ArbitraryValue

@[email protected]

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ArbitraryValue,

I’ve been showing all these matchups to my grandma. We didn’t know so many different owls existed! She votes for the snowy owl.

(Do we vote by commenting or is there a poll somewhere?)

ArbitraryValue,

Renovating my home is a hobby of mine, but I can’t stand tiny imperfections like walls that aren’t perfectly smooth, surfaces that aren’t exactly level, and mail-order furniture which isn’t quite the same color as it was in the pictures. Usually I can get things just right eventually, but sometimes I have to recognize that doing that would be crazy (i.e. it would require spending tens of thousands of dollars to demolish and rebuild something which everyone else tells me already looks great) and then I get really upset, give up in the middle of the renovation project, and never finish it.

The funny thing is that this level of perfectionism is actually just right for the sort of programming I do at my day job, so work ends up being less stressful than my hobby.

ArbitraryValue,

hāt tomāt

Tomatoes were one of the few things my dog wouldn’t eat.

ArbitraryValue,

For some reason I get ads promising ugly women. Does that mean I’m hot?

ArbitraryValue,

I wish the track my life is on went through a nice peaceful forest like that :)

ArbitraryValue,

Not just an investment but a really good one, with the cost in blood being paid by someone else. I don’t understand why the usually hawkish Republicans don’t see this. Is it just because Biden supports it? I wonder if they would be demanding intervention in Ukraine if Biden had decided to stay neutral…

ArbitraryValue,

I am a very large snake and this is my dream home.

Seriously though, that isn’t just someone’s easement? How did it even end up as a separate lot?

ArbitraryValue,

There’s also the common modern fantasy trope of blind heroes - Daredevil, blind swordmasters, demon hunters from Warcraft, etc. I wouldn’t count these characters as “disability representation” because they can perceive their environment as well as a sighted character could, but they certainly set a precedent for meeting a blind NPC in an RPG.

ArbitraryValue,

So drinking a real-world cow’s milk is ok, but drinking a Zootopia cow’s milk would not be ok because… the Zootopia cow is presumably a full member of society who earns a living by consensually being milked?

ArbitraryValue,

No, they make imitation ice cream now - I’ve seen almond, oat, and coconut milk used. It’s more similar to real ice cream than sorbet is. There’s a noticeable difference but I actually like the imitation ice cream more because it doesn’t have the sour aftertaste I get from milk. The downside is that it’s more expensive; I’ve only ever seen it sold in the premium-priced one-pint containers.

ArbitraryValue,

I don’t like being physically close to almost anyone, and especially not to strangers. It’s ok when each person has his own assigned space and everything is orderly and quiet, like on a plane or in a movie theater, but being in a crowd is both kind of disgusting and also upsetting in some other way which I don’t know how to put into words - I just want to leave and I can’t really express why. I can go into crowded places if I need to without freaking out, but afterwards I’m going to be in a bad mood for a while both because of the experience of being in a crowd and because of anger at the unfairness of the fact that for various reasons I live in a big city and I have to deal with all these… humans whenever I need to go outdoors.

So yeah, I guess you can say that I don’t like people.

DontMindMe, to fuck_cars
@DontMindMe@zirk.us avatar

Driving 8 hours round trip today to pick up one person, and I'll never understand why Americans think this is more convenient than my colleague taking a train.

@fuck_cars

ArbitraryValue,

You might be better off having him rent a car where he is and then return it where he’s going.

ArbitraryValue,

Is it a strange thing to admit to? I spent half my childhood in New York City (including taking the subway every day) and I still don’t like sharing a space with other people. It’s a common preference and I don’t see why it should be respected less than, for example, a preference to avoid loud noises and noxious odors would be when choosing how to live.

Recruiters Drop Elbit Systems after Palestine Action Campaign (lemmy.ml)

After weeks of action, the sole recruiters for the British operations of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, have confirmed via email to Palestine Action that they ended their association with Elbit on the evening of the 29th November. For two months, activists in the Palestine Action network had disrupted iO...

ArbitraryValue,

This doesn’t make British police look very good…

ArbitraryValue,

There was the same nonstop excitement there would be during an actual soccer match.

ArbitraryValue,

No. No. That’s not true. That’s impossible!

ArbitraryValue,

Isn’t that how it’s used now? (Although I wouldn’t say “sarcastically” but rather “metaphorically”.) I would define it as referring to a task that is very difficult due to a lack of outside support.

ArbitraryValue,

I figured that the people saying it meant “you need to find the strength to do this yourself since no one is going to help you”.

ArbitraryValue,

For context, this is probably where the Ukrainian troops are fighting with the largest disadvantage, attacking into Russian-held territory while across a river from supplies and reinforcements. I was amazed that they managed to make the crossing at all, and now I’m amazed that they’re able to hold on.

ArbitraryValue,

Almost ten years ago, I was walking and as a car drove by, a woman inside it yelled something at me. I couldn’t hear what she said but I assumed she was catcalling me. That memory warms me to this day.

ArbitraryValue,

I have a seven-year-old phone (LG V20, still the best phone with a replaceable battery) and a lot of stuff that worked well then doesn’t work nearly as well now. Google Maps is the worst offender - it’s quite slow and unresponsive. Reception is terrible too, with no signal even in the middle of a big city sometimes. I don’t care about new features; I just want 2016 functionality on my 2016 phone but for some reason the software has gotten worse over time.

ArbitraryValue,

I actually have one of those enormous replacement batteries that require replacing the back of the case and make the phone three times thicker than it used to be. I have experienced exactly zero inconvenience from having a thick phone, so I’m not sure why making them thinner is such a big deal to people. (I can’t do tap-to-pay with my phone since the antenna for that was on the original case back, but I don’t do tap-to-pay anyway.) The giant battery is nice, but despite what the Amazon listing said, I think it wasn’t manufactured recently so it doesn’t hold as much charge as it would if it had been.

I work in tech and I’m disappointed because over the last two years, exactly zero people have asked me why I have such a thick phone. Maybe if I solder an external antenna to it, I’ll get both the reception and the hipster pride that I crave.

ArbitraryValue,

Why are they all in one place?

ArbitraryValue,

Arbabi identifies herself as “i, a woman” in the claim and says the case would be tried in the “naomi arbabi court.”

That’s the lawyer being accused in the OP. Note that the lowercase i is not a typo.

ArbitraryValue,

You:

this post

Probably your DM:

ಠ_ಠ

But maybe your DM:

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

ArbitraryValue,

The way the meme works is that the humor comes from the fact that the “superior” option is actually the one that’s strange or embarrassing, which implies that the author is both deviant and lacks self-awareness. It’s deliberately self-deprecating.

ArbitraryValue,

What I’m saying is that the meme is usually used ironically. Here the OP is saying that he has a sexual fetish for a type of woman who doesn’t even exist. That is not something normal people respect or admit to. So the joke is that he thinks he’s superior but actually he’s not.

Then there’s a level of meta-humor because the OP is probably actually attracted to monster girls. So he’s a weirdo pretending to be a normal person pretending to be a weirdo. But he’s posting to a community of weirdos, and in that context he’s actually a normal person…

ArbitraryValue,

If I have to be the one who’s deprecating me, that means someone isn’t doing her job.

ArbitraryValue,

Cold winters are worth it for cool summers. But now I live somewhere where the winters are cold but the summers are hot :(

ArbitraryValue,

That feeling when your god has the trickery domain.

ArbitraryValue,

I would say that “missing” implies that in some sense the body parts ought to be there but the umbilical cord ought not to be there in both the “natural” and the “desired” senses.

ArbitraryValue, (edited )

IMO players should feel like badasses. Rolls are for when they’re doing something the hero in an action movie might fail at. This doesn’t mean that the game shouldn’t be challenging, but rather that the players should feel challenged by powerful foes, not by mooks. Thus I think the solution is simply not to require a roll when an ordinary person would have the skills to succeed with certainty. The barbarian would automatically succeed (at least on the surface level) in this situation.

I would only require a roll if:

  • The intimidator isn’t obviously frightening or dangerous. The halfling bard would have to roll unless he’s scarier-looking than the average halfling.
  • The intimidator is trying to be subtle. The barbarian would have to roll if he doesn’t want to make a scene in public.
  • The intimidator is trying to get the target to stay intimidated even after the target is not in immediate danger. The barbarian would have to roll if he doesn’t want the guard to run for help as soon as the barbarian is out of sight.
  • The target is unusually resistant to intimidation. The barbarian would have to roll if he’s threatening a fanatic unafraid to die.
  • The target might tell a convincing lie. This is the fun case, because a failed intimidation roll will look like a successful roll until the barbarian walks right into a trap.
ArbitraryValue,

I will only read a book if it has either robots or wizards. Ideally there would be both, they would battle, but one of the robots would fall in love with a wizard.

ArbitraryValue,

You’re the second person to suggest that to me - I’ll check it out.

ArbitraryValue,

Here is the post by Dr. Freedhoff criticizing Dr. Ge. It seems to me that Ge’s quoted statements, while obviously objectionable to many, aren’t particularly extreme compared to a lot of what gets said online. This and the fact that Freedhoff posted over two weeks ago makes me think that Freedhoff’s post may not be the main cause of Ge’s suspension.

ArbitraryValue,

No they’re not. I haven’t gone through and found dates for each of them, but there are several that reference events after Oct. 7.

ArbitraryValue,

I sold my house in a rural area at the end of 2019 and then signed a contract to buy my condo in the middle of a big city right before the covid quarantine started. I think I would have been significantly better off if I had waited six months to do both those things, but such is life. At least I have my low interest rate…

ArbitraryValue,

It’s tough being a flaming skeleton.

ArbitraryValue,

One time I invited a girl over to watch a movie and she got mad at me because apparently that’s what guys say when they want sex? I just wanted to watch a movie…

The worst part was realizing how disappointed all those other girls will did come over and watch movies with me must have been.

ArbitraryValue,

Yeah, I feel like Avengers: Endgame was an ending for the MCU. I’m not complaining, because a good story needs to have an ending, but I’m also not motivated to see superhero movies coming out after Endgame (at least not cosmic-scale superhero movies - I’ll always have a soft spot for Peter Parker).

ArbitraryValue, (edited )
  1. I was surprised by how nervous some of the people who visited me from the city were when I lived in a slightly rural area. It wasn’t even that remote - I had a neighbor across the street! Telling people that there were no bears and a lot less crime didn’t convince them to relax.
  2. A moonless night away from any artificial light is dark. Can’t-see-your-own-feet dark, and also so quiet that you start hearing a lot of noises that you aren’t used to hearing. It’s really unsettling. But of course I just carried a flashlight.
ArbitraryValue,

Believe me, I miss it too. I actually grew up in a big city, moved to a rural area for work, and then had to move back to that same big city. Crowding, noise, smells, terrible commutes - all the bad stuff about city living that I just took for granted before bothers me constantly now. I fantasize about being back on my own land with my own house, my own pickup truck, my own trees, and no strangers. All the people I care about are in the big city, they refuse to leave, and ultimately being close to them is more important to me, but I really wish they were country folk.

Hospitals have special protection under the rules of war. Why are they in the crosshairs in Gaza? (apnews.com)

JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of surgery at Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital held up his phone Saturday to the hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling. “Listen,” said Dr. Marwan Abu Sada as fighting raged around Shifa Hospital.

ArbitraryValue,

I wonder if a lot of people’s idea of war has been shaped by the recent American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which were wars of choice where at least in theory American soldiers were fighting largely for the benefit of the natives. Countries that believe they actually need to win and don’t have the option of just giving up and going home fight wars in a very different way. Consider for example World War II, the proverbial “good versus evil” war fought by the generation that originally came up with the comic book characters you read about. The Allies certainly didn’t hesitate to kill enormous numbers of Axis civilians in the course of destroying military targets. (IMO the Allies actually went way too far and a lot of the strategic bombing of Germany and Japan served no military purpose, but I suppose they were more worried about bombing too little than they were about bombing too much.)

ArbitraryValue,

erase the current populace entirely

Do you realize that the population of Gaza grows by over 50,000 people every year? Even if we accept the casualty figures provided by Hamas (and I don’t) then unless this war goes on at its current intensity for another four months (which it won’t) the population of Gaza will actually increase rather than decrease in the one-year period that includes the war.

The idea that the war in Gaza is “[erasing] the current populace entirely” is disconnected from reality.

ArbitraryValue,

Civilian casualties aren’t the same thing as genocide.

genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group

When a country with access to the full destructive power of a modern-day military (including nuclear weapons) fights a war in such a manner that at the end of the war there will be more enemy civilians than there were before the war, it is entirely unreasonable to claim that genocide or any attempt to commit genocide is taking place. You might as well call it cannibalism or pedophilia - those are also really bad things that Israel isn’t actually doing.

ArbitraryValue,

There are pelicans in Ukraine?

ArbitraryValue,

Hah, this reminds me of when I was a teenager and a girl bit me pretty hard. She didn’t send me to the hospital (low roll on the damage?) but she did leave a bruise. To this day, I don’t know if it was meant to be a form of flirting.

ArbitraryValue,

But I want to pretend none of this ever happened.

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