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1 yr. ago

  • Does it count if I only read summaries of both works, not the works itself?

    "A true story" is a parody on the "travelogue" that were popular in ancient Greece, like Homer's Odyssey and Illiad. 800 years later, they had a resurgence in the Roman Empire, like when Virgil wrote the Aeneid. Still 200 years later, A True Story was written by Lucian.

    In the preface, Lucian complains that the genre was ruined by authors making up unbelievable tales to trick their dumb readership. So he thinks it better to just admit that all he says is a lie.

    The story goes on how Lucian then set sail across the Atlantic, got caught in a storm so terrible it blew him to outer space, and meet the all-male civilisation that lives on the moon, who carry their children through the calf of their leg.

    Lucian and his crew return to Earth, get swallowed by a whale, explore the Islands of the blessed, see the Sinners being punished (the ones who lied in their stories being punished the hardest) and reach a distant continent. Lucian says what happened there will be shared in the sequel, which a comment describes as the biggest lie of all.

  • "Big small", was that one rapper, right? Didn't know he pushed minimalism on us, then again, he did sing "mo money mo problems".

  • I just don't respect botanical definitions any more. Who cares what they think berries, fruits, grain and nuts should be? They can't even define a tree! If anyone gets to define these terms for every English speaker, it sure isn't going to be them.

    Culinary definitions all the way! Unfortunately, they have no satisfying category for rhubarb either.

  • Acorns!

    Jump
  • Fun fact: Caulrophobia (fear of clowns) is way more common than arachnophobia (according to a quick glance at wikipedia), if we ignore how serious a reaction usually is in deciding what to cw, we better be ready to hide all Balatro screenshots.

  • Despite the name and status as a pest (they are literally European scarabs), I feel nostalgic whenever I see one. Farmers ruthlessly fought them, so there hasn't been a swarming event here in at least 20 years.

  • Permanently Deleted

    Jump
  • Nice try IRS, but you already know what I do: Unemployed, I only deliver newspapers to keep a day rhythm.

    Per month 450€ for paper delivery, 600€ from the state (mostly rent assistance).

    Lived half a year from my savings without any assistance and learned to cut back at everything unnecessary. Now I get more money and don't need to pay into healthcare. Feels weird to be able to splurge again. Nothing contributes to my pension fund at the moment, but nobody believes in pensions here anyway.

  • No fireflies where I live, but that doesn't mean my childhood was free of a beautiful insect swarm.

    My area had a bad outbreak of cockchafers I got to enjoy.

  • Sorry, was half asleep when I wrote that.

    CGPgrey did make a ton of prediction on the future of these 2 technologies, but did overestimate their potential in the near future. That much is evident 10/8 years later. The only thing they really excel at is getting money from starry eyed investors, which you can then run away with. Same as it was back then.

  • CGPgrey's AI and his self driving cars videos.

    Definitely made some poor choices in life due to these that I could scream into a pillow. The future is always unpredictable, and while behind the scenes I'm sure a lot happened to improve both of these technologies, more than a decade later the use cases of both are still the same - grifting investors.

  • I remember on Reddit one awful "This is Musk. He didn't like ___, so he invented ___" picture with like 4 examples of things he stole and a stick figure with his head. "Be like Musk" was the bottom text. I agreed with it at first, then I saw it like 6 more times.

    Being annoyed at those constant repost made me leave his fan club pretty quick. Oh how naive I was, thinking the worst thing he could be was annoying.

  • Yeah, sorry, one comment up from that one was the one I thought you responded too. Doesn't change anything though as far as I'm concerned.

    I don't think there is anything left to say, good luck with that Revolution thing.

  • The commenter you replied to was basically just informing people not to buy. You made a great showing that you were going to buy anyway and you don't care. That is something you need to justify, not the buying itself. No one would even know if you didn't go out of your way to tell everyone.

    And yes, what you do is good, but takes time to amount to anything. In the mean time, it is perfectly acceptable to also pursue methods that work in the short term. We aren't just individuals on a forum, we are public opinion. As flawed as it is, that's still better than the apathy you promote in your first comment.

  • Anyone who disagrees with that fact also thinks it's okay to go to the casino just for the bar at the back.

  • You can always be mad at 2 or more things at once, and how the gaming industry sucks out money from the consumer to pay their executives should be one of these.

    In all the industries you mentioned, "voting with your wallet" is a thing that's universally accepted as effective but at times hard to do. In gaming, it couldn't be easier, you can literally safe money by buying anything cheaper from the indie sphere, not buy anything at all and play games you already own, wait 2 weeks and get a 2nd hand copy, or the unnamed 4th thing.

    And the impact is more than just having a worse game to enjoy. As much as we like to laugh at people for their bad financial decisions, some people just cannot think rational about these things, and every game that includes microtransactions is simply not safe for them. Casino's are heavily regulated for a reason, it is perversive brain stimulation with decades of research behind it, and we invited it into our consoles and computers for kids to enjoy. And more and more people just expect games to be predatory, and it warps how they think of the effort put into games. Being a functional, complete game without any in game purchases used to be the minimum. But if you expect anyone to have your mental fortitude, that no kid will wander into this menu and that everyone has an unalterable image of the industry, feel free to support this.

    Genshin Impact lies at the end of this road.

    You do not have to support these decisions. You can be a Monster Hunter and Capcom fan, and not buy into the hype. Vote with your wallet.

  • Everything else being equal, of course electric and induction stoves are preferable to gas. I spend most of my life with an electric stove, no apartment I ever saw had induction, but I didn't particularly like the gas stove I had to use for some years.

    But if you want the worst user experience ever, find an electric stove with touchscreen controls. What the hell, landlord, where did you even find that one?

  • True, but this is really basic stuff. I think I learned this for English as 2nd language in primary school. We trust that people here know English well enough to understand the server rules, why then assume they don't know basic grammar?

    What makes this different from SVO word order? YSK how to use participles? Did you know about the order of adjective (That one is actually pretty interesting, but i's not basic grammar so it gets to pass). At some point it is ridiculous to try to teach some grammar rules of English in English, and I believe this is well past that point. Even if one doesn't speak the language naturally or have a formal education in it.

  • Why would you use Ukraine as the example word instead of uniform?

    I'm pretty sure I've heard "the Ukraine" been pronounced both ways often enough.

  • I've seen a good 15 minute essay-video about this:

    https://youtu.be/nCe7Fj8-ZnQ

    TLDW: English speakers increasingly use the consonant versions of "a(n)", "the" and "to" for anything in casual conversation, just with a glottal stop to separate vowel sounds. This is then found more and more in written and formal language.

  • I believe it is at least partially the same hatred for cosmetic surgery, just amped up because it's more impactful and they don't understand why being trans would make a difference.

    It was socially acceptable to make fun of "fake" people for years. Everyone knew what a Botox face looked like. Celebrities are ridiculed for not ageing gracefully and clinging to an image with 21 surgeries a year. And now these people are changing their entire gender and pointing at these people for being fake is supposedly wrong? Because it's "necessary", the same as the cosmetic freaks claimed? Why should it?

    In their mind, trans people just need a reality check the same way they dealt with cosmetic surgery addicts, but society seems to protect and pamper them instead of pointing out that they are loved in their natural look. And instead of trying to understand, they double down on what they've done for years. Sunk cost.