loobkoob

I’ve been separating Chris Brown’s music from his personality for a long time. I hated his music long before I know how terrible his personality is.

Unfortunately for her, too. She might be successful, but she seems fucking miserable all the time.

I’m definitely a little confused about Tango - I’m hoping we’ll at least get more details come out about why Microsoft shuttered them. I mean, Ghostwire Tokyo was… whatever, and I could understand Microsoft not wanting to have them working on that kind of scale again any time soon. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it was fairly expensive and perhaps didn’t do as well as they hoped. But I’m surprised they didn’t want to just downsize the studio and aim for another HI-FI Rush-esque game (or sequel).

But Arkane Austin being closed definitely makes sense. Not only was Redfall a disaster, but by the time Redfall released, 70% of the people who’d worked on Prey had left the studio. (Largely because the studio’s president had left the studio just after Prey, I believe, rather than because of the Microsoft acquisition of Bethesda.) All that was really left was the name.

I am not overweight

I didn’t mean to imply you are overweight, sorry if it came across like that! It’s more just that, besides general anxiety (which isn’t specific to the gym), the main reasons someone might be “gym shy” are because they’re overweight, unfit or unsure of how to use the equipment, so I wanted to touch on all of those things!

That said, I do seem to lack self-confidence.

I figured, seeing as you’re anxious about the gym and how people there might judge you, ha! Building confidence can take a long time, and definitely isn’t something that happens overnight. Obviously doing things you can be proud of - working towards a body you’re happy with, work achievements, artistic achievements, etc - can help a lot with building up confidence, but the big thing is working to adjust your perspective of yourself. Try to look at yourself how you look at other people; if you saw someone unfit working out in the gym, would you care? Or would you just have whatever your initial thought is and then move on?

…except that this is not what happens in my country.

It can definitely be a little more difficult if it’s ingrained into your culture for people to make a big deal out of things. Probably the best thing you can do - whether there are people around or not - is to listen to music/audiobooks/podcasts. It’s good for exercising anyway because it gives your mind something to focus on while your body does mindless exercises, but it also just lets you shut out other people entirely so it doesn’t matter whether they’re gossiping about you, talking about last night’s episode of whatever TV show, or something else.

Ultimately, though, trying to avoid basing your self-worth on other people’s opinions is something you should probably try to work towards. Not just because negative opinions can obviously bring you down and harm your self-esteem, but also because if you only feel good when surrounded by people and receiving positive reinforcement from them then it indicates you’re probably not happy with yourself

Anyway, sorry for ranting. I will try to do exercise at home and jog a bit!

That’s okay, having a good rant is healthy every now and then! Good luck with the exercise, and try to stick with it, even if you only do a small amount every day!

Doesn’t always work.

It doesn’t guarantee people are going to look at you and think you’re a 10/10 because some features are out your control, but the difference between being overweight, poorly-dressed with bad skin, bad hair, etc, and being athletic/toned and well-groomed is huge. And while they might seem like superficial things that you feel you shouldn’t have to do for someone to like you, they also boost your confidence which tends to make you more attractive as a personality, too.

Also this is likely me problem, but how do you get over people being judgemental in gym (about appearance/phyiscal capabilities)? It often scares me off from going to a gym.

This can definitely take a little while to change your mindset on, but the big thing is just realising that no-one actually cares.

• people are there to work out, not to judge others;
• how much do you judge other people in the gym? Very little, I’d assume;
• even if someone is judging you: so what? Does it actually matter what a stranger who you’ll likely never even see again thinks? You’re there to improve yourself, not to worry about their thoughts;
• if someone actually comments to you, you can turn it into a positive thing. Tall them you’re new to the gym and would welcome pointers. Most people who’ll talk to you in the gym are just going to be asking “how long are you going to be using that?” or something similar, though;
• there’s a pretty low chance someone will actually be rude to you, because most people are well aware that everyone starts somewhere, and that if you’re overweight/unfit then being in the gym is you already taking steps to fix that.

And most of those points apply to a lot of things in life - it’s very liberating when you realise that most people don’t really care about what you’re doing and that you should just do what makes you happy.

If it helps, you can also do some research before using the gym so you’re confident about how to use the machines and equipment. It removes that “what if I’m using it wrong and everything thinks I look like an idiot?” aspect for you to worry about.

And if you’re just worried about people judging your weight/fitness, you can exercise outside of the gym. Push-ups, sit-ups, squats, step-ups, etc, are all free and things you can do at home. You can probably find somewhere quiet to go for a run - especially early morning or late evening. Dumbbells are fairly cheap (relative to a gym membership for any extended period of time) and don’t take up much storage space at home; they be used for their own exercises and to enhance other exercises (just adding more weight to your squats, for instance). Resistance bands are another low-cost, low-space option.

So you can either start off exercising at home until you’re comfortable enough to step into a gym, or just keep working out at home and gradually expand your equipment as you see fit. Obviously some of the larger, more expensive machines you find in gyms have their uses - some of them ensure you’re doing the exercise in a healthy way, some of them allow you to work out multiple muscle groups at once that would otherwise be difficult (like the rowing machine), and some of them let you target specific muscles in specific ways - but the things I mentioned above can take you a long way.

The two most important things are just being consistent (so try to get into a routine) and making sure you’re doing it for yourself. Obviously we’re talking about it from a perspective of people finding you more attractive if you’re in good shape, but more important than that is doing it because you want to be happy and healthy - if you can become happy and healthy in yourself then other people finding you attractive will follow eventually.

Anyway, this turned into a bit of an essay but hopefully something I’ve said here has been helpful for you!

I don’t think the Steam Workshop is the issue here. I’m glad it exists, and direct downloads or snv links are still a reasonable alternative for mods that can’t be hosted on the Workshop for whatever reason.

Honestly, most “ugly” people can be reasonably attractive if they get in shape, eat healthily (especially in a way that clears up their skin) and style themselves (clothes, hair, etc) in a way that suits them. Plus finding good angles and lighting for photos/videos, and building up some confidence and charisma for in-person interactions. Those things aren’t necessarily easy and they take patience and commitment, but most people can easily go up a few points on an attractiveness/10 scale if they manage them.

It’s okay; I appreciate the apology! :)

I think it’s important to look for the nuance in situations and not treat everything as zero-sum. Both sides can have good points and be open to criticism at the same time (this isn’t an “enlightened centrist” take, I promise!). I think a lot of discussion online does tend to strip away nuance and take the position that if you show any empathy with one side then it means you must hate the other - I do my best to avoid that!

these people SHOULD be putting this negative pressure on them. It’s deserved

Was it not implied I agree with that when I said:

The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.

and;

• customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable
• people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable

I’m not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it’s obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I’ve not played it myself) and should be improved.

?

I don’t see why that would make my opinion stupid. Yes, the studio/publisher should be held to account for the crappy release. But a big part of holding them to account should be not giving them money for it in the first place; not just handing over money and then complaining afterwards. Complaining afterwards is reasonable for the people who did hand over money, but they should also hold themselves accountable for financially rewarding a company that puts out a crappy product - they’re part of the problem.

The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.

• it’s hard to feel sorry for people who pre-ordered because they got exactly what they paid for - a game of unknown quality and quantity of content
• it’s hard to feel sorry for people who bought post-release because they also got exactly what they paid for - a game where reviews detailed poor quality and quantity of content
• customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable
• people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable
• people abusing the devs is not reasonable

I’m not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it’s obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I’ve not played it myself) and should be improved. But I do think gamers could learn to be a little more responsible with their purchases and inform themselves before buying a game.

I’m pretty over the whole cycle of games coming out and not meeting expectations, people buying them anyway (through pre-orders or day-one purchases), people being unnecessarily rude/hostile/sending death threats to developers as if they were forced to buy the game as gunpoint. Yes, developers should try to do better, yes publishers should often give developers more time to polish up games rather than announcing the release date two years in advance and refusing to delay, but also consumers could really take some responsibility for what they decide to give money to.

As someone who doesn’t care for card games or poker: yes, it’s really that good!

The police didn’t actually arrest him, and I think the headline is a little misleading. Falter had been walking directly against the protest (and not attempting to cross the road like he claimed). The police stopped him and offered to escort him to his destination via a route that avoided the march. Falter refused and tried to push through the police officers and cross the protest march. The officers prevented him and told him he was free to go in the opposite direction, or that they would escort him past the protest, but that if he tried to go the way he was they would have to arrest him. It was clear they didn’t want to arrest him, and the officer offered probably a dozen times over the course of the ~15-minute interaction to escort him via a different route.

I think the officer did a good job of de-escalating, personally, and was incredibly patient in the face of Falter’s obnoxious, disingenuous antagonism. It’s a shame that there’s a single soundbite that, when stripped of context, portrays the officer poorly, but I think it’s clear to anyone watching the full video that the officer had no anti-semitic intent and handled the situation well.

The officer mentioned in the full video that Falter had been walking directly against the protest and wasn’t just trying to cross the road like he claimed. Which, “openly Jewish” or not, is a good reason to stop him, I think - for his own safety and the safety of the people in the march. And coupled with the fact that he very visibly is Jewish, it makes his actions seem a lot like a counter-protest - something the police generally try to limit or contain regardless of the protest subject.

The police officer had the patience of a saint, honestly. He offered to escort Falter to the place he wanted to go via a different route - so as to avoid the protest - probably around a dozen times. It’s very clear Falter didn’t really have any intention of getting to his claimed destination.

“It’s absurd that we live in a society where people feel the urge to tell me to greet them with ‘sallam alleykum’”.

There’s already a huge difference between what happened and your example here. Your example is “people saying you must do X” . What happens when it comes to gender is people asking, “please do not do X”.

They’re not saying you must refer to them as, for instance, she/her, but rather asking that you do not refer to them as he/him/they/them/whatever. You’re free to just not use pronouns to refer to them at all if that suits you better - you can refer to them by name instead. You’re left with plenty of options and only a handful of restrictions.

Your example, on the other hand, is completely restrictive; you must take this single course of action, and there are no alternatives.

For what it’s worth, I do think we’re in a fairly transitional stage (ha) of how we as society deal with transgenderism. I think people being made to change their pronouns in order to feel comfortable is silly. Not because those people are silly - they’re just doing what they can to feel comfortable with the restrictions society has placed on them - but because society and language are silly.

Why do we refer to people by gender at times when it’s completely irrelevant? Someone having a penis, or male hormones, or whatever other “masculine qualities”, is irrelevant 99% of the time when I refer to them as he/him. If I say, “Donald Trump? Yeah, he’s a corrupt idiot,” then why does him having a penis have any bearing on the language I use there?

And why do we have such gendered roles in society? Why can’t men just wear dresses and make-up and link the colour pink and still identify as men? Why can’t women cut their hair short and wear baggy clothes and like engineering projects and lifting weights at the gym and still identify as women? I guarantee that if we could remove all those kinds of gender associations, you’d see a lot less trans people.

People transition because who they are and what they like, and what society says they have to be (based on their gender) are at odds with each other, and it’s literally easier for them to change gender in order to be allowed to be themselves than to change society. Being trans isn’t some kind of personal failing; it’s a failure of society to accommodate people who deviate even slightly from its rigid roles and expectations.

The ideal future, such as I see it, is for there to be no trans people because no-one feels a need to transition - they can just feel comfortable and accepted as they are. But until then, you need to recognise that there’s a societal issue and stop being a part of it. It takes such a small amount of effort on your part to use the pronouns someone requests, or to avoid using pronouns at all, and it makes such a huge difference to them to be gendered properly. So just be a decent, respectful person and accommodate their wishes and stop making their life worse.

So as per @Kierunkowy74’s reply to me, limiting (basically what I described) is a feature on Mastodon already. It basically just sets things to follower-only mode on a per-instance basis. I’m not sure how well that would translate to the threadiverse, but I do think some level of opt-in integration would be best.

To go on a slight tangent: I’ve never used Imgur as anything other than a image hosting site, but I’m aware it has people that use it as a social network in its own right. Whenever I’ve hosted anything on Imgur in the past - even images that don’t need any context - I’ve noticed it always ended up downvoted and sometimes with some negative comments, while the reception on reddit was generally far better. It doesn’t bother me - like I said, I just used it as an image host - but it’s clear Imgur has its own culture. Threads could be the same, and trying to merge its culture with ours could prove difficult.

I don’t know what full-on federation with Threads would look like, but federating vote counts could definitely lead to Threads culture overwhelming threadiverse culture. But I assume that’s also something that can be done on a per-instance basis; I know kbin (which I use) already doesn’t federate downvotes from other instances, for example.

I’m not sure I have a fully-formed opinion on it all yet, unfortunately. I don’t like the idea of cutting Threads off completely unless they do something to earn defederation. I think finding a way to smoothly federate with Threads could give the fediverse a boost in users that could be significant for more niche communities that haven’t managed to find a large enough audience yet (because yes, I’m still missing some of the smaller communities from reddit). But I do also think there are very valid concerns about both the long-term and immediate impacts Threads could have on the fediverse.

That sounds like a good solution. I don’t want to need an account on a different platform to see Threads, but I also don’t want the feeds to just be overrun by Threads users, and that seems to achieve that.

I guess the ideal situation as far as I’m concerned would be for users to be able to choose that setting on an individual basis. Obviously anyone can set up their own instance and achieve that, but being able to do it without being an instance admin would be the best.

Personally, I would like to be able to follow individual Threads users if I so desire but not have Threads content showing up in my All feed. I don’t know if that’s possible with how federation/individual blocking currently works, but it would be the ideal, I think.

conducting industrial espionage against the vape store

That’s something we should’ve been doing all along! Now there’s a mist opportunity…

1.0 is getting a “true offline” mode where there won’t be any chat (and where a connection isn’t required for server authentication). Personally, I quite like the chat and the sense of community it brings (apart from when it’s filled with “D4 bad”) but I can see myself wanting it turned off if the game gets much more popular and attracts a more casual playerbase.

Honestly, though, I feel like that’s such a minor quibble to have - especially for a game still in beta. While Last Epoch obviously doesn’t have the budget behind it that Diablo 4 or Path Of Exile has, I think it’s done a great job of cementing itself as a worthwhile addition to the genre already. The developers have done a brilliant job of coming up with creative solutions to problems (both LE’s own problems and problems that other games have suffered from) and I think they’ve laid a very strong foundation to continue to build upon going forward. The game is mechanically interesting, has probably the most interesting itemisation and by far the best crafting in the genre, and generally feels good to play.

I agree that the art style isn’t as strong as Diablo 4, Path Of Exile or Grim Dawn, but I think it looks much better than a cheap Unreal asset - especially with the lighting overhaul in 1.0. And I’m glad that it isn’t just another dark fantasy setting; as much as I love those kinds of settings (Grim Dawn’s, especially), having the more lush, vibrant style of Last Epoch makes for a nice change.

It’s not a perfect game by any stretch, but I think it’s a very good game and I think it has a lot of room to grow going forward.

I say all this as a non-American, just to be clear. All mainstream American politics looks right-wing to me.

voting green […] can have the effect of moving the Overton window and creating conversation

I’d love if this were the case, but the pragmatist in me can’t agree. Right now, if Biden doesn’t win, the Overton window shifts to the right. Voting Green won’t shift the needle, as much as the idealist in me wishes it could. No-ones going to care that 2% more people voted for the Greens this time if Trump wins. Trump’s already stated his fascist ideals and the Overton window will shift to the right if he wins. Which means if you care about the Overton window at all, you vote to keep Trump out.

If the Democrats were in a more secure position then I’d say voting for the Greens would be very reasonable. It’d be a way to indicate that you’d like to continue to shift things leftwards. But right now, the best thing you can do if you care about left-wing or green values in the long-term is simply to keep Trump out.

Think about where you want politics to be in 2028, or 2032, or even 2036; do you think Trump or Biden winning is the best path to that goal? Because those are the realistic options right now. And personally, I think gradually shifting the Overton window leftwards is the way to do it, rather than letting the country slip into full-blown fascism and then hoping people will suddenly flip to socialism overnight on the evening before the 2036 election.

they’ve had to push a “but trump!” Narrative to scare anyone else from even running.

There certainly has been some of this. But I also think that’s something that’s very relevant right now. The time for finding more progressive Democrat candidates was during the primaries. Now, as difficult as it may be, the best thing to do is suck it up, rally behind Biden and fight for your long-term future by doing what you can to keep out the fascists. It’ll fucking suck, but not as much as Trump winning will.