Spyke

Replies

memes

Comment on

those ppl...

Reply in thread

IMO the quality of discussion here is about the same on reddit. Which is to say, not very good, or very deep. It's shallow observations, memes, and one liner gut reactions to headlines. People have been conditioned over the past decade to not engage with long replies or complex thoughts. It might have to do with social media becoming more or less defined by people engaging with it on mobile devices, which don't really enable that sort of engagement. But it might also be people genuinely not giving a shit anymore and only wanting that minor degree of superficial interaction.

Comment on

Whats your such opinion

Pitbulls are not more genetically predisposed towards biting or mauling than other breeds and the supposed "statistical data" on the subject is based around a confluence of inaccurate metrics caused by 1) people not being very good at accurately identifying dog breeds, 2) existing groups that hate pitbulls pushing bad statistics for political purposes, and 3) a self-fulfilling prophecy of pitbulls having a bad reputation and actively being sought out by people who want vicious dogs and who will treat their dogs in such a way as to encourage that behavior. And I say all of this as someone who does not own a pitbull and probably never will.

privacy

Comment on

As the Internet Gets Scarier, More Parents Keep Their Kids’ Photos Offline

As the internet gets scarier

How the fuck is the internet getting scarier? This isn't the random gore and porn filled, go to a forum and immediately get targeted by a sex-predator, internet that I grew up with. The internet is a corporate walled garden of mega services that feed disinformation and bullshit to people, but your odds of getting genuinely victimized as a child are so much lower than they used to be.

Comment on

I love it when I have to scream at a computer

The phrase "SQL programmers" is so fucking weird. SQL isn't a programming language. It's a query language. You don't "program" things with SQL. You utilize SQL as a component of programs for data insertion and lookup, but the actual logic of execution is done in a programming language. Unless you're doing Oracle PL/SQL, in which case why are you giving money to Oracle?

Edit: Damn, this comment made people mad.

Comment on

Anon tells you about The Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker

Reply in thread

Vader wasn't a figurehead. He was more or less the third most powerful person in the galaxy, right behind Grand Moff Tarkin, up until he died. He basically operated as the head of the Imperial military in their war with the Rebel Alliance. But he never gave rousing speeches or acted as a political figure. He was just the guy who told you what to do and if you fucked up, he would choke you to death with his creepy magic powers. Also, Palpatine was literally the Emperor of the galaxy. People knew who he was: he was the last Chancellor of the Old Republic who'd been granted greater and greater emergency powers during the Clone Wars, up until the point he could effectively stage a coup and seize total power for himself. Nobody knew who Vader was, because, publicly, all the Jedi had been killed, Anakin included.

memes

Comment on

Biden admits to taking drugs before the debate.

Reply in thread

Democrats suffer from a condition that I've come to call "Democratic Realism," named after Capitalist Realism. No matter how much they get their shit kicked in. No matter how badly they do. No matter how little they accomplish. No matter how badly they look or do in debates. Democrats always believe, beyond a shred of doubt, that they'll win elections without trying. Not because of their own merits, but because they're just the only "real" choice; they simply can't fathom anyone willingly voting for their opponents.

Hillary barely campaigned in the "flyover states" that she needed to win because she couldn't be fucking bothered to actually try. It wasn't worth the effort to try and persuade people she thought of as her lessers. And the DNC just went "well, it's obviously her turn. She's been waiting for the chance at the presidency for 20 years now. We should go ahead and let her be president." Because that's the mentality. They don't have to "win" elections. They just pick a candidate and they get to win, because there is no "real" alternative. That Bush and Trump won don't indicate that, yeah, actually, you do have to fight for the people who are voting for you, otherwise they'll vote for the schmuck that appeals to their basest and most venal instincts. Those were just flukes...right? And you don't have to inspire confidence and admiration in others, because they should just recognize how smart and accomplished and inoffensive their candidates are, and that they're told to vote for them by people that are smarter than they are, so they should just shut up and do it.

It's a party driven less by any kind of ideological goals and more by a pervasive sense of smug, impotent, lazy egotism. And, yeah, they'll get a shitload of votes in the elections because the alternative always seems to be someone who is one goose-step shy of a literal Nazi. Biden will probably even win the popular vote. Y'know....just like Hillary did...

memes

Comment on

Do you think Twitter is worth what it sold for?

Reply in thread

Elon had gotten away with blatant market manipulation so much he made the ultimate mistake: buying into his own bullshit. I'm absolutely convinced he didn't want to buy Twitter. He wanted to pump and dump. People think there's about to be a buyout so the price goes up in anticipation. He then shorts the stock with the plan of very publicly backing out of the deal and walks away with a couple hundred million. But for the first time ever he goes just too damn far and winds up in a scenario where he can be legally compelled to purchase the company. Now he's forced to eat shit and is saddled with what I can only imagine is the corporate equivalent of a pig in a poke.

Comment on

Korean President Yoon sits idly by as Japan tears down memorial to Korean forced laborers

Reply in thread

I think the person you're responding to already knows that and the implication of "the bad things they've done" is that they mean "the bad things their nation has done." It's a problem that Japan (or more specifically, Japan's government throughout the years) seems to have more than other nations because it's historically made a big show of its status as the only nation to ever suffer the use of nuclear weapons, and has plenty of memorials and museums to remember the event, while militantly denying, internally and externally, its own history of incredible violence and cruelty towards neighboring countries.

linux

Comment on

Custom Linux Distribution just for Gaming

As someone who has done a lot of distro hopping in the past, I've found that going for a stable release that is widely used as a daily driver is superior for gaming than "gaming specific" linux distros, largely on the basis that the gaming distros have routinely had buggy UIs, driver issues, and a variety of unexpected and undesired behavioral problems tied to the array of "gaming adjacent" software installed, most of which you can install yourself with little to no effort and most of which you probably don't want or need in the first place.

unions

Comment on

What happened?

Reply in thread

Also it helps that Europe was completely fucking devastated by World War II and that the United States had more factories than everyone else combined and was outside of bomber range. We dominated the world economy afterwards for literal decades because of that. What we're seeing in the late 20th century/early 21st century isn't some fantastical economic decline solely attributable to policy decisions or the war on organized labor (although it's a contributor) - it's rebalancing.