I think I speak for most people when I say that I’m a good representative of the general population.

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Joined 6 years ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2020

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  • I know it’s an engineering meme so presumably has more comedic value to engineers, but encabulation might be the funniest discovery I’ve come across in the past few years because it flawlessly emulates that feeling of hitting the three-minute mark of a topology seminar and it’s already “well I guess I’ll just sit here and stare”.

    The Chrysler video is my favorite, especially the service tech in the second half after the engineer finishes explaining how the turbo encabulator works.

    Using the Geiger scale on the DRB-2, measure the Renchin output of the capacitive reactance fluxmuster. If it is above ten RGs, replace the unit. If it is below ten RGs, you will be directed to perform a series of tests that will effectively raise the billable hours for the service department, but will perform no other useful function.


  • Remember kids you can be who you are without needing external validation. Especially not external validation gotten by being against your “own group “

    I don’t think it’s quite that straightforward, because they’re doing this because they’re also perceiving gamers as their own group and feeling like being a part of two groups at odds with one another demands that a choice be made. Their version of not being against their own group begins with asking themselves “which group do I identify more with”, rather than asking whether the two have to be at odds with each other in the first place. The lesson is that your immutable characteristics are not character failures, and if you’re starting to feel like they are it’s really important to introspect on where that’s coming from.

    I know people generally look at this kind of gatekeeping from the outside and write it off as a repressed self-hatred, but I’m kind of inclined to think of it the opposite way. If your immutable characteristics are a handicap to being a part of something important to you, then actually being accepted into that group is a triumph that most people with the same handicap can’t achieve. If gamers are cool and I don’t question the premise that girls aren’t fit to be gamers, then if I can kind of sort of be accepted in this space that’s still better than most other girls. The boys fit in better here of course, but it’s not impressive it’s just normal. This other girl is just larping because she wants to be like me.

    We should strive to identify cultures of looking down on others. We should strive not to participate in that. Don’t just find comfort in being who you are, but allow others to find the same comfort with more ease than you had.



  • Obviously this is not a representative sample, but it’s hard not to notice that the three redditors in these screenshots that are gatekeeping gaming all have female-presenting avatars. It makes me think of an article I read two or three years ago written by a black man saying he gave his son advice that in an emergency white cops were a significantly safer bet because institutionalized racism gives them a lot more leeway to show empathy towards minorities without being ostracized for it. A woman actually trying to fit into a misogynistic culture is going to feel more pressure to consistently prove her belonging, and can end up being more ruthless in enforcing the misogyny and more effective because her gender allows a cover of legitimacy.


  • It makes me angry and sad to see games with a traditionally female userbase, such as The Sims, to be lumped into ‘casual’ genres, when I never knew a single Sims player who had a casual relationship with that game. They were typically much more intense about these games and fandoms than your average male FIFA/Call of Duty/Battlefield players, but the latter count as ‘real gamers’.

    This is a really good point and it makes me realize that “casual” as a genre translates pretty well to “games stereotyped towards women”. I’d go as far as to say most modern video games can be played casually, but if we actually put the bar at games that aren’t intended to be played otherwise we’re looking at freecell.


  • War Thunder is a game that I only know exists because of how many times it’s made the news from actual military vehicle schematics being leaked by forum users hellbent on winning arguments.

    edit: After writing this comment I went to double-check I was remembering the right game by searching lemmy for “war thunder” and immediately found this exchange, which I find funny:


  • If either party actually disagreed on principle, we would have heard someone criticize the war on principle and not on breaking procedural norms or not planning the war well enough. Virtually every critique I have seen from elected officials, at least before this explicitly genocidal statement here, is some form of those two. “This war was poorly planned” is only a sidenote observation from someone actually opposed to a war of aggression. It’s the most milquetoast opposition you can give to claim you were always against it when things go wrong. No way in hell am I going to accept that they were powerless to stop him when no one will even clearly lay out the actual reasons why this is wrong.

    We know that actions speak louder than words, but if we want to give anyone else in our government the benefit of the doubt we’re gonna have to figure out what comes next after words.







  • I was really passionate about math for years, and I spent most of my free time on it. When I got to grad school and I had to do it to survive my passion dried up. I think it became harder to have fun when I knew I wouldn’t be free to put a project down if I wanted to, and when math stopped being fun I stopped being good at it.

    I passed all my coursework and exams but I burned out before finishing my dissertation and dropped out seven years into my phd program. It’s six years later and I still barely touch it. I passed qualifying exams in algebraic topology and today if you asked me to compute a homology group I’d be clueless.

    I’m not going to discount that monetizing your passions works for some people, but the experience of finding out you’re not one of those people is soul-crushing.