Blake [he/him]

@Blake [he/him]@feddit.uk
1 Post – 310 Comments
Joined 1 years ago

Hijacking your thread to advocate for my lazy ideology. Disclaimer I have pretty severe ADHD so this might be extreme for most people but for me this makes life liveable.

Forget trying to make things look super tidy and neat like in an IKEA commercial. Make your living space functional, comfortable and easy to maintain. Reduce the amount of physical, mental and emotional effort required to maintain your environment. For example, for laundry:

  1. Don’t iron anything unless you really need/want to. (Job interview, going on a date, appearing in court, etc.)
  2. Anywhere you’re liable to undress, have a basket for dirty clothes. It should be open-topped (no lid!) and mobile, like a laundry basket, so when you need to do a load of laundry, you can pick up and use the whole basket - functioning both as the hamper and the basket. Bedroom and bathroom are the usual places for this! You want the act of tossing dirty clothes in the laundry to be just as easy as tossing it on the floor.
  3. There’s no such thing as odd socks. They’re called mix ‘n’ match socks now. Like Mashems!
  4. No neatly folded clothes or hangers or anything like that, except for very special things such as in point 1 - everything just gets dumped into big drawers based on category. I have little fabric boxes that fit into a kallax to keep this relatively neat looking but super easy.
  5. If something can’t survive going in the washing machine mixed load cycle and the tumble dryer daily load, it is not welcome in my life. (There’s a similar rule about the dishwasher!)

You get the idea. Embrace your laziness, don't bother yourself with half a second what people might think of how you live. This is surprisingly neat and orderly and takes almost no effort to maintain. If you keep finding your basket is misplaced, buy another basket and keep it in two places. Stop fighting the current and go with your flow. Accept who you are, even if you’re a lazy bitch like me!

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I’m gonna come out swinging: not even a game, but two entire fucking genres:

  1. Battle royales. I am like 90% convinced that gamers have been tricked by some dark psychology that has somehow convinced them that these games are worth playing. I don’t know whether it’s because the quality of FPS games has been so low for so long that today’s gamers have never really played a properly fun shooter or what. Battle royales are 75% downtime. You spend so long fucking around parachuting in to the map, walking around, collecting stuff, bla bla bla, interspersed by just a few moments of action, and when you get killed it usually doesn’t feel fair, it’s because a whole other team showed up right as you were already fighting someone else and put you in a nearly impossible situation.

  2. MOBA games are just RTS games with the best bits taken out.

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There really should be a law requiring companies which provide online services to be required to release self-hosted server software once they discontinue the provision of the service.

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Stupid article, most of Gen Z aren’t even 21 yet, of course they’re gonna fall for scams, they’re teenagers or younger lol. I got scammed loads of times on RuneScape as a kid, and that taught me better than anything else how to avoid scams.

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Just in case you weren't aware, this is a very classic symptom of ADHD, you might want to check out the other symptoms and resources online to see if it fits you. There's medication for ADHD which may help? I have ADHD, so that's why I'm sharing.

A tip I once got was "three before me", which means every time you speak, you let other people speak 3 times before you add anything else. I find that helpful if I can remember to do it.

When I think of something to say, I feel a strong urge to blurt it out - partially because I am excited by this amazing thought I just had, and also partially because I'm worried I might forget it.

Another thing you can do is take notes of things you want to say, write them down - that also helps you evaluate if they're actually worth saying!

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Yes, probably. I also really enjoy the idea that you think that it being a suppository would factor in to the calculus at all, I think it’s really funny

Fellas, is it gay to put immortality up your ass?

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Clearly the real answer to this question is neither, and that Lemmy should incorporate a feature for automatically synchronising content between communities on different instances, in a way that reduces the duplication of data, if possible.

There’s little or no value in defederated social media if one instance hosts a number of large communities that all other instances depend on. It’s almost the same as the typical monolithic website with a public API model.

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Very often this shit is designed by people with psychology degrees.

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I wrote up a huge guide on the process until my phone crashed and I lost it all. but honestly? Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. Pay whatever it costs to get it professionally printed. I promise you, it’s not as easy as you think, you’ll spend more money getting the tools and materials to create a good final product than you would have done just getting it professionally printed. I can pretty much guarantee that unless you have professional design-grade printing, cutting and gluing equipment that you will not be able to do this as easily as you’re imagining it would be. Please heed my warning, do not make the same mistakes I did.

I really admire the honesty and bravery it took to write this comment. Thank you for sharing.

For workers, unions are 100% upside.

The extent to which you are arguing against overwhelming evidence cannot be understated. You are arguing against something less controversial than evolution.

We know that unions promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions.

But that’s not all unions do. Unions also have powerful effects on workers’ lives outside of work.

High unionization levels are associated with positive outcomes across multiple indicators of economic, personal, and democratic well-being

Unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28%.

Unionized workers are more likely to receive paid leave, have health insurance and pension plans.

Unionized workers receive more generous health benefits than nonunionized workers.

Unionized workers receive 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid leave

How unions help all workers

Workers get significant economic benefits from labor unions

Unionized workers earn 10.2% more than their non-union peers

Supporting workers’ right to organize is a key way to help boost wages and support quality jobs.

Unions provide major economic benefits for workers and families

Coworker (IT guy) went into a meeting room, turned on the computer, but not the monitor, and then returned to his office. Then he waited for another co-worker to enter the meeting room. The IT guy then remotely connected to the meeting room computer from his desk, logging in as the person in the meeting room - no idea how he got the password. He then made some very strange modifications to seemingly random employees time sheets and left a homophobic email in the drafts of a lesbian co-worker. Then he tried to cover his tracks by erasing some logs, logged out, and went on his merry way.

The changes were noticed the same day and I was asked to investigate. The only reason I looked thoroughly enough to figure it out was because the logs were erased, otherwise I probably would have stopped digging once the CCTV footage and time sheet modification logs matched up. He forgot to wipe the logs of his own machine showing the remote connection to the meeting room PC just before the changes were made. I was digging through his computer’s logs while sitting across from him, it was a bit surreal.

From what I heard, he gave no reason for why he did what he did. I don’t think he really had one.

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I’ve read this comment five times and I still don’t understand what you were trying to say.

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I’m sorry, I can’t answer your question, but I have experienced companies lying about their email marketing opt-ins.

I placed an order with a company (it was the NEC in Birmingham) and distinctly remember clicking the “I do not consent” box and got emails anyways. I contacted them and asked them to look into it, guessing it was a bug. They got back to me and said it wasn’t possible for that to happen, and I must have misremembered.

I signed up for a new account, explicitly ensuring I was opting out from emails, with a fresh email address then logged in to check my communication preferences - the account was opted in.

I contacted them with this information and they basically wrote me back apologising that I had been misinformed, but letting me know that they were still legally in the clear and that the checkbox was actually just a “nicety” that they didn’t need, and that they relied on legitimate interest rather than user consent for marketing.

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Once, I was pouring a can of petrol (gas, if you’re American) onto a fire, which spread up the stream of petrol into the petrol tank. I panicked, and my genius solution of how to extinguish it was to shake it around, kinda like how you might do to put out a match.

I poured burning petrol all over the ground and on my clothes, there was fire everywhere all around me. Luckily I was right next to the hosepipe, which I quickly turned on and doused everything in water before it got too out of hand.

Everything was fine, but it could have been a lot worse.

Edit: Don’t play with petrol/gasoline. Fire spreads through it way faster than you could ever imagine, it’s not like in the movies where it moves slow enough that you can stop it, it’s pretty much instant!

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Imagine if cars were really unsafe. Would you say, “we shouldn’t legislate car safety, we should all just wake up and start buying safer cars!”

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I remember when I was around 13-14 years old we had sex education class and we had to put a condom on a dildo. We all thought it was great fun.

This isn’t really related to whatever this woman is talking about, she’s probably just making shit up, but it just reminded me of that and I thought I’d share.

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Oh boy, Travis Worthington comes off as such a selfish asshole in this interview. Paraphrased, and being a bit unfair to him, he just kind of says, “oh, we know fine well that we are benefiting from stealing art from others, and I’d really like if you believed that I cared about that, but the reality is that I don’t really give a shit, and if you’re an illustrator, just give up on your dreams of getting a job someday, because I certainly won’t be paying you”

Definitely gonna be avoiding indie games studios from now on.

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This is fucking hilarious, the fact that this is so upvoted really tells you how geeky Lemmy is though!

Was chatting with a young (17-ish) atheist guy recently who misremembered this as “isn’t there a bit in the bible where Christian licks a prostitute’s feet?” which truly left me with so many things I wanted to say that I could bareky say anything without laughing so much, but I managed to get out “did you think Jesus was called Christian??”

Releasing what is essentially two different consoles at the same time was such a bad idea. I can’t imagine that anyone in the engineering team thought it was a good idea. It seems like the kind of decision that is made in a board meeting that gets handed to the engineers with the caveat, “you don’t have to agree with the idea; just make it work!”

As a kid I liked to chew random stuff, (and tbh as an adult too, but I control myself by chewing socially acceptable stuff!) and I once chewed on some fancy curtains were pretty big and covered a big bay window, and my parents had to replace them. I don’t know how much they were but it couldn’t have been cheap.

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It’s not even slightly gay to use a suppository either, it reminds me of the guys who think it’s gay to clean their ass because it’s gay to touch an asshole.

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User researcher is a job that’s becoming more common at tech firms, and usually requires a psychology degree or similar

When books are published in the US, they’re required to submit a copy to the library of congress for preservation purposes.

It shouldn’t be left to corporations to decide whether or not the cultural artifacts they own are worth preserving or not.

Star Wars Galaxies. It really was really lightning in a bottle. No other game has come close to recreating the social player-driven sandbox experience that was SWG. This was the first MMORPG I played to feature a classless build system and I haven’t played another game which does it quite as well. Honourable mention goes to the Jump to Lightspeed expansion, truly the coolest expansion for any game I’ve ever experienced. We will never be able to recreate the experience of SWG again, the culture of gaming has changed too much. It was a game where you simply couldn’t solo the entire game or hang around with a dungeon finder or anything like that. You had to interact with other people - you had to kick back and hang out in bars together, you had to ask someone to help you change your hair colour or style, you had to ask doctors to heal you, or tailors to make clothes for you in a style you liked, or settle for off-the-rack fashions bought from player-owned stores. Players would also take the role of bounty hunters to hunt down criminal players for credits. You’d get to know a lot of the people you shared a server with, you’d remember who was fun to team up with, or who saved your ass, or who gave you some buffs, etc. and it really made the experience unforgettable.

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Millennials: we’re all adults now, we want to be taken seriously!

Time: passes

Millennials: never mind we’ve made a mistake let’s go back

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Firefox. It's better, IMO, to follow a process of how to manually harden it because then you know how to allow exclusions to the hardening when things go wrong.

No, it’s the name of the company, Indie Game Studios. Not all independent studios of course!

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You probably shouldn’t decide how much to respect someone for what job they do. Unless they do like a really sketchy or immoral “job”, like a hitman or a scammer or something.

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It would being better pay, better benefits, even more stable careers and better work-life balance.

It doesn’t matter how much money you’re already making, or how good your benefits already are. If you have a Union, you can negotiate for improvements. There is always room for improvement, unless you’re working at a fully-mutual workers cooperative.

I know first hand that some trades even make more than their unionized counterparts

I’d be interested to learn more, do you have a source or anything?

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Disgusting corporate speak. I never heard anyone say “oh, we have too many staff to iterate quickly”. BioWare has sucked for quite a while. EA killed it. Absolute tragedy.

Some of these are just awful takes man, I’m sorry.

Like Jar Jar, fair enough, he’s shitty CGI, he has bad writing, and is a pretty weak addition to the prequels. Same with the Leia scene, it looks awful and ruins what could have been an impactful death, with an almost cartoonish feel at odds with the seriousness of the rest of the film.

But the Holdo manoeuvre scene is one of the most visually striking moments in the entirety of Star Wars. It has awesome sound design, great acting, it’s just a really impressive moment with real impact.

The scene where Kylo kills Han is also really well done. The lighting is fantastic, it has some great acting, again, great sound design and a really impactful moment with a lot of suspense, and Chewie’s pained reaction is unforgettable.

The casino planet isn’t a single scene and is more of a story arc, but the introduction of the Canto Bight casino is a pretty typical Star Wars scene, almost formulaic at this point, but is executed well - if you take issue with that one and not the introduction of Takadana, I’d be curious as to why.

I think the worst scene on Canto Bight is where Finn and Rose meet DJ, the hacker. It’s very awkward and stilted, the writing is pretty poor IMO, both the dialogue and the characterisation. I think DJ is a cool character and his writing is fine, but the scene itself and Finn/Rose’s behaviour is really strange.

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If Firefox isn't available, the next best choice would probably be de-googled Chromium (note that Chromium is not necessarily fully de-googled by default) or Safari. Edge is just Chrome plus Microsoft.

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  • 7zip (archive tool) People still use Winrar for whatever reason.
  • Firefox (web browser) - It’s well known but still under-used. Stop using chrome. Chrome will be the end of the free internet.
  • windirstat (visualise used disk space) - I use this to clear free space
  • musicbee (music player) - replaced VLC with this because VLC has had a bug that makes it not playback FLAC files properly for like... A year?
  • Screen2Gif (gif recorder & editor)
  • ShareX (screenshot/video tool)
  • Open Video Downloader (GUI tool to rip YouTube etc.)
  • uBlock Origin (ad-blocker) addon
  • Sponsorblock (sponsorship skipper) addon
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I’m not sure how much of this pressure is from your company or self-driven, but I always keep my webcam on and I don’t give a shit about sitting straight or looking attentive or whatever. Half the time I’m fucking around with stuff in the background. Nobody has ever said anything about it.

I have awful impulse control (severe ADHD) but usually I just eat an entire packet of Oreos instead of exploiting people for selfish reasons.

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I’ve played Starfield (PC) a good bit by now and I’d say that mid 80s is probably fair.

The gameplay is great fun - the combat, gear, etc. is really quite similar to Fallout 4 (though without the VATS), with a Skyrim style talent tree.

The base building and ship building is quite like Fallout 4, though much improved (thankfully!) but still a bit janky.

The worldbuilding is immersive but the world itself is just okay - it’s really predictable, they play it a bit too safe, every faction is nothing we haven’t seen a dozen times before, and society hasn’t advanced at all ~400 years in the future apparently.

Characters are exactly what you expect from a Bethesda game - a bit two dimensional, but nice enough.

Graphics are good, sound design is good, music is nice but a bit too similar to Skyrim IMO.

The story is also really quite safe and derivative, reminds me simultaneously of Mass Effect and Skyrim.

The exploration is cool, but does get a bit repetitive after a while. I think more interesting “random” locations would be really good - after a few abandoned, flavourless civilian bases, you’ve seen them all.

I’m a sucker for customisable bases/houses/etc. especially for space ships, giving me all those building blocks and letting me loose in the sandbox (starbox?) is honestly hours of entertainment.

Space combat is fun, but IMO the space part of the game would be way more immersive if I did all of the ship piloting stuff in-character rather than in the UI menues, seems like a big oversight - why not have something like the galaxy map from mass effect, or have everything on displays in the cockpit? It would be much more immersive, but I guess it would have delayed the game quite a bit.

A lot of the game is juggling menues and interfaces which aren’t the best designed. very similar to Skyrim - I imagine UI redesign mods will really shine once they start coming out. It’s pretty tricky trying to figure out what stuff in your inventory is junk you accidentally picked up (looking at you, Fire Extinguisher!) and which items have a surprisingly good value-to-weight ratio (like some - but not all - of the books, or the deck of cards, surprisingly)

There are occasionally little bugs and glitches, but it’s not too bad for 2023 - nothing that makes the game unplayable or breaks major things, it’s just been stuff like glitchy animations, containers placed in the wrong place/orientation, weird physics behaviour, and I’ve noticed a couple missing textures here and there.

If you’re looking for more of a story/RPG game, I’d suggest something more like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic.

For exploration and space combat, I think No Man’s Sky is better, but with much less customisation.

For more customisation and sandbox style gameplay - but less action-oriented - Space Engineers is probably a better choice.

All in all, Starfield is a fun game - Skyrim in space is a good starting point for describing it, but it’s a lot closer to “Fallout 4, but the bombs didn’t drop”, though the game has a lot of cool extra systems beyond that. I’d be happy to recommend it to someone who would enjoy a single player sci-fi themed looter-shooter sandbox game with some mild RPG elements and player-constructed ships and bases, and I’m sure there are hundreds of hours of enjoyment there, and, as with the Elder Scrolls or Fallout games, it’s likely a game that I will return to for many, many years to come

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I’m just a straight male. Are my pronouns he/him?

Probably. Straight is the wrong word here - that refers to your sexuality, not your gender identity. A straight male is into women. But a straight male could also have pronouns other than he/him. Usually, a cisgender male uses he/him pronouns, but not always. Cisgender is a word that means that your gender identity matches your assigned gender at birth - e.g. not transgender

Is that how I should tell people?

Yes, the best way to do it is part of your introductions, like, “Hi, I’m Blake, my pronouns are he him”. Usually people don’t “say” the slash, it’s just a space, but you can say it if you want.

Do you actually tell them as you meet them ?

It’s up to you. If I am meeting someone 1:1 for the first time, I probably wouldn’t unless they did first. I always do it when I’m introducing myself to a group.

Do I have to wait for a certain social cue ?

The only social cue is simply, “what are your pronouns?”. Ideally, we (cisgender folk) should be trying to make it easier for transgender/non-binary people by sharing our pronouns, even if they would be obvious to most people - I’m a hairy, 6’4” bear, most people can tell I identify as male, but if I say my pronouns are he/him or any/all pronouns (I don’t mind which pronouns people use for me) it makes it less awkward for trans people or gender non-conforming (GNC) folk to do so.

How about online. Should I tell people or have it on my personal profile somewhere?

It’s up to you, nobody will expect it from you - it’s personal information after all. If you’re comfortable sharing it, then you can put it anywhere you like, including on your profile, or you can share at the point it becomes relevant.

And about respecting other people’s pronouns. How do i figure them out?

Either they tell you, or you ask them! It’s better if you avoid trying to guess. If you need to use a pronoun and you haven’t been told them, go with they/them.

Is it a big faux pas if I don’t before I know them ?

Nope, not at all! No one is expecting you to know their pronouns before they tell you, or you ask.

Is it a faux pas if I refer to someone I just met and I assumed to be male as he/him?

Usually not - most of the time, you probably can guess from gender expression, and you wouldn’t cause any offence. If there is even 1% doubt in your mind though, you should definitely just ask. Even if you’re 99.99% or even 100% sure, it’s good to ask anyways. The more we normalise people asking and sharing pronouns, the less awkward it becomes for everyone!

I’ve never seen anyone referring to anyone irl by non conventional pronouns. Is it an actual thing or is it currently being pushed to make the world a more inclusive place?

In my experience, it’s pretty uncommon, but it does exist. Usually they’re used by people who don’t really feel comfortable identifying as exclusively male or exclusively female, or by people who want to subvert or oppose the usual gender binary.

Hope this helps, thanks for being open with your questions and for trying to make the world a better place! If you have any other questions just ask.

Babylon 5. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s a fantastic show, it was pretty popular back in the day, but since it ended it pretty much faded from memory for most people I think, compared to Stargate, for example.

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