Gross. Glad they’re not my provider anymore (they do both gas and electricity)

My brain cannot handle this headline. What is “under scrutiny” modifying here?

Cyclists here in Japan flaunt all the rules and ride like maniacs (illegally in most cases) on the sidewalks (and also illegally with earphones and staring at their phones). Pedestrians have absolute right-of-way and the cyclist is at fault for hitting them. Add to this generally high density and bad spacial awareness and it’s bad without drunks. Absolutely keep people from drinking off the cycles.

I follow some game dev and programming YouTube channels. I remember seeing someone make one and it being weird (and basically unplayable IMO), but I can’t recall which channel it was

I have lots of acquaintances and people with whom I’m friendly but few real friends… And I think that’s fine. I’ve never felt the need to spend tons of time around others or have tons of friends.

The getting off the internet thing is good. Usergroups and meetups can be a great place if you need socialization.

I’m old enough to have not had a ton of friends before the internet.

Option 3: we don’t buy any trees.

I saw this and I don’t know if I could do 10 hours in that thing. All for it existing for the people who can! (I’ll be on the train instead)

My sleep-deprived brain read “ancient bot” and I thought I must be dreaming. Really neat find!

No one must find out how many times I far-finger the same number and new and inventive ways

Throw the book at everyone in the entire chain that planned and executed this.

This was indeed me for the last 20ish years. STAR voting or similar now, plz (and an end to gerrymandering)

No, but rockets were a thing

I’ve been in Japan a decade and don’t recall ever seeing one of these. It says ネコ飛出し注意 cat jumping out caution.

• an absence of quick-time events (I hate those things in cut-scenes, parry systems, etc.)
• a mode that allows the player to destroy the environment, NPCs, etc. including, when on, making the game unable to be completed potentially. I think having that be a toggle will still allow people to relive older RPGs where you could easily ruin your life without knowing for hours.
• Off-the-wall weapons. I think Blood 2 had a few and even halflife 2
• Counting beyond 2, speaking of the above.

I had a lot of issues growing up. Neurodivergent kid in rural Ohio in the '80s, lots of conservative people around, abusive people in my family making stuff hard for much of my young childhood, and a number of other things. I wanted the same thing anyone joining a gang wants, really. Acceptance, feeling like I belong, and feeling like I was fighting something or for something better.

I came from a place where I, very much without knowing it, was very entitled and privileged. I was kept away from others a lot as a kid (lived with my grandparents for a bit and wasn’t allowed to play with the other neighbors (who were in my class) because they were not white. Other perspectives were few and far between when and where I grew up. There are some other reasons that there were huge gaps in my critical thinking and bullshit detection (partly due to not questioning people in power and getting heavily punished when I did). I got taken advantage of a lot when I first got out on my own and had to basically do a lot of lessons that most kids/teens learned as an adult with much more dire consequences.

I felt like I was working hard and that others’ failures were because they didn’t work hard enough (and that I didn’t work hard enough when I was failing). In reality, a lot of people attribute way too much of their success to their own skill not luck and circumstance. At the same time I was thinking other people were lazy, I was also helped by some of my family through some financial hard times more than once (though I was briefly homeless another time). I came to realize, as I met more and varied people, that some of the hardest workers I knew were getting fucked over. Two jobs, caring deeply about their families, and barely able to tread water to support themselves and those that relied on them.

Contradictions between people claiming to be christians and anything that christ would have done. People thinking they were holy and great for holding some coat drive and stuff, but any tax dollars for a safety net were just terrible and those people were just going to spend it on drugs. People who kept pulling up every bit of safety because “fuck you, I’ve got mine”, for lack of a better term was just more and more visible when I looked at what was going on. Also being out on my own and working when 9/11 happened and the crazy amounts of hate and racism that followed that. I slowly started actually seeing all of these things, losing that entitlement, not othering people, and realizing things for what they were. I traveled to other places, saw other ways of life. The early internet and chatting people from around the world via IRC and the like also played a role in that.

Living as a minority in another country (I moved to Japan in my early 30s), getting randomly stopped and searched, struggling to find housing, and other things also cemented many of the other things I had already been learning. I am a deeply empathetic person, but I had always assumed that everyone was acting in good faith in a lot of situations and that merit would see me treated “properly”. That’s not the reality. The reality is that people are messy and flawed, that people are mostly good but often wary. This can manifest as racism in the guise of “protecting our culture and way of life” where those others getting stopped and searched (often in front of their communities, peers, clients, etc. who have no idea what is going on and assume the worst) was just a mild inconvenience. That experience in particular showed me exactly what white, male privilege in the US was. I could never see it clearly since I always had it.

This is a very long and rambling response. I guess the TL;DR would be seeing my own entitlement and privilege, realizing that people in power and authority often don’t get there through merit and/or hard work alone (if at all), and generally getting more experience and seeing and experiencing inequity.

I recently found out gluten was a source of trouble (probably coeliac but not confirmed just yet), so none anymore. However, for the first 30ish years of my life: cereal in a bowl with a spoon. Cinnamon Toast Crunch as an adult treat, other boring health cereals (some kinda bran thing, I think a Special K one at some point, etc.), and Alphabits a lot as a kid. Also sometimes Cheerios, Frosted Flakes, and others depending upon what we could afford. I would just have some normal beverage alongside it but I don’t remember feeling particularly compelled to drink more.

No it isn’t; I do make soup out of my cereal like other weirdos.

I tried milk on cereal twice, puked both times. I just always ate dry cereal.

The good news, I guess, is that people can get better. I was one of those people who moved further right in young adulthood. I’m glad the social media and such didn’t exist then as I was not equipped to handle that by my upbringing and would have fallen right into that trap. We just had Limbaugh and Beck and the like. At some point, I pulled a 180 and, now in my mid-40s, find myself probably somewhere around center-left to left as most western European countries might define that.

Again/still/it really took you this long??