Man, my friend got all his D&D stuff taken away in 1984, he bought new stuff and left it at my house, which was fine by me as he said I could use it even if he wasn’t around.
I believe the culture war junk is part of distract and divide tactics. ‘hey parents don’t worry about all the bloodshed from neoliberal policies, your kids are summoning demons!’
I love that there’s a reference to the Tom Hanks classic Mazes and Monsters in there.
Funny thing about the eighties. I was absolutely forbidden from playing dungeons and dragons but was totally allowed to play wizardry, Ultima, and bards tale.
Explain that parental logic.
I do feel I missed out. Never did get to play the real deal.
I think tabletop gaming and D&D are having a renaissance in recent years - I bet you could find folks to play with easier than you think.
I haven’t played in decades myself, but my son does, and so does a good friend of mine (who is even older than me) and his kids, and seemingly half the people I know.
I would theoretically love to play, but I have other life circumstances that have required me to cut gaming time of any kind to 0 for awhile.
You should give it a shot if you can!
I love that there’s a reference to the Tom Hanks classic Mazes and Monsters in there.
That’s been on my rewatch list for awhile. I don’t think I’ve seen it since it was new. One of these days… :)
He sold the NFT, he announced the sale of the NFT. That triggered all this hububaluu/mental break? I’m not following but my buddy is sending updates as it his hillarious.
Remember boys and girls, we born different, we build different. We have a lot in common, but than there are your relatives, friends, teachers, city where you were born etc. You can compare two things only if you have all other variables are equal, which is impossible. Doing your best is different everyday as well as every month and every year. Achievements of others shouldn’t bother you, only your life goals should.
I was gonna say something like this but you already said it, so imma add to yours
Everyone is talented in some way-- you might not be able to sing, or do acrobatics, or drive a racecar, but you can do other things. Everybody can do something, yes your somethings might be different but that’s normal and perfectly fine. Things like talent and beauty are purely subjective, and even if you think you have neither of them that’s just your opinion.
I do agree with this as well, but wanted to add a little something that might give a different perspective. Let’s say you are extremely gifted at being a computer engineer and you don’t know it. Nowadays probably you start fiddling with computers and eventually find out. Let’s say that you are gifted for this, but instead being born nowadays, you were born in the 1800. There is no way to know you were a gifted computer engineer back then because, well, computers didn’t really exist. The inverse also applies as well. If you are extremely good at lightning up street lamps, nowadays that skill is not relevant, since no one needs to light up street lamps manually anymore.
I do think these skills have usually some sort of equivalent (even tangentially) and you find out what you can be good at. Is it your optimal skill? I do not think we can effectively know, since everything is not available from both present, past and future, all at once to be exposed to.
That does make sense, but I don’t quite agree. To continue with your gifted-computer-engineer-from-the-1800s example, they aren’t just good at computers-- they have the underlying skills (problem solving, attention to detail, able to apply abstract concepts to concrete objects, taking account of the whole system, good at maths, etc) and if they were born now, they also have an interest in computers. But if they were in the 1800s they would still have all those things (except for the interest in computers) and they’d be able to apply them to be good at other things
Before digital computers existed, humans were the computers! (first referenced as an occupation in 1613)
Skills are transferable, though there definitely are many cases where people aren't able to access the tools and education they might need to make the most of their talents because of lack of privilege and systemic oppression (which basically means facing more obstacles to gain access to the same tools and education as the most privileged get handed to them).
So when you were born definitely matters, but so does where, to who, what gender you were assigned at birth, how abled or disabled you are, and so on and so on..
It should also be mentioned that “talent” doesn’t exist. Anyone that is good at something has put a ton of time and effort into practice. You’re not born with skills, you refine them. Doesn’t matter if you’re an insanely skilled artist of some kind or if you’re a darkness-dwelling, aurora-ignoring retro game speed runner, if you’re good at something its because you earned that skill through countless hours of practice.
yes thisss i wanted to say this. if theres something u really really wanna do but dont have a talent for it, learn it, practice, get better and u can do it. applies to virtually anything
Thankfully it’s usually quite easy to dispel this myth by saying “then why are you bad at maths”. We all had the same number of hours in maths class as kids, but some had to practice WAY MORE to achieve a passable grade.
Most people can’t be Mozart. Some dedicate their lives to music, and do not get a fraction of the way there.
“Talent doesn’t exist” is a lie we tell ourselves as a society because our individualist culture sells us a pipe dream of personal greatness that many/most people literally aren’t equipped to achieve no matter how hard they try (and we should try regardless).
You think we all had the same amount of hours in math class as a kid but you conveniently ignore variables like focus, interest and after hours practice, among others I can’t think of I’m sure.
If you took guitar class with me back in high school and only practiced during class and for assigned homework, I’m absolutely smoking you right out of the gate because I’m also spending 3hrs minimum every night practicing for fun. Double that on most weekends.
Its all about the time you put into the skill. If you are engaged with practicing a particular skill because you genuinely enjoy it, you’re going to have a much easier time than someone who struggles to enjoy it. Math class is the perfect example. Many kids loathe math class while others love it. The kids that love it are gonna engage with it with more focus both in-class and at home. That practice and study directly translates to proficiency.
Nah, I hate maths and never studied at home. Still did way better than kids with difficulties that were studying way more.
Not studying didn’t pay off in higher education (focus issues, possibly undiagnosed ADHD or related), because talent ALONE is not enough anymore, but before then I had an objectively easier time than most and that was with little time or interest devoted to it.
We ALL use the concept of “left” and “right” daily. I’ve been doing that instinctively without a problem since I was, like, 8. Some adults still need to use a mnemonic every single time. Is that because they don’t have enough interest or didn’t spend as much time on it as 8 yo me did? Of course not.
I have put hundreds of hours into one of my hobbies, digital photography. I really like it. I have watched and read plenty of theory and know most of what there is to know about what makes a good picture. My photographs are only halfway decent and nowhere near what they should be given my time investment. And that’s OK, because I know it’s not because of anything I did and I like the hobby anyway.
Your argument does not have a leg to stand on. Someone with music agnosia cannot learn to play the guitar like you do. Dyslexics cannot “just study like I did” their way into being good at mental arithmetic. Pretending that skill is ONLY a function of time and drive is extremely pretentious and factually incorrect. It’s the “you’re depressed? Just do like me, think happy thoughts” of education.
I never mentioned anything about disadvantages because it should be self evident that if you are at a disadvantage for X reason you’re gonna have a bad time.
I myself have essential tremor. My muscles shake significantly when they are engaged. Trust me I know what its like to dig out of a hole when almost everyone else is standing on level ground to begin with.
Talent implies that people are born already being multiple chapters ahead of their peers in their skill refinement story. That’s just simply not true and believing that does nothing but perpetuate “woe is me” attitudes.
Practice is what digs you out of the hole. Someone could have all the supposed talent in the world but if they don’t practice and learn they won’t be able to keep up. Practice is all that matters.
I bet your photography is a lot better than you give yourself credit for. Everyone is their own harshest critic. You might be sitting on photos that some people would think are gold. I hope you’re sharing them even if you think they’re not so hot.
Now you’re just reaching at straws to comfort your worldview. I could explain to you that I never was a huge gamer (and only started spending significant time gaming around 12 y/o), and that I am hugely uncreative (in the traditional sense at least) despite having played with dolls as a child. But I get the feeling that you’ll just come up with more explanations why I somehow unconsciously “trained” the things I’m naturally good at.
Anything to avoid facing the fact that brains, like bodies, aren’t all created equal and identical. To pretend they are is completely ridiculous. Yet we do so because admitting that not everyone is born with equal potential breaks through the veil of The Meritocracy™, Karma™ and all the other little lies we tell ourselves to avoid facing the fact that the world is fundamentally unjust.
Don’t compare someone’s highlight reel to your behind the scenes.
I once convinced someone that they are actually doing a great job by sharing my struggles and showing that they are not an impostor. They now outshine me and will go to even greater heights.
And while that one episode of dealing with burnout and impostor syndrome is a drop in the ocean of their persistence, it’s a great illustration to how misleading comparison to others is.
PS: Also, if you have ADHD, you’re nearsighted in time. That doesn’t only mean “you can’t plan well”, it means “your life looks like a hazy blob, where others see a complex scenery”. And that can be devastating when doing a comparison. Be kind to yourself, be kind to others.
I mean, there is definitely the hurdle of getting in contact with the bank, explaining to them what checks were, waiting for them to figure things out & explaining to me how that isn’t a thing anyone, etc.
Seriously tho, none of my banks offer checks, and I don’t know about any that do. Probably a US thing for paychecks from historically significant employers.
Edit: US, India, France (bcs they had/have no transactions fees), and Australia still use checks, the latter two plan to phase them out by 2030. A lot of EU countries just don’t offer support anymore & cannot cash existing checks (neither at commercial or central banks).
Checks are increasingly a US centric thing. They’re almost non existent in Canada, certainly on the personal front, and in Europe the last holdout is France. All they’ve said is that they’re not phasing out checks before 2030, but they 100% are planning on getting rid of them. They’re just archaic and far too easy to commit fraud with.
I think in the US they cracked down on check fraud really hard for a while and people are basically too scared to do it now. In places where it does happen (usually rural poor areas) some (especioaly smaller) places will just not accept checks or have signs up about how check fraud is a federal crime and that they will take you to court for it. Not saying it’s the best solution, just trying to provide some background.
I mean with the IBAN system, checks are pretty much obsolete in Europe anyways. It’s so easy to send and receive money there, directly through your bank’s app, that third-party payment apps like paypal, venmo, cashapp, zelle etc. are practically non-existent if they even work there at all (which gives me some ideas as to why we don’t have a similar North American system)
US credit cards still don’t use a PIN. The rest of the world uses Chip&Pin or nfc contactless. The US uses magnetic strip very often, chip and no pin, and now contactless. The verification if asked, is not a PIN, it’s the billing zip code (5 digit postal code of the US). Usually just petrol pumps ask.
It’s also why I strongly advise any foreigner visiting Murica to learn the default zip for their card. If you use an international card (any non American card in America) it will still ask you for your zip code and if it fails, no petrol for you. And in the US you must pay BEFORE you pump so you could quite literally be stranded because of their archaic banking system.
Many European cards use 00000 or 12345. I’ve seen some Asian cards that use the last 5 digits of the card. Even if you have an American card if you aren’t the standard boring American household that never moves, it can be a pain. The card may have its billing address (and therefore zip) set to a place you’ve never been. But you have to remember it.
To add to your list. You could still get checks in Canada as of a couple years ago, but virtually no one does that outside of some seniors who refuse to move on.
the year is 2050
you are in a stadium
a man walks up on stage. he yells at the top of his lungs for 30 minutes straight
the crowd goes wild
suddenly the lights go out
the lights come back on slowly
you see “The elder scrolls V: Skyrim”
The first AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…A game
Todd Howard has done it again
The best thing to come out of Microsoft’s push into the indie space was XNA, which even now stands as one of the best game development frameworks of all time. It’s a shame they murdered it in its crib.
(I know Monogame/FNA exist, but I’ll always wonder where the project could have gone with Microsoft-level funding)
One problem is that what they’re calling him is completely inaccurate. “Journalist” implies impartiality, of at least content with a non-zero amount of truth.
If you think about, this makes the most sense. A person with an OF is getting their rocks off without other people present most of the time. Unless they are doing content with someone who enjoys making stuff too. But I think the majority of content creators are solo ventures.
In that most common scenario you would have a person not comfortable making content dating someone who does. That relationship is going to end eventually when OF creator is getting their sexual needs met and the SO isn’t getting enough attention to satisfy their needs.
But of course there will always be outliers like asexual people or having opposite libidos. Which those situations might work great to have an OF side gig.
But if we are talking the majority or people, I think its safe to say one OF creator dating a non-OF creator is probably not very likely.
OF content creators date non-creators all the time, just like other sex workers. There’s more to relationships than sex, and content creation isn’t the same thing as actual sexual intimacy and connection
Most animals in captivity live a very short and very miserable life till or while they are harvested and then discarded. That is not something that is currently being done to humans in a nearly as bad way.
Depending on the zoo, a lot function as very large animal shelters. My hometown has a really good zoo that’s run by a nonprofit organization, and they go to huge lengths to make sure the habitats for the animals fit their natural environments.
Most of the animals there have suffered injuries, or have some sort of defect or medical issue that prevents them being able to be released. Part of the property is also a wildlife reserve.
I get your knee jerk reaction but zoos do have a place
Their natural habitats don’t include having them put on display. I know people love zoos but there’s just no arguing with that. And there’s tons of research that supports that being on display causes animals anxiety. You can do wildlife preservation without exposing the animals to the public, I don’t get why that’s so controversial.
Ah, so you are an animal? or can you talk to them? What makes you think that you know?
Honestly, they are capable of suffering and we just accept them suffering, its at least morally wrong. But as soon as you criticize the lifestyle you get the conservative ones wanting everything to stay like it was, no surprise here
I just dont think survival justifies keeping them in captivity. Why would it? What dies that gain the species?
Also most animals in Zoos arent even endangered, so maybe stop defending keeping animals as attractions, that was already weird when we were doing that with humans …
A hole in a steamy bathrooms wall where you dispose wet things full of human skin cells sounds like a mold-hotel.
And if there are kids around, they put everything small enough inside.
Web 2.0 desperately clinging to life. FOSS self hosted web is the future. Internet speeds are fast enough on home networks that self hosting is perfectly viable for essentially everything, and for the few things that can’t be self hosted by just anyone, FOSS alternatives and work arounds to existing paid services exist.
Internet is becoming harder to monopolize, and increasing amounts of power and control are being handed back to the working class online. FOSS has become a movement that has grown exponentially over the last few years.
Their next recourse will be attempting to make jail time a thing for piracy. Both for hosting it and downloading it.
There’s certainly a bubble bursting. You only have to look at all the layoffs.fyi since COVID. I’m just hoping it’s happening in a slow enough way that it’s not going to take more legitimate companies with it.
AI is the next bubble. It will hit a brick wall either legally or just on functionality (maybe both). I can see uses for targeted models, bespoke to a use case, but training those is too expensive right now. General models are just toys IMHO. Unfortunately it’s going to get a few years for everyone to realise.
You are going to train the AI that replaces you. They aren’t going to tell you that though. I’m starting comprehensive plans so that any future work I do can’t be fed into AI. Making hardware that just dumps random input when I’m not using it. Isolating and containing any human input that does happen. Distributing my work across as many devices as possible to only give each it’s single app use worth of data.
The brick wall on AI is not functionality. It’s cost of running the neural networks. It’s simply not financially realistic to integrate ChatGPT into everything.
Ha, yeah sure, and trains will never go faster than 15mph.
Natural language computing is huge at the moment because it’s a huge and significant development in computing - yes there are lots of shitty ai girlfriend apps and the same goes for generative ai there are lots of shitty art apps but human language interfaces aren’t going away nor are generative design tools.
Even just the coding tools already available for free are a game changer, every single programmer I know and all the coding communities I’m in are using chatGPT regularly. When generative design gets into other areas such as cad and cam with natural language and problem solving (as in task based algorithms like the Go solver) then you’ll start to see the how ubiquitous and significant these technologies are.
I understand why you’d look at the first commercial computers and think that no normal person will ever have a use for them but look at where we are now. The same is true for ai, current stuff is amazing when carefully worked and it takes a lot to get it all wired in but as the ecosystem of code grows and training sets become better established everything becomes much easier which enables more effective use cases.
It’s not so simple. I’ve been trying to go the foss self-hosted way, as well as help p2p projects, and I got stuck because I’m behind a cgnat, unable to forward ports, and my shitty isp has no ipv6. I can’t afford vpns at the moment, so I got stuck. Besides, all that needed a lot of tech skills most people won’t have. This is a serious barrier of entry for a lot of people.
That would require every government worldwide to be on board. Then you’ll have a couple holdouts, and they’ll take in the dough from everyone wanting to host their content there. While there is a mile-long wishlist from the powers that be, they’re still going to chase what’s profitable.
Have you ever pirated something? If so, have you ever been sent to jail for it?
I’m not talking about hosting companies. Yes, I am aware that prosecution exists for them and has been a thing a long time. I’m saying they’re going to start pushing for end users to face jail time as well. It’s the only real recourse they have.
Unlike Americans, Europeans would never create systematic forms of oppression… except with migrants, and Arabs, and Romas, and Samis, and other Europeans.
Imagine justifiably criticising a bad trait that someone has in the hopes of having them improve
Most people are going to take that as a threat because they hold that trait deer to them and / or view it as a part of a themselves
americans are likely viewing the criticism as a threat to themselves and their country and are responding with emotionally fueled responses instead of logic based responses
americans should learn to meditate because it can help with the issue of wanting to respond to percived threats emotionally
You’re speaking pretty large for an American for not being a school shooter yourself
But as an American who meditates, that is not the answer lol.
We have a bigger issue with the media trying to make us feel like everything outside is scary first. A lot of fear mongering to keep the scared gun owners to buy and advocate for more until a mentally deranged one goes too far and ruins it for everyone else. The media can now sensationalize that shooting and you get either people buying more guns or people advocating for no guns and neither side wants to hear each other anymore. It’s one big crazy chain reaction loop we’re stuck in and the politicians got the crazies advocating for things that would just make the politicians more money. Sigh.
Yes saying we can do something about it and do better is stupid. Same here in Europe btw, no one has the power to do anything about media and capitalism fucking us over.
However i still think we can joke about it as a way to communicate our problems and relieve ourselves from the tragic.
(Of course that requires some empathy and a shared humour to overcome our cultural differences.)
Accepting it is a low hanging fruit is the saddest thing I’ve read today. It’s so obvious our society is fucked! Don’t you have something more creative to say, dumbass?
7% of residential properties in the US are owned by a single corporation, America accounts for 20% of the world’s prison population. The average salary of a college football coach in the US is $3,500,000, almost 60 times the average salary of a school teacher. Americas upcoming election will be fought between a barely coherent octogenarian and a proto-fascist serial fraudster & con artist.
Because – and this might be a hot take – I don’t think it should be socially acceptable to bring up a recent national tragedy as a fucking punchline
We’ve been voting. We’re trying to get the rules changed and we’re getting stonewalled by people who only listen to media that makes up reasons for them to hate things that would be good for the masses because it would be bad for a few people at the top and I’m sick to fucking death of people making fun of us for it and treating actual dying children as some sort of own. For Christ’s sake, have some fucking empathy. None of us, not even the furthest-right conservatives, think this is okay, and we’re trying to do something about it, and it doesn’t help when you’re like “haha look at all the dead children, isn’t it funny how stupid Americans are”
None of us, not even the furthest-right conservatives, think this is okay
Aguably, conservatives may not think it’s ok but they’re so scared of losing their guns (because their politicians say dems will take them so they can get elected) that conservatives consider dead kids an acceptable loss. If they didn’t, more of them would vote for the party that wants to control who can obtain them.
Or, arguably even more importantly, conservatives argue that this is actually about ‘mental health issues’ but then subsequently refuse to do anything to improve mental health. So they don’t even bother trying their own proposed solution.
You would think at this point that the US would have the most robust mental-healthcare system on the planet!
I wish I could say people were trying to stop school shootings in my area. I live in PERRY FUCKING IOWA, about a mile from the very school that was shot up, and all I fucking see from anyone around here is thoughts and prayers, wear a blue shirt, Perry Strong!!
I do agree that we need more empathy. But that empathy can and should be used to have a better humour.
Because i can’t stress enough how humour is important in dealing with tragedy. It’s one of the greatest tool to overcome it.
That’s why you also see American joking about it. Only their jokes might be funnier than European’s because they know and emphasize better with the tragedy.
On the other hand, one thing we do share is trying to change without any or not enough results. That’s something most countries know about in this day and age. Media and corrupt system is something European’s deals with too.
So i get your anger, it’s also good, it’s a driving force for us to continue trying to change, however helpless we feel.
Americans: USA is the greatest country in the world. Behold our God given rights and freedoms! We’re number 1! We’re exceptional! U! S! A! U! S! A!
Europeans: Actually it’s pretty arrogant to think your country is so much better than all the other. All countries have flaws and strengths. For example USA have problems with gun violence and healthcare.
Americans: How dare you make fun of our national tragedies! Can’t you see we’re suffering here? You’re making fun of dead children! You MONSTERS!!
Oh, I see where you got confused. When people say ‘Americans do something’ they mean ‘most Americans do it’ or ‘significant portion of American population do it’, not ‘all Americans do it’. You see, countries are big and there are a lot of people in them and it very rare for everyone in a country to think exactly the same. That’s why we usually focus on the prevailing attitudes that shape the country over the years instead of looking for believes shared by ALL citizens (because they don’t exists). Currently over 40% of Americans believe that “God has granted America a special role in human history” and it was way higher in the not so distant past, that’s why someone could say that “Americans believe it”. Hope this helps.
“Some Americans believe this, therefore the Americans who don’t and are actually trying to fix this Godforsaken country, and get upset when people accuse them of believing it, are hypocrites and crybabies who can’t take criticism.”
I know how you feel but you have to understand that the memes are not about you personally. We know that most Americans on lemmy are the cool ones. The ones that don’t have guns and are not afraid of socialism. The memes are about the other Americans and, you know, we’re just joshing. I though that’s obvious, that’s why I asked why everyone is suddenly so touchy about it. Usually the cool Americans are in on the joke. Now they are all sensitive about it. It’s just weird.
Idk wtf is wrong with all of my countrymen, those are three things we NEED to change.
It’s so fucking funny to me because they’re probably the same type of Americans that are like “oH aMeRiCa iS sO tOuGh nOt lIkE tHoSe SiSsY cOuNtRiEs iN tHe EU” but here they are all butt hurt when other countries make VERY VALID CRITICISMS about us
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