Toth

Ah fuck, I'm irredeemable. After my disheartening attempt at online dating almost two years ago I decided for myself that I should give up on romantic love and instead should focus my attention on improving my social skills, get new hobbies and make friends. I... did try that, though still failed utterly at the making friends part and still struggled really hard to have conversations with my coworkers without feeling extremely awkward... still, baby steps I guess. However now that my 30th birthday is only a couple of months away, I once again have these nagging intrusive thoughts that I'm running out of time and that I should try it again, but... ugh... I just know it's pointless and would just further deteriorate my self-esteem and I have enough stress as it is with work and my procrastination that seems to have gotten significantly worse since Corona. But once again, who in their right mind would date a guy this old who has no experience whatsoever in regards to relationships, hates touching and is quite probably asexual and is only available in a package with his mother? Ugh... why can't I just forget about all this societal pressure that relationships somehow are part of life? I suck at this part of life, I don't know how any of that is supposed to work, this shit is too hard...

... yes? Why that question?

I fear they are astonishingly deep in that incel rabbit hole already. I yesterday had another lesson in that class and a different boy for some reason wanted to blab about the Matrix again and again while another wanted to show me Tiktok videos about Tate's innocence. After that stuff last week and now having read that Tate also seem to incessantly reference the Matrix in his bullshit, I kind of wonder whether that is connected. What is it even with Incels and a movie made by two trans women? I also noted that, since I hadn't taught the whole class in quite some time after some schedule changes, that there have been some peculiar changes in the seat arrangement. A few months ago boys and girls were still more or less sitting together, with a slight left-right-divide. Today I noticed ALL the girls sitting in the front row, then two rows of nothing and then a large blob of those conspiracy sprouting boys in the back. This after there had been a massive number of kids dropping out entirely (8 of 28), with some stating they don't feel comfortable in the class. Externals had already done a workshop with them a couple of weeks ago, but after this experience, I must say I'm feeling things have only gotten more insidious. When before this class was mostly prominent for constantly pulling weird pranks on teachers, a large chunk of the boys now have really taken a liking to sprouting conspiracy theories and incel stuff with lines blurring between them just wanting to be provoking or actually believing some of it. (during the Andrew Tate discussion last week, one boy kept interjecting with the question whether I have a girlfriend, apparently feeling I need to confirm my manliness in order to have an opinion on him... meanwhile another interjected with Flat Earth stuff to derail it entirely when the boy harping on the media depiction of Tate kept stuttering in circles unable to form any coherent argument about why "the media" would purposely lie about the events that happened... so this guy was just kind of trolling. Colleagues however confirmed that they also observed that they seem to hero-worship men with girls and money in the most troubling way possible... I must admit I also couldn't help but respond by making fun of them when two boys tried to get some [relatively tame] pictures of dolled up women as desktop backgrounds during computer science - I just had to ask them whether we are on a construction site with them needing pin-ups to feel manly. Got at least a few laughs out of them before changing them back to Fortnite...)

I... never said anything about defeat, I'm only wary about this release of equipment which before had been completely held back might indicate another offensive. That the Russian army is essentially beaten and they are only refusing to accept that reality to stroke Putin's fragile ego is pretty much fact, but facts don't seem to bother him anymore. I will anxiously follow those "exercises" with Belarus next week and then we will see whether they will make another push from the north even though it would be the stupidest move imaginable. I just... wouldn't put it past the Russians...

So I guess I drop by in this thread to ask what the fuck this whole Andrew Tate business is and why anyone should care. I never heard of him before I happened to stumble across mentions of his arrest and something about human trafficking, catfishing women and a pizza box in a tweet attacking Greta Thunberg. Frankly, I didn't pay much attention to any of that until last Friday my students in a (all around very problematic) Politics class asked me whether I know of him. When I said that I vaguely heard of a guy like that being arrested for trafficking women three boys went on a rant about how the guy is innocent and it's just a smear campaign of "The Media"™ to silence a guy speaking "The Truth"™. What truth that is they couldn't tell me and who THE media is neither, but still insisted that they just had to be right. I asked them whether that means taz and Bild are part of the same conspiracy, but that flew over their heads because they couldn't think of any specific news outlet they actually read/watch to point their fingers at, but... THE media is always bad, you know, that is just a fact! Was forced to debate that more broadly because I didn't know shit about Tate, but holy hell, I broke my teeth on the topic and feel somewhat disheartened. Similar broad distrust arguments I already encountered in other classes when it came to Covid. With one particularly frustrating moment when I was on a field trip and several boys refused to wear a mask in the train despite it still being obligatory and citing their utter conviction "The Media"™ is lying about Corona being so bad as the reason why they refuse to comply. Eventually I managed to (more or less) talk them down (they wore it, but immediately pulled it below their nose upon sitting down), but damn, what a waste of time and breath...

I must admit, I'm very anxious about the next weeks. It feels like it can't be a coincidence that Ukraine is getting Bradleys, AMX-10s and Marders, at the same time as Russia is sending more and more equipment to Belarus, prepares another giant draft for more cannon fodder and there are troubling rumors going on about Belarus maybe possibly eventually getting pressured into joining this time around for real. Especially from a German perspective, where I feel very frustrated with my government doing NOTHING without other NATO members pushing us forward, a big step like sending Marders (which should have been in Ukraine ages ago) after all the excuses even though the arms manufacturers offered to send them essentially from week 1 for me is a big sign that US intelligence found another Russian offensive to be an imminent threat and pressured our government to send them. I see really no other explanation. Fuck... This is whole nonsensical waste of lives is going into the next round, isn't it?

I was always thinking a Superman game would have to run a property damage/casualty counter that will game over/punish you if you fight carelessly and allow villains to level the city around you. It should be a "world of cardboard" where you could be a ludicrously powerful monster, but have to somehow fight very carefully, restraining both yourself and your opponents' attacks. I was also thinking of a power gauging mechanic where Superman has to take a token number of hits first in order to assess how strong an opponent is and allowing you to adjust the strength of attacks so that you won't end up turning low level grunts into red smears all the time.

That's indeed one of the things going through my head as well. What gives him the right to declare that "the people" of the occupied territories want to be part of Russia? Just because they are Russian-speaking? The separatist movement itself even was quite divided, with the majority just acting out of fear of any Ukrainian nationalist crackdown upon Russian media, while only a hardened core envisioned special autonomy rights or even more daring independence. But getting annexed by Russia? That's a different animal to any of this. And after almost a year of martial law and being callously used as cannon fodder, I highly doubt Russia has gotten more popular since their intervention...

There is a fantastic Arte documentary named "Battle for Donetzk", that I can unfortunately only find in German at the moment, which had a reporter team accompany the separatists in the Donbass and show their view on the matters. The most sympathetic view on them I have is that they were incredibly dumb fools deluded by Russian propaganda, their own conspiracy theories and Soviet nostalgia, funded and led by Russians who just so happen to be 'retired' FSB agents, who tore their country apart clinging to the hope of personal economic gain that they maybe possibly could get under whatever system they'd carve out of Ukraine. In brief: They reminded me a lot of QAnon lunatics or our own brand of Reichsbürger fools, only playacting Stalinist communism instead of calling their opponents communists. I have watched them storm and tear apart their local town hall cheering, while their helpless neighbors were begging them to stop before they screamed them down and threatened them, then discuss calmly in front of the bloody cameras how many votes they need to fabricate to make their declaration of independence believable. Those same lunatics are responsible that men in the Donbass now have to hide in cellars or risk get dragged off the streets and press ganged into their redshirt army to die for Putin's hubris. That is not to speak of the disappearance of people who took part or were sympathetic to Euromaidan, or were unfortunate enough to be independent journalists, who were dragged to FSB torture cellars that had been in operation since 2016. Torture cellars that had gotten established in all Russian occupied territory since the invasion and frequently discovered every time Ukraine liberates another of their cities. Of course Ukraine will put them on trial for high treason and rightly so. Any country would do that. At the same time I obviously get nauseous thinking how many of the 100.000 dead Russians didn't wish to be there, especially those conscripts dragged right to the hottest battlefields with no training whatsoever in a cold calculation that throwing their lives away would help freeze the front lines. This war could end if someone was nice enough to put a bullet between Putin's eyes and call these boys home. Barring that, there is no way for this conflict to end but to cross fingers for Ukraine to retake its territory over the corpses of those bringing ruin upon its people. Whether they are doing it by force, for duty or deluded righteousness, the Russians still fire rockets purposefully on civilian targets because they can't beat the Ukrainian military after all. You may have found your calling in picking on Ser Scot, who... occasionally does tend to get overboard with accusations of extremes, but your one-sided vilification of Ukraine while ignoring completely Russia's role as the freaking aggressor in this conflict does paint you as someone who, while probably not cheering for Russia, feels quite superior about this 'middle ground' of both-sideisms where you don't need to stand for anything, but can be against those who do pick a side. You know, I'm picking the side where there actually would be a peace possible at the end of the road instead of all the frozen conflicts Russia likes to surround itself with these last decades... and where Moldovia and Kasachstan won't have to fear about being next.

Even in Starship Troopers you saw the animation evolve drastically from arc to arc. I still remember vividly how in the Pluto arc bullets were copy-pasted flat pixels flying across the screen that had no impact whatsoever, when in the later arcs Bugs got riddled with wounds and on top of that had much more complex movements and gestures. Also of course the background. Pluto and Tophet were just very basic stone and sand deserts, but later they would visit water and jungle worlds and of course fight through cities on Earth when the war became more grim. I remember that Beast Wars show was in the timeslot directly after Starship Troopers and in comparison it looked horrendous. Looking at their history, it's interesting that they also did Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise and members went on to do Battlestar Galactica. The world sure is a small place.

I must admit, when I was a kid, I can remember sneaking down to the living room past midnight during summer break to watch "Starship Troopers Chronicles", a very early completely CGI show that existed for a very brief time because someone was high enough to think that making a kids' show to a Paul Verhoeven movie and then make it actually somewhat closer to the Heinlein books was a good idea. It was dumb cheesy fun, but also extremely impressive for its time (we are talking about 1999 here). So when I was a teenager, Clone Wars was my guilty pleasure because it somehow struck a similar chord of stringing together animated action set-pieces and so I, sporadically, whenever I stumbled across it on TV, stuck to watch a couple of episodes here and there and despite not having seen all of it by a long shot, it was enough knowledge to go into the last comparably mature seasons straight away years later. It seems I slipped through the cracks with that journey and avoided having to binge through most of the early crap. I guess Starship Troopers made me strangely predisposed to the style of the show in a way that I managed to shrug off most of the silliness (though I do distinctly remember that I was always upset that the strongest arcs shied away from exploring really dark or ambiguous topics whenever they started approaching them, as if someone in the writing room always notably went "Oh shit, yes, this is supposed to be a kids show, let's backpedal a little here... and always found that to be quite a shame).

The issue isn't exactly height yet (the avocado is notably taller), but rather width. Each of the leaves is bigger than my head and it looks quite uncomfortably squeezed against the window if I place it on the bathroom window sill. Unfortunately any other place would have not enough light and humidity for its liking.

I did this on and off thing with Assassin's Creed Origins as well. Same shit as with the other newer AC games I guess, minus the fact that I found Bayek exceptionally sympathetic as the fatherly nice-guy who heroically helps out everyone he meets and because of that has friends in every city... (that particularly stands out to my short time in Unity where I wanted to strangle my character at every turn of the plot)... which stands in stark contrast to the gameplay having you messily murder hundreds of people for barely explained reasons. And that gets tedious as hell because of my damned completionist mindset forcing me to clear all question marks and all encampments off the map. Had also tried going back to Assassin's Creed 1 with the intention to make my way through the whole series and did get quite far in it (I hope), but every time I want to boot it up, I shudder at what the needlessly complicated key combinations for climbing will do to my fingers and then I don't.

So my Corona lockdown induced idiocy goes into the next round. After my two chestnut plants died this year, possibly because I put them too early into a large pot that didn't get enough sun, I collected last month a bunch more and planted them and one of them has already sprouted. Will keep that one closely guarded on the window sill and will see how that one fares. I also... collected all kinds of random other seeds while I was at it and an acorn has also sprouted. XD I will see whether an oak tree is easier to raise at home than a chestnut... Meanwhile some of my peppers have now died after two years, though some are still stubbornly clinging to life. Admittedly, cutting down on heating because of that whole war going on two flight hours away has probably also played a part in that. Some of the smaller orange plants have been dying, too. Though some of the bigger ones now also developed thorns. Never knew they had those, but... well, you never stop learning I guess. The two pomegranates are still alive, but still look remarkably delicate. Why don't they turn more shrub-like? I also had experimented with planting ginger and potatoes. The ginger grew into a nice tall plant, but unfortunately didn't develop any nodules. The potato turned into one single 4 meter long snake like monstrosity strangling everything on the dinner table before it suddenly died. With only one tiny mini potato being able to get harvested. I replanted that one as well... and it also turned into a similar snake plant. Damn you, Mark Watney, you lied to me! Potatoes suck as indoor crops! One of my other experiments had been mango. The first mango seed turned into a truly magnificient plant, but unfortunately all the ones after that had turned out oddly decrepit. Only a few died, but the others seem always to be just on the verge of dying and that's really frustrating to watch. I fear it has something to do with the bad light situation in winter. My mother also brought physalis seeds and a banana plant and... things went crazy. A couple of the physalis plants are strangling and overshadowing the avocado plant (though others look rather miserably), meanwhile the banana... turned into a massive tree-like monstrosity I have no space for anywhere... it also keeps churning out shoots like crazy, which I have also planted and which also quickly grow similarly well, with one of them also already growing more shoots.

Since we are already at the stage of sharing interesting videos:

By now I'm convinced it'll end more like the Scrin invasion in C&C Tiberium Wars. With the Alien invaders being completely baffled that these nutty stubborn fools keep fighting each other even as they are blasting Earth capitals.

Had I actually mentioned my latest step-up in total nerdiness: There is something looming above my shelf

It happens to be the only Arkham game I haven't played yet... and I haven't read that much negativity about it, just that they went overboard with the Batmobile missions.

Why is it that Microsoft of all companies suck so badly at backwards compatibility? Years ago I bought Forza Horizon 3 for a few bucks in a sale, but soon found out that it runs like a slide show on my laptop. Instead of refunding, I ended up keeping the game, thinking to just go play it later once I get a better PC. That day has come this week, because unfortunately my laptop that by now has been only held together by duct tape after I involuntarily used it as a sleigh to slide down a flight of stairs (I hadn't seen there were two steps missing and the laptop was in my backpack) has now finally croaked. So I was forced to buy myself a new PC. And thought to gloriously make it prove its mettle by running Forza Horizon 3. Well, fuck me, it refuses to start on Windows 11 and googling around, people say even Forza Horizon 4 is impossible to run on Windows 11. Are you shitting me, Microsoft? This is YOUR freaking game? How is this, I can run stuff from the early 2000s just fine with just a few compatibility tweaks and yet your own flagship racing game series has so shitty programming it can't run one operating system generation later?!? Fuck you! I won't buy any Microsoft game ever. This is bullshit!

Shit, fuck cancer indeed. Kevin Conroy... THE definite Batman. Gotta download Arkham Knight to pay respects...

In addition to what felice said: Luke's experience that is talked about during the briefing was done with a Skyhopper, which is from the same manufacturer as the X-Wing and is noted in pretty much all the background materials since ever to have very similar controls, somehow.

I'm really continuously baffled and frustrated with how crazy good my team in Dead by Daylight is when I'm trying out a new killer in a custom match against them and need 5 generators to hook someone, if I even manage to down anyone and then when we go to public matches, we die EVERY. SINGLE. GAME. Miserably, usually with only one or two generators done, because we are in a constant death spiral of unhooking and getting downed, with no one except me caring about generators and I'm usually the one getting hooked first and then quickly die because of repeated unsafe unhooks anyway. Yesterday was again particularly bad because MMR seemed to be in our favor for a change and yet we couldn't take any advantage out of it. We died MISERABLY against two Dredges who never used lockers, a Legion who rarely used frenzy and a baby Nemesis without any perks. Then I tried out Legion against the others after I had just accumulated enough shards for him and couldn't get a single down before they escaped and each time I started frenzy, there either was nobody else around or there was someone just waiting at a pallet who stunned me and immediately stopped the frenzy. And when I started to chase them normally, they just looped me forever or made me loose sight of them while everywhere around me gens popped. They ARE ludicrously good and I know I AM ludicrously bad and... I just want to give up. I have tried liking this game for two months now, wasted so much time on it, but I can't get myself to find any fun in getting shat on every fucking game. It's also interesting to learn that their strategy at the start of the game has been always to stick as closely as possible to the strongest loop, while I was out doing generators pretty much where I was starting, so obviously the killer has an easier time just whacking me down while I desperately try to make my way to somewhere safer. Meanwhile they can just instantly disappear when trouble comes their way. The thing is... of course I could try doing the same, but that needs so much map knowledge I don't really care to learn. And even if I by accident do, the Killers still just instantly mindgame me or I am just a second too slow to take advantage of stuff and get downed anyway.

I'm not saying Jaime was particularly smart about it, given that he was mostly driven by his rage, but my argument boils down to it that he personally hadn't put a hand on either Stark nor his men and so was still able to tell himself that he didn't personally soiled his cloak. My point is not that it makes sense or is justified in any way (even in-universe), but more about how this might be his personal hypocritical framing of the situation. Note that he's all about symbolic appearance when he decides when to show his golden armor and when to hide it with his white cloak when he's doing a good deed for example.

I think you could also look at it as an oath thing: Jaime is a knight of the Kingsguard and sworn to Robert Baratheon. While he did threaten Ned in the scene out of wrath about Tyrion's capture, I'm thinking that it entered Jaime's thought process that he would violate the constraints of his position by acting as a Lannister instead of a Kingsguard if he personally attacked his liege's best friend. So he ordered the Lannister Men at arms to do it for him/for Tyrion, so it's technically not him personally raising arms against Stark.

Mmh... I need a small refresher and even though I am right now leafing through the books again, maybe someone here is more knowledgeable right away: How much does Jaime know about the sack of Winterfell? I know the official story is that Theon sacked the city and Ramsay came to the rescue. But given Jaime's knowledge about handing Ramsay a fake Arya and calling it out on being a load of bull in dialogue to Brienne, does he also know that Ramsay actually sacked the castle? Or is the lie of the Boltons the version that even the Lannisters got?