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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 19th, 2024

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  • Anything.

    Could be an unfortunate freak accident that disables the electricity grid.

    Could be that all trees around your home all fall down and block the roads so you can’t get to the store.

    Could be that you break your leg and can’t go to the store to get food or water for 10 days.

    Could be flooding, could be drought, could be wildfires, could be a reversal of earths magnetic field or a solar storm that destroys all electronics and throws us back to the stone age.

    3-10 days is the realm of “something could happen that meaningfully disrupts the general supply chain”. and also still reasonable to expect of people. Like, they’re not going to ask you to stock up 6 months worth of water and food in a 50m² apartment. That’s not going to happen. Too expensive, don’t have the room. And they’re also not going to ask you to stock one (1) cookie for an emergency in case you get hungry tomorrow afternoon.

    And also, if the problem is so huge that the government, military and NGO people can’t fix it in 10 days, that’s a pretty damn big problem and it could be that stocking up from 1 month doesn’t help much more than 10 days, because they can only solve it in 5 years.

    3-10 days also buys time to figure out evacuation without having to think about literally the next meal.


  • So. There are two issues here.

    One is finding topics to talk about. This is what small talk is for. “The weather” is a dumb topic, but it leads to all sorts of things. “Nice weather, did you do anything cool outside on the weekend?” “Bad weather, how did you cope?”

    Socializing is like throwing balls back and forth as a game. You try to do something with the “ball” they throw at you and throw a question or a comment or a little story back at them. But also, if you initiate and they don’t want to play the socializing game (because they’re tired or busy or something), that’s it, no socializing.

    The voice and speaking thing is something else. Not sure how to advise on that. I don’t understand having “no confidence in your voice”. Do you mean you’re too quiet? Sounds like more of a therapy thing. Maybe a choir or theater hobby group could help you? It’s probably just practice, so you should seek a place where you get that practice and train your voice?





  • Historic stuff.

    Palestine was a country, or a region/territory administrated by the British. The formation of Israel was a bit of a historic coincidence, the empire was beaten by WW2 and scoping down and giving independence because the colonial stuff couldn’t be maintained any longer.

    The situation with the europen jews was problematic, because even though Nazi Germany was defeated, the prejudices against jews weren’t removed by snapping your fingers and the question of where the millions of victims should go and live was open. Putting them into Palestine and creating Israel was a convenient alignment of both the political opportunity and the public opinion of people who wanted the jews gone and the jews who wanted to leave and live in Israel instead.

    You may notice that the one group that wasn’t asked in this situation was the population of Palestine.

    That’s sort of the short version of how Israel came to be.

    The situation with the Kurds is completely different. They have no real external political support. The countries where “Kurdistan” would be “belongs” to intact, functioning sovereign nations, who all between each other agree to the current borders. And who all can field the military and governmental power to enforce that claim, both externally, but also internally. Because of how international territorial disputes are resolved, this is a “solved problem” diplomatically and internationally.

    Kurds who are pro Kurdistan and… well, armed, are treated as rebels against the government. And other governments also don’t like rebels in their countries, so the question of how legitimate the claim is, doesn’t even get debated on that level.

    So in short, supporting a “free Kurdistan” looks more like support rebels and terrorists, compared to palestinians who drew the short stick in a historical conflict and who are an underdog and “legitimately defending” themselves. So associating one-self with that is easier than with Kurdistan.

    (And I’m not judging the legitimacy of any party in any of the conflicts, everyone has their story.)






  • I think it’s just sameness fatigue.

    You have to observe the process for a while to understand the dynamic and when you do, it can appear that everything is just cyclic and boring. So an unbelievable number of people are now “aging out” of the 10-15 year period of exposure you need to understand what’s worth engaging with and what isn’t.

    It’s a certain realization that the original utopia of an interconnected places where everyone can share and everyone is interested in a broad number of topics and everyone can be nice for the purpose of discussion, is ending. Maybe I don’t care for the big platform that has everything and everyone, because most of everything and most of everyone is not actually interesting to me. Regardless of whether they’re bots or not.

    If it’s entertaining, it being fake isn’t a problem. But if it’s fake AND boring… why stick around.

    tldr: the internet hasn’t changed, we have. Or it did, but that’s not the point.






  • Let me reinforce this point mentioned by mushroommunk:

    There was one game, No Mercy, that really did push things too far. Collective Shout was able to poster child that game and pressure payment providers into pressuring game platforms to delist a lot of NSFW games.

    There were a few others and they were justifying and glorifying violence and terrorism. Not satire. Not as political commentary. Not artistically valuable. I recommend you don’t research this further. It’s real NSFL stuff. They were not putting it in fictional universes or anything like that either. It was “commit these crimes”-simulators and justifying it with racism, sexism or whatever, claiming that the victims deserve it. Actually disgusting.

    They would be declared illegal, by any customer protection agency or national / government prosecutors doing their job. They were only online and available because those gov. agencies were not aware of them and/or too slow in taking them offline.

    And because the steam’s process didn’t check them. Which Valve acknowledged in the sense that they admitted they didn’t and couldn’t and THEN took everything offline they couldn’t and didn’t check.

    And THAT also hit unrelated stuff, because valve couldn’t check it and doesn’t want to take responsibility. Which, yeah, understandable.


  • Create the situation where there is nothing to do except reading.

    Make the time. Make an appointment with yourself. Put the books to the place where you plan to read them. Shut off everything else, computer, laptop, music. Don’t put a clock near you. It’s not about “getting through this chore”. Focus on reading. If it’s a room with a window, the rising and setting of the sun will give you enough of a clue how early or late it is.

    I just don’t feel attracted to those books.

    Boohoo. Do it.