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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Except you also fell for the trap of pretending to be educated. The entire “how to use ‘octopus’ as a plural noun” is an internet clickbait phenomenon, and both linguists and communications experts have chimed in to say that language is not prescriptive based on supposed origins of words/phrases, but rather it is labile and the most correct form of communication is that which is most readily understood – therefore, they agree, saying simply ‘octopus’ or ‘octopuses’ is correct in English, as that is what English speakers already use.

    A word becomes distinct from its origins based on the context it is used in - i.e. we’re speaking English in the modern era, derived from generations of English speakers, and we are so far detached from any Greek origins in our language that it may as well not exist; these words have become English words through common use, and thus are subject to the grammatical rules of English. In the future, other words of varying origins with their ‘appropriate’ pluralizations and conjugations may be slowly overwritten by casual or undereducated use, adopting English grammar instead, and as long as that becomes the most common use, it is then the correct one.

    After all, language is for communication, and communication requires common understanding, so language is naturally defined by that which facilitates communication - not notions of history or propriety.


  • I take the opposite approach. If I notice someone is more chatty than I am, I make a point to tell them upfront “hey, I’m usually pretty quiet, but I still enjoy conversations even if they’re a little one-sided”. It’s a good test of character - if they still have a problem with me after I communicated clearly, then we’re not compatible, and I don’t need to worry about them. But I have certainly had friends that would talk my ear off and I’d happily nod and offer small insights or facts, and it worked out. It’s more about finding the right people - instead of trying to become the right person.


  • MantidSys@kbin.socialtoAutism@lemmy.worldWrong personality
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    8 months ago

    Because, for some reason, people think it’s better to smooth over social situations by acting inauthentically than handle any amount of friction or disagreement. But that’s how people end up with entire friend groups they don’t relate to, and feel unhappy.

    Personally, I think most people lack the emotional maturity to act authentic to themselves and say ‘fuck the haters’. People who do that tend to end up a lot more satisfied with life than chronic people-pleasers. I would know - I’ve tried both ways, and the people-pleasing only leads to anxiety and shame, like the OP’s meme describes.





  • Grass Spider. It’s not a funnel-web, because those are very darkly colored (almost exclusively solid black), are a type of tarantula, and are exclusive to places where a tree like this would never grow.

    Fun fact about grass spiders: they are quite nearly pacifistic when it comes to threats. They will make an attempt to ‘attack’ the threat, which means lunging forward and slapping it with their front two feet, hoping to scare it off in fear of a bite. They will never bite though, and if the false attack doesn’t scare away the threat, they immediately run and hide. Besides, grass spiders are harmless to humans - whereas funnel-webs have venom that is of medical significance and can even be deadly.

    Fun fact 2: a grass spider will gladly move into an abandoned web of another grass spider. Two webs in our house stayed up for years, alternating between being vacant or having different occupants. They even repaired the web regularly. We took to calling the webs ‘apartments’, because they really were.


  • Religion is a social construct wherein humans organize and participate in communal activities for the purposes of creating human connection/bonding and quelling anxieties through relinquishing perspective of control in life.

    Trying to make an AI preacher is an exercise in trying to emulate the latter without the former. The latter is spiritualism: the beliefs a person creates/adopts to create a sense of ‘belonging’ in the world. The former is the aspect that takes spiritualism and turns it into religion, as religion is essentially the social commodification of spiritualism. Of course no one seeking religion is going to be satisfied with an AI preacher, because anyone seeking religion is seeking human connection. You could use an AI to discuss spiritual beliefs with people instead, but at that point you’re not creating a preacher, but rather a chat-bot theologian.


  • Most of what I see as ‘issues’ are personal preferences. Stuff like railroaded dialog choices even worse than Fallout 4, or stiff/awkward voice acting, or landing on planets being randomly generated despite claims otherwise. But as for actual issues, two things stood out to me: spaceship flight is very dangerous because bumping into things has a good chance of bugging the physics engine and killing you instantly (but other times, barely even registering damage). And seeing a player get stuck because they got a bounty without even knowing it, and then the bounty was making them shoot-on-sight by guards and them having no clue how to deal with the bounty. I’m sure there’s a perfectly simple way out of the situation, but without any communication to the player, that’s nothing but frustration. Add in broken NPC pathing/animations (people getting stuck inside objects like bar counters), making it all-too-easy to fall down ladder holes in ships, and horrible performance optimization (with Todd Howard being quoted telling people to just buy better computers), and I think it’ll need a bit of polish before really considering giving it a shot.


  • Well, sure. And Starfield follows in the wake of Fallout 4’s lackluster RPG experience, offering shallow conversations and the illusion of choice. After Fallout 4, I’m not sure I can get myself to play another game modeled after the same system of “Would you like a quest? [Yes/Yes but sarcastic/One question first then yes/Maybe later]”. If the story is railroaded, Starfield and NMS aren’t too different then - there’s a main quest line, with things to learn and people to meet, and you check off the boxes until it’s done.

    But as to whether they should be compared, I think it’s unavoidable. There’s too much overlap, and no other games like it. Games in which you can customize a space ship, explore thousands of planets, make a home base on any planet you want, and are incentivized to explore and find new places and meet new people? NMS, Starfield, Elite Dangerous, maybe Star Citizen. With some similar gameplay elements and a small pool of games, comparison is natural and expected. Nothing wrong with that.


  • Fair enough, but there’s a difference between reading headlines/articles to make a judgement, and watching actual real-time gameplay for several hours to make a judgement. The only difference was that I wasn’t the one holding the controller. If several hours of uninterrupted unedited gameplay isn’t enough to make a surface-level observation, I’m not sure what is.

    Plus, I was just saying how what I saw made me feel, and I said I’d rather play one game over another. If we want to talk about unnecessarily strong opinions, let’s start with you attempting to shut down my honest two cents to reinforce your negative worldview. Let’s all be kind to each other, okay? :)


  • I haven’t bought Starfield, and I don’t plan to, but I watched some gameplay and… Well, the game is a pile of issues. And the few bits that are acceptable are bits I’ve already seen from NMS - and their implementation is usually better than Starfield. So as I’m watching Starfield footage, all I can feel is a desire to reinstall NMS and play that instead… And I’m not even a big NMS fan. It’s not a good sign if your ‘revolutionary’ game already feels beat out by competition that had existed before your game was even halfway in development. Bethesda had all the time and manpower in the world to compete with NMS, and still fell short.


  • That was a >100gb download that took the moderators time to download and test. And the admins weren’t involved. All the claims of admins backing the torrent or deleting comments has had zero proof, as it was all hysteria drummed up by the psychotic cracker called Empress, who has had a long standing imaginary feud with 1337x.

    1337x can have malware in anything, as anyone can upload. The volunteer moderators downloaded and tested it as soon as they could. I’m sorry some people downloaded it faster, but there’s no conspiracy here.


  • Do you think a “soulslike” is defined by being dark and gritty? I find it odd that you think the inclusion of anything cute or hopeful/friendly would be only a negative. Maybe your preferences are for dark and gritty only, but I assure you that many people enjoy other styles. There’s a charm to there being hope in a dying world, isn’t there?

    Besides, I’d say most people define “soulslike” by their gameplay, not aesthetics. Maybe the “git gud” fragile-masculinity crowd needs their unforgiving combat system paired with a dark, ‘masculine’ atmosphere to fulfill their power fantasy, but again, I assure you that many other types of people enjoy those games - especially Elden Ring, which has much broader appeal than the previous souls games.

    I’ll wager you’re a toxic “git gud” type that hinges their identity on these types of games, and that’s why the idea of your sacred icon being blemished by comparison to Soulframe upsets you so much. I really can’t see why else anyone would be this angry over a game not being to their preferences. If people enjoy something different than you, let them. :)


  • As someone who highly values spending time just thinking, it does take a level of privilege to do so. If your needs aren’t met, or your life isn’t safe/secure, letting the mind wander is giving it the ability to latch onto these distressing topics and create loops of anxiety and stress.

    As much as I value spending my time thinking, I also value ways of shutting my brain off so that I don’t have another panic attack about how I can’t afford groceries yet or not knowing if my housing situation is secure. I can’t feel like my life is collapsing if I distract myself.

    And more people than not are struggling to make ends meet, so I imagine more people than not have stresses they need to put out of mind, just to retain their sanity.


  • /r/Place has always had massive country flags whenever it ran. But the way I see it, the largest murals need the most people working on it, and getting many people involved means having them all be connected in some way, and country-of-origin is the easiest way to do that. Combine that with the fact that the biggest non-English communities on western social media like Reddit (and Lemmy too, now) tend to be German or French, and it’s no surprise that the two largest murals are those flags.
    You’d wish people would find something else to represent them and have fun with things like this, but people gravitate towards the largest groups they feel a part of. Low hanging fruit, I suppose.