Homophobia was the norm where I grew up in the '80s and '90s. Took me until the late '90s to start questioning that, and probably a year or two more to become completely cleansed of it.

When I was a kid, there was a period during which I was convinced my dad was planning to kill me (or have me killed). I’d have regular nightmares about it.

I have one [non-dream] memory in particular where we were walking through Belfast on a sunny Sunday afternoon, it was pretty much empty except for us. We were walking along a path holding hands (I was like 6 or 7), and an alleyway opened to the right of me, and I thought “this is it…” and was expecting a masked gunman to come out, and for my dad to let go of my hand and step aside, his job now complete. Genuinely thought that was about to happen and almost had a panic attack. No idea why I thought that, or why I eventually stopped thinking it.

I was later diagnosed with all sorts of neuro/psych shenanigans, so I guess it was probably that. I still have intrusive thoughts, but I’ve had therapy so I’m a bit better able to manage them. CBT might do you some good if you have access to a shrink. You can even do most of it on your own, or with a bit of guidance from someone else who’s already done it.

I don’t know who this is for. The show was 8 seasons and even then it felt rushed at the end, and each episode of it was close to a standard movie runtime. Then we have the spin-off shows. What exactly can get done, storywise, in even a 2 & ½ hour fillum? You’d spend the entire runtime just explaining who the fuck everyone is. And even if watching the OG show is a prerequisite, it’s still not long enough to get through more than 2 or 3 monologues.

How are the grooves made? 🤔 Like, is the wood a solid piece or does it start out as a sort of pulpy slurry?

FlashGet was my jam back in the early 2000s. Then one day it downloaded malware a malicious third party had somehow managed to inject into its updater 😒

Welp, looks like I’ll need to get myself a PS5 then.

Said no cunt ever

Charlie Kirk’s killer turns himself in. This cunt literally says “we got him”.

There’s some evidence/theories that the Northern Bank robbery was done to give ex-IRA members retirement funds 👀

‘Steam Store Front’ should be shortened to ‘Stormfront’. At least then no one would be shocked when they discover it’s teeming with illiterate bigots.

All I can suggest is that you report and block as much as you can. If there’s a game, like Relooted, that’s a bug light for scumbags, go to its forums when you have 10 minutes free and just report the shitstains you come across. Steam does take action sometimes.

My parents paid about that much for a SNES copy of Earthworm Jim back in the mid-90s. It was disgusting then and it’s disgusting now, despite the fact that, adjusted for inflation, that would be £140 today. I mean I don’t feel like we’re getting a 50% discount when a game costs 70 fuckin’ quid nowadays.

There’s really no reason to spend that anyway, not on PC at least. IsThereAnyDeal.com and the slightly questionable loaded.com (formerly cdkeys.com) give decent discounts even on day one (and Steam itself will eventually have it on sale, of course). Loaded isn’t like G2A, which is a credit card thief’s wonderland. It’s more like when your uncle Jim crosses the border with 40 cartons of cigarettes secreted in the wheel wells of his truck because they cost 400% less over there. I can live with that level of mischief when it comes to AAA games that take the absolute piss with their prices and their hostage DLCs. EA, Ubisoft and Rockstar have not caused me a millisecond of lost sleep when I get their games for £3 six months after release from a code that was originally bundled with a new GPU. With how extremely easy it is to pirate games (something I haven’t done in nearly 20 years), I don’t feel like those larger AAA companies are meeting us half way, to say the fucking least.

They could cover ‘Killing in the Name’ and not change a single lyric. They just need an aura of “and that’s fine, actually” which will be provided by their TRUMP 2024 flags.

Many newer fabrics don’t require ironing, or not as much of it at least. Newer washing machines and driers, as well as newer fabric softeners and detergents, seem to play a role in the non-wrinkliness of clothing, too.

I rarely own anything that would require regular ironing these days. I tend to avoid buying clothing that looks like it would be a pain in the ass to keep wrinkle-free. I guess in our parents’ era there were no such choices available.

Plastic in clothing might have circumvented the need for ironing, but of course it has brought its own issues. Plastic might be an apocalyptic death substance, or it might actually be fine to have 5% of our bodyweight to be nylon. Not sure which yet.

Jesus Christ the racism on Steam is out of control 😔

Is our collective memory of this trope (man ties woman to train tracks) all based on one instance of it in one silent movie, or was it really as widespread a cliché as it seems to us nowadays? 🤔

They’re banking on severe vendor lock-in preventing people from moving on. So many communities are solely on Discord now, it’s insane.

Would something like Stoat (previously known as Revolt) eventually have the same requirements?

Kid Rock makes music for people who listen to Kid Rock.

We expected it to be more than that, actually. If it’s $700, that’s pretty good. It’s not a Switch. It’s a prebuilt gaming PC in a tiny form factor. Building a gaming PC today with the same horsepower would probably set you back a lot more than that, and you’ll also have a giant tower taking up space.

It’s not for me, but I can think of at least 3 people in my family who would get a lot of value out of it at that price point. No PC-building headaches, no researching every bit of hardware and comparing prices and performance, no tedious planning of the cooling layout, no thermal paste, no separate warranties and RMA headaches for every individual component, no Windows bullshit, not needing an entire corner of the room just for the tower, perfect for the living room, driver and software updates that apply to and work for every customer, I could go on. I don’t see any downside for the average gamer. Sure, if you’re an FPS penny pincher who simply has to OC and have the best of the best and latest hardware, it’ll not appeal to you. But that’s a minority of gamers.

$700 is a dream. $1,000 is reasonable in the current climate I guess, but pushing it a little. $1,500 would be unfortunate, but it really depends on what extra value the system comes with from Valve. I wanna know their RMA and warranty plans. If they’re anything north of “Kafkaesque”, which is how it is with virtually every other hardware manufacturer/reseller, the extra money might actually be worth it, for one’s mental health. If they send out a replacement unit before you have to return a defective one, for example, that would be enough to justify a little more cost, but that’s coming from someone with a long and storied history of nightmarish, abusive RMA practices. I’d suck a dog’s dirty dick to not have to go through that shit again.

be on the wrong side of history speedrun

I can’t do small talk or general chat, but I can do meta. I can talk about how awkward it is to talk to strangers, for example. That feels like information exchange, as opposed to a complex two-person dance where I don’t have rhythm or sufficiently-malleable limbs, which is what small talk feels like to me. The goal of small talk seems to be the process itself. If we’re instead ‘educating’ each other about something, and that information is the ultimate goal, I’m much more comfortable.