Schmoo

Schmoo , 3 days ago

I disagree. Memes are powerful tools and by denying ourselves the use of popular memes we grant "the enemy" an enormous advantage. Better we acknowledge that the issue is not the meme itself, but how it is used.

Schmoo , 10 days ago (edited 10 days ago)

I mean, the entire game can sort of be described as an easter egg hunt. If you're talking about >!warping inside the Ash Twin project!< then I get it, I got stuck on that for a while too but I love puzzle games and am used to that feeling of being stuck. I've noticed watching playthroughs that most people miss >!clues for how to tell the warp towers apart or how to apply the knowledge that warp towers activate when oriented towards the gravitational center of a destination!<, so there could've been more clues for that.

Edit: I think something that could've improved it is if they made a mini-game of the ship log to get more people to interact with it. A lot of the issues people seem to have with the game stem from them not meaningfully engaging with the clues they've been given. As it is the game relies heavily on people actively trying to piece together the puzzle themselves without any mechanism to ensure they do it.

Schmoo , 10 days ago

I think it might depend on what client you're using. They're working on Sync.

Schmoo , 10 days ago

You do have a >!teleporter detector!<, sort of. You can use the >!scout launcher to see when the teleporter activates by shooting the scout on the platform and hanging back. A black hole will appear when it activates and you can jump in.!<

Schmoo , 18 days ago

Lol at the fact that anarchists are so often misunderstood that we're just happy to be criticized intelligently instead of mindlessly.

Schmoo , 18 days ago

Failures of implementation are not failures of ideology. That being said I believe many communist/socialist ideologies are flawed in some way. Notice I said ideologies plural because it is not a monolith.

Schmoo , 18 days ago

Craigslist was always on the fringes, before Facebook marketplace came in there were a bunch of separate and disconnected online marketplaces. Facebook marketplace had the advantage of already having a massive user base (larger than any of the existing online marketplaces), causing it to become the largest one right out the gate, which then of course makes it the most attractive option for sellers since they will reach more people.

Schmoo , 18 days ago

So you can spend 10 minutes to an hour getting poked with needles or you can just pop an ibuprofen.

Schmoo , 18 days ago

Imagine enforcing shitty copyright laws on yourself like some code of honor. We developed the technology to make infinite copies of any media and then spend endless resources fighting it because it undermines our parasitic economic model.

Imagine for a moment that society embraced the full potential of digital technology. We could have a library of all human art and knowledge ever produced available for free, instantly, everywhere. If book libraries didn't already exist and were proposed today the excuses for rejecting it would be the same. The answer is also the same, change our economic model to support people's basic needs unconditionally and directly subsidize the production we need/want (like art).

Schmoo , 1 month ago

You don't seem to understand what capitalism is. Capitalism is not the market, it specifically refers to the economic model in which the means of production are privately or corporately owned (as opposed to collectively) and development occurs via the accumulation and reinvestment (aka redistribution) of wealth by the same.

Centralization is the crucial component of capitalism. Saying that the problem is centralization and not capitalism is like saying the problem with dictatorships is dictators and not dictatorship. You could say that if companies would just behave and reinvest/redistribute their wealth fairly and equitably then capitalism would be great, but you could also say that if we just had a benevolent dictator then dictatorship would be great. Accountability must be built into the system.

Schmoo , 1 month ago

You missed my point somehow so I'll try to say it again more clearly. Centralization is inherent to capitalism and inseparable from it. Capitalism places the means of production, and therefore power, into the hands of private individuals. Those private individuals accumulate wealth which allows them to accumulate more wealth and on and on it goes, leading to further centralization of power. Any solution to this problem involves collectivizing the means of production in some way, which means it would no longer be capitalism.

Schmoo , 30 days ago

People can organize in a large variety of ways without centralizing power. This idea of "all economic systems suck, let's just make capitalism better" is misguided. Decentralizing the power structure within capitalism is tantamount to moving away from capitalism. What you call the economic system that results from this doesn't matter. The term communism for example is often used to refer to the communist party of the soviet union established by the Bolsheviks, despite the fact that the Bolsheviks betrayed the values for which the revolutionaries fought.

Communism is, by its' original envisioning, a fully decentralized economic system in which the means of production are collectively owned by the workers. Communism is decentralized by design and centralization results from flaws - often deliberate courtesy of selfish oppurtunists - in its' implementation. Capitalism is centralized by design and decentralization results from flaws - also often deliberate courtesy of those like you seeking to make it better - in its' implementation.

Trying to "fix" capitalism by introducing flaws in its' implementation will never make long lasting change; that can only come about by replacing the foundation of capitalism with something better.

Schmoo , 1 month ago

You know it's been a while since I've read that book, but I'm pretty positive that isn't true.

Schmoo , 1 month ago

It is also a cleaner delivery mechanism for THC than combustion.

Schmoo , 1 month ago

Yep, I like my dynavap. It's a much more pleasant experience than a joint or pipe.

Schmoo , 2 months ago

Have you ever been given drugs at the doctor's or dentist, like anesthesia or pain meds? It's pretty rare that someone has never experienced an altered state of mind at some point.

The majority of people have been high before, and the majority of people are not drug addicts who find being sober horribly depressing. It's the depression that causes the drug addiction, not the other way around - though it certainly does make it harder to recover.

Schmoo , 1 month ago

Didn't intend to suggest they were the same, only that people don't find being sober depressing and unbearable after experiencing an altered state of consciousness once. People get "high" at the doctor's or dentist all the time and the risk of addiction from that is all but non-existent, but if someone seeks out the same drug outside a hospital setting the risk of addiction is much higher. Why? Because drugs don't make people addicted, they keep people addicted. People become addicted when they begin to use drugs as a maladaptive coping mechanism (typically for mental illness or environmental factors, i.e. poverty), and only then does the chemical component of addiction come into play.

Schmoo , 2 months ago

a person must exhibit four out of the eight signs and symptoms to meet the diagnostic threshold for ODD.

• Is often touchy or easily annoyed

• Is often angry and resentful

• Often argues with authority figures or, for children and adolescents, with adults

• Often actively defies or refuses to comply with requests from authority figures or with rules

If I were imprisoned against my will I would certainly be exhibiting these 4 "symptoms." Does that mean I have oppositional defiant disorder?

The problem with this is that it can too easily classify behavior that is appropriate to the situation as a disorder. The distinction that a professional might make is that these symptoms are only considered signs of a disorder if they are not appropriate to the situation, and that is a value judgement that cannot be objectively determined. This makes the diagnosis heavily subject to the values and beliefs of the person making it. In my opinion, we shouldn't he classifying these types of situational behaviors as a disorder because the cause is almost always external/environmental, which a psychiatrist is often ill-equipped to address.

Schmoo , 3 months ago

What's the straight man seeking gay sex equivalent of Lactase? Poppers?

Schmoo , 3 months ago

The more I read and hear about this man, the more I see a reflection of myself. While our lives went in different directions, the descriptions of his upbringing and of how his beliefs changed over time mirror my own so closely that I feel like I've lost a brother I never had the pleasure of meeting. Even his friends' accounts of his mannerisms remind me a lot of myself, and I feel the same guilt at how little I am able to do in the face of so much injustice.

It makes me incredibly sad and angry at the system that drove Aaron Bushnell to such an extreme act. That his life and body burned in order to inspire this feeling in me is devastating, but highlights that burning one's life and body as well as the life and body of others is the routine and cold logic the state uses to maintain its hegemony.

Schmoo , 3 months ago

Their TV show Sense8 is also really great progressive sci-fi.

Schmoo , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Those ideas you listed are indeed often spread by means of propaganda, but the word propaganda has gained a negative connotation that is itself lacking nuance and is thus undeserved.

Any information disseminated that reflects the views or interests of any particular doctrine or cause - even just your own - is propaganda. If you have publicly expressed any sort of political opinion at all, you have engaged in propaganda.

The word was more useful when widely disseminating information required lots of resources or coordinated effort. Now that anyone can easily do so in a second, the word casts too wide a net to be useful in determining what information is expressed in earnest, and what information is deceptive.

When I see propaganda I first consider where it's coming from. Does it have the backing of mainstream media? Is it publicly/privately funded? Is it facing opposition, and if so from who? Is it grassroots or is it astroturfing?

Edit: Using the comic we're commenting under as an example, it is indeed propaganda. That of course is not a useful categorization, so we'll consider its' source. The creator of this comic Alzward is independent and their funding seems to come both from crowdsourcing and from selling access to their comics on Webtoons. The scale suggests this is just an independent artist supporting themselves, and that their art - and by extension this comic - is not influenced by money to a great extent. From this we can infer that the views expressed in this comic are expressed in earnest by the artist. The artist's views may themselves be influenced, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion. In other words, this is grassroots propaganda.

Schmoo , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

They didn't say they were conspiracy theories, they said they were propaganda. It's true but gives them an unfairly negative connotation.

Why put in quotes something they didn't say? edited because they fixed it. never mind, they undid their correction for some reason.

Schmoo , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I'm not trying to "save" the word propaganda. In highlighting its over-broad definition in combination with its negative connotation, I am actually advocating against its use.

"saving"

Also, don't use quotes around something the person you're responding to didn't say. You are now the second person I've responded to in this thread to have done so.

Schmoo , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Yep that's a big red flag, unfortunate it's so common.

To explain further, the problem is money as an end and the product the means. The best companies with the best products and services are ones that view their product/service as the end and money as the means. Such a company is satisfied when their product or service is the best it can be. A company viewing money as the end is never satisfied and the quality of the product/service is only relevant insofar as it's not a barrier to making more moolah.

Schmoo , 4 months ago

Younger guy from the southern US here, I have done this just to fuck with people. I'm just not very sensitive to the "bite" onions are supposed to have. I can chop quite a few of them before my eyes start to water.

Schmoo , 4 months ago

A trick for easily shifting your perception:

First imagine the cube is sitting on the ground and you are looking down at it from slightly above and to the right (this is the way most people will initially perceive it, because it is the most familiar).

Then imagine the cube is instead attached to a wall or perhaps a ceiling and you are looking up at it from slightly below and to the left.