DOTA 2, man. Once you get past the massive learning curve, there is just so much to do in-game. Every match is entirely unique, with constant updates, tournaments, battle passes, and what have you. When I feel like disappearing, I disappear into DOTA.

My cars are usually named after old women, because I subconsciously relate older women with comfort and kindness. Gertie, and Mathilde.

As if you needed further proof that this thing is the antichrist, he’s riding around the opposite of the pope mobile

The Dream: My mother gifted me an old, beat up RV to live in. It was filthy inside, rusted outside. I saw my aunt who wanted to see it and give me a house warming present but I told her No because it was so gross.

The Explanation: It’s because I have a very strained relationship with my family right now. They failed to step up to protect me when I was young, and then failed to show up again when I needed support as an adult (along with numerous times in between). They left me with trauma and fear and self-hatred without ever an apology or a modicum of empathy. It’s left me with the intense desire to be seen and to be loved, but at the same time an intense fear of being treated again like I was for so long. It’s left me opting out of most of life, because who would want to see such a disgusting, shoddy RV like me? And even if I do convince myself that someone might, what if they burn my RV down? Or come in and are repulsed because they don’t like what they see?

The ability to work from home has given me innumerable benefits, but I must admit that as a very introverted guy who’s been going through some shit, and who’s go-to move during times of anxiety and depression is to distance themselves from everyone… yeah, sometimes I do miss my coworkers. A lot of them are pretty great people. Doesn’t mean I’d rather spend 3 hours a day sitting in traffic to see them, just means I low-key miss someone to bitch with.

Actually…

study - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718793115

CNN article talking about the study - https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/13/health/falling-iq-scores-study-intl/index.html

I was thinking about their horrifying conclusion as well, and your comment made me pine for the days when you wouldn’t know something. Think about it, back before the internet, if you had a random question, you either had to interact with some trusted person, or you went to the library and looked it up. It’s like the ever-present access to all information has quelled or killed any notion of curiosity or boredom, and it’s within those frames of mind that learning and inspiration come. I remember as a kid when I wouldn’t know the answer to something, I’d think on it for days, weeks. I’d get stuck on a video game level, and hit my head against the wall for hours trying to overcome it, only to pick up a random gamer magazine off the rack at the mall, and read the solution. Treating that magazine like it was the lost treasure map of some ancient expedition, passing it around my group of friends… Interactions and experiences that are gone forever.

The idea that we’ve gradually went from relying on trusted professionals, learned educators, and scientific rigor, replacing them with a corporations data-harvesting LLM, on-line influencers, and click-bait “journals” cosplaying as academic centers with integrity. This article is basically celebrating the fact that we’ve off-shored all of our thinking, curiosity, and inquisitiveness to machines, all the while we struggle for scraps in a corporation dominated life devoid of genuine human interaction. We’re all to busy sipping dopamine hits from a screen instead of actually living our lives.

I grew up while the internet was being slowly rolled out, and being from the last generation to remember what it was like before the internet, I can say that the things I miss most are privacy, the ability to be bored, and not knowing.

It’s worse now, and it’s harder everyday to imagine that life on this planet will improve.

The existence of this kind of instinct within an LLM is extremely concerning. Acting out towards self-preservation via unethical means is something that can be hand-waved away in an LLM, but once we reach true AGI, this same thing will pop-up, and there’s no reason to believe that 1. we would notice, and 2. we would be able to stop it. This is the kind of thing that should, ideally, give us pause enough to set some world-wide ground rules for the development of this new tech. Creating a thinking organism that can potentially access vital cyber architecture whilst acting unethically towards self-preservation is how you get Skynet.

cooks make more than salads. You’re being an asshole.

Literally not a fantasy, but my and a lot of cooks reality.

When I was a cook, even if I was just making something simple, I could still find creative satisfaction in a variety of ways. How you sprinkle on the garnish, plating, using a little more of this, a little less of that. Food to a chef is like art designed to be destroyed, so with the temporary nature of the medium, it really allows you to be creative. You’re not hung up on making it perfect, because it’s just about to be eaten, so it let’s you be more free with your design choices. It can be fun creating art while you’re supposed to be working.

but if my job was suddenly just washing up after a machine… well. That will get old real quick.

Collin Farrel and Kristin Stewart.

They’re just not good actors. They’ve been in a couple good movies, but those movies succeed despite, not because of them.

Create art. Writing screenplays and books. Painting, gardening, working out, traveling, seeing live music, volunteer with whatever great organization I happen to be into at the time. Spend more time in my community. Have children.

The way I console myself is by saying that likely, the only way the US elects a true socialist democrat (AKA Bernie Sanders / AOC) that can bring about a Brand New Deal, is by having the pendulum of American politics first swing so far to the right, that everyone with a conscience is forced to get out and vote in retaliation.

But the idea that we could simply vote our way out of a rising fascist dictatorship seems a fleeting fantasy.

we’ve been given too much bread and too many circuses

For a while I celebrated the idea that we were in the “Golden Age of Television.” So many amazing shows, stories being told so exquisitely. But the more I think about it, the more that the ancient roman proverb of Bread and Circus seems more apt. I sit in front of a computer screen all day for work. On my breaks, I browse Lemmy on my phone. When I get off, I work out while staring at another screen in the gym. While making dinner I put on whatever NBA game is currently playing. While eating dinner I watch a show. After dinner I watch a comedy series while I eat dessert, occasionally browsing the internet simultaneously. My whole day, from when I wake up, to right before I go to bed, consuming content from a screen.

I wonder how many are like me, and how many of us are successfully using this constant stream of info- and entertainment to dull the pain of living like this. And what would it take for us to truly resist.

I think you’re right in that it would take hardship. We’re all mostly two missed paychecks away from our living standard collapsing, that could do it. But then that begs the question, how does one resist the rise of fascism? Because I’m beginning to think that voting may not save us when those in power are completely divorced from public outcry or consequences. When peaceful opposition is made impossible (or illegal on certain college campuses), when they round up and deport those that would publicly question their authority, when our elected leaders wring their hands in mocking frustration over all the nothing they’ve tried… well, perhaps violence is the answer after all. What other means have they left us?

That is an insane thing to have to do. Having to manipulate your TV into not doing something you don’t want or require it to do.

I don’t agree. I think what was originally dubbed masculine, was thinly veiled stoicism. It was a philosophical approach to how one should live a good life. It was be a hard, strong, quiet man that takes it all on the chin because you know that your work will come back and benefit you in the long run. Masculinity was akin to boomer-isms of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” or “work hard and you’ll be rewarded.”

But through the lack of social economic reforms over the last half century, there is a profound disconnect between hard work and wealth. Wealth generated passively from capital has surged, while earnings from actual hard work has dried up. Young men are not so stupid that they don’t see this. So what happens when someone swoops in with seemingly a massive fortune, that is selling a new version of masculinity? He’s selling a new philosophical approach to the dire economic hardship of today, and it’s basically one of the gangster. The same people that idolized Al Pacino in Scarface, now, instead, worship online toxic figures selling similarly thought out get-rich quick schemes.

His philosophy could be surmised into “Use everyone around you in order to accumulate wealth.”

It’s really just a terrible philosophy that destroys lives, but within it, he offers the same snake-oil that most religions do, “it’s not your fault.” Which is the barb that sticks in people. “It’s not your fault, it’s XYZ (whether that’s the woke or women or immigrants or whatever, it doesn’t matter who they blame, so long as they blame someone else for your problems).”

So, instead of focusing on figures of true positive masculinity (Steve Irwin, Mr. Rogers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lebron James), they flock to the simpler, easier answer. They can imagine how to use people, how to sell drugs or prostitute women, because they see it depicted in movies, and think that they could do it. It’s far more difficult and far more convoluted to grow into a fully realized man that values others, and works hard despite not garnering massive wealth. To live a life of charity and humility isn’t sexy, and doesn’t make one a millionaire. So why would they flock to it?

Fix wealth inequality, and you’ll fix a LOT of issues we have today, including (I think) the rise of toxic male influencers.

Gardening.

Previously my only gardening experience was my mom yelling at me to weed outside in the hot summer sun.

Now that I live alone, I started getting potted plants, and there is something wonderful about sharing my space with green growing things. I have a few that have really taken to the environment and amount of sunlight, watching them grow is wonderful. Marveling when one of my little planty bois randomly flowers, and there’s something so stress-relieving about digging your hands into soil when it’s time to re-pot.

he’ll learn

Think I found your problem right there

My marriage. In all my past relationships, it usually takes me about as long as the relationship lasted to get my feet back under me, but in this case, that time would be 10 years, so I really hope it won’t take that long. I’m on year 4 now. I read somewhere that men take longer to get over romantic relationships, because usually their romantic partner is also their best friend, and mine was no exception. We broke up because we shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place. I was in active alcoholism, and despite us both knowing that I wanted children, and she absolutely did not, we plowed ahead regardless. It seems stupid, but we truly loved each other. Heck, I guess we still love each other, we just have acknowledged that we’re not compatible in a way that severely limits our long term goals. It sucks. Logically, I should be able to just get right back on with dating, but it hasn’t been so easy.

There’s been multiple things standing in the way. First and foremost, some childhood trauma that had been trying to resurface for as long as I was an active alcoholic. Add that into a severely dysfunctional family dynamic, and you get a big ol’ mess that I’m only now starting to emerge from. I’m back to browsing tinder, and even though I do fine with matches, I just haven’t the energy to message anybody. Like, I just assume that they’re going to waste my time, and so I just sit by myself instead. I’m trying to become the person that would attract my ideal partner, so I’ve been putting extra time in at the gym, and have refocused on some hobbies of mine, like writing, and performing stand-up comedy. But even those seem like a chore sometimes.