So Wolfenstein is fair game because that’s clearly satire, with roided up, mecha Nazis, but this is bad because… robot Thatcher? Sure, that makes sense.

Dvds still account for around half of physical media sales. Far from obsolete.

Paging Mini Minuteman.

I’m visiting Naples at the moment with my Italian boyfriend, and I remarked to him that Naples has a lot of places that people can just hang out without spending money, something that the UK has lost. Part of this is due to the climate, but also corporatism hasn’t hit Italy as hard as other western countries. It really is a shame.

Mastadon has definitely improved it’s user onboarding process. When I first tried, and failed, to use it 3 years ago it was awful. Signing up a year ago was a painless process. It may not be fully ready for the mainstream just yet, but it’s definitely getting there.

I’m so tired of hearing queer people’s lives and relationships called “non-traditional” or something similar. There’s reference to gay relationships and third gender people dating back all the way to the mesopotamians, literally as old as the written word. Queer people have been around longer than the word marriage FFS.

Harry Potter tattoos have a higher regret rate than gender affirming surgeries.

No flared base, not approved.

I was going to go with “Mr Memania has entered the chat”

I’m 4 weeks away from my voluntary redundancy. I was planning on leaving the job this year anyway, as I wanted to move, so to get a nice paycheck with it was a definite bonus.

Of the people that chose voluntary redundancy, it was mostly those without ties to the area, those that could move, young enough to re-skill, or old enough to retire. The ones that were forced into redundancy have families, mortgages, history in the area, enough baggage to cause inertia. Part of my reasoning to take the voluntary redundancy was to help save at least one person from that.

So absolutely, consent matters. It just sucks that this is happening at all.

The company’s stated reasons for redundancy was to move skills to other locations in the country. This is after a year’s long effort to co-locate in order to facilitate collaboration. What it really seems to be is that our location has very high staff retention, and therefore high salaries, and the company thinks it can hire younger and cheaper elsewhere. The skill and knowledge lost with this move is staggering, everyone can see that, but profit is the most important factor the company cares about, so it’ll inflict its own wounds to get profit up. Capitalism is weird.

Do the X-Wing/TIE Fighter games next!

I’d buy that for a monthly subscription!

Gender and sexual minorities is more complete. Trans and non-binary identities are not sexual minorities.

I’ve always wanted a beanie with two flashing orange lights, so I can put it on and sit on the hood of cars parking illegally while flashing their hazard lights. If they ask/tell me to move, I’ll just reply “it’s okay, I’ve got my parking lights on” and remain sitting on the hood for another few minutes. One day.

I think what the previous poster meant is that any treatment adds the placebo effect to (hopefully) a real effect from the intervention. Ben Goldacre details this in his book Bad Science.

The same thing you can make sangria in?

Story time!

During uni, I’d just moved house with some friends of mine, a big old party house of 9 people (5 officially lived there, but some had partners, and a couple friends usually crashed on the sofas). My room was the converted garage, so was at the front of the house, which meant I had door duty.

So there was a knock at the door a few days after we moved in. I opened it and there was a girl there, similar age to us, who said “Hi [my name], we saw you guys move in, thought we’d come over when you were settled. We live just down the road.” I have no idea who this girl is, but she knows me by name, so I greet her in a friendly manner, while internally trying to figure out who the fuck she is.

We’re chatting for a bit, from the context of the conversation I discern she knows people I know, but I still don’t recognise her. Then one of my housemates comes down the stairs and greets her by name, let’s say Susie. ‘Good,’ I think, ‘Mike knows her, she’s at least not a crazy catfish.’

After a couple more minutes, she addresses me, looking annoyed. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she says, directly at me. I flubber for a bit, apologise and ask where we met. She says she sees me all the time at The Hole In The Wall, a local pub. “Well you can’t expect me to remember someone I only meet while drunk!”

We’re still standing in the doorway, front door open, when someone else shows up. I recognise him and greet him, “Hi, John!” This sends Susie into a rage. “John’s my boyfriend! You’ve only met him when you see me. And you remember him!” I don’t know how to react and again blame alcohol.

Recounting this story to another housemate later in the day, he just laughs. “You really are gay, aren’t you?” he manages during fits of laughter.

Like every Grindr hookup I’ve ever had.