Other than Exemplary, it might be useful for the ability to self label a comment. While in some sense it might be desirable for anyone posting a comment that falls under such a category, and is self aware, to simply refrain from posting, some of the boundaries for labels such as joke and off-topic can be rather fuzzy.

The first episode of the new season is out! What do you think of it?

I thought it was pretty okay. It was too self - referential for me. It kept making too many "we're back" jokes but they kind of did that the last time they were cancelled and brought back. They eased off those kind of jokes eventually the last time it happened.

I was worried about how they would handle references to more modern things as "Attack of the killer App" was really painful to watch. But it seems like they handled it pretty decently.

I'm slow, but it took me a while to realise that Scary Mirror as a replacement for Scary Door was a jab at Black Mirror.

I didn't think the episode was very funny, but it wasn't bad either. What was good about it shows promise, so I'm hopeful.

I have a cavalier king charles spaniel that has had some unfortunate health issues for the past few years. The most pressing one that I haven't been able to nail down and fix is her GI issues. Every now and then, she has an all night bout of diarrhea even though the only food she has eaten is her hydrolyzed protein dog food. I remember reading about FMT years ago for people who had GI issues and I'm wondering what the results have been for dogs (and other animals). It seems counter intuitive to fight shit with more shit, but at this point I am willing to try most non-invasive treatments. While taking her to the dog park and asking other dog owners if my dog can eat their dog's poo would be the cheapest option, instead I found a site that purportedly has capsules available.

https://doggybiome.com/dog-products-for-diarrhea/

However, because it is difficult to find more information about this company and because I don't want imagine how this type of business (if it worked) could scale up as an industrial factory farm, I am skeptical.

Any thoughts on treating IBD in dogs for an allergy prone, and sensitive dog? She is already getting fiber and she sometimes gets probiotic with her food.

Mods: I put this in Tech because Amazon is a tech company, if this is the wrong group I apologize.

For the last several purchases I have made through Amazon, not only has the advertised "expected delivery date" been wrong, Amazon hasn't even shipped the product by the delivery date. The day I expect an order to arrive, I get a notice from Amazon saying it's "running late" and the new expected delivery date is anywhere from 4 to 10 days away.

This is on top of the fact that I have Amazon Prime. Prime eligible meant "it would be delivered within two days" for the better part of a decade. They slowly transitioned away from that to "two days delivery after it ships," and now it seems like half of everything takes 5-8 days to deliver, even with Prime.

Anyway, the reason I reported them to the FTC because I believe they are advertising misleading or downright incorrect delivery times in hopes of winning your business over a competitor who is honest about their delivery times. If I want a monitor and Best Buy has it for $200 with 3-5 day shipping, and Amazon advertises it being delivered on day 3, I'm probably going to go with Amazon if I'm in urgent need of a monitor. But then the third day rolls around and Amazon indicates "oh, well, it's probably going to be 3-4 more days." If I had known that, I would have just gone with Best Buy, where I know it would have at least been delivered in 5 days; now I'm stuck waiting a week for Amazon.

I don't even know if this is something the FTC cares about. But it should. I encourage everyone to report this if they've encountered the same issue.

So, a friend of mine wants to become a Twitch streamer, commenting over movies. I never used Twitch. He showed me some channels over there that made me confused. There are dozens of channels entirely dedicated to people providing minimal commentary to entire movies, animes, and TV shows which are displayed in full, although not on full screen. And they seem to be monetized, otherwise why would anyone stream 5 to 10 hours a day? They have ads.

I have a few questions.

First, how is that legal? Why aren't copyright holders taking these channels down? Do people really care about a streamer that mumbles a single uninteresting word every few minutes, or it's all just an excuse to watch movies for free? Why the same content that will get your video taken down on YouTube is apparently okay on Twitch?

I used to be happy paying $45/year for YNAB (grandfathered plan). But then "lol no, $90/year" happened and I started looking into alternatives. I tried out a bunch but none felt the same. Eventually I found Actual (open-source). I've been using it for ~6 months now and it offers everything I want/need. I self-host the container on my PC (no sync/etc.).

Hey all! I love that comics has its own tag now. So in that vein, I'd like to ask what are some smaller comics you read? Any kind; oneshots, long running epics, webcomics, anthologies, anything that just might not be from a big publisher like marvel or just something that you think deserves more attention.
A few of my personal favorite webcomics are Phantomarine (hosted on website of the same name), as well as City of Blank(on webtoon).

Phantomarine is a maritime mystery with an intriguing world and (for me)absolutely tantalizing central question. A big reveal just happened, so it's an interesting time to read!
City of Blank is an action/mystery about a world in which creatures called Blanks can steal your face(and memories). It's in the final season, and I would say that following the third season it's the best so far.
Ok, your turn!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984322000583

Abstract

We submitted over 12,000 job applications, to over 4,000 job advertisements, to investigate hiring discrimination against six ethnic groups for leadership positions.

For leadership positions, applicants with English names received 26.8% of positive responses for their job applications, while applicants with non-English names received 11.3% of positive responses. This means ethnic minorities received 57.4% fewer positive responses than applicants with English names for leadership positions despite identical resumes.

For non-leadership positions, applicants with English names received 21.2% of positive responses for their job applications, while applicants with non-English names received 11.6% of positive responses. This means ethnic minorities received 45.3% fewer positive responses for non-leadership positions despite identical resumes.

Ethnic discrimination for leadership positions was even more pronounced when the advertised job required customer contact.

I'm currently reading The Priory of the Orange Tree, and really enjoying it, but I've got to confess I'm a bit disappointed by how predictable the world is. There's an obvious pseudo-medieval European culture, a vaguely Eastern culture of respect and honour, a wise Southern Arabic-flavoured culture, and so on.

It's making me long for some fantasy that feels genuinely different - as far away as possible from this vision of monotheistic courts, swordsman's honour and mysterious wisdom from far away. Something that feels refreshing in trying to portray a world that I have never seen before.

I recently read C.T. Rwizi's Scarlet Odyssey series, and while that definitely involves analogues to a lot of our cultures, it was told from an African perspective, which was very refreshing. So I'd welcome suggestions for fantasy books that approach the typical enemies from a perspective that I don't often see as an English-speaking European reader. But is there much in the way of fantasy that truly tries to explore places and people that are completely out there and away from any of our experiences?

Hey folks! I’m looking for some audiobook ideas (preferably fantasy and science-fiction). I want them to have a TV series or Movie about them though I could watch before listening to them.

All ideas welcome!

I recently finished watching Silo (2023 - ) on Apple TV and at the end I didn't care much for many of the characters, I just wanted to find out more about the silo itself.

I like those types of sci-fi thrillers, but I cannot remember any of them that made me care much about the characters.

I just finished it today and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what parts I enjoyed.

The rest of the book felt very preachy and a lot of it felt unnecessary. I don't think I liked a single character in the book. They all felt like caricatures and not how people would genuinely act or respond to the events happening in the book. Almost every single action taken by every single character felt forced to fit a narrative.

I cannot fathom why this won a Hugo award other than the fact that it was the first piece of science fiction originally written by a Chinese author in the Chinese language to win. [edit: In terms of novelty. The fact that it was originally written in Chinese has absolutely no bearing on my opinion other than possibly due to the translation the characters seemed to have no depth.]

I listened to the audio book, as I was told the names can be confusing and the audio book helped with it. I kept waiting for it to go somewhere, and when it was over I thought to myself, "that's it?"

Maybe someone can give a different perspective on it, because right now I'm just frustrated I spent money on it.

1. What do you think of popular figures like Noam Chomsky, Jason Hickel, Richard Wolff, David Graeber, and Bernie Sanders?

2. Why does grotesque inequality persist? Will the lot of the downtrodden and the oppressed ever improve?

3. What do you think of Anarchism?

Just looking to learn from the community members here. Thanks.