fracture [he/him]

i guess? we talk a lot about the consequences of being in an information bubble but i think we’ve experienced it very little. and it’s hard to imagine the consequences are going to be worse than… this waves hands at the current state of things

i tend to think that the internet, up to this point, has been relatively forceful in exposing you to opposing viewpoints, which, from a mental health perspective, is quite taxing on individuals (we’re not really wired to constantly be confronting really fundamental disagreements all the time). so i think that an internet where people are less constantly thrown into friction with each other will be a net benefit, even if there are some consequences for the otherwise information bubbling

would love to see a source for AI helping with the covid 19 vaccine

fr, this and that other headline that was like “Testing how much people will tolerate a declining standard of living”

we all going through the same shit

kind of ironic that this article is hosted on a site with several pages worth of cookie selections that you have to scroll through and opt out of

enshittification of the net continues

ancknowledgements

it is proprietary, but it’s worth noting that bsky is also federated, so it is less centralized than e.g. xitter. it uses a different protocol than mastodon and i don’t know many details about it, so unfortunately this is about the extent that i can speak on it

edit: it looks like you can get more details from others in this thread

if it’s not worth preserving

IT’S NOT WORTH PURCHASING

rarely, i like to play a fluffy, feel good game with no real stakes. enter: Flynn, Son of Crimson

there is absolutely no chance of anything really bad happening in the game, the worst that happens is your powerful guardian diety dog loses his powers at the beginning of the game (but it’s OK, he just rests until you reclaim his powers and he feels better). you never really feel like anyone is really in danger, you get to play a pretty fun 2d action platforming game, and it has some really fun sections later on that make you feel awesome

it wraps up nicely in probably 20 hours too, if you want to 100% it, so it doesn’t overstay its welcome and lets you experience all of its content with low demands. really a lovely little experience. it’s not pushing the envelope at all, but if you want basically 20 solid hours of lighthearted fun, this is a great way to get it

gonna throw in my caveat here; ITT is a really good co-op game but there’s like a 25% chance the story isn’t for you. it’s the kind of story where, if you think about it too much, you start to realize that the characters do some pretty fucked up stuff including

::: graphically tearing a plush doll apart while it screams for mercy

:::

i don’t want to come across as judgemental if you enjoyed it; i get that some people are gonna find it more slapstick than anything. but it was more than enough to make me and the person i played it with flush it, and i wouldn’t feel right not mentioning it for specifically “uplifting games”

if you can ignore the story, the co-op gameplay is super solid, though

(sorry if the spoilers don’t show up right, my client doesn’t show them properly)

lots of great suggestions in this thread, just wanted to shoutout this little indie i played and had a delightful time with: Flynn, Son of Crimson

it’s a little 2d adventure game with pretty linear progression, although there will probably be some backtracking if you want to 100%. but it’s level based and not open world at all. the movement and combat both feel pretty good, the story is very fluffy and feel good, and you have a giant dog as a pet, what more could you want?

it’s probably like a 15-20 hour game in total, if that. a great time if you want something short, fun, and uncomplicated

idk if i should be encouraging you, per se, beyond just encouraging you to allow yourself to be how you are and accept it… but, if you really want to know, perhaps studying trauma will give you the answers you seek.

i like this question

one of the major roadblocks to figuring out i was trans is that a lot of my self value and perspective of the world was rooted in being a woman

the night i realized that wasn’t true, that i wasn’t a woman, that i probably had never been a woman, was truly incredible. everything i knew about the world fell away and for a short time, i saw everything with fresh eyes. nothing i had learned before was taken for granted; everything was subject to change, everything needed to be checked again

of course, over the course of the next week or so, i found that indeed, the world worked pretty similarly to how i had figured it did before. but ever since, a lot of things have changed, too. for example, it’s very hard to assume that people’s genders are set in stone anymore. prior, i thought them to be fairly rigid, known early in life. and now it’s more like… if you’re cis, it’s a little harder to assume you’ll always be cis, since most cis people haven’t gone through the internal work to even be open to the possibility that they’re not cis, nevermind the various threats to life and identity that come with it…

anyways, the point i was trying to get by talking about all this is- especially over the last decade or so, where i found out a lot of people i looked up to or even aspired to be like were total shitbags- i think that rooting your identity is a mistake

let yourself be open to being whatever you’re composed of at the moment… knowing you might need to release it in the next. appreciate it while it’s there, understand what you get out of it, and don’t be afraid to fall into its absence… trust that you’ll always find the solid ground of yourself below it

beyond the obvious ways this is fucked up, imagining this happening with AI gen text is insane. trying to craft a post to both empathize with another poster, kindly demonstrate flaws in thinking or logic about a point they usually care a lot about, and trying to explain how the different point of view better supports the things they care about it such a monumental effort already that AI just cannot do. no actual persuasion will come out of this (not that a ton happens on the internet to begin with, but even less than that)

and honestly if you’re firehosing people like that, AI is just going to absolutely drown out any actual communication from happening. at some point, we’ll just have bots going to war for us about our points, and no one will be reading it

big shoutout HOTS… i should tap back in… FUCK deadlock (note: this user has not played deadlock)

that’s true, but there’s also an argument of resources and conformity to consider. oppressive regiemes also have large amounts of media at their disposal and tend to be very good at issuing orders from the top down, so their ability to define things is pretty strong

we don’t really… have those things :') so our ability to make an impact isn’t really as great, i would think. and given that, maybe it’s best to recognize and educate people on what the existing dog whistles are, rather than trying to reclaim them?

really would like to see the article if you have it on hand. i can see the argument for both sides, so i would like to read more and potentially be persuaded one way or the other

this is something i didn’t realize until recently, but you really gotta be on washing that shit weekly. i used to think it wasn’t a big deal, you could just do it every couple of weeks / once a month, but you sleep WAY better when you wash them weekly because your body and skin don’t have to hold off a trillion bacteria trying to get into your body / getting allergies triggered by dust mites

although, to be honest, i would never have figured that out without dealing with a persistent vaginal infection because of it… 😭 at least i’m like 95% sure that’s the cause atm. i guess i’ll edit my comment in two months when i can confirm it (i’m testing this as of about a week rn)

i would have liked it if this had offered a COVID perspective on communal baths. i’m inclined to think that a hot moist environment is a likely place for it to flourish, and it seems odd to neglect to mention that three years of a pandemic probably had an outsize impact on the number of bathhouses still open in 2022

obviously we probably don’t have a ton of data on how to circulate air and filter COVID out of bathhouses, but i also bet there’s a way to do it in a relatively energy efficient way

anyways, it feels like a major spot that’s lacking in an otherwise informative and well thought out read

really good thoughts and write up that you linked, thanks