In middle school I played the (French) horn, and one time I lost my mouthpiece right before a concert. I spent the entire thing just pretending to play my mouthpieceless instrument.

I think my teacher knew not to do a song with a horn solo; none of us actually bothered to learn the notes to the songs. The concert probably sounded marginally better without me.

Well yeah, as the owners they have the exclusive right to determine what's okay. They're just following the rules as they've been laid out by centuries of corporate lobbying for more exploitable copyright laws. Those are what we need to focus on if we want more fair use of intellectual property that the rights holder has already sufficiently profited from - the thing that such protections were initially meant to ensure to a much more reasonable extent.

But they DO have the exclusive right. People want to be told the world is different - that it's better - but if we want to change it we need to see it for what it is. If we say "They don't have the right!" before we've done the work necessary to strip them of the right, then we'll never even understand how to start fixing this broken system.

The Best Ways to Stand Up to your Bully

1. Just give him your lunch money. It is one of the easiest ways to stand up to your bully.

I was never full-on incel, but I was definitely headed down that path. I was a late-20's fat guy with severe acne all over my upper body, and I'd obviously never had a girlfriend. I looked ahead in life and just saw it going further and further downhill. I tried dieting, working out, etc, but none of my attempts at making a change ever lasted.

One day I saw a facebook post that one of my old highschool classmates had gotten married. The guy looked a lot like me, and at first I was mad - I had that classic incel thought of "why is he successful and not me?" But after sitting in that dark place for awhile, I realized that the answer to that question is that I can be successful! I realized that I'd never tried to put myself out there because I always viewed myself as not being worthy - I needed to be fitter, more attractive, better at talking to people, etc - but did I really? I wanted to find out, so I made an online dating account, cleaned myself up, got a friend to take some nice pictures of me doing things I enjoyed, and put myself out there.

I made a goal for myself to never start a conversation with "Hey" or something similar - I went through every profile I found and picked something specific to talk about. It took a while, and I missed a lot of opportunities by being awkward, but eventually I got good enough at holding a conversation to secure a few dates, and in only a few months of that, I found the woman who is now my wife!

I'm still fat, but having someone to look good for was at least enough for me to shower more regularly, which cleared up a lot of my acne. I'm still pretty awkward, but so is my wife, and we both find it endearing. Life's not perfect - there are still issues - but I'm no longer looking ahead at my life and seeing only downhill trajectory; I have a sense of optimism I didn't have before, and it mostly came from me accepting myself. I'm not sure if other incels are the same as I was - not realizing that the one they actually hate is themselves - but I hope that if they are, they eventually come to the same realization that I did: that they are worthy.

If you've got cleaned, cooked seafood that smells like fish shit, you're at a shitty restaurant. My only takeaway from this is that we should really see if we can make terrestrial insects taste as delicious as we make aquatic insects taste.

Makes sense. I've always been disappointed that instead of using better processing power to make bigger, more complex games, we used it to make the same games with more complex animations and details. I don't want a game that only differs from its predecessors through use of graphical upgrades like individual blades of grass swaying in the wind, or the character starting to sweat in relation to their exertion; I want games with PS1-PS2 graphics and animation quality, but with complex gameplay that the consoles of that era could only dream of being able to handle.

I want to tell people this sometimes, but I figure they'll just think I'm mansplaining mansplaining.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: when a company does something that shows it doesn’t have its customers’ best interests in mind, it's imperative that it be immediately and wholly abandoned.

Companies have long since learned that we'll ignore major red flags for the sake of convenience, and at this point they're not even trying to hide the flags - they're proudly flying them and laughing as we continue to give them business.

Well, it worked with the news.

Efficient workers get more work if you're in the office. I work from home, and that allows me to work efficiently until my work is done, set up scheduled emails to go out at the time I would've otherwise been done, then do what I want until then.

Stupid cosmetic designs have been an issue for a long time. There was a theater fire in Chicago in the early 1900's where a bunch of people died because they couldn't figure out how to use the fancy door handles while panicking and being crushed by everyone trying to get out. That's the reason why exit doors on buildings with a high occupancy are now required to swing out, and have those pushbar locks that allow the door to open even if you're just falling on it.

If it's possible that someone will need to use something while panicking, it needs to be as simple, intuitive, and failproof as possible

I think the biggest issue is that we don't know what to do when we're mad anymore. People think that being mad is all you need - that if you say you're mad, things will change. I often see people get pissed about something, then calm down and move on, as if they somehow achieved something with their anger alone.

I'm hoping that there's some pressure going on under the surface, and people will eventually reach a point where enough anger has built up that they can't take it anymore and they really take action, but from what I've seen, people are so against the concept of acting upon angry feelings that I worry they'll just hold it in until they die.

I've seen this image floating around for a while, which breaks down the reasoning - or lack thereof in certain media - pretty well.

I had this issue with my last address, so when I moved to my current house and started seeing mail for the previous owner as well as what I assume to be the owner before him, I immediately wrote 'No longer at this address, return to sender" on all mail that wasn't for me - even spam mail - and made a support ticket on the USPS website. I felt like it was a bit overkill, but I did stop seeing mail for other people pretty quickly.

Dunno how quick Royal Mail would be comparatively, but maybe they'd be just as effective as USPS was for me.

You can never be sure on the Internet. Plus, I know there are people who think like this; my mom did something similar to my dad when I was a kid. When they were first dating she told him she didn't want to be tied down, a sentiment that he thought was long over by the time they got married. Much to his surprise, she was angry that he wasn't more accepting when he caught her cheating. Decades later, she still claims that she was entirely justified, and that my dad is an asshole for getting angry at her.

My sister used to be the head of the environmental department of one of the suburbs of Minneapolis. She's met Tim Walz a few times, and has had nothing but good things to say about both his personality and his attitude toward the environment. The US has pretty slim pickings for good politicians these days, but I really feel that Tim is on that list. I'm feeling hopeful about American politics for the first time since I learned about how American politics works!

For me it was when I was around 8 or 9 and met someone from Kenya. They could speak perfect English, wore normal clothes, and talked about having electricity. I'd literally never been told that those things existed in Africa - every reference to that continent only talked about tribes and jungles, save for Egypt which only talked about ruins and deserts. I asked around and found that most of the rest of the world has the same stuff we have, and most countries have a functioning government. I was so confused - why were we the country of freedom when everyone else has the same thing?

At the time I just assumed that there was something I was missing, or maybe the rest of the world just caught up to our idea, but eventually I came to the conclusion that they tell us we're the country of freedom - and keep our studies of other countries to a minimum when we're young - so that we can internalize the rhetoric that our country is the best before we find out that most other countries about the same, and often better in certain ways.

It's the year 1.7×10^106^. The heat death of the universe is imminent. Still listening to this banger. Modern music sucks - I was born in the wrong generation. Like if you agree.

Best I can do is whooping cough.

Because the media is owned and operated by rich men who benefit from putting the blame on others and calling it "news."

I remember when the first wave of stimulus checks went out and a bunch of car dealerships suddenly raised the price on their cars by $1000. UBI would be great, but if we don't reign in the corporate-apologist economy first, every product will suddenly be more expensive so they can bleed people of that extra money.

I honestly can't tell if sending this to my wife would go over very well or very poorly.

They're better than the OLD alternative, which was total boycotting at best, and torches and pitchforks at worst. The NEW alternative is complaining about it for a week or two, then continuing on without making any changes at all. They don't mind the new alternative.

I wasted my entire life being kind to people

Sorry, bud - kind people don't say that. Yes, I've been walked all over by assholes, and I've been taken advantage of more times than I can count. I've been bullied and abused because of my body, and I've been made to feel like I don't deserve to share the same planet with some people, but I've also met some amazing people who accept me and love me.

The whole point of being kind is to be vulnerable, and to help people earnestly and without judgement. Why would I give a shit that some asshole got a leg up because of my effort, or felt bigger by making me feel smaller? If I help 100 jerks and one good person, at the end of the day, I helped a good person, and that makes my whole day, regardless of anything else. That's how you find the good people in the world, and build your social circle with people who care for you.

I guarantee you he asked someone who he was supposed to be introducing right before he went on stage, heard the name Nicky, pictured a woman, and introduced accordingly.

The issue with the high-paying medical profession is that it attracts 2 kinds of people: nice people who want to do good and help people, and self-centered people who want to feel powerful and in-control while making a bunch of money. The latter are the reason for shit like this. I'd bet that she doesn't care about children at all, and just wants to feel powerful, while raking in the cash from rich people looking to use her license to validate their terrible behavior.

Microsoft was screwing over consumers before Google was even founded.

Republican voters will accept it wholeheartedly simply because a Republican suggested it. Then they'll view themselves as heroes who made a huge sacrifice for the good of the country when really none of this needed to happen and the country's just getting worse. Of course, when they actually get to retirement age they'll be confused and angry as to why THEY can't retire yet; after all, they're heroes!

Don't worry, I was also confused as to why she was wearing a towel in a high-tech laser science lab.

Yeah, but that difference is specifically rooted in sexism and misogyny. The very fact that we can all see the difference that isn't much of a difference shows that there's a divide that needs to be bridged. We only think women's nipples are inappropriate because we were taught to. Plenty of cultures around the world don't see breasts as inappropriate, and they're doing just fine.

It took me a few glances to realize that's not chewed gum stuck in the keyboard.

Yeah, people who have experienced it understand that you don't "try" gaslighting. People who do it are just constantly doing it, usually without even needing to try - it's just their natural state to counter the things other people say. It works not by making someone believe a lie, but by wearing them down slowly, showing such confidence in something that the victim sees as being so clearly incorrect that they can't help but think that maybe they're the problem.

Can't have a blue wave without a blue vote.

Negative change worms it's way in through small defeats. The first DLC's were a small price for a lot of content, the first YouTube ads were only a single ad that was just a few seconds long, the first video game preorders came with amazing rewards, etc. When you allow for 2 seconds, then what's 3 seconds? What's 4, 5, 6? What's 30 seconds? What's 2 minutes? We've seen examples of this all throughout capitalism's history; to ignore them is, well, ignorant.

I'm not writing up anything. I clock in when my shift starts, I complete the work designated for me for that shift, send it out by the time it needs to be sent out, and clock out at the end of my shift.

She's my buttery snacc.

Whenever I hear the name Ariana Grande, I can't help but try to translate it to "Big Aryan." I know that's not a correct translation, but it's always what I picture in my head.

Wait, so Steam isn't even actually on the picture? I feel like they could've just circled any original logo and made the joke about that instead.