“Greetings, we’ve been trying to reach your civilisation about the extended warranty on your Class 7 interstellar exploration cruiser…”

I miss forums as well, and I’m actually moving back to them. Back in the early 2000’s, I visited like a dozen forums each day. I was a member of like three watch forums, a camera forum, a Star Trek forum, some gaming forums and others. Just ‘doing the rounds’ kept you busy for a while. People also were insanely knowledgeable on those niche forums, and they all had their own specific culture and flavor to them.

Places like a niche subreddit are… OK at best. They are convenient and easy to visit, but don’t tend to have the level of knowledge and discourse that I generally enjoy. You also run the risk of your sub getting ruined by people who are into the wrong aspects of your particular hobby. For example, on a watch FORUM, the discussions are about design, mechanical features, history, photography, how to repair, etc. etc. On the subreddit, a lot of posts tended to be drive-by posters who ‘found a watch and wanted to know what it’s worth’. or ‘is this fake’. The subreddit didn’t curb that, so eventually I and many others just stopped going there. It was basically too easy for people to post there just because, well, they could. Whereas on an actual watch forum, you can do a bit stricter moderation and the registration requirement weeds out low effort posting.

Some consider that ‘gatekeeping’, but I see it as a valid way of protecting one’s chosen community.

I don’t think I’ve met any Brazilians back in those days; (online) gaming is really expensive there from what I heard, right?

One fun thing in the old COD lobbies was always to teach others slurs and general cursing in your language. I learned how to curse folks out in like 50 languages. Each country also has its own unique style of cursing. We Dutch really like to incorporate diseases for example.

I’m certainly not going to say you’re wrong on that first part. I’ve been online since 1996. At that time, the internet was the domain of white, heterosexual, nerdy, generally well educated guys. And me being a white, heterosexual, nerdy, well educated guy… well… going online felt like coming home. Those were my people. I still really miss those days.

But I also know that the experience of someone not like me would’ve been wildly different. I learned a bajillion slurs on COD lobbies after all. It’s a good thing that more people now feel welcome online, as it led to platform growth and functionality that we otherwise wouldn’t have had if it was just ‘my kind of people’.

The current safe, sanitised, gentrified gaming sphere also has benefits: COD lobbies these days are very pleasant by comparison. You even have to sign a code of conduct to get on multiplayer. It feels more welcoming, less hostile. Of course, companies certainly have been financially incentivized to attract as wide an audience as possible. For example, the very first GTA game sold about 6 million copies. GTA V has sold 200 million. And with ever-increasing development budgets, you can’t afford to cater to a niche, you want to cast as wide a net as possible to recoup those costs.

I miss that era. Companies didn’t mind a bit of edginess and weren’t afraid to market to adults. The console culture itself also isn’t what it used to be.

These days, gaming consoles all need to be safe enough for five year olds to play on them. And it’s caused everything to be just too bland and safe, both in marketing and the console itself. Can’t really have things like Xbox 360 Uno with the live camera feed and no moderation. Or the wholly uncensored COD lobbies.

Thankfully where I live, that sort of thing didn’t happen much during the pandemic itself. Most people understood how to properly wear a mask and why it was necessary. Nobody enjoyed wearing one - I didn’t either - but they definitely made me feel safer in situations where you couldn’t always avoid being near someone, like public transport.

Though it’s certainly odd that people who wear them NOW use them wrong. That’s a head scratcher for sure.

That’ll work. I was sick and tired of people refusing to follow basic COVID guidelines. Selfish idiots.

If this takes out people with that same attitude? Awesome.

We should practice the standard health and safety formation, just in case. So we’re properly prepared…

Here’s the way I see it: to most people, that word is not linked to a disability. It’s just a word to describe bewilderment or exasperation at someone, something, some situation. It’s not intended to be hurtful.

I have a disability as well. I see about twenty percent of what normal people see. I’m pretty much blind without my contacts or glasses. I don’t get offended when someone uses terms like ‘short-sighted’ or when someone says ‘are you blind?’ to someone else. We also use seeing metaphors quite a lot if you pay attention to them. I’m not offended by it, because I know the language is not intended to offend me.

I’ve also worked with people who had actual mental disabilities. And trust me, most of them know damn well when something’s intended as an insult or when it’s just metaphorical use.

Airbus is Ableist!

Well, you certainly haven’t been rushing it so far, considering Fallout 4 released back in 2015…

Thankfully i haven’t had any bad experiences like with that chair. Even as kids, we were always very specific with the gifts we wanted. Parents likewise. Mom will straight up just send me 10 items she wants for mother’s day or her birthday. That suits me just fine.

Buying things that fit someone else’s interest is tricky at best. I have very specific hobbies and interests. Usually, if it’s ‘cheap enough for you give as a gift’, it’s certainly cheap enough that I’d have bought it for myself if I wanted or needed it. It’s also difficult for people outside of that interest to judge what is a good value or what an item might cost. I.e. to me, a 50 dollar dildo sounds expensive. It’s a piece of rubber after all, how much can it cost? Most casual people wouldn’t know that a thing like a 250 dollar dildo even exists. So while they think they’re doing you a favor by buying something they consider ‘expensive’, it might not be what you want or need.

Gift cards are just silly. It locks you into a specific store and some cards even expire or are otherwise really inconvenient to use. COMPANIES really love them though - because people just don’t always use them or let them expire. That’s free money for a store, and a wasted gift…

Ironically, personally I do like to give physical gifts. But I only do it when the person has no gift expectation and only with items that I’m personally familiar with. For example, interns at our company always get a really nice pen when they depart. I like to tailor the specific pen to the intern, based on their writing habits, favorite color, etc. Usually I give people Lamy Safari fountain pens or rollerballs, in their favorite color. It’s a way for me to introduce them to a hobby that I like, while also being a meaningful gift. After all, everyone can use a good pen, right? You might not buy one for yourself, but you’ll certainly enjoy using it.

Seriously though, it’s pretty much the best gift you can give if you simply don’t want to pick the wrong thing. Which is much, much more likely to do if the recipient doesn’t outright tell you exactly what they want.

If someone wants to buy me a physical gift, I always give them exact suggestions: buy x, version Y. Shop at this store, pay no more than Z for it. That way it’s pretty much impossible for them to fuck it up. Can’t get it done? Give me cash instead.

If it’s acceptable to give a gift card, it’s acceptable to give money as far as I’m concerned. It’s the universal gift card without the restrictions.

We should teach them abstinence first. The pill just leads to more casual sex :D

This certainly sounds iffy.

I’ll say this: if this sort of thing poses an actual potential risk to passengers and crew, the people involved need to be given the harshest possible sentences. Take them out back and feed them into a woodchipper slowly if they wilfully endanger lives.

I got all wibbly wobbly just reading that.

Have fun & stay safe! Those always look like great events. Sadly, never been to one myself, though we do have a huge one every year in Amsterdam.

Going to see two movies in the cinema; The Watchers saturday afternoon, sunday is Interstellar (classic movie). I’ve got an unlimited movie pass and usually see about three movies per week. This one’s a slow one; not many new releases.

Apart from that, I’m going to squeeze in a bit of photography. Need to test out a new tilt-shift lens that I got this week.

All in all, going to be a fun weekend.

Guess I should stock up while I can huh?

I’ve been a RPI fan since the beginning and have used their boards for all sorts of projects and tinkering. But it’s hard not to feel like it’s losing sight of what made it attractive in the first place: low power and low priced computing. It had its charm in buying a Pi Zero and just chucking emulators on it and handing them out to folks who might want to have a go.

But with the more expensive, more powerful hardware you just can’t really use them for things like that anymore. Just too expensive and too much oomph for the use case.

We’ll see if the company finds its way. But this usually isn’t a good sign…

Well yeah…. They’re clearly developmentally challenged at Epic. In every sense of the word. I’m not exactly surprised that a platform still lacking basic functionality that should’ve been there on day one, has trouble figuring out Linux.