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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • I’m in the UK, and I work with a LOT of Americans already, so know this first hand:

    • You fuckers are always in for a culture shock when you realise that everywhere isn’t like London. You seem to either expect London or Harry Potter Land, but when you end up somewhere like Bristol, Leeds, or Birmingham the frame of reference just dies and you see the wheels turning in your head trying to make sense of it all.
    • Weirdly, you seem to really like our supermarkets. They’re a lot smaller than yours, meal deals are a novelty that never gets old, and paying the price on the tag is the greatest thing ever.
    • You love our bread, and our chocolate is like crack to you. You’d think that you’d moved to France or something…
    • Butter on bread will fuck you up. You use Mayo all the time, but we use butter/spread, and it messes with your minds.
    • You quickly learn that Europe is a continent, and that cultures across the continent are very different to one another. You also learn that no one knows US history that well, or that we had a war with you (since we have basically had a war with everyone at some point).
    • The drinking culture is a really interesting one. Some love it, some hate it. It’s a staple of British life
    • We get paid a lot less than you do, but your money will go much further because you’re not spending it on healthcare. You’ll also get taxed a lot, but ultimately you’ll earn enough to be comfortable, and a comfortable life in the UK is nice.

    To answer your question, you’re more than welcome here, and it’s much easier to get a visa to the UK for you than for us to go to the US. Expect some people to give you shit for Trump, but give them shit back for Brexit and electing the Tories for 15 years.



  • It’s quite simple, and aligns with why he got in in the first place.

    The economy and cost of living is still in the toilet. Trump is a protest vote because competent public servants have failed to even acknowledge that everything costs 2-3x what it did a decade ago. Sad to say, but most people don’t give a fuck about LGBTQIA+ rights, Israel, Ukraine, or anything outside of this.

    Call it apathy if you want, but it’s ultimately a failure of moderates to acknowledge a better social net for people (I.e. left policies) or propping an economy by improving lives for regular people so their money goes further.


  • Source: I was a mod on /r/soccer for a while.

    You won’t win this “battle”, no matter what you do. Being a mod is a thankless job, and you’ll piss people off regardless of which side you take. The only thing you can do is be fair and balanced. List your rules out, enforce mostly to the rules, but add common sense, and regularly check in with the community to get feedback.


  • I have a hard time taking some of the advice here seriously, especially around there being some kind of conspiracy where the police are right-wing and full of fascists - but let’s take it at face value

    Instead of law enforcement, go to a lawyer and ask them to help, stating that you feel that you cannot go to the police. Any law firm worth their salt would ensure that you are represented, or that you’re represented by someone from your district that will protect you. They will also keep an eye on adequate law enforcement to ensure they actually protect you, and don’t just farm you back to relatives. At the very least, they can give you enough protection to ensure that your relatives in the south can contact you and take you in if needed.


  • On the American Dad theory, there is a long-running theory that Roger’s ultimate goal is to replace all of humanity. The start of the show is just him, and then “learning” to put on disguises, but he’s become more and more people over time, to the point where it is hard for almost everyone (except the Smiths, who he trusts) to know it is him.

    It isn’t inconsequential, but an interesting theory on whether the finale of American Dad will either be finding out that Roger IS everyone, or if Stan saving Roger actually saved humanity by allowing Roger to see humanity.


  • I interviewed for a part-time web developer role during the summer of my second year at university. The “employer” wanted the interview at their house. No problem, I guess it’s a small operation and I’d work remotely?

    The interview was fine. It was a guy that worked with his wife, and they needed someone to pick up some work over a few weeks. Midway through the interview, the guy’s wife came downstairs - in what I can only describe as the kind of dressing gown you’d see in porn.

    She walked over, asked if I was “the guy”. The man said, “oh yeah, he looks good don’t you think?”, to which she responded “yeah, he looks like he’ll do the job nicely”. She then came over and put her hand by the back of my neck, and asked if I wanted to help out with a problem they’d been having.

    Being a socially awkward 20 year old CS student, I said something along the lines of “uhh no that’s okay thanks, I’d better get going soon”, and the man escorted me out. I had received an email minutes after to say the job was mine if I wanted it.

    I turned the job down, saying that something else had come up. I’m 70% sure that the job was a threesome or some weird cuck thing, and if I didn’t have a girlfriend and wasn’t awkward as fuck I’d probably have gone back and plowed his wife/written some PHP. Either way, that’s my worst interview experience - and probably will be for the rest of my days.

    On the other side, one guy I interviewed for a startup was really qualified and we wanted to offer him the role. I thankfully Googled him, and found a Twitter account against his name where he had pics of him balls deep in a blow up doll. We didn’t hire him.



  • BlueSky already annoys me because someone took my name for an inactive account. It’s why I chose Mastodon over BlueSky initially.

    With that said, Mastodon has several glaring issues:

    • Federation, in general, solves a problem that very few people have. People don’t want to pick an app or an instance out of dozens. They want the prescribed experience, and then they want to tailor to their preferences.
    • It’s dead. There is interaction, but if you set up an account, follow some people, reply to some stuff, you’ll probably get maybe 1-2 followers? The interaction seems stuck at a few people.
    • There are a lot of bots, which in itself can be useful, but when several are there to maintain archives of Twitter accounts onto Mastodon it just adds to the deadness.
    • It doesn’t offer anything new or interesting over BlueSky or Twitter. It’s just a clone.
    • Humour hasn’t really made it’s way onto Mastodon. It’s all very serious stuff, and many people like social media to look at dumb shit.

    With that said, BlueSky is growing, but it’s still a minnow.


  • Nothing ages you like talking to an actual young person.

    I worked with a software engineer several years ago that was about a decade younger than me. A few of us were talking about first games, and he mentioned playing his dad’s PlayStation and his first game being on the PS2. Our first games were all Master System, NES, all 2D. He said, and I quote, “I wasn’t born when graphics were shit”.

    Oof


  • Hajime No Ippo!

    It’s a boxing anime based on a manga (that’s still going after decades!) where a school kid is beat up and rescued by a passing boxer, who takes him in to a boxing gym to fix his wounds. It turns out he’s got some solid power from his family background in fishing, so he becomes a boxer and learns what it means to be strong.

    If you like DBZ, you’ll probably love this. Alongside this, it’s refreshing in that it’s an anime that praises hard work, rather than being “the chosen one” or being gifted power. What I love about it is that several characters go through huge growth in ways that are truly unexpected.


  • Something similar. Not necessarily the fear of death or a painful death, but the very real possibility that once the light goes off, you disappear for good.

    I won’t get into religion or anything like that, but it all feels…very inefficient. IMO, reincarnation always seemed cool, because it’s essentially the reuse of consciousness in another being. I also remember reading a cool story years ago where it turned out that everyone was actually the same person, and in death you reincarnated as the next person, with the ultimate goal of having lived every life to ever live and becoming god. The idea that someone could live for even a very brief moment, and that energy is just gone is just so wasteful that the universe just seems cruel for it to even be a possibility.



  • Rule under Mufasa was essentially an oligarchy, with oppression everywhere. Unlike the other RACIST lions, Scar would spend time with the hyaenas, providing them food and protection. He skipped the crowning of a new pampered little shit, and after getting shit from his king brother he had had enough - he ended the bloodline.

    His first act was to remove oppression, giving equality for all. Then a huge natural disaster happened, absolutely no fault of Scar’s, and life was harsh.

    Then, Simba the little prick just fucks off, lives the dream in luxury like the pampered little asshole he is, and then decides “fuck it, this is too nice, let’s bring back the racism”. He comes back, plants doubt through a hate campaign and the hyaenas kill Scar. The drought ends, Simba brings back oppression, and has another little cunt kid.

    Scar was a hero. He undid years of ruthless oppression against other species, and got shit for it because the land was left in a poor state and couldn’t handle a downturn in weather.





  • It’s a great idea in theory, but the bus service here is dominated by one company that has underperformed for decades. Not only that, but they have a history of pushing competition out where possible, and reducing routes to overload other companies that move in - so there’s that problem.

    Politically, Bristol is quite strange. Lots of corruption, lots of green ideas, but lots of problems that need tough solutions. Around two decades ago we were sick of our council being so corrupt, so we voted for elected mayors like London. The two mayor’s we had were both corrupt - one syphoning off green capital money to his family, one pretending to build an underground subway and an arena while taking kickbacks from YTL and achieving literally nothing. Both mayors touted a subway, and one funneled tens of millions into…another set of bus routes now controlled by private companies. The second spent a decade of terms pretending to build a subway, and achieved literally nothing. We now voted to get rid of mayors, and the council are shit again.

    To then answer your question - all of the above and more. The bus service would probably need to expand by 3x overnight to be reliable, it would also need additional routes AND to somehow not get caught up in the horrendous traffic in the city. The buses have been so bad for so long, with so many broken promises, that many locals just drive or cycle, because at least that way you’ll get where you need to go on time. It’s probably the one thing that everyone in Bristol is unified by, and any talk of trams, subways, etc are all met with “you can’t even run a fucking bus route, how will you manage that”.

    To cut my rant short, Bristol is too big, too expensive, and too poorly connected to make commuting possible. It needs a bold decision to be made, rather than giving First’s shareholders some more money.


  • I can kinda see what they were going for with the sequel, since more of the same would be tricky when balancing Arthur’s battle with his alter ego. The musical idea does work in theory.

    With that said, this kind of thing works really well on TV, but not so much in a follow-up to a movie many consider to be great. Also, I know she had great success in A Star Is Born, but I’m still not entirely sold on Lady Gaga as an actress. She can definitely act, but many of her roles are basically “…and Lady Gaga is in this too”. She’s definitely better than Beyonce in that regard, but IMO she was cast because they wanted to make a Joker-themed musical, rather than a sequel to a critically acclaimed movie called Joker.


  • Nice to see my home city here! As a resident for almost forty years I can give some context.

    Sadly, cars are necessary in Bristol. Public transport has been a monopoly for far too long, and getting anywhere is both expensive and unreliable. On no less than two occasions I’ve watched as someone breaks down into tears on the bus because they’re late to work for the last time, because a 25 min car journey and a 45 minutes bike ride has taken 90 mins+. We are big on cycling, but when you bear in mind that parking is nonexistent and Bristol is very hilly, it paints a picture where cycling is basically the only cheap way to get around.

    We have a lot of gammons here, but Bristol is mostly a progressive city, and as someone with a young child it isn’t uncommon for cars to be on pavements. It’s absolutely the right step, but with ULEZ, residents parking charges, 20 mph lanes, traffic slowdown measures, and simple roadworks that can often take 18-24 months, motorists also have every reason to be pissed too. I appreciate where I’m posting this, but ultimately Bristol just likes to ignore the impact of cars instead of leaning one way or another - and it ultimately just pisses off motorists to make everything a vendetta.

    What Bristol needs is another form of public transport that isn’t buses. I hate to say it because he was a corrupt cunt, but Marvin Rees’ subway idea was IMO the only way to solve this. Add it to the current train lines, add stations to the centre, and pay it off over 50-60 years with the construction company footing the bill and getting the proceeds + interest if they can build lines asap. I’d go as far as to way to also build underground cycle lanes too, so that cyclists can cycle without fear of shitty roads and dangerous cars.