macrocarpa

@macrocarpa@lemmy.world
0 Post – 67 Comments
Joined 1 years ago

Asked a girl out on a date. She invited me over to watch a movie with her at her parents house (we were in our late teens). I arrived; her recently deceased family dog and incredibly distressed mother were both in the kitchen. Dog was a really big golden retriever that had been euthanized, and the mom had bought him home? Not sure why? Maybe to bury in the back yard or something? Idk

Anyway I offered to leave but she was insistent that we watch the movie together, which we did, on the couch, with her mom crying in the next room. Halfway through the movie the mom screams he's still alive, he's still alive. Go into the kitchen, she'd gone to move the body and it had expelled air and made some noise. I had to explain, with my best year 12 biology, what had happened. Five minutes of this woman losing her shit with grief out of her beloved companion dying.

Girl insisted we watch the last 10 minutes of the movie, it finishes with us watching in silence, I get up to leave and said something stupid like hey I'd love to do this again sometime and she says "I have a boyfriend"

I'm like alright well that's that then and didn't put in any more effort. Stupid me, she was hot and I really liked her. Being a dipshit I wrote a song about it, using the three guitar chords I knew, which takes me to act ii.....

....five years later, I'm at a party, exchanging worst first date stories with friends and fellow partygoers including a cute blonde. I wait my turn, tell the story, she laughs her arse off and then goads me into singing the song, accompanying myself poorly on the guitar. I absolutely fucking nail it, everyone is in stitches, sit down next to her and the night goes from there. We end up leaving the party for a walk down to the local beach, made out on the beach, things get frisky, jump in a cab back to my house, in bed together, have drunken sex....which results in a broken condom. She lives literally the other side of town so we have to wait till (a) I'm sober enough to drive and (b) pharmacy is open to get a plan b, then have the most awkward drive back to her house. Get there, offer to walk her to the door, she says no, kisses me goodbye in the car, then texts me...to say she has a boyfriend.

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I was young and naive, even a couple years later I would've done a bit of digging. You know, questions like what's his name, how long you guys been going out for, shouldn't he be here with you in your moment of need given your fucking dog is dead.

Mate I've had some cracker first dates that didn't work out in the long run but were absolutely part of the tapestry which got me to here.

The number of good first dates far outweighs the weird and shitty ones.

Some of my most treasured experiences are those quiet intimate moments just between two of you. An experience that just the two of you share. It is profound.

We are our experiences.

There's a movie about that scenario with the Beatles. Called yesterday.

Tricky, theirs is a cover version, so the original would still exist.

tbh we are all just snapshots of ourselves at different stage of the same cycle. The Simpsons did a whole thing about lolapalooza which starts with homer looking for his favourite artists in a record store, and the record store dude, and being directed to the oldies section.

The bands that feature in that episode are the smashing pumpkins, soundgarden , cypress Hill and Peter Frampton, all of whom appear in Spotify old school lists

I spent a bit of time going through your post history to get an understanding of your background

In short I think your life experiences mean you've lost all trust in men. Not just your direct experiences but what you've observed in others.

As a result you enter each interaction assuming the worst. Every male social worker you engage with will confirm this pattern because that's what you're looking for. The - ah fuck here we go again - feeling.

For them, and I don't expect you to have empathy for them, this is what they live - the outcomes of other mens behaviours. But - they were there and they tried. That is something.

You have changed quite a lot of your original post.

"OK so she must've bleached the full head then done the green side first, then the black side. Man her scalp must be itchy as fuck. What did I used to use to stop the burn? Coconut oil? Yeah that's right. Smelt like Malibu for a week or so, and had to throw out that set of pillow cases. Man that sucks, I loved those pillow cases, perfect for winter. I wonder if you can still get them?"

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The devices that you describe are incompatible with a standard that has been mature for 50 years.

The 3.5mm jack is everywhere, it is the standard. USB C is incredibly recent.

Put it this way, if you were to walk into a store and pick up any given electronic product with audio output, would you expect it to have an audio jack, or a USB C connector?

In your drawer full of random electric cables, how many have 3.5mm plugs in them vs usb a, micro, mini, or some propriety plug? And how many could you plug into a device and just...work?

So why do you accept devices that don't have this standard?? It is beyond me.

Younger than 45

Oh OK that actually makes sense.

45 year olds and above are digital immigrants. In short, they had an off-line childhood and an online adulthood. They have different speech and writing patterns to you because they learnt and communicated in a different way to you.

Assuming you're under 45, this won't make sense, because you've never experienced a world which doesn't have this sort of interaction. You're a digital native, digital tech has always been there.

In twenty years time, children born or educated after the advent of chat gpt will have the same problem understanding you. The way you write, post and interact will seem clunky and old fashioned. It's already happening - we're having to adapt the way we interact, in order to be able to 'be understood' by AI.

The wonderful thing about humanity, tho, is that we do adapt and adopt! Consider this - everyone over the age of 50 had to learn something completely new to them in order to be able to communicate with you via email, sms or messaging app. They used to just talk, or write letters. Sharing media was a physical act. Yet here they are using the same texh as you. Awesome.

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The rise of feminism has seen the steady devaluation of the contribution of men in those areas of society where they should be most active. Rather than celebrate and recognise what's right, the focus is on attacking what's wrong.

The majority of men are lonely, isolated and uncared for. Many feel unvalued, unsafe and vulnerable. There is less community support for men than there has been in the past, less institutional support, and a continued decline in the tolerance of men being in shared places. The minimisation of value in societal roles is yet another way that men are cut off.

This seems to escape the vision of feminism. There is always claim of ideological alignment, where the empowerment of women directly benefits men, but when it comes to any form of concrete action that helps men that need help, or celebrates men that contribute - it's nowhere to be seen.

Men kill themselves. They kill themselves. In their thousands. Leaving cratered families, trauma, guilt from the survivors, many of whom are female. Because they feel valueless, helpless and can't see a purpose to going on.

Accountability goes both ways. In demanding support from men, feminism must support men.

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Sex work is work. Decriminalise it, legislate it, create a sex workers employment category and taxation, require licensing and health checks, give copyright protections to content creators, to their images and likenesses.

To me porn is no more fantastical than acting is.

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She went on the BBC (no pun intended) to talk about her problems finding employment.

So it's possible but my spidey sense is she's doing it for a laugh.

However normal reminder, don't put anything in backgrounds that you don't want screen capped and sent first to your colleagues and subsequently to the world. Aka passwords, pin numbers, phone numbers, notes, org charts, technical artefacts or business sensitive information (including whiteboards)

Gratitude makes you live longer, feel better, and it's free.

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It's not fine - it's been around longer and the user base is rusted onto it.

I left Facebook in 2018 after discovering the level of behavioural tracking, and the discovery that Facebook had both captured and sold this information to advertisers. I found this out at a marketing technology showcase after chatting with a FB engineer.

In short, because people have different values and are motivated by different things.

Doing something that aligns with your values can be deeply fulfilling! Faith, charity, community, financial independence, respect etc.

Note that there isn't anything objectively right or wrong about this, or the things that people value, it just is. You might value solitude and rest.

Head to personalvalu.es for examples of values.

On a shelf though? Doesn't dust adhere to rubbery or siliconey stuff? I would have though in a drawer would be more hygienic.

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Farm feedstock.contain all the nutrients an adult cow needs, including a wide range of vitamins (including A, B, D, E, K), essential fatty acids and taurine, without the need for grass. Although obligate herbivores in the wild, domestic cows still need nutrients they would normally source from vegetation. Thankfully farm feedstock contains all those nutrients in a bioavailable grain.

grain is a professional cow food, created by grain manufacturers in 50,000BC, formulated and checked by independent animal nutritionists to meet the AAFCO(USA) and FEDIAF(Europe) guidelines for animal nutrition.

We've had safe and healthy variants of cow food for 52,000 years. Trying to elevate the question to animal abuse speaks entirely to personal ignorance.

Eta - modifying the diet of a domesticated animal for your convenience seems to run contrary to the premise of minimising animal cruelty.

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I think it's not feasible to stop or control it, for several reasons -

  1. People are motivated to consume ai porn
  2. There is no barrier to creating it
  3. There is no cost to create it
  4. There are multiple generations of people who have shared the source material needed to create it.

We joke about rule 34 right, if you can think of it there is porn of it. It's now pretty straightforward to fulfil the second part of that, irrespective as to the thing you thought of. Those pics of your granddsd in his 20s in a navy uniform? Your high school yearbook picture? Six shots of your younger sister shared by an aunt on Facebook? Those are just as consumable by ai as tay tay is.

Wtf

A simple way for any audio output device following the global standard used for the past 25 years to output sound directly from the device. Failure rate is one tenth that of any other external port. Use is so widespread in home audio that it's absence is seen as a detractor.

The original Walkman has a 3.5mm jack. That's how far back this standard has been in common use.

I can't comprehend why anyone puts up with not having an audio jack.

Sim city 2000

It may astonish you to learn that many media devices in this wide, rich and varied world are not software applications.

Very small is 3 people. It's a small company.

My experience working in a dev company exactly that size -

Pros

Less dead wood (people not carrying their own weight).

Everyone knows everyone well, it's a tight team

Think it, do it - quick to develop and respond

Less pressure

Feels a bit like a family

More chilled than corporate esp. working from home

More support of networking and linking up with industry peers

Higher degree of trust and support

Way more latitude to do what you want to do

Easy to influence senior leadership

Can offer things like equity etc

If you're a high performer you will be noticed

Way less red tape

A lot more trust

Company can prosper if everyone works hard

Cons

Company favourites

Can be quite political, although far less so than some large organisations I've worked for

Less cover if you're on leave or similar

Harder to get some things done if money is needed (lower budgets and thinner reserves)

Lower remuneration, fewer levers to pull to get a salary increase

More drama with paychecks etc

Fewer higher skilled people to learn from

Culture can go sideways quickly

Nowhere near the same level of support and benefits provided by the big companies

Tend not to attract the best and brightest talent

Comoany more impacted by economic conditions

It also greatly depends on you and your preferred style. Some people just outright don't like working for big businesses and prefer smaller gigs.

Yay, something I can talk to.

I'm a middle manager in tech delivery. Started in a different industry, moved into the saas world at the right time, became a dev, became a contractor, made lots of money, had a family, needed more regular hours so went the management route, less money, more stress. About a year ago I took on a new role which has me across approx 10 directs each who have their own squads of 6 to 10 people.

I don't hate it but it is hard work. And yes it is objectively harder and more stressful than being a developer, simply because of the level of accountability that I personally take.

In terms of expertise. I know a deep amount about one platform, a moderate amount about three others and I have no fucking clue about the rest. Integration, for instance. Yet I'm accountable for delivery and eye watering budgets. I'm sure the devs have a similar opinion of me as to what's posted elsewhere in the thread, that I don't understand the specific technology hence shouldn't be directing the work stream, but the thing is - thats not the role.

The role is to manage money and people. The array of brilliant technologists who i've seen step into leadership roles then slowly drown and fail is distressing. So when I'm looking for leads to bring into positions, a lot of the time I'm looking for people who naturally want to step forward and want to lead. Most of the time they do well even without the full depth of tech.

I think this is the link back to your question. Like, can you go back to being a dev? If your promotion to management was as a result of being the most experienced dev, then yes absolutely, you should fit back in fine. If you were promoted because you were the voice in the team that said why or how or what if or let's do this, then I'm sorry. Leadership will seek you out once again.

A lot of really tough grown up shit is coming. You're going to have to make hard decisions. You kind of have to work it out as best you can.

The fuck is wrong with feeding cows grass?

Cows eat grass, I've seen them do it

There's grass everywhere, even in hawaii I think

Always remember that this, too, shall pass.

Anything that you can think of has already been thought of, modelled, and done by international actors who have more resources, technical capability and time than you, and have far fewer morals.

You want a specific outcome to this election? So do Russia and China. They're a lot better at this than you are and are orders of magnitude more invested in it.

The behaviours that the youth detest in elders were acceptable in the elders youth. All that changed was time. It'll happen to you, too, and you won't give a fuck what the kids are saying.

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Tldr "In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence"

I'm really happy you commented this. "normal" reflects norms.

Part of any generational attitude divide is the base conditions aka norms. When a change / progress is made, it sets those norms.

It's normal for my generation that people wear seat belts and don't smoke in pubs, that women have extensive varied careers and dads don't beat their kids. It wasn't for the generation before me.

It's not normal for men of my generation to talk openly and confidently about their sexuality and mental health. Yet that seems to be normal for some of the younger generations, and I envy that.

I find that the easiest way to tap into the generational norms is to listen to comedy. It often represents the edge of what is considered acceptable, because comedy does play with that edge.

It's amusing to see the pitchforks come out for comedians where they're judged for edgy content from 25 years ago and society has moved on a bit. Amusing because most of this judgement seems to happen online, and thus is a permanent record, so in 25 years time we'll have a bunch of embarrassed mid 40s people trying to explain their cruelty to an unsympathetic younger generation. "you weren't there, man! You don't understand!"

Are you diagnosed neurodiverse? This is a common trait.

I'm just baffled. It seems unnecessarily cruel.

It's over the top exaggeration to highlight plot points.

I didn't find the purported themes really resonated with me tbh.

The sets and costumes were amazing and there were some funny bits tho.

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Threshold.

In houses with mud floors, the stalks of wheat (thresh) were spread about as a kind of insulator and absorbative. A thresh hold was a block of wood at the entrance which stopped the thresh from getting spread through the doorway.

This grew to mean the boundary between the house and the rest of the world, to the point of symbolic ownership. When you cross a threshold you are going from one domain to another.

We now use it to mean a limit, or the how far you have to go before something changes or breaks. Kinda cool.

The other one is arrowhead. Terry Pratchett wrote a great piece on "ontic dumping", where we use one word to mean one thing then associate it with another thing and the connection is just automatically known by all.

So ->

We know what this means right. Go in this direction, look at this direction, the thing which needs attention is in this direction. There are arrow heads everywhere. On signage, on interfaces, even on the spacecraft which we have sent careening off into the universe. If other species are out there, they might interact with an object which had an arrowhead on it and would have absolutely no concept of what it means.

Why does an arrow have a head anyway? Because that's the way an arrow flies right. The pointy bit, which we call the arrowhead, moves in the direction that it's pointing. Which is bullshit, because if you hold an arrow horizontally then drop it, it goes straight down. And it only flies in that direction if you apply force at one end of the arrow and propel it in that direction.

But WHY IS IT CALLED A HEAD?

It doesn't resemble a head. There's no body. Heads don't usually "point" in the direction of travel. Yet we have taken a word that means "the bit that is important", because we've determined that a head is an important thing, and the bit of a thing whxih does the most of the thinging should be called a head.

It baffles me.

Women are more than happy for a walk while the girls were at the moment as they were a couple of weeks ago but I did really have the chance for them in my family

Hey - very much feel this one.

It will likely come from your kids in the future, the validation doesn't come from society. They get to a point where they recognise what you did and say thanks.

You're doing well, keep it up mate.

Yes and no.

It gives an insight as to the nature, location and odor of many gigs