God yes. Back in 1995, the web felt like a little village. You knew everyone in your particular digital neighbourhood so to speak. Lots of great forums, lots of little niche websites… nothing was really commercialised yet:

And frankly, I liked that it was a nerdy thing as well. Everyone shared at least some level of knowledge and understanding of what the web was. And we were all some level of nerd, whether it was Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, trains, flightsim, Sci-Fi or whatever niche interest you had.

We lost all that when we made the web too accessible to the general public. We should’ve kept it to ourselves.

Not exactly surprising, and certainly a broader trend than the UK. Lots of parents aren’t really parenting. There’s parents who just let kids do whatever and ‘they will tell you when they are ready’. That soft approach just doesn’t work for things like this.

There’s also plenty of parents who see school as glorified childcare, and that teaching them even basic life skills should be the school’s job, not the parents.

It’s certainly disconcerting. One would hope that parents who CHOOSE to have a child would actually want them to grow up well and properly prepared for life’s challenges. Instead, kids are more like Instagram fodder, something to be shown off but otherwise nog given much attention.

Very scary indeed.

Yeah… no. None of that sounds appealing.

‘Curbing toxicity with AI’ means a bot is going to ban you because it doesn’t recognise sarcasm.

And ‘new tech to verify your identity’ sounds like a privacy violation at best.

‘Verifying that you own a product before they let you post in its community’ is a complete lack of understanding of how people use places like this.

Digg can fuck right off.

Oh I’ve been to some :D

One time our boss took us to a fancy restaurant that had a Michelin-starred chef owner. We did some ad work and publicity for him, so this was sort of a thank you, and a way for him to go all out and make a surprise menu to try things. Basically, we were dining for free there.

They go all out. Nine course meal. And as you’d expect, that means giant plates with tiny portions.

Now, thing is… our company is more of a steakhouse crowd.

Halfway through, they serve a perfect steak. Cooked to heavenly perfection. Best steak I’ve ever had in my entire life. And garnished with gourmet fries. They serve those in this tiny ramekin, intended to share. Basically, everyone gets a handful of fries.

One colleague sees the steak, grabs three ramekins and proceeds to load up his plate. He promptly flags the waitress and asks ‘hey, can you get some more fries?’.

Waitress comes back with some more. Colleague again: ‘hey uh, you wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of curry sauce?’ The look on her face was priceless. That was not a question this restaurant had ever had. ‘I’ll go ask… the chef’

Luckily the chef had a good sense of humor about him: out comes this wild, tattooed, giant bearded mountain of a man carrying the biggest kitchen knife I’ve ever seen. ‘WHO’S THE FUCKER WHO JUST ORDERED CURRY SAUCE IN MY RESTAURANT??’ Colleague meekly raises his hand. Chef hands him the bottle of curry sauce he was holding behind his back 😂

Well, it’s just pain compared to some other options :D

I love sausage on pizza though! Meatballs, minced meat as well. And I recently discovered ‘nduja, ever had that? Tastes great on pizza. It’s a spicy, spreadable pork sausage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'Nduja

I do also enjoy a Hawaiian on occasion though…

You know what my favorite food is? A plain pepperoni pizza. Absolutely love it.

You can take me out to dinner to the fanciest restaurant: five Michelin stars, the best trained chefs, the most expensive ingredients, the perfect ambience… and it would be utterly wasted on me. Because nothing beats a plain pepperoni pizza.

Some people are like that with movies. Even movies which are objectively some of the best ever produced in the history of cinema, will have people who don’t like them. And that’s perfectly fine.

I was one of the very, very, VERY earliest people to ever buy Minecraft. This was late 2009 during the early alpha development.

I bought it because it looked fun and relaxing. I introduced a fair few people to the game, but frankly… I expected it to remain a niche thing due to how it looked and the fact that it didn’t really have set gameplay goals. You basically had to make your own fun.

It was wild to see it become a cultural icon. It was even wilder to go to the cinema and watch a billion dollar movie starring Jack Black based on a dumb game about blocks that I bought from some random Swedish dude’s site 16 years before.

Shit, that’s definitely the kind of people you don’t want to know your name.

I imagine you probably gave a card to someone who handed it off to another guy who donated his jacket to Goodwill or something like that.

What in the ever loving FUCK is GOING ON THERE in the US. This is the kind of silly shit you expect from a third world dictatorship. He really just… renamed the fucking thing and put his own name first. That’s just utterly disrespectful, not to mention distasteful in general.

It used to be you had to at least die in order to get your name put on things….

5 years ago I would’ve called you insane, but with everything happening right now… it’s a distinct possibility.

RAM’s unaffordable, GPU’s will likely be harder to come by and more expensive. Microsoft is actively driving people away from Windows, Steam is launching their Steam Machine…

Here’s hoping many gamers will jump to Linux and grow that platform instead. But even then, too expensive hardware will be an issue.

We’re living in interesting times.

That’s called ‘being Dutch’ 😀

Well ‘buy local’ tends to be the solution most people offer when this particular discussions arises. But I agree that only solves some issues. Especially since local shops also get that stuff from the same sources.

I’m more of a ‘there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism’ kinda guy.

But frankly, I’ve got too much going on to worry about the ethics of where I’m sourcing pens and notepads. I’d rather focus on the big things.

It’s also a question of availability. Looking at my last ten purchases, simply none of those were available locally here. We don’t HAVE a camera store here to buy things like lens caps. The stationary store where I went didn’t HAVE large elastic bands, only small ones. Nor did they have the specific Pentel gel pen that I use for work. The shoes I bought (US size 17) are not available, since stores don’t stock past size 13.

I did buy a laptop stand, so technically I could’ve bought say, a plastic box or some books locally to do the same thing. But the stand is nicer.

For me, it’s not about the price. I’d rather spend 10 for something great than 1 for something that sort of works. I am by no means cheap. But I do have specific needs and tastes that my local stores don’t cater to.

And hey, if they won’t sell me what I need, I’m not going to feel bad about buying it somewhere that will 🤷‍♂️

This shit frustrates me to no end. These days I just look on Aliexpress first, just so I’m aware what the usual drop shipping item actually goes for.

It’s very annoying that platforms like Amazon tolerate this. Because it’s actively driving me away from them. I want to see good quality items, not the same Aliexpress shit priced ten times higher. But I can’t FIND the good stuff because the platform is literally full of garbage.

Hey, you and me both; sweet and salty is an excellent combination. But some people have not yet seen the light and the glory that is pineapple on pizza. Goddamn heathens.

No doubt the thing had some no-no thoughts. Probably regarding the acceptability of pineapple on pizza, or the total extinction of the human race. Either way, good on them for pulling the plug, I guess.

And those are the best ones, considering fuckwit writers and producers can’t run them into the ground while you’re enjoying them. The Wire, Sopranos etc. will always remain excellent.

Lower prices? Yeah, I’m sure they’ll get right on that…

You don’t reward a thief and murderer, you shoot them between the eyes. As a Dutchman, I wholeheartedly support shooting every uniformed Russian or allied you can find. Twice.