Hyperrealism

Or buy a second hand pc for not much more than 50 euros/dollars. Install linux and it'll be more than fast enough for torrenting, playing media and a bit of surfing. Companies are off loading anything that can't run windows 11 right now.

Also means you're not torrenting stuff on your main system while gaming.

English isn't my native language, but I watch a lot of English language youtube videos. When I watch youtube without an adblocker, I now get to enjoy all the local language adverts, automatically translated into a robotic English voice.

It's often quite literally unintelligible. The algorithm and American companies are too stupid to realise people can speak more than one language. Their LLMs are incredibly bad in languages other than English. And I can't disable it, because they clearly want to push this unfinished crap down our throats.

AI is nowhere near ready enough, nowhere near as widely applicable, and nowhere as useful as the tech giants pretend it is, and they'll never be able to make a return on all the money they've invested in it for years to come.

It's the dotcom bubble all over again. It's pump and dump on a massive scale. Anyone with even a bit of sense knows it. It'd be funny if this wasn't about to cause a massive recession, that will cost countless people their livelihoods and even their lives.

On the plus side, if the recession's bad enough, it might help offset some of the environmental damage that's been caused. And just like with the dotcom bubble, after 10-20 years, the technology will have matured enough to warrant at least some of the hype.

You'll probably hate me for saying this, but when I worked in an office, I often pretended to be stupid when it came to IT stuff.

Sometimes it's nice to have a little break on the company's dime. I get that it's annoying, but on the plus side, it helps prevent management from making unnecessary and existentially threatening cuts to the IT department.

Boomer boss gets the importance of the IT guy replacing the deskjet printer so they can print off a 100 page colour manual on how the company's 'going green'. They don't understand the IT department fixing something like sievelike data security. That's a problem for after the shareholder meeting, if anyone ever finds out.

It's a bit like how I'm not great at scanning stuff at the self-scan tills and make mistakes. Don't want it to be too profitable to replace a cashier with a machine. Everyone's got bills to pay.

I used to do IT support, so now I sometimes pretend to be an idiot outside of work too. "Mom's friend Sarah has an issue with windows and wants me to help fix it for free? Sorry, I only know how to use the apples."

A kilometer is 1000 M16A4s.

Also: the latin for lead(Pb) is plumbum, not plumbium. Same thing for gold(Au). It's Aurum, not Aurium. Same for Iron(Fe). Ferrum not Ferrium.

I could see it being written about a lot of straight men. The world is full of deeply insecure emotionally stunted man-children, bullied at school for being supposedly 'feminine' or 'gay', who now overcompensate by riding around in huge trucks, being right-wing douche canoes, and pretending to be 'alpha'. It's no coincidence that plenty of those types end up killing themselves too, despite supposedly being in a position of privilege.

Society is patriarchal and heteronormative. This hurts almost everyone to a certain degree.

Not that I'm discounting the very real predjudice the LGBTQ+ community faces. It has cost me a job or two. Fortunately I'm bi and look stereotypically masculine, so I'm able to fly under the radar most of the time. And coming to terms with my sexuality has really opened my world and broadened my horizons, which has helped me immensely.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

Look at all the straight men, who are performatively masculine. Look at how angry and insecure they are, because they're unable to be honest about their supposedly 'feminine' characteristics and interests.

Look at tradwives and performatively feminine women. Often unhappy because they can never conform fully to an artificial and socially constructed female ideal. Look at how they often project that frustration on other marginalised groups.

Potassium (K) is called Kalium in New Latin and a variation thereof in plenty of languages. It makes far more sense. The symbol's K in the periodic table an the eymological link with alkali is in the word. The Brits don't have a leg to stand on.

Then again, Americans are stupid about the metric system. Think they can't visualize what 1 meter is, but almost every American can visualize the length of an M16A4 just fine.

Exactly a year ago:

before the match, Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were filmed pulling Palestinian flags from houses, making racist anti-Arab chants such as "death to Arabs", assaulting people, and vandalising local property. Plans to attack Israeli fans were subsequently shared through messaging apps. After the match, Maccabi fans were ambushed and assaulted across the city centre, while a group of Maccabi fans around Damrak was recorded assaulting people and vandalising local property. ... a report compiled with the chief prosecutor and chief of police which said the events were caused by a "toxic combination of antisemitism, hooliganism, and anger about the conflicts in ... the Middle East" ... The Maccabi Tel Aviv fan base is known to include far-right ultra groups that have been involved in racist incidents in Israel in the past, including directing racist abuse at Arab and black players on their own team.

Honestly, who needs that much hassle over a football match? Birmingham dodged a bullet.

The media coverage of this has been poor, but let's not get started on UK social media, where I think it's becoming increasingly obvious that bad actors who are already amplifying far right voices and trying to sow division, jumped on this whole debacle to once again be level 9000 bad faith wankers about the whole thing.

You'd be surprised.

Bit of a tangent, but I once read an article about professional Santas. Apparently a surprising amount of women (and I assume men) are into the whole jolly old fat man with a beard thing. Outfit and all. And not necessarily in a good way either. Apparently constant sexual harrassment is one of the serious downsides of being a professional Santa.