crompo [none/use name]

I coincidentally just finished this a few days ago, and it's a fantastic read. Parenti lays everything out so clearly, I wish more theory/history was written this way. I really can't recommend it enough, I think it's a great entry point into understanding communism.

I really appreciated Parenti's nuanced take on both the successes and failures of communism. I didn't realize until he pointed it out how much I had internalized the false notion that being a leftist means disavowing communism entirely due to its failures (while ignoring its successes). He does a great job making the case that communism has been a force for good in many ways and that it absolutely should not be thrown by the wayside.

This kind of shit is so funny to me because conservatives are always lamenting the "stagnation" of culture despite the fact that it's literally late stage capitalism that homogenizes everything

I've struggled with that kind of thing a lot relating to my personal projects, where I just see immense tasks before me and I'm incapable of breaking things down into little steps.

It's not perfect, but what's helped me recently is just telling myself I'll spend 30 minutes on my task at a specific time every single day. A lot of the time I won't even make any tangible progress at all. More often than not I wind up doing more than 30 minutes, but even if I wind up doing just 30 minutes I try to let it go and tell myself that it's fine. Doing a little bit every day is one of the best ways to make progress on something.

Often times enthusiasm comes after you force yourself to do something and not before, which is frustrating.

I always felt weird about finding Aubrey Plaza attractive because I've never actually seen anything she's been in, but I remember there being this creepy obsessive Reddit culture around her so I've never actually told anyone that I just think she looks cute

Into the department of the office that makes Minecraft, of course

I am humbled, thank you friend

:sicko-lunar:

The entire movie pretty much relies on activating the pleasure centers of your brain that respond to familiar faces

It's so funny that every conservative's masculine ideal is a fictional character. It's always John Wayne or James Bond, they can never come up with a real person

It's so funny too because it's just like basic storytelling. You're not a genius for being able to open Tv Tropes

In all seriousness AI definitely won't be at a point to do that any time soon. I do think that AI might some day be used to generate policies that actual human politicians then vote on. And it'll be heralded as objectively good policy because it came from a machine that "did the math", ignoring the reality that AI will always operate under the biases of the people who programmed it.

man I just made myself sad about a fake thing I made up

Whenever I see these homes I immediately stress out about what a nightmare they would be to clean. How are you even supposed to clean the gunk out of those grooves under the couches?

The answer is that you don't, your underpaid laborers do (when you're out of the house so you don't have to look them in the face or acknowledge their existence)

I saw a completely unironic thread on that subreddit where a pedophile was arguing that being able to act out their fantasies in AI Dungeon helped them cope with their real life struggles. The comments were all talking about how healthy and positive the whole thing was. Legit felt like vomiting after reading it

I feel that. Just curious, have you tried/been able to reduce your workday by a couple hours without telling your employer? I started doing that this year since I'm working from home and it's been helpful. Turns out most people don't need to work 8 hours a day to get everything done, and as long as things are being done then who cares if your employer doesn't know you've shortened your workday? :shrug-outta-hecks:

I love the game, but I do relate to your feelings on the blood vial system. Dark Souls 1 had such a perfect healing system with estus, I have no idea why they make you grind for vials in BB. Idk if you know this already (I didn't realize until about 2/3 of the way through the game), but you can buy them in the hunter's dream hub with blood echoes, which is a little easier than grinding for them to drop from enemies (although you still need echoes to purchase them)

Yup, that and the fact that the ballooning cost of entertainment means that executives are increasingly more likely to just revive old franchises rather than risk trying anything new