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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I’m from Australia, that looks like a huntsman.

    When I first moved here and saw one I freaked out and begged my husband to catch it. He laughed and said they are good spiders, and very fast so hard to catch anyway.

    That spider lived above the window blinds, and I realised I would have to sweep the dead bugs off the windowsill every few days.

    He definitely became an honoured guest!







  • I have traveled to very conservative countries and have never found the sort of puritanical hand wringing that comes from a certain subset of Americans.

    I say this as an American expat who has lived everywhere from Hawaii to the bible belt, to New York.

    Can you imagine the pain and anxiety you would cause a biological woman who does not look feminine enough for your line of reasoning here?

    You see her in the restroom and act like she doesn’t belong there - maybe you say something, maybe you keep your “discomfort in your vulnerable place” to yourself, but your stupid ideas about what a woman is and how one should look in order to be accepted into a bathroom are hurtful.

    I was in an art class last month with a lovely young woman who has pcos. She is a Sikh woman, and therefore does not remove her facial hair.

    She had a beard that would put a young man to shame, and now it occurs to me that had she been unfortunate enough to be born in America, she would have had to choose between honouring the basic tenets of her religion, or conforming so she is not shunned - or worse, assaulted for using the womens room.

    https://www.learnreligions.com/some-sikh-women-have-facial-hair-2993341












  • I bought Red Dead Redemption for myself and three friends, super excited about the game, the lore. I had never spent that much money on a game.

    We all played through the single player tutorial, and finally into the open world. We meet up and begin exploring and trying to complete quests when suddenly one of us just … drops dead.

    Then another is hit by a meteor and caught on fire?

    I am thrown up into the sky.

    An alien ship?! Appears and messes with us for a while. I try begging in pub chat for the hacker to please leave us so we can play, which seems to goad them further. This continued for an hour.

    A quick look around the internet told us that this was par for the course for RDR and GTA and Rockstar couldn’t/wouldn’t do anything about it.

    We ended up refunding all the games through steam. Sad times.



  • I missed the discussion on voting the other day it seems, but for what it’s worth, I like the voting system. In real life discussions happen in open air, and don’t hang there in posterity for people to stumble upon after. When we come to a consensus in conversation it is then left at that and we move on.

    When online, these discussions stay as they are, and I think voting gives a way of people to come to a consensus, to leave a mark upon the conversation such that the people who come behind understand how everyone felt about it.

    This is helpful I think, because it does not hide the down votes on nasty comments or ideas that hurt others.

    One of the most interesting and horrible things about the internet is that every village has a “crazy Bob” but because they were the minority the good of the people outnumbered their outlandish or hateful ideas.

    Now they can and do find each other online, forming a vocal and damaging minority. Without the majority able to show their dislike, human nature means more will fall in line with them and their ideals.