BusAlderaan's recent activity

  1. Is the United States in its Soviet Union era?

    For the last 10-years or so, I've been much more interested in US history, it started because I wanted to be a more informed citizen, but continued because of how much recorded history differed...

    For the last 10-years or so, I've been much more interested in US history, it started because I wanted to be a more informed citizen, but continued because of how much recorded history differed from how I was taught. Then I started seeing how the lofty offerings of America, as an idea, had really never existed.

    Like, when the rest of the world was watching the Soviet Union from the outside as it proudly proclaimed how amazing they were and everyone was kind of glancing at each other and whispering "They know we can see how it's going, right?" I wonder if the same is happening now, as countries watch US politics unfold. How close are we from a failure here or there to cascading failure?

    I'm at a point of accumulated facts, doing my best to remove my personal bias, that I can't help but think we were arrogant to think we could keep a continent this large in one piece. The weight of national systems that can support a population this spread out is immense. The upkeep of infrastructure at this scale is a logistics nightmare. Passing any national laws has become the chore that just never gets done, we'll always get to it tomorrow. The people, Americans, can be amazing, but that's a truth of humanity, not nationality.

    I'm sad to think I could be witnessing the end of something really impressive and inspiring, even if a lot of it was some makeup and nice lighting. Thoughts?

    39 votes
  2. Comment on Stimulation Clicker in ~games

    BusAlderaan
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    Ok the ASMR eating drove me absolutely crazy, but the murder podcast was incredible. I'm just sitting back and enjoying the view now, after a good days work. Fun game!

    Ok the ASMR eating drove me absolutely crazy, but the murder podcast was incredible. I'm just sitting back and enjoying the view now, after a good days work. Fun game!

    14 votes
  3. Comment on Climate stress has millennials rethinking retirement in ~finance

    BusAlderaan
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    I have a hard time with your framing, because Climate Change isn't a freak accident, it is a future our world is collectively slow walking towards. It's easy to say "Don't live in fear of...

    I have a hard time with your framing, because Climate Change isn't a freak accident, it is a future our world is collectively slow walking towards. It's easy to say "Don't live in fear of something that could happen," but people aren't living outside of reality, their fear is very much rooted in a clear and inescapable end.

    3 votes
  4. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    BusAlderaan
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    I'm playing Balatro, after it went on sale and I am a sucker for a good roguelike. I holds up well, much better than I would expect. Also, if you're someone who has any experience playing poker,...

    I'm playing Balatro, after it went on sale and I am a sucker for a good roguelike. I holds up well, much better than I would expect. Also, if you're someone who has any experience playing poker, there's basically nothing hard learn. You know the odds, you know the values, it makes it a kind of mindless game for me sometimes.

    I spent years playing The Binding of Isaac and have had trouble finding roguelikes that match Isaac's sheer possibilities and I could see Balatro doing that.

  5. Comment on How do you learn to recognize your own emotions? in ~health.mental

    BusAlderaan
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    When I read your post, a few things caught my eye. I want to caveat this with sharing that I myself found out about my neurodivergence late in life and that I think everyone is basically doing the...

    When I read your post, a few things caught my eye. I want to caveat this with sharing that I myself found out about my neurodivergence late in life and that I think everyone is basically doing the best they can. Do what you have the time and energy to do. Lastly, my wife is a therapist and, just by living together for 15 years and the both of us being hyper verbal , I've learned quite a lot from her.

    So these are the parts that jumped out to me the most. My wife and other therapists I've talked to all know that there are clients who come see them, they spend months talking through things, and then things abruptly end, because they're "Not helping" or some other similar reason. From their perspective, they saw where all the work was going, and they believe the clients share a commonality, which is that they bail when a touchy part of themselves get triggered. They'll have a session where the therapist, who hear something months ago that they knew they needed to dig into, challenges the client on something and quickly after the session, they're fired. I'm not saying this is you, but when I read this:

    I never felt like it helped me much.
    and
    we just kept talking past each other
    and
    I super don't have the energy to keep trying new therapists, and waste weeks or months on each one before I figure out we won't click.

    I ask myself one question. If I had seen a bunch of therapists and shopped and shopped, but never found anyone who could help, when do I ask myself the hard question about the commonality amongst all these failed client/mental health professional relationships? It's me.

    I'm not saying it is you, but since you're opening up about how you struggle with emotions and you may have some disdain for "Social scripts," another common male neurodivergent issue, make it seem like a worthy point of interest.

    I recently learned about a new kind of therapy that, as one of it's primary tenants, believes that anxiety is the body's reaction to another emotion we are not comfortable experiencing. So, instead of the emotion, people get the anxiety instead. I'm also not saying that is true for you, but it's what I think about in my head as I read your post. Maybe all these therapist relationships aren't working out, because you aren't fully giving yourself over to the work. It's REALLY hard to do, so that would actually be a really reasonable explanation.

    Good luck in all your work and efforts. I agree with what others have said, that this is life work, there is no quick fix. It will be the work of the rest of your years here.

    4 votes
  6. Comment on Thoughts on a Democratic postmortem in ~society

    BusAlderaan
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    I guess I'm confused... While I agree with everything you wrote, doesn't that prove my own point? I agree that we can't gleam actual statistical analysis of what percentage of US voters were...

    I guess I'm confused... While I agree with everything you wrote, doesn't that prove my own point? I agree that we can't gleam actual statistical analysis of what percentage of US voters were searching with those phrases, but we can agree that a spike from 0 to 10 is a clear indicator that too many people people in the country weren't following the election until election day? If there's 300-some-million people in the country and a 0 in searches still accounts for how ever many people would search those on an average day, there has to be more than 1 person out of that many that searches if someone dropped out of the race every day. Then doesn't it stand to reason that a spike from 0-10 one election day is plain evidence that a not insubstantial number of people searched?

  7. Comment on What does the word "cancelled" mean to you? in ~talk

    BusAlderaan
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    I don't think I've seen anyone add that "Cancel culture" is currently, and has potentially always been, somewhat of a political or ideological dog whistle for Conservatives. I don't want to...
    • Exemplary

    I don't think I've seen anyone add that "Cancel culture" is currently, and has potentially always been, somewhat of a political or ideological dog whistle for Conservatives. I don't want to generalize too much, because there is a lot of nuance here, but to give you a fuller picture of the term, right now that term is mostly used by Conservative Christians, who don't agree with people they like being "Cancelled." This is one of those times where not all vehicles are trucks, but all trucks are vehicles.

    Just this last weekend I was at church and the pastor talked about how shameful it was that Harris Butker was cancelled for "Praising motherhood." This is kind of a perfect encapsulation of what I"m talking about.

    1. Harris was not cancelled, he is still very much around.
    2. Calling his remarks a "Praise of motherhood" is such an unbelievable stretch of the English language. His speech was littered with dog whistles for Conservatives,

    I won't share all the details, since they're not pertinent to the bit of context I'm trying to give you, but if you want validation that this isn't just in my head, I can explain more.

    But, like I said, it's actually still nuanced, and it's not just Conservatives who use the term, the scale is just weighted in their direction.

    24 votes
  8. Comment on What does the word "cancelled" mean to you? in ~talk

    BusAlderaan
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    I want to add an important addition to what you've said, which I basically agree with in it's entirety. Cancel culture became a thing for all the reasons you mentioned, but there was another...

    I want to add an important addition to what you've said, which I basically agree with in it's entirety.

    Cancel culture became a thing for all the reasons you mentioned, but there was another catalyst alongside social media. Human culture spent years covering for each other and pretending it was "impolite" or that "Boys will be boys." Men covered for men constantly, women covered for men, men covered for women, and women turned a blind eye to other women. The reason this is such an important catalyst is because when someone "Apologizes," no one is inclined to believe it anymore, because it's just used as a PR tool. So, in the pendulum of change, we are most definitely swinging too far to the opposite side of there being no accountability for people in power. But I don't think it's fair to omit this detail, basically making the case that cancel culture cropped up out of no societal need, there was and is definitely a need. We just need to correct our over correction to the lack of accountability many of us grew up with, which is something humans have always had to do.

    10 votes
  9. Comment on Thoughts on a Democratic postmortem in ~society

    BusAlderaan
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    "Harris under-performed even so?" I'd actually like to hear your theories on this, because I felt she performed about as good as any candidate would in a 100 day campaign to gain name recognition...

    "Harris under-performed even so?"

    I'd actually like to hear your theories on this, because I felt she performed about as good as any candidate would in a 100 day campaign to gain name recognition next to a guy who has decades of name recognition. After all, we have to remember, the American electorate is unbelievably under-informed. So much so, that the google "Did Joe Biden drop out of the election" spiked on election day. I'm open to hear arguments to the contrary, really open to anything that makes this make more sense.

    11 votes
  10. Comment on FEMA can kind of suck in ~life

    BusAlderaan
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    I think you bring up a great point about the apartments being a business. It sounds like OP is running an apartment differently than most landlords, which is pretty cool, but when you do things...

    I think you bring up a great point about the apartments being a business. It sounds like OP is running an apartment differently than most landlords, which is pretty cool, but when you do things differently sometimes the system screws you, because it's not designed for you. Apartments, all housing really, is a profit machine in the US and because of that decision, FEMA isn't designed to help them. In the American business world, you were responsible for aggressively raising rents to compete with other apartments and buying more property, investing, or at least saving some of the large profits you made from raising rent every year. That money pays for the tree repair.

    I'm not saying any of that is true or accurate, just that FEMA doesn't serve you, because it sounds like you're not running your apartments to make the maximum profit. So you get screwed, because America values money over the human right to housing.

    18 votes
  11. Comment on Star Wars Outlaws is a crappy masterpiece in ~games

    BusAlderaan
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    I guess I'm confused, the author doesn't even address the #1 issue causing this dissonance, profits. It's not as profitable to ship a triple-a game anymore, like gamers these companies executive...

    I guess I'm confused, the author doesn't even address the #1 issue causing this dissonance, profits. It's not as profitable to ship a triple-a game anymore, like gamers these companies executive branches are min/maxing, but they're focusing on making money. Is it cheaper to pay testers for a few hundred hours more or is it cheaper to ship the game and make players test it? Is it cheaper hand paint beautiful and thoughtful landscapes or is it cheaper to give the computer a list of objects and let it randomly populate everything in the game? Is it cheaper to have the requested staff of people to ship a good game or is it better to cut the project to shreds and move the timeline up to a better fiscal quarter?

    Indie developers are a prime example that, no, games don't have to be shit. Indie devs are making AAA quality games now, they have the tools and the tools make one person's work output like 20x that of a dev 20 years ago. Games of AAA quality still ship in great shape and thoughtful creation, because they don't have a shareholder or board member breathing down their neck.

    13 votes
  12. Comment on The US DOJ files an antitrust suit against a software company for allegedly manipulating rent prices in ~tech

    BusAlderaan
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    I'm very curious how this plays out, since it seems plain on it's face that this is price fixing, regardless of using some algorithmic middleman to do all the math, but obviously this is some new...

    I'm very curious how this plays out, since it seems plain on it's face that this is price fixing, regardless of using some algorithmic middleman to do all the math, but obviously this is some new legal precedent and I'm not encouraged by many recent decisions handed down by the federal courts.

    9 votes
  13. Comment on US judge rules Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend caused her death, dismisses some charges against ex-officers in ~news

    BusAlderaan
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    What are the rippling legal implications of a decision like this, can any lawyers explain? This seems like a branch of new legal thinking that protects police.

    What are the rippling legal implications of a decision like this, can any lawyers explain? This seems like a branch of new legal thinking that protects police.

    19 votes
  14. Comment on Sid Meier’s Civilization VII | Gameplay reveal trailer in ~games

    BusAlderaan
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    I just stumbled across this last night, thanks for sharing though, I am really excited after watching that gameplay. The verticality of the maps is really interesting and I love that they changed...

    I just stumbled across this last night, thanks for sharing though, I am really excited after watching that gameplay. The verticality of the maps is really interesting and I love that they changed queue management and development.

    2 votes
  15. Comment on Sid Meier’s Civilization VII | Gameplay reveal trailer in ~games

    BusAlderaan
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    I'm always annoyed when Dev's call a trailer "Gameplay" and it's just inside the game footage. No actual gameplay, not explanation, no highlight of what's new or changed. I'm still excited for the...

    I'm always annoyed when Dev's call a trailer "Gameplay" and it's just inside the game footage. No actual gameplay, not explanation, no highlight of what's new or changed. I'm still excited for the game, but this didn't offer much of anything but a bit more hype, there are literally no details about the game that get revealed.

    33 votes
  16. Comment on Disney seeking dismissal of Raglan Road death lawsuit because victim was Disney+ subscriber in ~news

    BusAlderaan
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    This is how I envision the most toxic aspects of law come from, people being forced to twist the law into some convoluted way to fit a demanded defense and somehow it works and no one cares about...

    This is how I envision the most toxic aspects of law come from, people being forced to twist the law into some convoluted way to fit a demanded defense and somehow it works and no one cares about the consequences.

    5 votes
  17. Comment on ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ struts past $1B global box office; soon to become biggest R-rated movie ever worldwide in ~movies

    BusAlderaan
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    But, I wasn't making the argument that a movie can't be both, I was making the argument that a movie can be one of those things. Yes, movies can be fun and good, but can't they just be fun or just...

    But, I wasn't making the argument that a movie can't be both, I was making the argument that a movie can be one of those things. Yes, movies can be fun and good, but can't they just be fun or just be good? 12 Years a Slave isn't fun, but it's good. So yeah, I just felt like the movie took itself as seriously as the main character and in this particular character's case, being fan-service-y and nerdy is pretty on brand. It's fine that you didn't like it, I just took issue with that part of your review.

    5 votes
  18. Comment on ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ struts past $1B global box office; soon to become biggest R-rated movie ever worldwide in ~movies

    BusAlderaan
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    Thanks I guess I'm confused by your opinion that the story was a "non-factor," since the story is that this Deadpool's timeline is about to get the sleep by a rogue TVA employee, who is solely...

    Thanks

    I guess I'm confused by your opinion that the story was a "non-factor," since the story is that this Deadpool's timeline is about to get the sleep by a rogue TVA employee, who is solely interested in climbing the ranks as fast as possible. That's a pretty big motivating factor imo. I do believe it could have had more meat on it's bones, but since the story is one that has to do with infinite realities, wouldn't it make sense that they add color with the characters that show up? I assume you're saying you'd rather they build interesting characters around Pool and Wolverine, instead of shuck in old Marvel failures for the lol's, but since those characters were inevitably going to die, why not have some fun fan service character redemption?

    All in all, I didn't go to it expecting to see something good, I went to it to see something fun and I feel like it delivered. I have enough blockbusters with insane CGI and impeccable writing, I like casual fun and this hit the spot. Even more so, the main character is a walking-talking-grating-meme, in the comics and the movies. I can't begrudge the walking meme for being too meme'y, ya know?

    4 votes
  19. Comment on ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ struts past $1B global box office; soon to become biggest R-rated movie ever worldwide in ~movies

    BusAlderaan
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    Care to elaborate why? @teaearlgraycold was asking for reviews, after all.

    Care to elaborate why? @teaearlgraycold was asking for reviews, after all.

    11 votes
  20. Comment on JD Vance’s wife: My husband only meant to insult people who actively choose not to have kids, not people who are trying but are unsuccessful in ~society

    BusAlderaan
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    I've never heard this idea before, but I really like it and it easily aligns with my understanding of humanity and community. I, personally, relish the idea of a smaller humanity and an earth...

    I've never heard this idea before, but I really like it and it easily aligns with my understanding of humanity and community. I, personally, relish the idea of a smaller humanity and an earth reborn, even though I don't want to diminish what the transition years may hurt like for those who live through it, but it seems like humanity is doing to the entire planet what humans worry a single invasive species does to a small ecosystem.