BougieBirdie

It’s interesting that the phrasing here is that the younger people shouldn’t be allowed to date the older people. The issue with this kind of age gap is the imbalance of power, and whether you realize it or not you’ve just placed the stigma at the feet of the person who’s most likely to be victimized.

Anyway, banning this kind of thing doesn’t work. It happens at a scale that would likely be unenforceable, not to mention that rebellious people will do things because they’re banned

A better approach to harm reduction is education. Meet people where they’re at without shame and explain the risks realistically. And even then, some people just won’t learn until experience teaches them

At the end of the day, if your daughter wants to work out her daddy issues by getting railed by an older man, no amount of pearl clutching is going to prevent that

Many people prefer boneless, but this way you can save the bones to make stock

Top 5%, mom would be proud!

I’d argue that racism is a symptom of some of these other things.

An imbalance of societal power leads to - or is caused by - manipulative politics. Those politics are increasingly being pushed through addictive technologies, and indeed, are using racism to divide us at the cost of democracy.

Racism is a symptom, but understanding where it’s being pushed from has value. It’s like saying someone died of heart failure - just about everyone dies of heart failure, but it can be more useful to know what caused the heart to fail

So it bothers you when people vocalize their question marks, eh?

Git is what’s known as “Version Control Software” which basically means that it keeps track of the changes you make.

It’s primarily used for software development, and where it shines is when multiple people are collaborating on a project which will receive many changes. You can create a “branch” of the project with the changes you want to “commit” and then after they’re reviewed in a “pull request” you can “merge” them back inyo the main branch. If at any point in the process you discover that the changes cause issues, a history allows you to “revert” those changes back to what you had previously.

As you can probably see, there’s a fair bit of terminology in git. It’s a powerful tool that has a learning curve in order to use it.

While git is primarily used in software development, it doesn’t have to be. In fact, you could use it for any collection of files that receive changes. It’s not uncommon to see it used for technical writing , wikis, or large collaborative documents. I recall seeing a compelling argument that it could be used for drafting legislation, although I’m not aware of any government which uses it for that purpose.

Some people argue about whether or not you should use git with non-text files because the changes are much larger, but you don’t have to rigidly follow dogma.

I knew a guy who liked to use git for his RPG campaign notes. The main branch held his setting info, and when he’d run a game he’d create a new branch. If he was pleased with the game and wanted to enshrine it in canon, he’d merge it into main. Otherwise, he could leave the branch alone, but he’d still always be able to go back and look at the adventure with the details of the setting as it was at that time. I thought it was overkill, but he had fun.

“There’s no way we evolved from monkeys, and I’ll prove it: humans are good at holding bananas!”

Can’t make this stuff up

Most things work great out of the box these days. If you do your gaming through Steam already then it’s the easiest it could be. Otherwise you can download some other platform like Lutris to manage your compatibility for you

There are definite exceptions though. There’s this great website ProtonDB that tells you how compatible games are if you want to look before you leap.

Kernel-level anticheat can make some games unplayable on Linux. Basically, it’s intended to detect cheaters, but it gives false positives on Linux. On the flip side, the software is super invasive, like once you’re aware of how it works it will make you wonder why anybody would allow that shit on their computer. Probably because they don’t know any better, but still. This is more of a problem with high budget PvP games like Call of Duty, so depending on your taste you may never encounter it

Hardware for the most part seems to just work through plug and play. However, if your stuff is highly customizable through software - like Razer Synapse/Chroma/whatever they call it these days - you may not have access to all the features.

Most Linux installers give you the option to just try out the OS in a non-permanent environment. So you could find a distro that appeals to you and then give it a test run without comitting to a full installation. It’d be a good way to see if there’s any hardware or compatibility issues.

If you have an Intel/Nvidia rig and are thinking about gaming, I recommend pop_os! I’ve been using it for a few years now and I have no complaints.

Only on the fediverse can I expect to see someone explain how to manage their kitchen with a computer analogy and not the other way around

It’s good advice though, I have no notes

It’s a common turn of phrase that people use when explaining something to someone who seems unclear on a subject.

I hope this clears things up.

The market is saturated with crap that doesn’t sell under its own merits. In theory a review signals that not only did that product sell, but somebody actually cared enough to leave a review.

An online market is especially tricky for consumers because you can’t really look at the product to judge it for yourself. You have to make do with a product description, specifications, or photos. All of which might be incomplete, poorly translated, or photoshopped / AI-generated.

So reviews tell you what other people thought. It’s their first line of marketing after SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Of course, unethical companies are out there using paid and fake reviews, so it’s not like a savvy shopper can even use the reviews to judge quality.

Anyway, as someone else said, don’t engage with these emails. You’ll just end up with more emails if you do.

Oh neat, so they act like human doctors

Considering the cube

HtWFaIP - How to Win Friends and Influence People

Bad person, probably not. That’s a harsh descriptor to apply for a single transgression.

I’d call this behaviour to avoid though. Most people don’t like being lied to or ghosted

Sometimes you can’t really avoid it, like if safety is a concern. But if you lie and ghost because feelings are messy then it causes other people to have messy feelings

Every girl’s crazy bout a cyborg cop

My interpretation is that people hate AI, but an individual’s rage against the machine isn’t enough to hurt it. Something I agree with.

Then it goes on to say that AI is just here to help, which I think is supposed to evoke sympathy for something that was unfairly demonized. Something I don’t agree with.

If you try to distill it further, I read this as dissatisfaction against AI is futile and unjustified. It reads as though AI was a benevolent force designed to help people, which unfortunately just isn’t true

I got back together with an old tabletop group recently.

Five or six years ago we wrapped up the campaign we were running to take a little break. Scheduling became tricky, a couple of people were expecting their first child and some others were starting new jobs. Without a common meeting, the group just kind of faded out.

Anyway, a couple months back I bump into one of the players and we start talking. Shortly after that, he starts up a new group chat trying to get the band back together.

My mental health has been an absolute shitshow the last several years, so I really agonized over whether I wanted to try to get back together or embrace the solitude that I desperately crave for my free time. Well, I went against my initial judgment and it’s been awesome playing with likeminded people again.

A couple of friends still can’t really make it, the schedule is too difficult with young kids. But we brought in a couple new players too and the funny thing is that even with new people it still feels like old times.

I think in Cube it was razor wire, but they may have upgraded to lasers for Cube 2