Yeah, but I like to try to use it to move in a certain direction emotionally. Like, instead of pure sad, I’ll put on something sad and wistful to move a little in that direction, or sad and angry to shift a little that way, depending on my current needs.

Like, this is sad and wistful, with a touch of determination:

https://youtu.be/es9MQweZzvc

This is sad and angry:

https://youtu.be/6NXnxTNIWkc

This helps avoid wallowing in the pure sad feeling, which I don’t really like.

Big yellow flame probably indicates its not getting enough air mixing with the fuel for complete combustion. I’m guessing something got clogged up with soot, or possibly rust. Look around at all the little holes the gas comes out of, see if any of them are clogged up. If you find some, something like a safety pin can probably get them opened up.

I wouldn’t. Have to remember that a core component of trolling is making things up, so you should not take for granted that any mental illness is actually present. Imagine the troll as a 13 year old, smirking or giggling to themselves while they type. That’s the spirit these things are done in.

Anyway, bringing mental illness into it just insults people with actual mental illness, who generally behave much more maturely.

If you want to actually engage in any sort of positive way with a troll, you need to stoop to their level and draw out more engagement from them, without making it fun. We used to call this counter-trolling. Trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls … ad infinitum. This eats up some of their energy without giving them anything in return, as the time they spend engaging with you is time they can’t spend trolling other people, who might feed them more.

Or save yourself the time and just block and move on. That’s definitely the most mature thing to do.

The worst thing you can do is a short engagement that results in you acting like you’ve gotten upset and then disengaging. This is feeding them more things to giggle about. If you engage, you need to be willing to stay in it for as long as it takes to deprive them of that satisfaction. This can go for multiple days. I don’t really recommend it unless you also find the bantering process amusing.

if someone is doing that

Key words. I think we can look at

Someone showed me a TikTok video of a…

and assume with a fair degree of confidence that something a little fishy is going on here.

5/10 interestingness gets 0 seconds of watch time for me, there’s just too much quality content produced in my topics of interest every day for me to keep up with. I already have to miss some 7/10 projects just because there’s only so much free time in a day.

Regarding the time question, for something that barely crosses the “okay I’ll watch it” threshold, 10-15 minutes is probably what I’ll give it. It can be longer than that, I’ll just skip through parts of the video for the gist to decide if I want to give it more time.

Worth noting though, that for extremely interesting content, a 15 minute duration actually dissuades me from watching it, as I doubt there’s enough time to cover much of anything at a decent level in that little an amount of time. So like, for a neat history vid on a topic I’d like to hear more about, if it’s 30 minutes or less then I’m less likely to give it a chance, unless it’s covering something super narrow where there wouldn’t be as much to talk about. But if you’re going to cover a major historical event, you better be at least a half hour. There are some exceptions to this, Indy Nidell(sp?) is a good example, but it’s my general rule.

Yes, absolutely.

I’d probably take something like 10% of it and go ahead and enjoy spending that, you can get some cool stuff for 1.5k that you can enjoy right now.

How you want to invest the bulk of it depends on your plans, but don’t forget that things like a reliable car or a computer you might need for future schooling are also “investments” of sorts into your future.

I’m not so knowledgeable about all the different sorts of investments out there, so maybe someone else can help out there. Knowing what your medium-long term goals are will help them fine-tune their advice though. Are you planning on any sort of post-secondary education or job training?

I find it useful to remember that entertainment products are designed to be both understandable and fun, where real life was not designed to be understandable and fun.

With that in mind, no, I would not.

Yeah, I won’t say it’s impossible or anything. I just think there’s other reasonable explanations too.

Personally I just avoid mentioning China when I’m over there. lol It’s easier to keep everything civil if you avoid naming names, and China is a particularly sore spot for them. You also can’t forget that free speech is not a foundational part of their ideology like it is ours. They’re more about seizing the means of production than the free contesting of ideas.

It does feel a little like walking on eggshells.

I kinda doubt it. Let’s not forget this is a global community, and Marxism-Leninism has different levels of support in different parts of the world.

If this was a state-funded project, I think the development would have gone a lot more swiftly, and the leads would be even more puritanical in pushing their beliefs. As it is, I’ve argued pretty extensively from a liberal perspective on .ml before, even personally with dessalines, and while they don’t exactly love me over there, I’m careful to respect their rules and they haven’t banned me.

I think they really are just idealistic supporters of communism, mostly from places where that’s a little more common.

When the Generative Agents system was evaluated for how “believably human” the agents acted, researchers found the AI versions scored higher than actual human actors.

That’s a neat finding. I feel like there’s a lot to unpack there around how our expectations are formed.

Vampires…? Uh, garlic. lol

What flavor of apocalypse matters a lot. If it’s zombies, ammo becomes critical. If it’s nuclear, ammo is less important and water filtration probably becomes critical. If it’s a gigantic asteroid that blots out the sun, water is easy to find but food is critical.

For an unknown apocalypse, I think I’ll go with gasoline. Not critical in and of itself, but helps a lot more generally with a lot of stuff, being able to power a generator and move camp more easily.

Many modern Christians have turned into the Pharisees from their own stories. As I recall, Jesus rather famously took his belt to them.

It actually has a hopeful ending, fyi, despite being about such difficult subject material. It’s not all gloom, though, it is a very well-made movie, overall. Liam Neeson is fantastic in it too.

Schindler’s List was shown in one of our history classes, I probably never would have watched it otherwise due to being black and white and me thinking I wouldn’t like that.

I can’t say that I enjoyed it, it’s not a particularly “enjoyable” film. It was moving though, and talking in class about what humans are capable of was interesting.

I cannot specifically remember any of the others we watched, but I remember that I liked movie days because you tended not to get homework. They certainly weren’t nearly as memorable though.

The line I’ve seen the most is that god uses even sinful unbelievers to accomplish his goals.

It’s in the same vein as gamma ray bursts. Could possibly cause problems, but space is so big, so heavily occupied by empty space, that the odds of ever encountering one vs just more empty space is almost infinity:1.

I mean, our planet is billions of years old and hasn’t encountered a single one yet, based on the fact it’s still comfortably in orbit around the sun.

Asteroids are far, far more concerning. Encountered a bunch of those already.

A whowouldwin community.

Battleboarding communities draw a lot of engagement and help retain new users among the younger demographics.

In a world where trolling was done as a recreational activity, this was a good strategy. This is not that world anymore, though, this is a world where right wing fight clubs are popping up in dozens of countries. Trolls are no longer recreational, they’re trying to slowly and gradually change the world in their image.

You’ve never needed everyone for something, that’s unrealistic. A village doesn’t require the exact same behavior from all people to function smoothly, and any such bottleneck would create weaknesses anyway. You just need that to be the prevailing culture.