The way you respond to gaslighting is you cut contact with the person who’s gaslighting you.

Do you speak Swahili?

No?

Does that mean you can’t learn Swahili?

What do you like to do?

You also deserve better than what you can offer right now. You deserve to be well taken care of, including by yourself.

This means when you fuck up while trying to take care of yourself, you can be angry at yourself for fucking up, or you can be compassionate to yourself in recognition of your loss.

It is an unfortunate fact of human culture that the expenditure of effort is seen as the currency of respect.

This is why neckties are a thing: they demonstrate that a person put effort into a particular social protocol.

Proof of work is where social currency is generated.

All of existence is a thin veneer of order over a roiling sea of chaos. Terror is the primordial experience, at times merely occluded by the colorful distractions of gaiety and hope.

Because autocorrect is evil and is intent on making us all look stupid

This was me with Space Engineers.

Fucking loved that game until I got to the moon. I was doing 10-hour sessions I loved it so much.

I played a scenario where I start in a planet, and there’s a space station orbiting the planet, and whenever I’m ready I can go to the space station and hit a button and then it’s basically zombie defense except it’s robotic drones.

Well, I started on the surface and my first thing was I had no water to make hydrogen and there were mountains on the horizon with ice caps on them so the first like 50 hours of gameplay was me building a rover and finding a path around a canyon to those mountains.

Finally I had a source of ice, hence hydrogen, hence fuel to get off the surface and into space.

After a few attempts I got a flying craft into space. Bare bones basics on it: survival kit, basic refinery so I could make repairs to my ship, and I started exploring outer space.

I tried the station with the defense thing and died instantly. So I decided I’d build up my ship, get more weapons, and try again.

So I cruised around, my ship grew, got more and more features including tons of turrets. I went and did another run at the drones and got through like 10 waves instead of 2. Then I decided to go check out the moon. This was a long journey (30 minutes at max speed as the crow flies) and I stopped many times along the way to expand my ship, so it was actually days of journeying to the moon.

Then I got to the moon, and landed, and it was cool and then … flop. All my motivation and fascination died all at once.

Apparently it’s quite common with Space Engineers. I really wish there was some major sequence of goals.

The drones goal isn’t beatable, I don’t think. And it’s the only goal like that. The reason it isn’t bearable is there’s infinite waves. I think.

What would even make it cooler is a series of challenges that you have to pass. At locations, each with their own difficulty level.

I mean there’s contracts where you can get money to trade like 50 steel plates for some space bucks.

I tried multiplayer servers but none of the worlds persist. Either the servers themselves are persistent - but the world is wiped every 6 hours - or the servers themselves are just rented servers that are up for a few days then gone.

I wasn’t able to find any public servers with long-term persistent worlds using the in-game browser.

I think he’s thinking of Build a Gate 3, which is indeed the most confusing game ever. It helps to think in terms wood grain, and it really helps if you get the carpentry instruction from BaG 1 and 2.

Battle Royales in general. It just doesn’t appeal to me. Despite the fact I’m pretty good, and usually finish in the top five.

An air conditioner.

Not really. Like Ripley in Alien broke the stereotype but didn’t get called woke.

People are more likely to call something work for stereotyping white people than they are for having non-stereotypical black people.

Like here’s a black character … what’s their role in this story?

Are they pursuing a PhD in mathematics? Are they trying to resolve a major conflict with their father? Are they touring the world tasting wine? Are they writing a novel?

Nope, they’re talking street wisdom and being the judge of who else is cool or uncool, and they’re getting this white girl out of her shell so she can learn to party, and educating her on the history of racism.

That is a stereotype. That is the kind of shit that will get called woke.

I don’t believe you. I listen to lots of right wing commentators and I’ve never heard this claim.

Are you sure that’s something that right wingers do, or is it just what your left wing friends told you that right wingers do.

Like … do you ever listen to right wingers speak? To get direct knowledge of what they believe? Or is it all hearsay?

You realize that woke philosophy would criticize the idea that a person’s story can be separated from their ethnicity right?

The criticism of “woke” isn’t about the presence of minority characters.

Finally a way to determine social status!

Humanity’s been really slipping on its social status evaluation game up to now.

What are you trying to tell me? That I can make a bechemel sauce from scratch?

No Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.

“I’m tired. I’ll talk to you tomorrow”

People have also been making choice and being actively involved in raising kids for thousands of years. Imposing rules on kids is part of normal human life.

“Excuse me child, can you please not hit that crack pipe while class is in session?”

This is not on the kids at all. Kids need to be protected by adults including from themselves.

It’s our job to limit their free access to addictive stuff. Once they’re adults, addiction management becomes their own problem. But these phones are like crack.