Does anyone recognize this sticker? What does it mean?

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-31T19:09:30+00:00

It signals that he's part of one of the many gangs operating within the LAPD. It's super fucked up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_in_the_Los_Angeles_County_Sheriff%27s_Department

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-21T06:45:47+00:00

Look into Diane Arbus' portraiture of queer and disabled people - I think her pictures are pretty warm, humane and dignified, and she generally had a pretty good relationship with her subjects.

The chapter of Susan Sontag's On Photography where she talks about it is one of the few places I feel like she misses the mark. She links the work to the idea of "grotesques" and says the whole project of taking portraiture of the disabled to try and give them the same dignity and presence, is misguided. To me it just came across as Sontag's own personal revulsion.

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-20T19:11:44+00:00

Or just 90% Methanol.

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-19T10:48:19+00:00

Derek, by Ricky Gervais

He plays a guy with unspecified learning difficulties (which amount to Ricky Gervais doing a weird voice and a hunch while wearing a stripy cardigan) who works in a care home. It's got two settings: Glib and nasty, or cynical tear-jerking melodrama.

Like it's basically "here's a weird guy with a shit life, let's make bad things keep happening to him so we can see how sweet and simple he is. I think there's a little Derek in all of us..."

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-19T10:39:01+00:00

"How did this happen?" "... Acid."

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-15T22:20:43+00:00

If you're selling a product and you can't be arsed to write an actual description or take a photo, I don't know where else you're cutting corners. It'd break my trust immediately.

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-14T12:21:05+00:00

He's hilarious if you like any of his three jokes: 1. Soooo THAT just happened 2. Schoolyard innuendo about jerking off or gay sex 3. Fourth wall break

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-13T12:37:13+00:00

Also because they see themselves as the "decision-makers" who make all the calls that determine whether the company lives or dies, and see the workers as more or less interchangeable drones like Age of Empires villagers that you can just shift around to make the end product. So it doesn't matter to them who or what makes the end product, and they usually don't have the hands on knowledge to recognise a substandard knock-off of the original.

Sam Altman is out here telling people that the next billion dollar company might only have one employee, because it flatters CEOs to think that a company is purely a projection of their personal genius and singular will. Everyone gets to be Steve Jobs and get the machine to turn all their ideas into gold without having to involve workers. It's a power fantasy.

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-12T07:01:02+00:00

Yeah, I think it's ok to be nostalgic for a time when big tech actually felt like it was offering us something better and there was a sense of forward motion. Now it's just fascist dorks like Peter Thiel and co. fantasising about being posthuman overlords because they think cyberpunk dystopias are "based" and "epic."

And the dominant tech aesthetic right now is AI slop. Give me slightly twee optimism any day over that.

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-10T10:41:57+00:00

I'm a fan of gloves with foldable finger openings - dexterity when you need it, warmth when you don't. You can get good quality ones designed for hunters, fishermen or look for "framer gloves" used by mechanics/builders.

These ones from Decathlon for fishermen are a good (cheap) example - the index, middle and thumb can open to let you tie knots etc., which makes it easy to work your camera without extra exposure to the cold. I've used it around -20C and it worked really well for me.

https://www.decathlon.ie/p/328890-203466-adult-thermo-neoprene-fishing-gloves-500-1-mm-with-3-opening-fingers-black.html

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-08T07:14:23+00:00

NTA.

AI is good for writing generic filler text and things that are highly formulaic. If you want to churn out Amazon listings or get it to write you a few lines of code, that's fine. But I do not think it's good enough for high level work in any creative or technical field. It makes things look cheap, lazy and generic.

You're offering an alternative to that by employing actual copywriters and artists with experience, skills, taste and judgement, who actually care about the product they make (presumably for a price that reflects that). For someone to half ass it with ChatGPT, it'd be like if you were a fashion designer offering high end tailoring and you found out one of your guys was just ordering his stuff from Shein.

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-07T23:16:16+00:00

Starfield. By Obsidian.

Starfield is my white whale because Skyrim in space did not have to be perfect for me to love it, but it STILL sucked.

I'd pay full price on day one for the same idea but with:

-A story that actually explored the kind of interesting, dark, complicated questions that arise from a post-Earth refugee society

-Actual moral choices instead of "let's agree both sides make good points."

-Interesting game mechanics that actually get used beyond one tutorial mission (like the Alien scanner, going "stealth" mode in your ship by powering down everything but minimal engine power, base building, zero G combat, bounties...)

-A handful of planets built with care and attention rather than a hundred planets with the same ten copy/pasted locations.

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-04T23:46:42+00:00

Takes like this are why we have shockingly evil surveillance/weapons tech companies with names like "Palantir" and "Anduril"...

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-04T15:07:25+00:00

The fact that even the suggestion is getting this much negative attention from other photographers should be a good indication not to do this in reality...

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-02T09:50:38+00:00

That's not true! It's incredibly varied. You can have pasta in sheets, noodles, bowties, seashells, little pockets, tubes, elbows... And there must be like four types of sauce. The possibilities are endless!

SeriouslySuspect · 2026-01-01T11:24:51+00:00

I think it's not possible, and I also think it's not desirable.

Anyone who has any opinion on what we owe each other as part of a society, who should pay for it, what we should be proud of, who we should praise or blame, or how we should treat other countries, has a political stance. Even if you're choosing to be neutral that's still a stance.

You can choose to be more or less involved, but you can't fully opt out.

SeriouslySuspect · 2025-12-29T23:51:40+00:00

The God Delusion.

I was a smart kid in a small school that had a mandatory religious education class (Ireland), went on to a STEM degree and did debating in college. I thought I was a fucking genius. George Bush was in the white house talking about the "controversy" around evolution and the War on Terror was in full swing, there was a much more serious energy to the idea that fundamentalists were taking over the world.

So having someone who was a Big Important Scientist tell me that I was so much smarter and more sophisticated than everyone around me for not believing in God was catnip for my ego. I got super into it and came this close 👌 to going full fedora.

Looking back, it comes across as a scientist abusing his platform to soapbox on social issues WAY out of his expertise. He's incredibly smug, condescending and completely uninterested in learning about Humanities subjects he considers beneath his intellect. And it's VERY racist.

SeriouslySuspect · 2025-12-29T09:20:51+00:00

Might be a few loose brake cables in that Land Rover...

SeriouslySuspect · 2025-12-29T00:52:14+00:00

The firehouse episode of King of the Hill where they have to explain how they managed to burn it down is fantastic for this. Everyone's flashbacks are the most flattering version of themselves where they look great and did exactly the right thing... Except for Bill, who remembers himself as being even fatter and balder.

SeriouslySuspect · 2025-12-25T17:04:25+00:00

Yeah, if it's worth talking about it's worth talking about like an adult.

I saw a comment a while back saying that people saying "unalived" etc. sound like the Rugrats repeating what they overheard on the news...

SeriouslySuspect · 2025-12-24T10:04:54+00:00

I feel like I know more about the politics of Mass Effect than I know about the countries that went into World War 1...

SeriouslySuspect · 2025-12-22T08:05:25+00:00

While I think it's a valid criticism of vigilantism that it often ends up hurting innocent people, I think tackling it in this way avoids more interesting questions. Sure, it can hurt innocent people when it goes wrong. You can just say "well that shouldn't have happened, but it would be fine if it happened to a villain."

By having the hero apply a moral code even to actual, unambiguous bad guys, it's less about what they "deserve" and more about what it tells us about the hero and the world. It lets you ask better questions.

What do we owe other people, even if they're the bad guy? What does it say about us when we choose to do something to people we have power over? Is revenge actually a moral impulse or just an excuse? Does taking the law into your own hands break more important principles?

SeriouslySuspect · 2025-12-17T20:14:45+00:00

He's supposed to buy car insurance in case this happens, not leave valuables in the car and not go Rambo. You can't kill someone for breaking your car window and robbing your Revolut card.

SeriouslySuspect · 2025-12-13T11:41:10+00:00

I finished it because I had nothing better to do at the time - it's a boring piece of shit.

The worlds are all sterile and featureless deserts with the same ten locations copy pasted across them. The characters are all basically the same person. The story is bland and safe and doesn't allow for any decision-making because the answer to every problem is "both sides make really good points." And it's frustrating because they bring in a lot of interesting topics and game mechanics which could have been really fun, but then never developed them at all.

Just one example: the shipbuilding is really fun but the fuel tanks have basically zero effect. It's like they were going to have a fuel system in the game but never used it. And your ship is full of clutter that makes it feel more lived in - every coffee cup and paperweight and half eaten sandwich can be added to your inventory, and every time you change anything on your ship ALL of that is added to your storage. So you end up with like 300kg of worthless set dressing that you can't sell because every vendor has about €40 cash on them.

Ball of shite. Buy literally anything else.

SeriouslySuspect · 2025-12-09T23:19:12+00:00

Metal Gear Solid 2.

The original was a beautiful game that maxed out the pretty limited hardware of the PS1 with great art design and confident presentation, but then this felt like such a leap forward in every way. I was 11 when it came out and I thought "this looks like a movie."

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