect is purely cultural/artificial.