Stepos Venzny

If there was ever a difference between being far-right and being disinformation, there isn’t one anymore.

The whole article is fixated on Grok being far right and never seems to care that an LLM is citing another LLM instead of an actual source.

As a cis guy, it feels pretty unnatural to say “when I was a boy” because the word has always meant gender more than age to me. Since the variable I’m indicating is my age, I use “kid” or “child” for it.

As to the broader question, my gut tells me to go with your gut. Whether the word “boy” or “girl” is what came to your mind, there is probably some relevant nuance to what it is you’re saying about your younger self that informed that instinct.

Prejudice, no? Not one of the classic examples, granted, but it’s the same logic as them.

I’m a better person than I was in the past because the bully is gone and I am no longer mirroring that toxicity. I’m still seemingly permanently tainted by it but the level is much reduced since cutting ties.

Had I never been bullied, I’d definitely be a better person than I am now.

You asked how to defuse the tension, I’m telling you how to defuse the tension. If that’s not what you want to do then I can’t help you.

EDIT: That was kinda glib on my part so I’ll expand some more.

If my coworker gives in to every entitled relative who yells at her and treats her this way, either my coworker will resign or take leave due to depression, a coworker who was simply doing her job to the best of her abilities managing the 20 something operations that had to be readied for Monday next week. And she gets abused for that? And you condone the karen? This part of your post seems very tone deaf. My coworker didn’t even do her pause. It is her the one who deserves empathy, respect and my support, not the karen.

What you’re asking me to do right now is acknowledge the legitimacy of your grievance. And I do, of course. Nobody deserves to be abused.

The goal here is to make the abuse stop happening, though, right? So the best course of action is the course of action that stops it. If you discount the possibility that she can behave reasonably, there’s no possibility of talking her down from her current state of aggression. Essentially, you both want the same thing: not to feel upset, not to feel hurt. If you can make her stop feeling that, she will stop causing you to feel that. It’s not fair but you didn’t ask for fairness. You asked for how you can produce results.

She has framed this as her on one side versus you (you being a proxy for the hospital) on the other. Option A is you accept her framing and remain in conflict and both of you continue to cause each other pain, option B is you influence her to change her framing into one side being both you and her and the other side being the situation. If you succeed at option B, both of you stop causing each other pain. So you acknowledge the legitimacy of her grievance. Her father was supposed to get an operation that day and he didn’t. Nobody deserves to have their medical treatment withheld, even temporarily, even if it was an elective procedure.

You called her a karen five times in the space of this post. That framing doesn’t help you. You don’t know that she’s an innately unreasonable person, you just know that she’s unreasonable in a specific moment where several people have failed her in a serious matter.

does it really help to simply stay next to my colleague, letting her do the talking while I do nothing but looking at the karen in the eye?

Staying quietly next to your colleague does help your colleague but this sustained eye contact sounds like an escalation. Try to express condolence instead of contempt.

what if, each time the karen opens her mouth I repeat ‘calm down’ ad nauseam till she either tires, shuts up or walks away?

That is an escalation of hostility. Any time you find yourself thinking “maybe this will shut them up”, that’s you looking to defeat an adversary. The goal here is to make her feel better, not even more hopeless.

what do you say or do to support your coworkers while they’re being verbally abused that somewhat defuses the situation?

Redirect. Gently point out that the coworker isn’t to blame for the problem and suggest focusing on how to proceed from here.

what if avoiding conflict is a trait of mine to the point that I let people walk all over me?

how do you resist the urge to walk away? Situations like this trigger my fight or flight response.

All there really is to do is practice.

what if I have to do this with a man and it gets physical? If somebody strikes me and I strike back, and I can guarantee you I’m striking back, I’m as guilty as the first aggressor.

This is one of the reasons it’s nice to have coworkers standing by your side. If it does get violent, a third party can split that up easier than a participant.

Broad strokes, make it clear that you would also prefer that her father get his scheduled treatment.

There is no severity of raw capitalism that makes this makes this make sense to me.

Why, when making a game that centers on a judge, is the judge Snoop Dogg? Why, when making a game that centers on Snoop Dogg, is Snoop Dogg a judge?

Whichever angle I’m coming at it from I can’t make any sense of this premise.

I have that, too. Recently had a medical issue that was essentially a month-long open wound that obviously needed to be dressed the whole time. Absolutely brutal on the skin.

Tegaderm is less bad, I learned. Significantly more expensive but absolutely worth it for that situation. Showed up to the doctor with that on and was told “absolute overkill, stop using that” and then when I showed up the next time after following their instructions and using large Band-aids they took one look at my back and said “you should switch back to Tegaderm.”

“Fragrances.”

Boy do I ever wish ingredients lists would specify what fragrances they’re using, then I’d be able to learn which scented products are okay for me to use without testing them individually.

It’s very mild but fuck is it ever inescapable. Everything I use can be hypoallergenic if I put in the effort but take one step into any building other than my home and it’s being cleaned with scented cleaning products and pumped full of air fresheners on top of that.

Also I’ve got seasonal allergies that are stronger than my fragrance one(s), so the outdoors often doesn’t function as an escape, either.

At the computer desk where my desktop computer already is.

Think about the end of the movie. Our protagonist is being crucified. A whole field of people up on crosses with him. And this happens on this scale regularly. There’s a tradition of sparing one and only one person out of these groups by request so as to pacify the citizens by giving them an illusion of power. And the citizens, rather than even trying to save one life, prioritize laughing over and over at a speech impediment.

But against all odds, our protagonist is chosen through that process to be spared. But he isn’t, because Rome cares so little about any of this that they make absolutely zero effort to verify who they’re sparing. Not that the guy they let down deserved to be crucified, either.

And a rebel group shows up to maybe save these people from, and I can’t stress this enough, being crucified. And instead they too die pointlessly. By their own hands. On purpose. And the movie ends on a jaunty musical number about how terrible everything is and frankly maybe it’s better to die than to be a part of this world.

When I look at the scene you’re talking about in the context of the rest of the movie, it looks less like “Rome is good actually” and more like “why are these the freedom fighters we have?” Whether being conquered by the empire also comes with perks isn’t the point and it’s meant to be frustrating that they chose this ineffectual argument.

The only issue I might have is that some of the bigotry might start coming after me for associating. I’d like to think I’m the sort of person that would stand strong against that shit but I recognize that’s easier said than done from a position as relatively comfortable as the one I’m in.

Who am I kidding, though? I’d never think through the question as long as I did being asked it as a hypothetical. I’d date her and then maybe regret it later for the tangential reason.

Cookie Cutter

I heard ages ago that the animation was something special and then saw it was dirt cheap on sale and grabbed it a while after that but was just never in the mood to start something that looked so frantic. Finally actually started playing it a couple days ago.

For starters, the main character’s animation work really is something special. The snappy movement, the expressive face, the terrible posture, the confrontationally ever-visible underwear.

Everything other than the visuals seems so undercooked, though. The setting is high concept but the plot is a basic “get revenge and save the girl” type deal. It’s one big map like a Metroid game but the levels are as straightforward as a level-based licensed platformer. The combat is trying to be spectacle-fightery but there is absolutely zero complexity to it. And I was just playing it last night and have already completely forgotten the music sounds like aside from, like, there’s electric guitar.

I’ll stick with it longer in hopes that the game around this extremely likable main character develops into something beyond baseline technical competence. I’ve simply never played a game that is so lovingly and expertly made in one specific regard that phones literally everything else in as hard as this seems to so far.

I’m also getting into Death Stranding 2 but it feels like there’s nothing to say about it. First game again but more of it. Weird to see Kojima making so conservative a sequel. Like with Cookie Cutter, I’m really hoping for more from this as I progress. Not to say that they’re equivalently disappointing.

Nothing smart technology promises over dumb technology is something I ever wanted in the first place.

I just want phones to be phones, TVs to be TVs, and glasses to be glasses.

With FPTP in the USA, the winning option would have been that everyone who normally voted Dem, voted for Green or the Democratic Socialist Party. But again, harder to pull off since you gotta convince so many people.

This is you not pulling the lever.

Five people call out to you to save their lives with the simple pull of a lever and you shout back to them “No, I am too principled. Perhaps if I had the abilities of Superman I could save you all with this lever and then also save that person with my hands but I recognize my limitations and will therefore choose the outcome where more people will die rather than fewer.”

They’re all so proud of you for those next five seconds.

I’m angry enough that people made me get a smart phone, I’m not gonna actually use it like one. All off.

The bad guys in Black and White were Pokemon rights activists and your heroic allies were watching them speak being like “everyone knows Pokemon love being captured and made to fight each other, these guys are a bunch of nutjobs!”

Then later it turns out the Pokemon rights thing was just a cover for something nefarious because nobody could actually believe what these people are claiming to.