Akir's recent activity

  1. Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I would say the alternative to books is to read articles about feminism, but frankly that's a field too broad to put into a single article. Instead, maybe consider looking up more modern feminist...

    I would say the alternative to books is to read articles about feminism, but frankly that's a field too broad to put into a single article. Instead, maybe consider looking up more modern feminist frameworks such as the ethics of care and intersectionality.

    Those links are to wikipedia, but of course wikipedia articles aren't meant to be persuasive, so I'd encourage you to find other articles about them.

  2. Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life

    Akir
    Link Parent
    Have you considered that perhaps the problems you are having with feminism is the places you have these conversations in? Many places on the web have been poisoned by manosphere types, and I can...

    Have you considered that perhaps the problems you are having with feminism is the places you have these conversations in? Many places on the web have been poisoned by manosphere types, and I can understand if you feel that you don't want to talk about some of your thoughts here for the pushback you could get.

    My suggestion is to simply read some books by feminist authors. There are pretty much no major misandrist voices in modern feminism and by most accounts feminists want to help men to live happier, healthier lives.

    8 votes

  3. Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life

    Akir
    Link Parent
    Oh, perhaps I misunderstood by the use of "us" in the article.

    Oh, perhaps I misunderstood by the use of "us" in the article.

    6 votes

  4. Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I am saying that the macho men are the ones creating the world that is causing the non-macho men to be lonely. Machismo hurts everyone, not just women or macho men. I really disagree with your...

    I am saying that the macho men are the ones creating the world that is causing the non-macho men to be lonely. Machismo hurts everyone, not just women or macho men.

    I really disagree with your characterization of the article. Perhaps it’s not talking to you, because you are not a macho man. It’s being written in the perspective of women, but it’s targeting macho men.

    13 votes

  5. Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life

    Akir
    Link Parent
    The thing that kills me about the public rejection of feminism is the utter failure of the majority to learn what it is or even the definition of some of the most basic terms. “Toxic masculinity”,...

    The thing that kills me about the public rejection of feminism is the utter failure of the majority to learn what it is or even the definition of some of the most basic terms. “Toxic masculinity”, for instance, is a term to describe how masculine ideals hurt men, but the public decided instead that it means that all men are poisonous. What an absurd leap!

    People like to pretend that feminism is some cult that came out of nowhere in the 1960s, but in reality is an evolution of the combined philosophies which is simply applying those principles more universally by examining the barrier of gender. It’s not something that can be disproven if you are actually making good faith attempts to understand the arguments. And more importantly, it’s (generally, but not always) not a means of putting women on top of society, but bringing true egalitarianism to be.

    9 votes

  6. Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life

    Akir
    Link Parent
    To me this is very clearly the other side of the coin. Women are calling men out because they are being macho creeps. Another commenter said they know one girl who is quick to reject boys when...

    To me this is very clearly the other side of the coin. Women are calling men out because they are being macho creeps. Another commenter said they know one girl who is quick to reject boys when they show signs of hiding their macho side, so it’s pretty easy to understand that the reason why this category of men are hurting still gets traced back to the behavior of the machismo crowd. To put things more succinctly, patriarchy hurts everyone.

    If you ever find a way to tell people things they don’t want to hear, let me know.

    12 votes

  7. Comment on Slop and guilt in ~talk

    Akir
    Link
    There’s a huge difference between slop and formula. Slop is an absolute minimum of effort expended; it’s phoning things in. Formula is designed to be easy to digest, yes, but it takes effort....

    There’s a huge difference between slop and formula. Slop is an absolute minimum of effort expended; it’s phoning things in. Formula is designed to be easy to digest, yes, but it takes effort. Often tremendous effort.

    Precure is absolutely formulaic. There is no denying it. But things like reusing animation is not a way of phoning things in, but for increasing overall quality. Having canned animations mean that they have to put their all into the creation of those animations, so they are front-loading their production costs, which is a very high effort thing to do! Doing this also allows them to make sure that the scenes that they are not reusing can have more time to work on and improve the show overall. I am sure precure did not invent canned animations and they are far from the only shows that do it.

    It’s also somewhat unfair to say that precure has 1000+ shows. There’s a whole bunch of precure but they are not all the same shows. But then again, what do I know? I’ve seen maybe three episodes of them altogether? Frankly, I do think that the shows are childish and that they are not worth watching. But why the hell should that matter to you? I don’t think less of anyone who watches it. Each episode is undeniably a beautiful work of art even if it’s not something that I personally appreciate. Art doesn’t need to be high brow to be art or to be loved. There are tons of shows that are low brow and arguably have less artistic merit than Precure but are still enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people. I can think of a few even when sticking to animation! Heck, I personally think higher of the people who watch kids animation than I do of the people who watch reality TV, which is generally more acceptable to society at large.

    9 votes

  8. Comment on Phil Spencer is leaving Microsoft/Xbox in ~games

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I feel they could do all of the things they want by simply manufacturing peripherals at this point. But there’s significantly less money to be made that way versus having the proverbial keys to...

    I feel they could do all of the things they want by simply manufacturing peripherals at this point. But there’s significantly less money to be made that way versus having the proverbial keys to the kingdom.

  9. Comment on Phil Spencer is leaving Microsoft/Xbox in ~games

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I feel that since at least the time Microsoft announced the Xbox One they have been actively trying to kill consoles. Their announcement of that system not only had some massively stupid changes...

    I feel that since at least the time Microsoft announced the Xbox One they have been actively trying to kill consoles. Their announcement of that system not only had some massively stupid changes that they were forced to peddle back on from public outcry, they started showing it off with media capabilities and didn’t talk games for something like the first 15-20 minutes. Since then, they’ve further integrated their console business with Windows, and essentially killed off the idea of console exclusives.

    2 votes

  10. Comment on Phil Spencer is leaving Microsoft/Xbox in ~games

    Akir
    Link Parent
    They did a steam deck, kind of. They have the Xbox branded Acer ROG Ally X Xbox or whatever stupid name they call the thing. They introduced new windows features coinciding with its release to be...

    They did a steam deck, kind of. They have the Xbox branded Acer ROG Ally X Xbox or whatever stupid name they call the thing. They introduced new windows features coinciding with its release to be more competitive with steam deck on the software front.

    I haven’t heard any reports of anyone buying it though. It was very expensive.

    2 votes

  11. Comment on What's a reasonable amount of time to spend on an RPG campaign? in ~games

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I know wanting 5 hour RPGs is weird, but I think that the reason why I end up noping out of a lot of RPGs - particularly those without particularly engaging combat mechanics - is that they are...

    I know wanting 5 hour RPGs is weird, but I think that the reason why I end up noping out of a lot of RPGs - particularly those without particularly engaging combat mechanics - is that they are often padded with what tends to feel like busywork. I'm told that Omori is a masterwork. And it might be, but the length combined with a lost save (Steam didn't sync it for whatever reason) prevented me from ever really 'getting' it.

    6 votes

  12. Comment on Ponderings on unicode support on the site, re: punycode, tags, etc in ~tildes

    Akir
    Link Parent
    We have a lot of multilingual people here, so I think any attempt to improve non-latin support on tildes is an endeavor worth taking. But at the same time, I don't think that it's a huge priority...

    We have a lot of multilingual people here, so I think any attempt to improve non-latin support on tildes is an endeavor worth taking. But at the same time, I don't think that it's a huge priority given that conversation here happens entirely in English.

    That being said, I kind of like the idea of multilingual tildes conversations as well!

    2 votes

  13. What's a reasonable amount of time to spend on an RPG campaign?

    ~games Ask
    Personally, I find RPGs to be at their best when they are reasonably short - somewhere between 5 and 20 hours. Games like Chrono Trigger and Earthbound seem to come to mind. For more open-ended...

    Personally, I find RPGs to be at their best when they are reasonably short - somewhere between 5 and 20 hours. Games like Chrono Trigger and Earthbound seem to come to mind. For more open-ended experiences like Fallout New Vegas or Skyrim I find that I generally lose interest after somewhere between 30-50 hours regardless of how addictive the gameplay is.

    I haven't played tabletop RPGs so I don't have anything to say about them, but please feel free to chime in with them as well.

    19 votes

  14. Comment on Here are your choices for a self-hosted ebook server in ~books

    Akir
    Link
    I'm grateful that this conversation has kept popping up because until now I haven't seen any reason to deal with an ebook server until this moment when I accidentally clicked in and saw a...

    I'm grateful that this conversation has kept popping up because until now I haven't seen any reason to deal with an ebook server until this moment when I accidentally clicked in and saw a reference to Apple Books. I didn't see what the purpose of having a dedicated server over a basic file server. But now that I realize that they are also syncing the reading status, bookmarks, and annotations, it seems incredibly useful! That was the one reason why I liked using Apple Books for my school texts - it let me read on the go as well as during my scheduled study time at the computer. I also have an ebook reader and having it sync with everything else could be very useful to me.

    I have calibre on my mac already for a certain extension needed for, um, reasons, and my ebook reader has koreader which has calibre integration. The only missing part here is on my iPhone. Can I get any recommendations? There's about a million options out there.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on Lindsay Ellis - Is there still a very special place in hell for Matt Stone and Trey Parker? in ~tv

    Akir
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    South Park and how the creators' political opinions have managed to affect society. Big parts of it are about ManBearPig and climate denialism as well as their current lampooning of the Trump...

    South Park and how the creators' political opinions have managed to affect society.

    Big parts of it are about ManBearPig and climate denialism as well as their current lampooning of the Trump administration. She also compares how them and Stephen Colbert's criticism of the regime had some very different reactions from Paramount, the company paying both of them. Her works always cover a little bit of everything though.

    (edited because the original wasn't terribly detailed)

    10 votes

  16. Comment on Why Vegas doesn't care if you visit anymore in ~finance

    Akir
    Link Parent
    Would you mind if I asked what it was you do for a living? Feel free to DM me if you'd rather keep it private.

    Would you mind if I asked what it was you do for a living? Feel free to DM me if you'd rather keep it private.

    1 vote

  17. Comment on What are your architectural hot takes? in ~design

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I don't know if I really agree with you but I do kind of wish it were still used more simply because it's a super durable material that is also very repairable.

    I don't know if I really agree with you but I do kind of wish it were still used more simply because it's a super durable material that is also very repairable.

    2 votes

  18. Comment on Why Vegas doesn't care if you visit anymore in ~finance

    Akir
    Link Parent
    It should be mentioned that my comment was mainly concerned with the experience on the strip. Outside of it there is still a lot to like, but it's a different kind of experience than what people...

    It should be mentioned that my comment was mainly concerned with the experience on the strip. Outside of it there is still a lot to like, but it's a different kind of experience than what people tend to think about when they are talking about taking a trip there. I'll reiterate that downtown in particular is wonderful!

    The wide variety of people and cultures is one thing I really miss about Las Vegas. Growing up there it kind of made me wonder why people thought racism was a big deal because my schools were always filled with a mixture of people of different ethnicities. It turns out that in most of the rest of the country people are still racially geo-segregated. Where I live right now is an Asian neighborhood, and it's fairly rare to find black people, which still feels very strange in spite of now having lived here longer than I had in Vegas. The church I grew up in was a Southern Baptist congregation, and coming out of it was surprising how much of a negative opinion people had over their hateful ideology - I didn't get that for the most part.

    Nowadays I have a love for the place. I don't know if the tourism industry for regular folks will ever recover, but I hope that the other businesses that have sprouted up there over the years continue to thrive and support the people who live there.

    The thing I find particularly frustrating about this market change is that while the strip was always expensive for locals, it was still a place one could go to on a free day and enjoy the sights and amenities. I can't speak for them because I am no longer one myself, but it really doesn't feel like that's the case anymore. So the properties on the strip now feel like castles that locals may enter to labor in, but not to participate in.

    6 votes

  19. Comment on Why Vegas doesn't care if you visit anymore in ~finance

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I actually have a high opinion of them, but I have seen others who dislike them because they are as much an advocacy organization as they are a news organization. That and there's a crazy...

    I actually have a high opinion of them, but I have seen others who dislike them because they are as much an advocacy organization as they are a news organization. That and there's a crazy anti-union stigma across much of the US.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on What are your architectural hot takes? in ~design

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I think that my primary problem with brutalism is that it seems that every time I see it, it's not because there was some grand artistic vision to choose the style, but because it's less expensive...

    I think that my primary problem with brutalism is that it seems that every time I see it, it's not because there was some grand artistic vision to choose the style, but because it's less expensive to have exposed concrete than it is to make it look good. There are ways to make concrete forms more beautiful, but it seems like that's not usually happening.

    I also hate when a building is entirely concrete. No matter how much shaping you do with it, it's going to look boring. It's the real-world equivalent to making a 3D model and never bothering to apply textures or edit the default material properties. And no, mixing grey concrete with grey bricks does not count. Color variety is important, regardless of what the building is for.

    Perhaps the most important thing that I think shouldn't be in a brutalist style is outdoor spaces, such as courtyards or the spaces between buildings. They have the effect of making real plants look artificial, and anyone who is building those painful awkward concrete benches and seating elements that are always freezing and wet in the morning must have never had to live with the aftermath.

    3 votes