All the people trying to dissect you for science.

As OP mentioned, a lot of replies focus on loss, that friends will inevitably die and objects will break… we already face that reality with regular life! That’s hardly a downside of immortality itself.

As a wildcard (my first pick is already here) I put forward Pathologic. I’ve never played it and playing it seems torturous, but it’s absolutely an amazing game with an powerful immersive story. Or perhaps, it’s an amazing game which is a powerful immersive story. The game mechanics are a story-telling mechanism, rather than a mere medium to overlay story onto.

Hbomberguy video: Pathologic is Genius, And Here’s Why

Thank Goodness You’re Here

Just by the name and you mentioning it’s a comedy, I suspect it’s a nod to the TV show Thank God You’re Here (or more likely the British version), where performers such as comedians enter a surprise setting and must improvise.

• https://youtube.com/watch?v=FnM-cWvPoMg
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=rAmIG2c3e_0

My blind playthrough was great, despite or even due to mistakes made. Lost once playing sport so badly it destoyed my self-esteem, but also won a miracle 5% perception roll right at the end (although we scared it away). On my first playthrough I intentionally tried to avoid losing and I played conservatively enough for the game to start bullying me over it, which is great design.

I’m the kind of person who thinks it’s hilarious how fragile the player can be where (esp. because of the class I picked). The cursed chair didn’t get me but it sure made me laugh.

“World Socialist Web Site”, the paper of the Socialist Equality Party (who, in my personal experience, are toxic idealists who will counterprotest pickets and any union action whatsoever)

I’ve had great experiences with reading socialist news sites. They tend not to care about ‘the spectacle’ and don’t like ads. Although you still have to avoid the ones like WSWS who just use it as a platform to call other socialists ‘pseudo-left’.

Side note: There’s a great famous analysis of the US media in the book Manufacturing Consent. You can find a PDF online, but at the very very very least you should read the Wikipedia summary. It explains the reasons why media organisations almost inevitably have some of these biases and bullshits.

What do you think was the source of the general disdain in the UK?

If the citizens weren’t tacitly benefiting, in any way from the resource extraction of the bourgeoisie, maybe you’d have a point there; but since they do, you don’t

Someone tacitly benefiting from a state’s imperialism doesn’t stop them simultaneously being victims of the absolute horror that is capitalism. That’s a big part of why even in the most exploitative regimes there are millions of anti-capitalists who engage in international solidarity. The capitalist class like to pretend there’s some national unity at play when they screw over the proletariat, but it’s all clearly bullshit.

Just fuck off if you’re gonna go to bat for a settler before you waste any more of both of our time.

I don’t bat for settlers. I’m publicly replying to your public reply, because it was sectarian in a way which is harmful to the international socialist movement. If you think this conversation is wasting your time, then just ignore it.

If I remember correctly, the admin (a US Lolbertarian) finally closed it down, among other reasons, when they realized the resident nazis there were not just joking to troll da libs and actually believed the things they were saying about ‘jewish shapeshifters’. They wanted a free speech haven, and so they got the people we collectively told to shut up.

Why would it? It seems like it would just be similar to the circlejerk forums they’ve have for decades, alienated from the mainstream and unable to normalize their ideas and recruit so easily.

It sounds as if you’re using the atrocities of the French bourgeoisie as a way to excuse nationalist bigotry against a people. The French state is imperialist and colonist, the French citizens are mostly victims of capitalism, not the settlers.

Obviously it’s a different situation with French people overseas, but we’re not in that context.

Don’t know why you’d give a joke answer at all, but there’s nothing wrong with unsweetened yogurt (e.g. greek) on potato. Put chives on there, maybe some zataar. Or use it to offset a chilli sauce, make a barbecue sauce creamy. I’d even just have it by itself on fries.

How is that Stalinist? Censorship isn’t some unique rare policy, even 5EYES countries regularly challenge the legality of E2EE.

This is a good point. The pseudonymous internet is like a confessional booth. I can bluntly say all my political beliefs here with little-to-no consequence that I can’t solve by registering a new account. There’s no risk of alienating a friend or family member who disagrees. As an extreme case, I’ve met a couple of people online who can be legally killed for their political views (e.g. not following the state religion). So the internet can provide more comfort in free expression and therefore more people arguing over differences.

I’m starting to feel like all this hate and division is manufactured

Even putting aside biases or conspiracies, mass media and (for-profit) social media has an economic incentive to get people passionate and interested and viewing more ads. So there are systematic factors at play, which I’d say are enhanced by digital technology.

@Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com This highlights the problem with using relative terms like ‘left’ and ‘center’ and ‘far’. They’re subjective, and in my opinion, shouldn’t be used.

I don’t know what country or society you’re in. “Left” can often mean anything from centrist liberalism (Democrat Party) to nothing less than socialism (socialists often consider liberalism to be in the center). Then you get literal Fascists (as in, Mussolini and Mosley types, unlike Nazi fascists) who throw a stone in the whole thing: their heritage comes from both the traditional left (namely syndicalism) and the right (ultranationalism), and don’t neatly fit into progressive or regressive (BUF notably gained many women supporters for their pro-suffrage policies, progressive at the time).

One can avoid arguments like in the OP just by learning the proper terms for political views and ideologies. Are you a progressive liberalist? Are you a social democrat? Are you a democratic socialist? (yes unfortunately those two get confusing)

For more information about the political compass and examples of why it’s not a useful tool, I recommend this video.

Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah, that is a major issue.

An interesting part of it is that I’m not use how much of that is the service working as intended (even in abstract ways, like promoting interest-grabbing things) and how much is abuse of the service (basically SEO for social media posts, using botfarms to promote content, etc.). And just to be clear, it’s still a fault of the platform if it’s being abused by organized think-tanks and advertisers. Whereas in Lemmy and Mastodon, the openness and customisability would communities to adjust ‘the algorithm’ that decides which posts to promote, or just block things that are unwelcome in their community.

I’m not sure if that’s really how the US propaganda model works (that is, the one defined in Manufacturing Consent). It’s an element of it, you’re right about that, but I think ultimately the issue is that they’re a for-profit information platform. And, as a result of that and the system we’re in, they’re affected by at least four of the five filters of bias that the authors proposed:

• They’re filtered by the investor demands to censor.
• They’re filtered by advertising demands to censor.
• They’re vulnerable to mass-media flak against their reputation.
• They’re vulnerable to anti-[flavour-of-the-month] red-scare hysteria.

Mastodon, like Lemmy, can basically ignore the first two filters, and established communities which don’t mind being smaller than mainstream are unaffected by the remaining two.

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that BlueSky is a for-profit business, like Twitter, like reddit. I urge everyone to avoid it where possible, just like I would go back in time and urge people not to make Twitter a thing.

They will inevitably go down a similar path. Even in the best case hypothetical scenario, they are still beholden to the interests of shareholders and advertisers. They have to make money from you, or from rich companies, to survive. Mastodon instances, on the other hand, are scalable enough that they can sustain themselves off self-funding or donations. Just like Lemmy, they don’t have an intrinsic motivation to throw in ads, or to get you addicted to scrolling and arguing, or to censor communities that offend their sponsors.

It’s no co-incidence that you’re feeling some similarities between Lemmy and Mastodon, in fact Mastodon users can actually post here! ‘Fediverse’ programs all use the same language (protocol) to communicate and so some are able to interact. I’ve had a Lemmy<->Mastodon conversation before. Admittedly it’s not ideal to do that everyday, because of the obvious difference in formats, but having the ability to do that can be useful, especially if one service has a community that yours doesn’t.