Oooh, very cool. Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out

A form of wage theft that’s common in the US (and elsewhere) is that workers are expected to still do work when they have already clocked out (such as closing up the shop).

I have a Japanese friend who told me that it’s not uncommon that if your work colleagues are going to the bar after work, you are expected to go along. If you don’t, it shows a lack of commitment to your job. As it’s not a formal requirement, of course you don’t get paid for this, despite it being functionally mandatory. What’s worse is that you can’t just stick around for one drink and then head home — you are expected to stick around at least as long as your boss, even if he (let’s face it, the boss is probably male) is still drinking long into the night. I consider this to be an especially egregious form of the wage theft I described above.

It sounds so exhausting that I would likely be unable to do anything besides pretend to work, and even that would lead to inevitable burn out. I had heard that the work culture in Japan was bad, but I had no idea how bad until my friend shared some first hand experiences with me.

Corporations are not our friends, even when they seem friendly, like Steam. However, they can be useful allies, so I’m glad to see this response from Steam.

Damn, I relate to this so hard. Like, even more than most memes on this community. I really struggle to explain how I handle time perception to people. It sometimes causes issues with my support workers, because I come across as hyper capable and smart, but I struggle so hard when time gets involved. I literally can’t remember what happened last week unless I have some logs to look back on. Well, can’t remember is probably inaccurate — I do remember, I just can’t distinguish those memories from ones that happened two weeks ago, or two months ago (I can probably distinguish it from two years ago, but that’s only because I’ve moved house and changed jobs since then)

Were you running it with the unofficial patch? I don’t remember what it was that was causing me problems, but it’s possible that was it.

I’ve learned so much about the Luddites in the past couple of years. I’ve found it super useful to connect our current struggles to historical analogues.

It makes me think of the writings of philosopher and political theorist Frederic Jameson. He argues that one of the best ways we can resist the cultural logic of late stage capitalism is by making these connections to history — a quote he’s known for is “always historicize”. By reclaiming and reconnecting to our history, it’s easier to understand it as a dialectical process.^[1]

[1]: this isn’t the best summary of Jameson’s points. He’s a pretty dense writer, and I’m still working through his stuff. If you’re someone who enjoys videos, Michael Burns is an ex-philosophy professor who has a few good videos on Jameson

"I made a mod that replaces cliffracers with Thomas the Tank Engine. […] I am incapable of learning lessons whenever it involves corporations, because I fundamentally do not view toy company CEOs or media CEOs as people.

In between working on my game and dying of various accidental injuries, I sometimes feel like I need to milk a particular joke until its inevitable demise. I will do this no matter how many legal threats, actual threats, black vans with the Mattel logo on them, or severed Barbie heads are mailed to me.

This is because I have issues with authority, particularly authority derived from intimidation. I kicked a lot of bullies in the nuts when I was a kid.”

Idgaf about silly mods like this, but this is iconic

To be fair, the first part of the game is by far the best. The unofficial patch adds back in a heckton of content in the late game, but even then, it feels sparse. I have very fond memories of exploring Santa Monica though. The game felt huge and exciting, even playing it for the first time in 2019.

Damn, I should try install it again. I’m running Linux now, and if I recall, I had some problems getting it working. I should take another crack at it.

The problem is that’s not what they’re doing, even after people who volunteered time to work on localisation have asked for the AI to not overwrite existing human-translated documents. That’s the bare minimum, but it seems like it’s too much for Mozilla

Not all memory foams are equal. I’ve found that quality makes a huge difference. Unfortunately, the good stuff can get pretty pricey. It sounds like you’re talking about memory foam insoles, and I know that a lot of those tend to be the rubbish kind

Perhaps the real trash were the draft reviews we wrote along the way

Ooh, I love that cardigan thing. It’s giving streetwear, which is an interesting juxtaposition with the cosiness of the knitwear.

You should tell your friend that a random internet stranger thinks they’re very funny

Man, I feel so much nostalgia over Halo, especially Reach. It was the first campaign I completed on Legendary. My brother and I used to play the Swat game mode a lot, and we made one hell of a team. It was a nice contrast to arguing all the time. I enjoyed when I was in the zone and reacting so quickly that salty people would accuse me of using aimbot. That’s the highest compliment one can receive in an online shooter.

Oh wow, that is pretty fucked up. That sounds similar to what I’ve heard described as “weaponized therapy speak” — where terms from mental health therapy creep into daily vernacular and, divorced from their original context, are misused in a way that causes harm.

The archetypical example of this might be if a person doesn’t remember a past event that their partner is referencing in an argument, they may be accused of “gaslighting”. It’s not always an intentional misuse, but sometimes it is deliberate and maliciously used to manipulate someone. A big example of that is someone making unreasonable and controlling demands of a person, and then getting annoyed if that person doesn’t comply, because they’re “not respecting boundaries”.

I don’t know whether what you describe would count as misusing therapy speak, but I do know that I feel icky about “consent” being used in this way — in addition to being a hurtful way to put you down, this feels like it obfuscates the actual meaning of consent.

Regardless, I’m sorry that happened to you; that really sucks. It must’ve been hard to feel like you weren’t allowed to express your beliefs — politics are pretty pervasive, so even if you’re avoiding actively political discussions, political subtext can seep into regular conversations pretty easily. Having different political beliefs to you was no excuse to shut you down in such a hurtful manner. I hope you have better friends now.

A friend once said that she finds the invasiveness of this legitimately a little triggering, because it so vividly reminds her of the time she spent with an extremely abusive partner, who would similarly restrict her ability to meaningfully say no to something.

Ever since she made this point to me, I realised that I had been thinking of online consent dialogs as being distinct from the general concept of consent that we use in other life contexts (such as sexual consent, medical consent etc.). Since then, I have started to fold the online stuff into the more general notion of consent, which adds a whole bunch of connotations that makes me feel far more icky whenever I see a dialog that doesn’t let you say no.

Good blog post, thanks for sharing. I like the point about companies double dipping by trying to extract both our data and our money; I feel like I’m probably going to use that at some point when I’m on my soapbox and complaining about big tech.

We can acknowledge that mean people and trolls on the internet are inevitable, whilst also denouncing unacceptable behaviour. If we don’t call out stuff, then that’s a great way for the window of what is considered to be acceptable to slide ever further into hostility.

I think it’s important to try to hold the line, where possible. I’m someone who is pretty good at only engaging in online discussions in a manner that’s productive and/or wholesome, but even I sometimes find that online discussions can make it so easy to slip into needless hostility. I think the anonymous format is a big part of it, as is the lack of context we have for most comments, which can cause people to misinterpret the tone of a discussion and engage in a more argumentative manner than they might do otherwise.

I tend to post positive stuff because I made an active choice to resist that pull of toxicity that many of us feel on the internet. I found that doing my best to disengage from the toxic stuff helped me to be more resistant towards accidentally slipping into vitriolic arguments. Calling out trolls for acting inappropriately probably isn’t going to shame them into treating their fellow online humans with respect, but that kind of denunciation is more for the benefit of the spectators than the trolls — especially if we want to prevent a community from producing even more trolls.

TL;DR:

“You will encounter mean people and trolls, learn how to deal with them (block/report)”

Good advice

“stop crying”

Not good advice. We can encourage people to block nasty people, whilst still retaining a sense of compassion for the people who are being shat on by trolls.

Sorry, I’m not clear on who your “fuck you” is directed towards

I hope it’s an entertaining trash fire for you, at the very least

Iconic