Unironically, yes. The brain is really weird about a lot of shit. It’s not that difficult to make it believe something if you’re committed.

I got involved in this around a decade ago learning a bunch of “brain hacking” stuff. Can confirm, it is real. Can’t say it’s something I’d recommend to the average person, though. It’s a fast track to some major instability if you aren’t used to playing around with your own thought processes in detail.

Psychedelics are just kind of like that sometimes

Mushrooms can tell you if they want to, very firmly, that it’s time to hang up the phone

Yeah, it should be tax funded and overseen by an independent oversight group.

I don’t know why this is such a difficult thing. Access to information is necessary for a healthy society. Things that are necessary for a healthy society but aren’t profitable should be tax funded, that’s the purpose of the taxes.

Literally a 5 second google about “how do I get rid of ads on my smart TV” would present you half a dozen options.

I have little sympathy for people who never even try to seek any solution to their problems.

I read Dresden Files for the first time within the last 18 months and I’ve been relentlessly shilling it to everyone ever since. I’ve been a bookworm my entire life and it’s probably my favorite series I’ve ever read, ever. It fucking slaps, it’s SO good.

America’s curse is coming for you too. We’ve unleashed a monster and we can’t put it back.

Please stay vigilant. “It could never happen here” is exactly how we Americans got into this position ourselves.

I don’t feel valued because I bring no value to anyone in my life. Internet strangers asking questions do not count into that lol

Well, sure it does. That’s the reason we’re all here, isn’t it? Maybe not for you in particular, but for the Lemmy community. Internet strangers asking questions that you then answer and spark discussion is kind of THE value that any of us bring to this place. People asking questions and having discussions and sharing their own perspectives and life experiences is like, 80% of the whole internet. It’s what brought us into the global awareness that we have today.

The people specifically elected and appointed to hold him responsible to his oaths of office have abdicated their duty.

Many of the rest of us are busy being shot, arrested, and/or deported about it.

Jokes and puns show a mastery of the language they’re written in.

I know a little Spanish, I can write technical documentation in Spanish well enough with some translation assistance. I can’t make a joke in Spanish, though. I especially can’t make a pun, which relies on knowledge of both the joke and the “straight intention” of the pun.

If you can make a pun in another language off the top of your head I’d probably consider you fluent in that language for all intents and purposes.

I ran Lich path on my first run of WOTR and it might be my favorite CRPG experience I’ve ever played. You’re evil, but you’re lawful evil, and the game gives you the opportunity to lean more lawful which I did. Excellent example of being smart evil instead of stupid evil which is exactly how I think a proper lich should be portrayed.

My first name is a random set of numbers and letters and other alphanumerics that changes hourly forever

My last name, a thousand vowels fading down a sinkhole to a sussurus, couldn’t just be John Doe or Bingo

My address, a made up language written out in living glyphs, lifted from demonic literature and religious text

Telephone uncovered by purveyors of the Ouija, then checked against the CBGB women’s room graffiti

My social, a sudoku

My age is obscure

My ‘in-case-of-emergency’ is in the daisies chasing birds

Employed by trillionaires with perfect teeth and pores, and people who open doors for the people who open doors

My medical history is a course at SUNY Buffalo

Charlatan psychiatry and troubleshooting undertow

Nervous in the service still,

I’m burger meat and purple pills

“Here, thank you. We’ll call your name.”

Sure you will

• Aesop Rock, “Shrunk”

Fuck me, even the magical creatures are gaming the metrics now? We truly are in the end times

Don’t you know switching to your sidearm is always faster than reloading?

We call this the New York Reload and strapping down with like six pistols is a legitimate tactic.

This requires a level of pre-planning that I am only sometimes capable of.

For me at least, being grounded was the preferable alternative to having my ass beaten physically off my body with the nearest leather belt or wooden implement. I can serve my time and be free afterward, or I can make things worse for everyone involved, and still be grounded but also be physically harmed while I’m grounded.

Was this good and right? Hell if I know, man. It feels like a fundamental disrespect of someone’s human rights, but also, I was ten, and it succeeded in teaching me to be less of an incorrigible little fucker.

Right, that’s all good. Now you have to get a couple of low-ranking servicemen to carry out every step of that hundred page manual to the letter on each of their several dozen machines, daily, after they’ve been deployed for an ongoing 10 months because their superiors are morons, and are further scheduled to become the longest running carrier deployment of all time at over a year of deploy time, because their superiors are morons.

I’d believe that some corners were cut in these servicemen’s duty, and it just happened to be one too many corners one too many times. The men are fatigued, they want to get off the ship. It’s possible these corners were even cut on purpose with exactly this result in mind in an attempt to get them off the ship.

Sure. This comment thread is about class mobility in the West though.

But, fact is, it seems it’s the same everywhere.

Throughout pretty much all of human history it’s been apparent that the “nobles” class has been, at best, more trouble than they’re worth; and at worst, the instigating spark that creates a nation-destroying blaze.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read a history book that the American nobleman is equally as useless and destructive as his counterpart anywhere else.