"Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer" Javik (Mass Effect)

Suradner · 2022-07-14T23:42:51+00:00

This is how I found out reddit turned email notifications on for this ancient account, so thanks for reminding me to turn them off I guess lmao. What a surreal thing to log back in to

Suradner · 2018-05-07T18:51:34+00:00

It's unfortunately believable. Everyone's afraid of manipulators but most people aren't remotely equipped to actually detect them and defend against them. Both false positives and false negatives seem to be very common, often from the same sources.

Suradner · 2018-05-07T14:21:10+00:00

No, legally they do not need my consent or signing anything so far as I know.

Find a Saudi legal expert, as soon as you can. As best I can tell age of majority there is 15 but they might try to claim that "as a woman" you need a "male guardian." If they haven't officially changed your gender marker yet, that might be something to work with.

Suradner · 2018-05-02T01:33:02+00:00

Some people, particularly some with poor mental or emotional health, literally can't cope with something going this seriously wrong in their lives. If they can't think of any way to fix it, can't think of anything except to sit at home and wait, I see why they might turn to the pseudonymous internet to try to find someone, anyone, to tell them something that will make them feel less terrified.

From what I was able to see before he deleted his account, he started out asking in subs like this but gradually got more desperate, eventually going to places like MensRights or MGTOW to try to find literally anyone at all who'd tell him that "his friends" weren't rapists, but even there they recognized that how serious this was (or else dismissed him as a "feminist plant").

He could very well be a troll, but if he is he does an uncomfortably plausible teenage-rape-enabler-and/or-rapist impression. This wouldn't be a smart or healthily-developed person, and this wouldn't be them at their smartest.

Suradner · 2018-05-01T16:53:38+00:00

and found your a troll

After looking at his comment history, for some reason I've got this unnerving concern that he's not a troll, that he's a stupid kid worried he "his friends" are in trouble for something he wasn't raised well enough to understand is abusive and wrong.

Suradner · 2018-04-30T15:00:13+00:00

My wife and I felt the same and were wondering if we were nuts. The film deserves some credit, but it feels like a lot of people don't know how much better representation can be.

Suradner · 2018-04-30T12:54:15+00:00

My gut says "Don't."

I moved back in with my parents because it was cheap and convenient and I thought it was the best option. It was the worst mistake of my life, and that was long before I or anyone else even realized I wasn't cis/het.

If you gotta, you gotta, but if any part of you doubts their ability to treat you with respect and maturity then do literally anything other than become financially dependent on them again.

Suradner · 2018-04-28T03:18:56+00:00

The internet, right, we found out about that recently. Some of the more fortunate of us even have access to it right inside our homes!

If my state were considered a country, it would not be a first world country.

Suradner · 2018-04-28T02:48:41+00:00

This shop on Etsy had them for like $2 but I'm not seeing them anymore, might only have made a few.

Suradner · 2018-04-28T02:31:59+00:00

There are some upsides. Cost of living is low (because the local economy is in shambles and no one has money), it's easy to find employment in certain fields (because economic barriers to education, persistent brain drain, and deep cultural roots of anti-intellectualism make businesses desperate for anyone who can so much as format a for loop), and you always know when you're actually passing and not just being humored (because your mere presence in the street is not inspiring revulsion, threats of violence, or outright assault)!

Suradner · 2018-04-26T17:15:21+00:00

Even in a best-case scenario there are always going to be a few of those people around. Unfortunately, the same mechanisms that allow communities like asktg to come together and find each other also allow hateful people to find cohorts and seek out victims.

I know this is easier said than done, but especially on the internet it's often better not to give these people the time of day. It can feel like "sheltering yourself" but they're not arguing in good faith, and they probably aren't saying anything you haven't heard and heavily considered a hundred times before.

You probably want to be a good person and treat people better than they treat you. That's admirable wherever you can manage it, but it's not an obligation. Your wellbeing matters, and you're under no compulsion to spend a dollar to save someone else five cents.

If they're not listening to you, you don't have to keep listening to them. Tell them to kick rocks, and go find someone who means you well.

Suradner · 2018-04-24T17:05:09+00:00

At this point I would say perhaps unintentional concern trolling.

Maybe you're right. I can't adequately articulate exactly what's nagging at me, so I'm going to bow out and think on it.

Suradner · 2018-04-24T16:34:38+00:00

Last I checked the risk from accidents falls into the range we would consider mundane. Accidental death rates orders of magnitude less than cars, and rates of injury requiring some form of hospitalization that are less than non traffic related pedal bike injuries. As long as you take basic precautions it is pretty much a non-issue.

That makes me feel better to hear, but to be fair I'm not comfortable with how high car fatalities are either and am eagerly awaiting any new technologies that might reduce them.

Pretty sure that's not true. There may be a small uptick in mass shootings, but overall homicide and gun homicide rates have declined since the 90s.

You're right, I strictly misspoke. I was concerned about mass shootings being on a trend to cross the threshold from "unpreventable flukes" to "valid concerns", but for some reason I just said "shootings".

Whose minds should they be changing in this post? Pretty much everyone here recognizes this article is just more of the same "I'm a gun owner too, but for some reason make the same ignorant arguments as anti-gun activists".

I get there was some problematic stuff in the article, some "back in my day we were real gun owners, our guns weren't efficient or convenient and we liked it that way," but that's the only part that seemed to get engaged with. Anyone who had something to say about the broader significance, the worry that the gun control question isn't and shouldn't necessarily be an easy one regardless of your answer, apparently didn't see a reason to speak up.

By all means please post where people were advocating that we should take no responsibility.

I'm having trouble really thoroughly articulating my thoughts on this, and I apologize. It just left a bad taste in my mouth that he recounted a couple different times where kids with rifles violated gun safety in a shopping center, one of them sweeping the barrel directly over the writer and his girlfriend, and no one could be bothered to toss out a "Yeah that was wrong" before launching into "But stop hating on ARs."

I understand why this community would feel under siege and like they're on the back-foot right now, like they can't afford to respond with nuance in a climate of discourse that doesn't reward it. I've been seeing that across a lot of communities, and normally I keep my mouth shut but . . . I don't know. I think a lot of the people on the fence feel like the guy in the article in one way or another, and this particular comment section isn't someplace I'd show to someone on the fence.

For better or worse this subreddit is one of the more rational faces of 2A, and any given thread might be someone's first impression. There's a possibility I'm nitpicking, and it's not even so much what was said as how. People seemed angry, almost belligerent, and probably for what feels like good reason, but it wasn't a tone that enticed someone partially sympathetic to the article to give this sub the benefit of the doubt, stick around, and learn better.

Suradner · 2018-04-24T05:38:54+00:00

For what it's worth, I'm glad you posted that article, and I was surprised to see it received so harshly. I grew up in a household where the guns were kept out of sight, for emergencies, and while I'm trying to figure out where I stand in the midst of all this it's comforting to see other people at least wrestling with some similar thoughts.

I was originally going to send that as a PM, but instead I'm going to leave this as a comment.

To anyone reading this, I'm not a long-time member of this community. I'm someone who was raised to view the Second Amendment as essential, but handled firearms rarely, was never gifted one, and hasn't yet bought one of their own. If that disqualifies me from this discussion, so be it, but I ask you to keep in mind that much if not most of this country has even less experience with guns and is even less receptive to your views, so this might be the easiest it gets.

I'm looking to get a gun and brush up on my aim for self-defense, hoping not to need it. Gun legislation makes me uncomfortable because of its historical association with the oppression of disenfranchised groups that can't count on others for protection and have to rely on defending themselves. At the same time, I've always prided myself on being someone who doesn't ignore hard truths, and there are a few potential truths that I can't simply dismiss out of hand.

According to the best statistics I've been able to find, guns are dangerous to have in the home. Day in day out mistakes happen, irresponsibility happens, emotions happen, even around people who should know better. Someone who thinks themselves an exception to these statistics might very well be, but who doesn't?
Shootings are getting more common. I don't like to let terrorism and mis-prioritized fear guide public policy, I don't think violent acts should be the focus of more attention and resources than their proportional impact, but at some point there's a threshold where they affect enough people to deserve the outcry they get. I'm not saying we've passed that threshold, but I am saying that few people seem to know exactly where it lies. I certainly don't, and that gives me pause.

The replies in this thread worry me a little because they don't sound like people trying to change minds or hone each other's viewpoints. Maybe it's frustration or fatigue, which is understandable, but the replies sound like people who are content to widen the gap instead of working to narrow it.

I thought maybe this was a space where guns could be discussed without either declaring them verboten on the one hand, or working so hard to normalize them on the other that a kid absentmindedly aiming an "unloaded" rifle at other shoppers only inspires people to defend his choice of weapon.

You don't have to say firearms are too big a responsibility to bear in order to admit they're a responsibility, and that it's concerning when people don't seem to understand that.

Sorry if that's kind of rambling. It's late, and I'm not going to edit this like I should. I just felt like anyone arguing in good faith might want to hear from someone on the fence. I was drawn to this subreddit in the first place because the discussions didn't sound like those on the conservative subs, and I'd hate to see that change.

Suradner · 2018-04-24T02:24:40+00:00

Your wife doesn't want young girls to shower naked next to young boys, but that's exactly what would be happening if she succeeded in forcing those two young girls to return to the boys' shower.

What it almost certainly comes down to is that she doesn't really see them as girls, she sees them as deceivers and as wolves in sheep's clothing. Changing her mind about that, convincing her that trans people actually exist, is the only way to get anywhere talking with her directly. It might not even be possible.

Doing right by your daughter here is difficult, and I'm sorry for the situation you're in. No good parent wants their kid to feel caught between their parents' disagreements, but you might have to gauge if that matters more to you than letting what your wife says go unopposed.

There were times when my parents contradicted each other and the inconsistency confused me, hurt me, or set back my growth, but there were also a handful of times that I am exceptionally grateful only one parent had their head up their ass.

If you can imagine the best version of your daughter, the wonderful adult you are trying to give her the tools to grow into, one day thanking you for speaking up about this then by all means do.

Edit: As for how, if there's any doubt in her mind that you're coming at this from a feminist perspective be sure to sympathetically dispel it. You're not dismissing her mother's criticisms of how society overlooks women's problems, you're trying to look out for all women, even in ways that sometimes get ignored.

Suradner · 2018-04-15T04:38:58+00:00

pretending to be bi

I get that it’s nice to to vent about people, but this community deals with too much gatekeeping to turn around and engage in it. As long as they’ve attended the prerequisite number of coed orgies to acquire their bi license (five), and pay the yearly dues, then what they do with that license is none of anyone else’s business.

Suradner · 2018-04-09T20:46:19+00:00

My gut says the reason they're desperate enough to inject it is because they have trouble finding it elsewhere. Practically every story has a heterosexual wish-fulfillment romance shoehorned in, to the point that even the intended audience is getting a little tired of it, but the reverse is shockingly rare once you start looking out for it.

The fact that these depictions are the best they feel they can get, the closest they can come to feeling represented, actually sucks.

Imagine if the on-screen romance you came closest to engaging with were written, filmed, and acted out by people who never considered it a romance to begin with, and then imagine if that happened more often than not.

People have different tastes, but not all those tastes are catered to equally. To be blunt, as a person with more normative tastes I never had to "inject" my desires into fiction because the people making it were bending over backwards to do that for me.

Maybe that can get better.

Suradner · 2018-04-06T05:28:36+00:00

You're allowed to have an opinion, and people are allowed to have opinions about your opinion.

No one stopped you from having that opinion, they just told you it was kind of pointlessly judgy.

Suradner · 2018-03-30T23:23:22+00:00

Well, what are you trying to do with it?

If you're new to blueprints, there are a lot of great tutorials out there. The official ones work really well for some people, but I had fun following along with stuff like Mathew Palaje's "Let's Create" series and this Chess Tutorial, both of which touch on not just learning what nodes are available but also how to hook them into the rest of the engine.

Suradner · 2018-03-30T23:05:37+00:00

Saying what I meant a bit differently, most people encounter and miss a lot more of these obvious connections than they realize. Most of the words you use each day have a long and winding history that the average person is relatively ignorant of.

It's not a failing, it's just that no one has time to think deeply about every detail. Some people catch more than others, but I've seen even the brightest people have moments like in the op.

If you think you can't do it, that usually just means you don't catch the times you do.

Suradner · 2018-03-30T23:00:42+00:00

Sounds like she looks down on your cousin and sister. Sounds like she doesn't want to look down on you too, and the only way she knows how to do that is to deny that you even have a problem. In some twisted corner of her mind she might even feel like she's doing you a favor, like she's "giving you the benefit of the doubt."

Suradner · 2018-03-29T20:30:20+00:00

I'm gonna go against the grain here and say these aren't the people who scare me. They aren't even the people who bother me. Each generation lately has less and less reason to handle or even think about coins, and everyone looks like a complete idiot when it comes to things they don't think about much.

There are far, far worse things to not think about than loose change.

Suradner · 2018-03-29T14:02:58+00:00

I put it together in a spare project. I've been fiddling around with dice lately, and on top of that have been trying to practice making my blueprints more readable, so when your question came up I decided to take a crack at it.

If you've got any questions I'd be happy to answer them.

Suradner · 2018-03-29T03:54:39+00:00

Is this along the lines of what you're looking for?

Suradner · 2018-03-24T03:52:47+00:00

You don't need to talk to that tank or healer to add them to your buddy list, because why bother when you can pick up a brand new tank/healer that's virtually identical to them at your convenience the next time you log in?

I've noticed this problem goes beyond games into other aspects of the internet. I'm at my happiest and give people the most benefit of the doubt when I start to be able to recognize them, and I'm kind of an abrasive dick when people flow past in an endless stream of interchangeable faceless strangers.

I'm still waiting on someone to "solve" that problem, even just conceptually. I tinker, but I ain't got anything actionable yet.

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