And similarly, from Tool’s “Right In Two”:

Monkey killing monkey killing monkey over
pieces of the ground
Silly monkeys
Give them thumbs, they make a club
to beat their brother down
How they’ve survived so misguided is a mystery
Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability
to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here

And telling all the poor people how much of a sin their envy and greed is, of course!

Yep. LLMs are great for bouncing ideas off, and for getting “soft answers”, but no-one should ever be looking for factual answers from them.

The big difference between the two for me is how much feeling of gameplay expression there is. In Fallout, my options feel like melee, shooting enemies with shotguns, shooting enemies with automatic rifles, shooting enemies with long-range rifles, shooting enemies with lasers, shooting enemies with miniguns, and so on. And the shooting mechanics don’t feel strong enough to really differentiate those different weapons as different playstyles for the most part. If I play a game like Titanfall, Battlefield, etc, then changing weapons can feel drastically different - they handle differently, you navigate combat arenas differently, you prioritise targets differently, you use cover differently. But that doesn’t really feel like the case with Fallout for me without any of the moment-to-moment decision making that tends to allow for gameplay expression in shooters.

Whereas Skyrim feels like there are a lot more playstyles available. Destruction magic feels very different to conjuration which feels very different to illusion which feels very different to being a stealth archer which feels very different to using a dagger which feels very different to using a huge, two-handed melee weapon. They’re not just visually different; how you approach and navigate combat encounters will be significantly different depending on what kind of build you have. It just feels like there’s so much more gameplay depth.

I’ve been separating Chris Brown’s music from his personality for a long time. I hated his music long before I know how terrible his personality is.

Unfortunately for her, too. She might be successful, but she seems fucking miserable all the time.

I wouldn’t recommend ChatGPT for factual information at all (at least, not without validating for yourself afterwards), but I think it’s quite good for helping you mull over or develop ideas, and for finding “soft answers” to things.

I used it recently to suggest a font to use, for instance, and found it much, much better than trying to use a search engine. My font knowledge isn’t particularly high at all - I know what serif means but that’s about it as far as technical knowledge, and I wouldn’t recognise or categorise most fonts - but I was able to describe what I wanted to ChatGPT and narrow it down:

• “I want something more friendly than that”
• “less professional”
• “more wonky”
• “less rounded”
• “less uncomfortable”

And so on. I could be somewhat abstract with my requests and it still mostly seemed to understand what I meant. Eventually it suggested something that fit my requirements pretty well. Trying to find a similar suggestion via a search engine would have been very difficult, I think, and would basically have just relied on me stumbling on a “top 10 fonts for X” listicle that happened to cover my requirements.

ChatGPT is fantastic within its specific niche (assuming you know how to feed it prompts properly and how to interpret its outputs - it’s a tool thats usefulness very much depends on the operator) but I definitely wouldn’t want it to replace search engines.

I agree, I had the same thought. And not only is she very pretty, she’s also “believably pretty”; she doesn’t look like a movie star or an unrealistically attractive Instagram model, she looks like someone you could see walking down the street. She’d catch your eye, of course, and probably be the prettiest person you saw that day, but it’s not like some pictures/videos I’ve seen of people where I’ve thought “I’ve never seen someone look that attractive in real life” and there’s a bit of a disconnect because of it.

Using Olga’s likeness, I suspect a lot of people can be fooled into thinking she’s just a regular person who happens to be at the upper end of the attractiveness scale rather than a paid model, and I’m sure they very intentionally decided to steal her likeness for that reason.

I think @rayyy is right, unfortunately. If the West severs ties with Israel overnight (and suddenly stopping arms shipments would essentially be the same thing as severing ties), it’ll just create a power vacuum where Russia or China will cosy up to Israel instead. Israel has a lot of influence in the region - partially because it’s been propped up by US support, of course - and other countries would absolutely try to prop up Israel and capitalise on their influence in the US’ place if they had the opportunity. Which would perhaps slow down the genocide for a little while, but it would inevitably pick back up, but this time without the US/West having any influence at all.

Not to mention the fact that the US losing its influence over Israel would almost certainly destabilise the region. Iran would be emboldened, as you alluded to. Hamas would be emboldened, and while I take the side of the Palestinian people in this whole ordeal, I don’t think Hamas being emboldened would be a good idea - it would likely lead to further conflict and even worse suffering for the Palestinian people. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey would all likely try to expand their influences, too.

Biden is trying to slowly reel Israel in while still maintaining US influence there. Partially because the US just wants to keep its power, of course, but also because it’s perhaps the best way to have some control over the genocide and over the region rather than just being an observer. I don’t like all the blood on our collective hands but I think that, at this point, the genocide would continue without us.

I absolutely think the fact that Israel has been put in the position it’s in represents decades of shortsightedness and foreign policy failure, though. Israel should never have been in the position to do this.

Oh, they won’t be issues. Well be drinking Compute straight from the can, and all our appliances will run on direct Compute inputs. You’ll get home from your job earning 10 Compute/hr at the Compute factory, pay the standard 120 Compute charge to unlock your front door, hop onto your Compute Generation Dynamo for an hour to power the oven, and then settle down on the sofa for the evening to see what’s on Soravision - discounted to 7 Compute/hr for GPT+ subscribers.

I think a lot of people on lemmy use lemmy/kbin/the threadiverse interchangeably. But yeah, I use kbin, too.

I definitely find myself being much, much more active on Discord since the whole reddit thing went down. It has its issues, and it’s not exactly a 1:1 substitution for thread-based forums, but I enjoy the greater sense of community that comes with Discord.

You can just say “well they’re stupid that’s what you get” or you can ask yourself why aren’t we getting these people on board while some greasy billionaire can?

I don’t necessarily like to just dismiss people as stupid, but a lack of education and the ability to understand complex issues is both a big issue for these people and a reason why the greasy billionaires can get them on board. Convincing someone that them paying some of their money into a union will actually result in better working conditions and more money for them - rather than just being poorer - is a lot harder and takes more understanding on their part than someone convincing them there’s less money to go around because there are more immigrants, for instance.

On top of that, people like to be able to absolve themselves of personal responsibility if they are given the option to. That’s not exclusive to right-wing people, but when that’s coupled with people wanting simple “explanations” because they don’t understand more complex systems with all their consequences, knock-on effects, etc, it makes it easy for right-wing politicians and media to offer simple scapegoats and get people on board.

To use the immigrants example again: not only is it not your average right-wing voter’s fault in any way - it’s the immigrants’ fault - but also, they don’t personally need to do anything to fix the issue, they just need to let the right-wing politicians get into power and it’ll all be solved for them. It’s all very comforting for them - much more so than being told it’s going to take ten years and some work on their part to improve things.

I’m definitely a little confused about Tango - I’m hoping we’ll at least get more details come out about why Microsoft shuttered them. I mean, Ghostwire Tokyo was… whatever, and I could understand Microsoft not wanting to have them working on that kind of scale again any time soon. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it was fairly expensive and perhaps didn’t do as well as they hoped. But I’m surprised they didn’t want to just downsize the studio and aim for another HI-FI Rush-esque game (or sequel).

But Arkane Austin being closed definitely makes sense. Not only was Redfall a disaster, but by the time Redfall released, 70% of the people who’d worked on Prey had left the studio. (Largely because the studio’s president had left the studio just after Prey, I believe, rather than because of the Microsoft acquisition of Bethesda.) All that was really left was the name.

Those underlying issues are what left-wing people are trying to resolve already, though - wealth inequality, poor mental health, too much power in the hands of corporations and the mega-rich, removing outrage politics, etc.

I installed uBlock for someone recently. They complained about all the empty space where the ads used to be. So I removed the empty space by blocking that element with uBlock, which increased the width of the main body of the website, and they then complained that the website was too wide…

Some people are beyond help.

It’s worth pointing out, I think, that TalkTV is Rupert Murdoch’s latest outing, and is owned by his News Corp, which also owns The S*n and The Times. It’s no surprise it’s awful.

I recall him saying a year or two back that he ultimately thinks it’s a good thing it failed, too, because, if it’d done well, he probably wouldn’t have gone onto do more serious things like Escape At Dannemora and Severance.

I agree. As much as I agree with the idea of universal basic income - because I think supporting society while reducing the work necessary is something we should aim for, because it’s the best way to ensure everyone gets a fair lot in life and because I think it’s a necessity with the direction the labour market is heading - this isn’t really the kind of thing I want to see in this community, personally. Hell, UBI doesn’t really have much to do with the thought of “if X is Y% of Z then 1000X is Y% of 1000Z” - it’s just basic maths really (and OP seems to have got the maths wrong, too).

I am not overweight

I didn’t mean to imply you are overweight, sorry if it came across like that! It’s more just that, besides general anxiety (which isn’t specific to the gym), the main reasons someone might be “gym shy” are because they’re overweight, unfit or unsure of how to use the equipment, so I wanted to touch on all of those things!

That said, I do seem to lack self-confidence.

I figured, seeing as you’re anxious about the gym and how people there might judge you, ha! Building confidence can take a long time, and definitely isn’t something that happens overnight. Obviously doing things you can be proud of - working towards a body you’re happy with, work achievements, artistic achievements, etc - can help a lot with building up confidence, but the big thing is working to adjust your perspective of yourself. Try to look at yourself how you look at other people; if you saw someone unfit working out in the gym, would you care? Or would you just have whatever your initial thought is and then move on?

…except that this is not what happens in my country.

It can definitely be a little more difficult if it’s ingrained into your culture for people to make a big deal out of things. Probably the best thing you can do - whether there are people around or not - is to listen to music/audiobooks/podcasts. It’s good for exercising anyway because it gives your mind something to focus on while your body does mindless exercises, but it also just lets you shut out other people entirely so it doesn’t matter whether they’re gossiping about you, talking about last night’s episode of whatever TV show, or something else.

Ultimately, though, trying to avoid basing your self-worth on other people’s opinions is something you should probably try to work towards. Not just because negative opinions can obviously bring you down and harm your self-esteem, but also because if you only feel good when surrounded by people and receiving positive reinforcement from them then it indicates you’re probably not happy with yourself

Anyway, sorry for ranting. I will try to do exercise at home and jog a bit!

That’s okay, having a good rant is healthy every now and then! Good luck with the exercise, and try to stick with it, even if you only do a small amount every day!

Doesn’t always work.

It doesn’t guarantee people are going to look at you and think you’re a 10/10 because some features are out your control, but the difference between being overweight, poorly-dressed with bad skin, bad hair, etc, and being athletic/toned and well-groomed is huge. And while they might seem like superficial things that you feel you shouldn’t have to do for someone to like you, they also boost your confidence which tends to make you more attractive as a personality, too.

Also this is likely me problem, but how do you get over people being judgemental in gym (about appearance/phyiscal capabilities)? It often scares me off from going to a gym.

This can definitely take a little while to change your mindset on, but the big thing is just realising that no-one actually cares.

• people are there to work out, not to judge others;
• how much do you judge other people in the gym? Very little, I’d assume;
• even if someone is judging you: so what? Does it actually matter what a stranger who you’ll likely never even see again thinks? You’re there to improve yourself, not to worry about their thoughts;
• if someone actually comments to you, you can turn it into a positive thing. Tall them you’re new to the gym and would welcome pointers. Most people who’ll talk to you in the gym are just going to be asking “how long are you going to be using that?” or something similar, though;
• there’s a pretty low chance someone will actually be rude to you, because most people are well aware that everyone starts somewhere, and that if you’re overweight/unfit then being in the gym is you already taking steps to fix that.

And most of those points apply to a lot of things in life - it’s very liberating when you realise that most people don’t really care about what you’re doing and that you should just do what makes you happy.

If it helps, you can also do some research before using the gym so you’re confident about how to use the machines and equipment. It removes that “what if I’m using it wrong and everything thinks I look like an idiot?” aspect for you to worry about.

And if you’re just worried about people judging your weight/fitness, you can exercise outside of the gym. Push-ups, sit-ups, squats, step-ups, etc, are all free and things you can do at home. You can probably find somewhere quiet to go for a run - especially early morning or late evening. Dumbbells are fairly cheap (relative to a gym membership for any extended period of time) and don’t take up much storage space at home; they be used for their own exercises and to enhance other exercises (just adding more weight to your squats, for instance). Resistance bands are another low-cost, low-space option.

So you can either start off exercising at home until you’re comfortable enough to step into a gym, or just keep working out at home and gradually expand your equipment as you see fit. Obviously some of the larger, more expensive machines you find in gyms have their uses - some of them ensure you’re doing the exercise in a healthy way, some of them allow you to work out multiple muscle groups at once that would otherwise be difficult (like the rowing machine), and some of them let you target specific muscles in specific ways - but the things I mentioned above can take you a long way.

The two most important things are just being consistent (so try to get into a routine) and making sure you’re doing it for yourself. Obviously we’re talking about it from a perspective of people finding you more attractive if you’re in good shape, but more important than that is doing it because you want to be happy and healthy - if you can become happy and healthy in yourself then other people finding you attractive will follow eventually.

Anyway, this turned into a bit of an essay but hopefully something I’ve said here has been helpful for you!