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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • If Biden had been up there saying that about a political opponent … it would make headlines all over the world.

    It’s like the “only Democrats have agency” thing.

    When Democrats fuck up we’re like wow they really screwed up, look at these bad choices, they’re fucked up.

    When Republicans fuck up we’re just like well yeah that’s what they do. You don’t get mad at the sun for setting or a fire burning. Sometimes we act like they’re just immutable forces of nature instead of human jerks.

    We don’t really hold Republicans to any standards.








  • It was a good game. Not perfect, but very good.

    Even the things I don’t like are pretty minor.

    • upgrading weapons is kind of tedious. Once you know where the stones are or the bearings, it’s kind of a chore to get them.
    • related: once you know where some high value items are, it’s really tempting to just beeline for them from the start. But that’s kind of tedious. I guess I could just pretend I don’t know where the +5 stats talisman is.
    • a lot of side content isn’t especially rewarding. The first time you play it’s exciting because you don’t know what you’ll find. But later it’s like “nah, this catacomb has a useless ash and boss I’ll fight elsewhere”. Which is a shame because most of the level design is great.



  • I just tried “Language Drops” and it was… interesting. It didn’t place me at the right level, so I got a very beginner lesson when I’m closer to intermediate (but definitely not fluent). I’m not sure I liked matching the pictures- the picture for “thank you” could mean different things depending on how you interpret the person’s face and body language- and then I hit the end of the free content for the day. It didn’t get to different tenses or even whole sentences- just basic vocabulary and no verbs. Maybe it ramps up quickly?


  • They will accept any negative sum game, they will ruin their own livelihoods and their own lives, if only it helps sad little kings of sad little hills.

    I’m reminded of that book about Authoritarian Personality Types. They did like a model UN / Civilization game kind of thing, where the players represented different countries and could make decisions about policy, war, and so on. There were two groups. Unknown to the players, the people running this experiment put all the people who scored high for authoritarian personality in one group, and everyone else in the other group.

    The group with low authoritarian personality scores? Basically everything was fine. They solved the ozone layer crisis. They were solving world hunger. One guy tried to be a dick and the rest of the group brought him in line.

    The high authoritarian guys? Nuclear apocalypse. They made them sit in the dark for five minutes to think about what they’d done, and let them have a do-over. They still did a shit job. Petty squabbling. Stealing. Out of control climate crisis.

    I don’t think there’s an ethical way to do this in real life, but I do think if you just didn’t allow people with that kind of personality to have any real power, we’d all be much better off.

    It’s also possible i mangled the story because I rewrote it here from memory, but I believe it was in this book: https://theauthoritarians.org/



  • “”"

    16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

    17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

    18 “Which ones?” he inquired.

    Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,’[a] and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]”

    20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

    21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

    22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

    “”"

    Don’t see a lot of rich assholes talking about this part of the bible. (Matthew 19:16-22)