| and they’re also easier on the eyes

This is my main reason for preferring to read on e-readers. A book is a long-ass journey, and to be staring at a regular screen for that long can be painful business.

I also like that there’s at least the suggestion of old-school physical connection to the book. It’s a device that does just one thing (and is very good at it as a result), and you find yourself treating it the way you used to treat a paper book. I guess it’s the same sort of “positive friction” you get when you listen to vinyl or something like that. Makes the experience a bit nicer. Like, yeah, you could open notepad on a smartphone and read the complete works of Shakespeare for free in Courier New font, having to scroll every 2 paragraphs, but who the fuck wants to do that?

The basic form factor of the book has been perfected over centuries, and e-readers emulate it to a fair degree.

I think most e-readers are waterproof, too 🤔 One would hope so, at least! Reading in the tub or on a beach is one of the benefits of its portability.

I think what he did was heroic. I don’t know for sure that his motives were pure, like I can’t see into his soul, or know what his relationship with Russia was before doing it, but all in all I think what he revealed had to be revealed. The NSA were untethered by any sort of oversight or accountability to the public, and they proved beyond any doubt just how completely and totally an agency loses it’s fucking mind when no one’s watching. I doubt anything changed in that regard - they’ve probably just strafed into a different shadowy part of the landscape and are continuing with new/improved tools - but it at least taught us all that, yes, the government really is both capable and motivated to spy on every bowel movement and armpit sniff you perform, whether or not you’re a suspect in a crime. The mere affirmation that this sort of thing really goes on is worth having.

Great info/ideas! 👍

I use an add-on that has similar functionality (kinda). It’s called Search from Popup or ContextMenu:

• Firefox Add-ons
• GitHub

That’s a great idea, DDoS their brains to the point where they zone out 😆

At my age, if I had the choice between eating my own M&Ms or doing the sexes with women while also doing maintenance and upkeep for a sex dungeon and having to make eye contact with women in order to lure them back to it… I’d just have the M&Ms (the peanut ones, naturally).

It’s legit misogyny masquerading as a male empowerment philosophy. Without thinking women are shallow robots, there’s no looksmaxxing movement. Incels who are offended by the label in the current climate (which is understandable, what with the mass shootings and all that) are trying to dress up their “women are to blame for my insecurity” worldview as some sort of intellectually-distinct way of being that isn’t just inceldom. It’s essentially a GQ magazine cover image pasted over the front of a 4chan manifesto. The kind of wankers who smoke cigars and wear sunglasses indoors because they have a 13-year-old boy’s conception of what a successful man looks like. They’re torn between hating women, and spending their entire lives being focused on impressing them. They’ll literally hammer their faces and stretch their jaws to become what their primary enemy (women) demands of them. It’s like if a Hamas member started going to temple and grew some payot/sidelocks.

Many newer fabrics don’t require ironing, or not as much of it at least. Newer washing machines and driers, as well as newer fabric softeners and detergents, seem to play a role in the non-wrinkliness of clothing, too.

I rarely own anything that would require regular ironing these days. I tend to avoid buying clothing that looks like it would be a pain in the ass to keep wrinkle-free. I guess in our parents’ era there were no such choices available.

Plastic in clothing might have circumvented the need for ironing, but of course it has brought its own issues. Plastic might be an apocalyptic death substance, or it might actually be fine to have 5% of our bodyweight to be nylon. Not sure which yet.

Not sure who came up with it first or why humans are wired this way, but the magic combination of anger, outrage, and the vicarious bullying satisfaction of seeing someone dunked on and made to look stupid/humiliated, is all grist for the mill that is the attention economy. The longer you watch, the better it is for the YouTubes and Twitters of the world. And nothing glues people to their screens quite like their own masochism. It’s like when you have a sore tooth and can’t help but prod it with your tongue. Makes no sense, but it’s what we do. The fact that this stuff is so effective is why the algorithms force it down our throats and why cunts like Ben Shapiro have made careers off of it. Society is being torn apart at the seams by this shit. That pent-up hateful energy gets co-opted by state actors and bot farms, and then we get Brexit and two terms of Donald fucking Trump.

I’ve been making a conscious effort to avoid any videos that have titles like that (and by extension, the creators of those videos), and my life and mental health has improved immeasurably as a result. I have literally no idea how to convince anyone else to do the same. It would probably be easier to get people to exercise and eat healthily (something I don’t fucking do either). People get as much of this content as they can consume for free and at any time and any place, thanks to the inherent portability of cellphones. If you’re into this shit, there is no time of day or room in your house where you won’t have it calling to you like a pocket version of the wee devil that sits on a cartoon character’s shoulder whispering evil commands into its ear. And in this scenario, there is no angel on the other shoulder, because that would cause people to maybe spend a bit less time on these platforms, which is no bueno to Silicon Valley sociopaths.

Debates are almost entirely pointless. Very few people in the audience are actually open to being swayed. It’s just verbal UFC, and the winner isn’t the one with the best ideas, but the one with the best tongue jiu-jitsu.

As for Plato et al., I think having something to fill one’s attention in those days was probably a good way to stop people from fucking their livestock. So debates were necessary to prevent sheepman monstrosities from polluting the gene pool with their woolly nutsacks.

An entire thread of people missing the point 🙄

Patient 1

A Bug’s Life

Boots should really come with an exhaust so that with every step you’re pushing air/moisture out the back end. Nothing like a big pipe or anything, just a wee hole and a sort of bladder that fills with air when you lift your foot and pushes it out again when you step on it. Sure, you’ll sound like you’re stepping on farting mices everywhere you go, but if you just cough with each step you should be fine.

It’s a very dark part of conspiracism in general. The same tactics, both conscious and unconscious, are used to evangelise these ideas - and defend them despite being indefensible - as are used in all conspiracy theories and “alternative” views of established fact.

So, it has less to do with the available evidence, and more to do with personality flaws. It’s not even about reasoning skills or intelligence - the more intelligent you are, the less likely you’ll be to change your views because you’re so good at generating narratives that support your position. It’s a deep flaw in human psychology that can’t be reasoned away, and trying to combat these ideas with facts just reinforces them and gives them credibility (which is why no one with any sense debates Holocaust deniers anymore). It’s like when a schizophrenic person hallucinates; you don’t want to do or say anything that makes the hallucination seem real, you don’t want to say “where is the creature? Here? I’m stamping on it, is it gone? I don’t see it!” you simply accept that they’re hallucinating and don’t engage with it beyond that. Extreme example, but the logic is the same.

Dr. Reddy’s hard, bulbous, throbbing capsule will take away your anxiety.

Ahh, so it’s like they’re reading from the order/prescription, and say “ok he needs pregabalin - tick - and it’s 150mgs - tick - and it’s hard capsules - tick”, or something to that effect?

My favourite show back in the day!

Derry Girls

If you want to compress video files, you’ll need to reencode them. Maybe using something like HEVC (High Efficiency Video Codec). But for 80GB of videos, you’ll be there for a while and probably won’t shrink them enough to be worth it. It would likely take less time to simply re-download the files later, even with a mediocre internet connection. In practical terms, you won’t get that 80GB to be any smaller.

ISOs don’t compress anything, as far as I know, or at least not by default. I think they’re basically just a container.

To reencode your videos, you can use the free HandBrake.

True, but the post title still needs to have text, and hopefully people will be decent enough to accurately describe the content/topic (if only for accessibility reasons). If someone is doing this all the time to circumvent people’s personal block lists, they themselves will likely get blocked 👀

Analogue clocks, particularly clock towers in towns, but also just basic clocks on the wall in your home. With smart devices everywhere, it seems like they’re not needed and probably old-fashioned. The circular 12-hour clock face probably feels like the floppy disk icon or the rotary telephone, in terms of how ‘of another era’ it is, but it’s still a fantastic and resilient form factor for the purpose of visualising the passage of time. Digital is great, but analogue will be with us for the foreseeable future (and I’m including in that the representation of analogue in a digital form, e.g. on smartwatches that provide a classic clock face graphic).