southsamurai

It’s easy when you use the same password for encoding everything.

You’re confusing concepts. And yeah, I know it’s a shower thought, so it doesn’t need to be anything like that.

Wabisabi, beauty in the eye of the beholder, and the concept of “trash” beauty are related, but not the same.

Wabi sabi is more about realizing that mom matter how close to perfect you get something, there’s always the human element, so embrace those imperfections. It has the benefit that that which is broken still has beauty. This leads to the practice of visible repairs. But it’s more like how antiques are more valuable when you don’t fuck with them doing refinishing or painting, you do repairs to keep it functional, not to make it like new (and if you knew how often I’ve seen people ruin any monetary or historic value in knives, you’d want to use one on yourself).

The same kind of idea, seeing the beauty and value in things as they are can indeed be extended to things that were never crafted in the first place, like seeing a trashed room and appreciating the human element in it. But the key is that the mattress in and covered by trash isn’t the same thing as a broken vase.

And that is different from the spartan, minimalist to the point of apathy kind of single guy with no furniture arrangements. You can be minimalist and/or spartan in living without living in trash.

Now, being real, once you get things like food that is going to become a health risk, and pizza boxes can be, then that’s no longer about accepting this as they are, and becomes just being nasty (and I don’t throw that word around lightly). You can be disorganized, and still be clean. It’s harder, but completely doable.

That doesn’t take away from seeing a photo of such a vista and appreciating the beauty of the composition, and how it shines a light on the human condition, on how we are. It does not, however fall under the concept of wabi sabi as it exists in its home culture.

Like, I get what you mean, I do.

But it’s simply not accurate. Great as a shower thought! Just not accurate regarding the motives of all prostitutes and porn actors.

It isn’t about poverty, though that is there. It isn’t about addiction, though that’s definitely a big factor in both. But it has never been that simple.

I think what would be more accurate is that in a post scarcity environment, prostitution and pornography would cease to be about necessity. You would see way less of either, with pornography possibly becoming only self produced.

Prostitution would probably cease to be an exchange of goods or currency, which does mean it would be eliminated on a semantic level. After all, if it isn’t an exchange of goods/currency for a service, is it still prostitution, or is it just two consenting adults having sex? At that point, it’s no different than hooking up with someone you met via something like grindr.

But that doesn’t mean the basic idea of someone having sex with strangers for some kind of exchange would die entirely. It could end up as a more direct exchange of services. “Hey man, if I give you head, could you help me move this fridge?” “Sure dude, sounds like a fair trade to me.” You might even still have street level hooking, where people are just looking for some kind of exchange of sex, even if only for the rush, but it isn’t about money. Wouldn’t be much, most people aren’t into that. But there are people into that.

The internet put a huge dent in the porn industry. It didn’t kill it, and I don’t think it can. But people making their own porn for fun and sharing it changed the industry. Enough that I’m certain it will never go away entirely, though the exact shape of it may be so different as to not really count. But porn, at its core, is not about the porn industry. The industry could well die within years of scarcity disappearing, maybe even less time. But you’ll still have people making movies of themselves that they allow other people to enjoy. You’ll likely even have hobbyists that have skill with the film making that get asked to do the filming (I know a guy that does exactly that).

But, yeah, good shower thought!

You know, I never post much of anything. But even if I did, I couldn’t post most of my actual shower thoughts without calls for banning, psychiatric intervention, or exorcism. Maybe all at once.

I get too relaxed in the shower, and my weird shit comes to the surface.

As an example, a few nights ago I had a doozy. I had had a conversation with a friend via text where they yet again tried to talk me into running for mayor. A joke w as made on his part about electing me as dictator for life.

By the time I got in the shower, my brain w as scrambling coming up with ways I could get out of such a situation. One of the first things I thought up was doing something so atrocious that I would get thrown into jail for life, because someone would have to decide I couldn’t be allowed to roam free if I went hard enough.

What proceeded was a shower filled with my brain going through horrible things leaders have done in the past and concluding that there’s never any guarantee a madman will be taken down while not being killed because there are so many people that will support the kind of batshit crazy that commits atrocities.

Mind you, it isn’t always that fucking batshit, but whatever is in my brain when I get under warm, running water is going to keep percolating until it goes off the rails. I’ve learned to never shower after watching “true” crime shows, political ads, or visiting anything that deals with botched surgeries. Why? Because my brain can’t be trusted to not turn it into a game of “what if?” It will inevitably go to the darkest, ugliest possible places.

Well, it’s one of those things where you either learn to compartmentalize, or you quit fast.

I moderated forums back in the early days of the internet. It was rough some days, to the point I had someone show up at my house because I wouldn’t let them abuse other users.

I moderated on reddit, and it was both easier and worse. People like to complain, but automod being able to filter out so much of the worst without having to see it at all made the job bearable. If I’d had to wade through the bigotry, the worst slurs, and similar stuff that a well crafted automod rule could magic away, I wouldn’t have done it at all.

But the fact that you have to constantly adjust the automod to catch up with the most persistent assholes is draining.

And that’s not getting into the stuff that isn’t hate speech, misogyny, bigotry, and that kind of infection. People think they can say anything they want, any way they want, and you stopping them means you’re the asshole, even after that went on a rant about fucking someone’s wife and kids (seriously, that’s a ban I had to make) because someone didn’t agree with their opinion of a flashlight. Seriously, that fucking happened.

Point being that while there are mods that go too far, the internet, and places like reddit or lemmy, would be unbearable without it. There has to be someone making those calls, keeping things from turning into the non stop scroll of venom and porn that used to be way too common back in the day.

Nah, you have the right kind of friend, they don’t just help but the body, they kill the fucker for you and you never know there’s a body

Unless I misread, the point isn’t leaving bad reviews, it’s making fake good reviews for a chain restaurant.

The way it’s being done is intended to stymie outsiders from crowding out locals.

Now, I agree that it is going to make competition harder for the non-chain restaurants the fake reviews are supposed to be isolating from tourist and traveller customers. It’s still a shitty move that hurts the local businesses. But it isn’t the same thing as actively trying to tank them. It’s a quibble about wording though, not a disagreement with your actual point.

I’m way less worried about bluesky as opposed to threads. If anything, it serves as a healthy competitor to mastodon in terms of how it would require a bridge to interact. You have to go out of your way to make it happen.

But threads is pulling a EEE, and it’s obvious that’s the goal.

That it started out enshittified, and things can only get worse with VC being involved deeper.

Well, I dunno if that’s what they meant, but that sure as heck is the reality of it

Well, considering that some of those knives would sell for a few hundred, and include irreplaceable antiques, I’ll err on the side of caution, thank you.

Fwiw, my kid is trained. They’ve been doing martial arts with me for years, when my body lets me. They were part of the small class I was teaching for a while too. Dunno if martial arts as a hobby is that esoteric or not, but it is something I’ve done since my twenties, and I’m fifty now.

And, really, compared to shit like funko (funco? I can’t remember how it’s spelled), at least knives have history and aren’t made of plastics that fuck up the environment.

But, my dude, for someone “friendly ribbing”, you’re really fucking snarky about mentioning me having kids. That crosses a line, you dig? So, if you really were just playing, and not being a douche on purpose, maybe avoid that kind of joke in the future, it’s such am asshole thing to say. I’m choosing to assume the best here, that you think snarky “ribbing” with or about a stranger to someone other than that person is friendly in any way, instead of assuming you’re only being a dick. But, you know, if it walks like a dick and quacks like a dick, it might just be a dick ;)

No, it’s a matter of safety.

I have kids visit that range from toddlers to almost adult. Kids do stupid shit when they get any time to do so. So, they stay in my case and locked up.

Did you never run across some kid where they’d carve shit into trees, or furniture, or whatever kind of silliness crossed their mind? I never did it with knives, but I did plenty of other stupid shit with things that you wouldn’t imagine a kid doing something stupid with. But my dumb ass liked seeing what happened when you mix bottles of stuff together. Some of which, had I been stupid enough to do it inside would have been way worse than it was.

Would my kid fuck with the knives? Probably not, they’ve been drilled on how to use knives in the kitchen, and in martial arts, so I think they’d at least be respectful enough of my knives not to fuck with them at all. But other people’s kids? You get a ten year old bored at a gathering, and it’s just better to keep shit secured

Besides, the adults like to grab my really nice knives and do horrible things to them in the name of food prep lol. So even if it wasn’t something I do with every knife, the case would still be there, so it isn’t like there’s any extra hassle involved

Yeah, that’s not on the app/service.

Could the kid have found another way? Absolutely. But there’s a fucking reason guns stay locked up and out of access for minors, even if that means the adults can’t access them quickly. Kids literally can’t exert full self inhibition of urges, so you make damn sure that anything as easy to make horrible impulse decisions with is out of their hands.

Shit, my kitchen knives stay in a locked case. Same with dangerous chemicals. There’s a limit to how much you can realistically compartmentalize and keep locked up, but that limit isn’t hard to achieve to the degree that nobody can reach things on impulse. Even a toolbox with a padlock on it is enough to slow someone down and give their brain a chance to inhibit the impulse.

My policy? If the gun isn’t on my person, it’s locked up in a way that can only be accessed by the people I want to access it. Shit, even my pellet guns stay in the main safe. The two that are available for the other adults are behind fingerprint locks. Even my displayed collection of knives is locked up enough to prevent casual impulses.

I’m not trying to shit on the parents here, but it isn’t hard to keep a firearm locked up and still accessible to the owner rapidly. Fingerprint safes and locks have been around long enough that the bugs are worked out. They’re not cheap, but if you can afford a firearm in the first place, you can damn well afford keeping it out of someone else’s hands without your permission or a lot of hassle.

Afaik, there’s no apps that do that. You’re likely just going to have to block individual accounts

Being real though, I often have more than 20 comments a day. It really isn’t that difficult to rack up if you’re bored and have the time. I’m not much of a poster, but 10 a day isn’t too far outside of feasibility for a person that’s into memery. So you’d end up filtering out people that would likely be good to have access to over time, even if it’s rare. If you do figure out a way to do it, might want to bump your threshold up a little.

Well, once you have a room full of long boxes, you kinda have to either become rich enough to build a new house with dedicated comic storage, or you start looking at digital.

Half joke aside (because good luck affording a house nowadays), reading comics digitally is actually very nice, but being able to have and store an entire published history of a comic on a single drive instead of taking up multiple boxes is too damn nice to ignore. And that’s assuming you’re paying for the digital version. If you pirate, the money issue is a major decrease in resources needed to enjoy comics. Hard to pirate physical copies of the very old and rare stuff, but easy to find digitally.

Someone needs to cook up a bot that flags every post on Twitter, Facebook, or reddit with a DCMA takedown.

Eh, I am an asshole.

Friends are hard to make. It’s even harder to find good friends. The key is to move through life open to the possibilities as they come.

Given enough time, and the willingness to be a friend, regardless of whether or not it works out at any given time, you’ll find people. Might take years, might get lucky at any time.

No bullshit, the real secret to having friends is being one. You’ll meet people at work, at stores, at events, wherever. If you comport yourself as the kind of person you would like to have as a friend, it is inevitable that you’ll meet someone that wants that kind of friend too. From there, you do your best, and let them do their best, and see where it goes.

It can be harder the more unusual you’re desired friend traits are. But that’s not the point.

It’s okay to “fake it til you make it”, btw. If you want a friend that’s compassionate, but you’re more of a stiff individual that isn’t moved by others, you might need to learn compassion by faking it. But as long as you’re acting with compassion, you’ll eventually either learn it for real, or become so good at mimicking compassion that it becomes the same thing. And that’s true for almost any trait. Hard to fake raw intelligence, or being tall, but stuff that’s behavioral? Absolutely possible to pick it up as you go along.

Be the kind of person you want in your life

I mean, if you don’t mind solar cell production also taking a hit, yeah.

It isn’t going to doom the world or anything, but if the mines aren’t recoverable in a fairly short amount of time, it will put a major crimp in solar deployment. That includes driving up the price (which, unless we’re willing to kick off a revolution, is a major factor in a capitalist system) of solar right when it’s really starting to be so much cheaper than fossil fuels that it can be a big shift for energy.

Short term, it isn’t going to do anything at all. Even a few months would be a blip. But if the mines take much longer than that, it’s a big problem for everyone.

And, as an added problem, you’ve got the people that do the work now displaced. They’ll only be able to just sit idle for so long before they have to move on to other jobs, likely well away from the area. So you have a talent drain involved that can ripple out just as badly as the production drop for solar.

I don’t think anyone legitimately gives a fuck about the semiconductor makers taking a hit financially (well, assuming it doesn’t fuck the rest of us down the road too), but the “tech” industry isn’t just companies churning out the next GPU model or AI scam.

Depends on the phone, but some of them, the audio is horrible through the regular speaker for calls, but better via the bigger one. Just not necessarily enough better for everyone.

Mind you, most of the people that do that are just twits, but hard of hearing people might need to use the phone that way to be able to communicate effectively, regardless of phone quality.

Nice!

I agree, 404 is legit journalism. No org is perfect, but they’re as good as it gets.