Constantly. Usually it takes the form of reducing topics to binary choices and/or purity tests.

• “You’re either with me or against me / You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem”
  • Where “part of the solution” means doing exactly, and only exactly what they think you should be doing.
• “If you don’t satisfy all of my impossible requirements, you’re as bad as a nazi”
• “We only agree on 99 out of 100 things, so clearly you’re not to be trusted”
• etc

Yeah. I read a bit more since I commented, and Alton Brown doesn’t just approve - he actually helped design it.

The cost of those is definitely why I still have a mono-vection oven haha.

I’m not a fan of single-purpose appliances (microwave notwithstanding), and I recently got a toaster oven / air fryer / grill (so no microwave) and I love it. Haven’t used my full size oven in the 3 months I’ve had this one.

The “Trivection Oven” (as seen on 30 Rock) is a real appliance, and includes microwave heating as one of the 'vections. I believe the microwave heating is just to speed up cooking with the thermal and convection heat for crisping.

Are they a gimmick? Honestly, no clue. I’ve not used one, but the logic checks out and Alton Brown approves.

[Giancarlo Esposito Meme]

I think billionaires shouldn’t exist because we should have appropriate levels of taxation and a “maximum wage” law.

Lemmy thinks billionaires shouldn’t exist and are setting up guillotines.

We are not the same.

Paper Dolls in English

Nice, and yeah, definitely. Until my senior year English class, the only books were were allowed to use for any reading assignment were Shakespeare or Newberry award books.

Definitely different experiences, but yeah, agree. Generally, I only like to listen to the audiobook after I’ve read it (unless there’s no other option). It’s difficult for me to not miss important plot points when I’m listening to it, but that’s probably just my ADHD.

The genre doesn’t exist, but it should: “Bedtime Stories: Narrated by Morgan Freeman and Stepehn Fry”.

Seriously, this. I can’t stand to read “the classics” but I love reading things that interest me. Would be nice if schools recognized that and encouraged reading just for the sake of it rather than forcing kids to trudge through endless stanzas of “ye art incorrect and thou must protest this injustice. Oh Horatio! Oh, lamentation this! Lamentation that!” Like, fuck, I lost the plot 3 pages of lamentations ago.

Just let kids do book reports on Harry Potter (or whatever’s cool these days). At least they’re reading and their brain cells are firing.

Provided it’s got a decent narrator, audiobooks are like literal bedtime stories, and a lot of players have “sleep mode” that will either set a timer or stop it after the current chapter. Seems like an easy way to get people into them, IMO.

I have two of Stephen Fry’s autobiographies on audiobook and would basically let his smooth voice lull me to sleep. 😆

And in some unfortunate cases, not tidy.

Oh, your hair is (pause) fine.

Like another commenter said, polarization and cemented, frequently extreme, views. You’re not going to change their mind on anything, but they’re constantly trying to change your mind on everything. I consider them shills and hit that block button.

I also block people who are here “on a mission” for whatever cause. Social media has enough activists, and even if I agree with them, I’m still thinking “will you shut up, man?”.

I also block people who intentionally take others out of context as an excuse to attack them or inject drama into every interaction. There’s plenty of that to go around, and thankfully, there doesn’t seem to be a limit on the number of blocks I can issue.

Basically, I’m not here for drama or activism or circle-jerking any political cause or to suffer immature edgelords. I just wanna talk about cool stuff with rational people. Blocking helps separate the wheat from the chaff in that regard. Anyone who has a pattern of making this place unenjoyable gets blocked

We need people that will safeguard certain lines that may not be crossed.

Exactly.

“We finally won.”

What did it cost?

“Our humanity”

If people are so willing to cross those lines, what are we even doing or trying to uphold?

I’m happy he’s not spewing hate anymore. However, I abhor (and denounce) how that came to pass and remain genuinely disgusted at the sick, bloodthirsty mob social media turns into when shit like this happens (or attempted happens).

I am very much not an “ends justify the means” kind of person and firmly believe that kind of logic is extremely dangerous.

How does this make me feel? Well, disgusted. Disgusted that there’s more gun violence in the world, disgusted that people are cheering it on, and disgusted with pretty much everyone’s knee-jerk takes on the matter. I can forgive celebrating his passing as dark humor / gallows humor. I can even understand laughing at the schadenfreude due to the guy’s stance on exactly this kind of thing. But for people to be praising the suspect or calling for more is firmly crossing the line into psychopath territory.

Again, the ends do not justify the means.

I can feel in my bones that the other shoe is about to drop, and all these people salivating over the bloodshed are not going to be happy when it does. Violence only begets more violence, and people need to understand that and not be cheering it on.

But then…you sound like…William…Shatner…and I’m not…sure…if that is any…better.

I didn’t notice it at the time, but AIM away messages were basically like proto-Twitter long before actual Twitter became a thing. Some people would always be “away” so their inspirational crap would show since AIM still let you chat like normal while “away”.

vaguebooking that would involve lame-ass “motivation quotes” or worse song lyrics that were obviously about some dramatic thing happening in their life

You’ve just described like 90% of the AIM away messages in high school lol.

Maybe this is an old millennial problem, but I’ve had the same cell phone number for over 20 years. The number would actively link me to whatever. But that doesn’t really bother me too much.

What does bother me is that I get enough spam calls as it is. If you don’t carefully read the ToS/EULA/privacy policy when giving them your number for “verification”, you may be giving them permission for marketing calls or to have your number shared with their affiliates.

Paracord. You can weave it into just about anything. Can probably also weave a water filter.