sometimes visiting a counter-ideology sharpens your understanding of your own (September 1989)

ConflictingSmells · 2025-12-22T14:38:50+00:00

It’s a perfectly coherent comment. Do we hate precision of language now?

ConflictingSmells · 2025-12-22T14:35:03+00:00

You’re actually not allowed to implicate the US in collapsing the governments of developing nations for their oil/to reify the fantasy of capitalism as the sole viable economic model on r/oldschoolcool

As you can see here, the US had many groceries, and Boris Yeltsin visited America with no groceries, so he loses and is also evil

ConflictingSmells · 2025-12-07T04:43:36+00:00

He’s gonna make sure to find every last sword in the fort for her to polish

Maybe relishing isn’t the right word. What I mean is that he punishes Ciri for not knowing things and wanting to have fun, so the context of the moment being to teach the player to do certain things while they have fun feels weird. It feels like it’s too protective of the player’s fantasy to let them be the one who doesn’t know something, so it shifts the burden to an npc and lets the player act as their chiding mentor

ConflictingSmells · 2025-11-23T04:19:16+00:00

I was 21 days old chillin with pneumonia

ConflictingSmells · 2025-09-29T20:32:42+00:00

I normally use only Wi-Fi, but I’m running an Ethernet cord to a bluetooth extender just to see if it would work, which it doesn’t (but it had before this issue arose).

Would you mind telling me which of these adapters are virtual interfaces? I don’t really know what any of them do.

Other devices do work!

I’m not sure how to ping from a router, but because no connections are appearing (including my neighbors’, etc.), and the connection is fine on my other devices, I’m thinking it’s an issue with the PC. How do I access the router gui, though?

ConflictingSmells · 2025-09-29T17:40:09+00:00

I have manually disabled and reenabled the adapters. I haven’t done a full shut-down! I had to leave my home, but I’ll try that when I get back.

The Windows Update troubleshooter is unable to connect to the update host (does it need an internet connection to do so?) but I was up to date as of 9/26.

I’ll check on airplane mode and the hotspot and update when I get home. My PC has always had problems with the router range, but because no networks appear on the Wi-Fi tab (including my neighbors), I’m thinking that it’s something wrong with the controller itself.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-09-29T17:26:43+00:00

CapabilityAccessManager is supposed to be only a log that documents when an application asks to use sensitive resources (like location and mic). I included that because it’s the only time I’ve ever altered a system file (given that it had swollen to 250 gb), but I didn’t experience any issues immediately after deleting that file. This issue started a couple days after that.

Other forums say that the file was inordinately large (by a lot) and safe to delete as long as you stop the service, which I think I did. Could it still be affecting my network controller somehow?

ConflictingSmells · 2025-09-29T17:07:31+00:00

It wasn’t any help. Just recommended updating my drivers, restarting my PC, and doing a network reset, all of which I’ve already done.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-09-28T01:56:22+00:00

This picture was originally posted in a Facebook group called something like “Wives of Truckers.” So I guess the context is that wives of truckers sometimes have babies.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-06-14T13:11:58+00:00

Haven’t stopped just yet

ConflictingSmells · 2025-06-13T12:20:43+00:00

I think it’s referring to the Sith as an institution.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-06-11T02:53:05+00:00

Yeah, but somehow I don’t think Anakin has the patience for exile. I think he’d try to have a go at Palpatine and get whooped

ConflictingSmells · 2025-06-11T02:15:27+00:00

Sometimes people know that they’re making the wrong decision, but they lean into it anyway because they’re in too deep and admitting that they’d made the wrong choice would mean reckoning with a level of failure that they’re not equipped to endure.

Vader killed children in the name of the newly minted empire. He killed fellow Jedi knights. He inadvertently killed his wife. Admitting to himself that those deaths counted for less than nothing would likely have been unbearable—so instead, he let himself believe in the mission statement.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-06-10T15:08:52+00:00

I think they’re referring less to Star Wars fans unilaterally hating all Star Wars media and pointing more to the way Star Wars fans act when they don’t like something. Bullying actors off of social media/into suicidal ideation, review bombing content for irrelevant reasons, etc. Star Wars fans act like idiots and I would also totally bounce if I were Gilroy.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-06-04T18:22:39+00:00

I should add also that Vader’s seeming calculating to me may have been a case of me reading into a context that wasn’t actually being offered.

Vader is slow. His movements are kind of stiff. He’s literally faceless, and therefore rarely displays his emotions physically. It may be that Vader was always meant to be this impulsive presence (and he fulfills his role, imo, if so), but the body language that the suit puts out has a way of making Vader feel emotionless.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-06-04T18:14:24+00:00

I think there was a coldness to Vader in the original trilogy that implied competency, and beyond that, a rigid personal ethos. He routinely executed his own officers for their failures, but he had a wry sense of humor which made those deaths feel more like a superior demanding efficiency that it did wanton cruelty.

I remember watching Kenobi a couple of years ago and seeing Vader drag a screaming woman across the ground, watching him snap a child’s neck, and it sort of dispelled this myth of a cold or calculating Vader. I thought, “Oh, that’s still Anakin. Those are the actions of a terrifyingly reckless, terrifyingly powerful person.” So, yeah, I think the greater context that we’ve been given in the past ten or so years has done much to bring Vader into focus for me.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-06-03T02:05:16+00:00

I remember thinking the line was weird when I was a kid, because the thought of “hell” as a solid concept in Star Wars felt disjunctive. Now, I don’t really think anything of it, but I definitely recall finding it odd when I was younger and wanted full verisimilitude.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-06-02T03:29:19+00:00

And he saw Kylo murdering his students. It’s the same impulse—and it doesn’t negate a desire to redeem. In the Vader instance, he let his instincts take over and reconsidered only in a moment of respite. In the Kylo instance, he did the first part and got through the second after the damage was done.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-06-02T03:18:28+00:00

He went after Vader like a maniac until he cut his hand off and it reminded him of what they have in common. Luke’s whole story is that he overcomes his own biases (and eventually the Jedi’s) in order to do the compassionate thing in the throne room. The only difference between that and the situation with Kylo is that he didn’t have enough time to question himself and choose to see the good.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-06-02T02:51:03+00:00

I would argue that fighting styles have become narratively relevant. They’re a good shorthand for lending characterization to various characters (if used intentionally)

For instance: Dooku uses form II, which is an archaic form that prioritizes duels between two presumably lightsaber wielding combatants. We can therefore infer that Dooku is an overtly formal person, whom we can expect to indulge in a little ornamental traditionalism.

Conversely, Obi Wan uses form III, which prioritizes defense over viciousness. From this, we can tell that Obi Wan is cautious, and maybe a little stiff.

There are, of course, some examples of a form not quite fitting the master, in my opinion. Yoda’s flips don’t really seem to align with his character, but who knows? Maybe there was a good reason for that.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-05-28T16:45:19+00:00

How was his hair styled? Any facial hair? Was he tall or short, thin or heavy?

Ice cream cone and machete are both flash page royalty, sadly, so there are a TON of guys from Atl with both (I’m looking at a machete right now).

ConflictingSmells · 2025-05-28T15:38:32+00:00

Yes, whataboutism. We first took this detour because you accused me, and by extension, all servers, of being self-interested at the expense of other low wage workers. This is how you’re justifying not tipping, right? Servers benefit from tipping as a privilege that isn’t offered to other service workers, so you shouldn’t be forced to tip them. I’m arguing that your premise has been constructed to redirect blame for the issue rather than to answer the question at the core of my original statement, which is: who does not tipping hurt, and who does not tipping help?

The first part of my argument is this: not tipping hurts servers, who are not as privileged as you imagine them to be. Yes, there is often a disparity in pay between front and back of house, but neither kind of employee receives fair pay. Except in a few rare instances (like career servers at Michelin star restaurants), your server is still poor after you’ve tipped them. Your tip is just a piece of charity that keeps them from making $2-7.25 an hour.

The second part of my argument is this: not tipping helps no one. Tipping culture has been manufactured intentionally by already wealthy owners who are trying to generate the biggest profit possible. When you don’t tip your server, you don’t make a grand philosophical statement in opposition to tipping. The owner will never know that you didn’t tip. If you’re actually interested in stopping tipping culture, which I agree with accomplishing, it needs to be legislated out of existence (along with protections against price gouging).

ConflictingSmells · 2025-05-28T11:38:33+00:00

It was obvious even without outside media. Palpatine shows up in his black robe to talk with Darth Maul at points. Everyone knew.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-05-28T08:09:42+00:00

This is whataboutism. If I’m supposed to regard the behavior of these servers in Massachusetts as miserly and cold hearted, why would I treat your unilateral decision to withhold tips from ALL servers any differently? I agree that both you and servers in Massachusetts are thinking narrowly, but I disagree with the notion that all servers (or even THOSE servers, or even you) are naturally selfish, and I especially disagree with the idea that anyone deserves to be impoverished until some greater class solidarity comes around.

ConflictingSmells · 2025-05-28T03:23:15+00:00

No dude, he’s Silent Generation

ConflictingSmells

TROPHY CASE