BabaIsPissed

joined 3 years ago
[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

got the Samsung buds pro 2 at half price recently and I kind of like them, but they were a bit underwhelming even at that price. I've never spent a lot on audio in general, so they were actually a big improvement, but there was no "wow" factor or anything. Plus having to install bloatware that asks for all permissions under the sun sucks (why the fuck would a settings menu want to know my location???).

I do think you underestimate how nice the noise cancelation can be though. I moved to a big city and my hick ass cannot deal with all the fucking noise. Plus I'm clumsy and end up getting wires caught on everything, which means wire stuff also becomes e-waste fairly quickly.

[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It reads as parody so much that I was actually kind of enjoying it. I mean the scene with the Teslas crashing, Havana Syndrome, "Death to America, I remember it from the videogame", the 13 year old girl quoting West Wing, all the nonsense pontificating about random bullshit like Friends, the camera zooming and twisting for no discernible reason, I thought I was picking up on some deep contempt for lib neurosis and vapidness and it got a laugh out of me a couple of times. Pausing it to check out who made it was a mistake, soured the rest of the thing. It might have been ruined by the runtime anyway so no big loss.

[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 5 points 2 years ago

the ice levels in Spelunky HD are my least favorite, but this track almost makes up for all the stupid UFOs crashing into me from out of screen

[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 11 points 2 years ago

The video consists of like 2 hours of some examples of youtube plagiarism, with discussion of content mills and the beginning of an interesting point about how plagiarists view the people they steal from as lesser, which is not expanded upon as much as it should IMO.

The other 2 hours are about James Somerston, a gay video essayist that basically Frakensteined a bunch (if not all) of his videos from queer authors, some well known, a lot of them not. By the end Hbomb makes a good point about erasure, and how young queer people don't understand their history in part because of people like Somerston.

I'm generally not annoyed by length since I'm a zoomer and watch everything at 2x or more, but in this case I get the point because it actually took me 2 real time hours to watch and I felt there was a lot that could have been cut. I still won't watch the 3 hour scorcese movie, fuck all of you, movies ARE too long now.

I went on a ramble about the video that should probably be a separate comment, feel free to ignore

So regarding video length I think there's some value in going into detail about how plagiarism takes place. Some of this context is also relevant as a way to preempt any shitty response (for example he took the time to explain that Somerston's assistant writer is most likely not in on it and how his boss has shown signs of setting him up as a scapegoat).

He also seems to genuinely care about James's plagiarism because he's bi himself. I'm currently having a bout of insomnia, and was reading The Gentrification of the Mind before making the mistake of opening hexbear and seeing a new hbomb video was out, and while these two are not comparable in content, I found it interesting to experience them back to back, and since a bit of the vibe is there, I believe Harris is sincere about why he cares about it (also Vito Russo's name popped up in both, so I guess this is a sign that I should add The Celluloid Closet to my reading list).

However, the video does feel petty. Hbomb has this mean streak to him that served him really well when he was directly responding to right wing talking points, but is a lot less useful when talking about stuff like this, which becomes a problem when it's a large chunk of the video. He kind of recognizes it too, saying this feels like a drama video, and how he's donating all ad revenue to people James plagiarized from.

It does feel more appropriate when you consider that most of these people are reactionary pieces of shit and that should have been a much larger part of the video. He mentions it a bit (the first guy is a chud, internet historian tries to hide that he's a chud, Somerston came from business school and seems to hate women) and talks about contempt for the people they copy from, but I feel there's a lot more to dig into. What about contempt for the audience? What is the frame of mind of people that trend chase for years, sometimes decades, in order to garner an audience? That think regurtitating Wikipedia is worthy of other people's time? He says it was always like this mentioning AVGN copycats, but was it really? While the incentive structure didn't change how plagiarism takes place, didn't the kind of people that did the plagiarizing change? I think exploring this thoroughly is a lot more interesting than "showing the receipts" by comparing the copied work to the original for most of the runtime.

I still think it was worth a watch, but that's because I was already familiar with Somerston and some of the other people and they gave me the video essay equivalent of the ick. This should have been 2 hours at most.

[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 5 points 2 years ago

I think going for the Rebuild treatment was a really cool idea and they mostly executed it pretty well. One thing I didn't get is why they put that blur effect on everything.

 

So, I've started working my first "real job" last month, and it's pretty decent. Good benefits, decent pay, strong union despite being tech, and for reasonable hours (6 per day). The problem is that I took this job mainly so I can continue grad school. Currently I'm finishing up my master's, so I'm managing to conciliate doing both OK since I don't need to be in uni premises for anything anymore, but I'm unsure about being able to do a PhD later.

I figure once I work for a few months and get to work remote for most of the week I can do 6 hours of office work plus 6 hours of research work, or alternatively 6 + 4 and compensate by doing some research on the weekends. However I've heard conflicting feedback about this plan. One of my roommates says this is a horrible idea and that I'll become the Joker after a couple months, while one of my coworkers said I should wait a bit to see if this job won't demand too much of me (still in training currently), but that he thinks it's doable. Both are currently doing/have done a PhD at the same uni I want to enroll in. Also is 6ish hours per day even enough for a PhD?

Additional info: Public latam uni, so no tuition but the government grants are nothing to write home about (before getting the job it was barely enough to get by, and that was with help from my folks). The advisor I'm aiming for can be demanding at times but is also really nice and is new faculty. The PhD is in compsci (ML/NLP) and I plan to continue exploring a niche I'm already familiar with. Work schedule is fairly flexible, save for the fucking meetings (agile delenda est). A lot of credits can be done by getting good publications instead of doing uni courses.

Edit: Thanks everyone! I kind of feared "obviously no you moron" would be the general consensus. I probably got too optimistic about getting to keep doing research immediately. I'll wait for things to settle down and reevaluate my options. There's some mechanisms at the job that are supposedly designed so you can continue education, but my impression is that those are mostly reserved for MBA types, infrequently offered and also really contested, but I should ask around some more to be sure. I also know some better sources of funding are available once you enroll, but seeing my friend applying for those and failing repeatedly discourages me from betting on it. Worst comes to worst I'll save up some money, try doing this for a bit and quit if it proves unsustainable. Again, thanks for the input!

[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 28 points 2 years ago

The only guy I have on my friends list that plays this stuff is definetly not afraid to let others know, he does extensive reviews of every datable girl in a given game. visible-disgust but also entertaining to read/make fun of sometimes.

[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago

There is no deeper understanding about the issues they are marching for. It is all just slogans.

projection . I don't understand how people who don't know shit don't just shut the fuck up until they learn more.

I'm sick of simulation theory as well and want something cooler to take its place. Maybe Gnosticism?

[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

They do once their depression gets better though? Anhedonia, loss of interest/libido/attention/whatever the fuck else are symptoms of depression. I'm all for self-improvement, my own mental health improved greatly as a result of trying to improve myself, to the point I consider myself no longer depressed. But we're social creatures and no one builds self-confidence and mental resilience in a vacuum. It's often up to the depressed person to put themselves out in situations where this can happen, but sometimes it does not work out for whatever reason and the whole thing is a long process. In this situation self-compassion is a lot better than telling yourself you're a sack of shit.

Also, isn't the interesting life thing all backwards? If you like a person you get curious and find them interesting. If I like a guy I'll find what they are into cool, be it singing, playing chess or knowing a lot about bugs.

No one is owed that kind of attention, but most people are worthy of compassion.

[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 5 points 2 years ago

I started typing a long debatebro paragraph about how Israel is not forced to bomb hospitals because its ego is wounded but a) I suck at convincing people and b) the suggestion of just showing footage is better.

Maybe with captions? "Why should I care if these are 'good victims' like in the West Bank?" " Is this not state terrorism (A.K.A terrorism?)" "The vast majority of Hamas's arsenal is underground, who is this really hurting?". IDK, something snappy to shake them out of the debatebro mentality.

[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 34 points 2 years ago (11 children)

I don't know shit but from casually checking the news mega that seems to be the general sentiment. What I don't get is wouldn't this ground invasion be a completely unforced error on Israel's part? Why are they even considering it?

[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 87 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (10 children)

Implementing fascism as a mechanic only for it to be unsustainable gameplaywise is a good bit tbh

[–] BabaIsPissed@hexbear.net 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Could be because cats can be really distrustful of strangers. My cat is really sweet but she'll hiss to almost every guest. Could be a upbringing thing though, my neighbor has 4 and 3 of them were street cats that she took in, when I occasionally take care of them the only one that gives me any trouble is the one that was there since she was a kitten.

view more: next ›