I can build a better PC for less money

Maybe we should wait until we know the price before making memes about this?

Especially with how RAM and SSD prices are increasing. A huge part of the Steam Deck’s success was because they partnered with AMD to get a great price-to-performance APU in a market where GPU prices were inflated by crypto, and now AI.

Of course if RAM and SSD prices get too high these machines might get bought up and scrapped for parts anyways, but let’s at least see if that happens first.

Oh yeah I have as much respect for him as I can have for any other celebrity I’ve never met or interacted with at all. I just wanted to get ahead of anyone responding to me pointing out that he’s not particularly qualified on this subject.

The reason I referenced him at all was not because of his qualifications, but as a way of establishing how popular these conversations were on the internet at the time. In that sense, the fact that he’s not an AI or finance expert and doesn’t specialize in such content speaks to how widespread the topic was at the time.

Something along the lines of “well I actually don’t like anime!”. And started talking about how people expect him to be an anime fan, and how he lived in Japan for a while and liked manga a lot but not so much anime.

It was a a party with a lot of “alternative” people, most of whom probably would just say “yeah I like anime”. I think the guy was expecting me to say that so that he could that he could then subvert expectations, but my more neutral response kind of derailed things.

1. Bigotry and prejudice is always bad, even if it’s not against a “protected class”. Hating on white people, straight people, cis people, men, or anyone else for the way they were born, what their ancestors did makes the world a worse place. Heck, “white” itself is a nebulous concept that changes over time and is different depending on which racist you’re talking to. Just because someone resembles your oppressor does not make them your enemy.

2. Kind of related, but I don’t broadly judge categories of things. I was at a party recently and someone asked me if I liked anime, and I responded that I like some anime. Most of it I don’t like, but that’s not specific to anime. In my experience, roughly 80-90% of all media is somewhere between “garbage” and “mediocre”, and it’s the 10-20% at the top that I look for. A lot of my favorite bands happen to be metal, but I’m not going to like every band that uses distorted guitars.

Perhaps another way of phrasing it is that I usually find that the parameters which define genre are often separate from the parameters that determine my personal enjoyment.

My theory is that most people are more concerned with the social groups around media than the media itself.

Traffic signals and traffic cameras are two entirely different things.

I would expand that to body modification in general. Tattoos, piercings, hair loss/removal treatments, shoe lifts, fake nails. Heck, you could even expand it to clothing and fashion.

For me it comes down to cost-benefit analysis. For me personally I find it pretty easy to change my mind, so that’s usually “cheaper” than trying to change my body. Or you could say that I don’t see much “benefit” to such changes to my appearance. To let go of my desire to appear a certain way, to stop caring about how others see me. Some might call that cis privelege, but I would argue it’s something most cis people (at least in the US) struggle with too.

With the people I hang out with, i’m usually the only one without piercings to tattoos. Often I’m the only person with naturally colored hair (I do hope I go grey before losing it because it would be pretty cool to look like an old wizard, but if I lose my hair first I’ll just embrace it).

At the same time, you could extend the conversation the other way to things like prosthetics. I just saw a meme on Lemmy yesterday about a closeted trans person who had a car accident with a moose and needed extensive surgery afterwords. So rather than restoring how they used to look they took the opportunity to fully transition. From my perspective, the opportunity cost of transitioning was lowered in that case.

I want to see humanity continue to pursue technology to reduce these costs though. People have been writing fiction for centuries about gender-swapping, even just for a couple of days. If there really was some magical pill that could swap your gender for a day or two, or was easily reversible, or if you could just transfer your brain between artificial bodies, I could see that leading to a lot more empathy in the world.

The last one standing or the last one left holding the bag?

I visited Boston 2 months ago for a wedding. Spent almost a whole week making a vacation of it with my wife. Can confirm all of this is accurate.

And yes, I went to the famous Italian district in the North End. It was way overpriced and it was fine but not particularly memorable. Just generic american-italian fare you can find in any city in America. The only notable food I had was the absolute worst Pad Thai I’ve ever had in my life.

I’m a white guy who has lived my whole life in the northeast US, and even I was shocked at the lack of spices or flavor in everything. Even my Dunkin Donuts coffee seemed blander than how it was at home.

Well, I did get some edibles from the dispensary which included some incredible white chocolate with espresso beans. Not sure if I would count that as “food” though.

If you do have to eat in downtown Boston I would recommend the South Street Diner. The food itself was just the stuff you would expect from any diner in America, but it was executed well and almost reasonably priced.

This can result in support for hardware and software being upwards of two to three YEARS out of date. Which for gamers for example is unacceptable and causes issues more often then not.

I think your perspective might be a bit biased towards your own bubble here. People are still buying Nintendo Switch’s. People are still buying Steam Decks.

I am getting close to 600 games in my Steam Library, but only 2 were released this year. Both were Indie games (Fragrance Point and Tower Wizard).

Ram is costing hundreds of dollars. GPU’s are costing thousands. Desktop gaming, heck desktop ownership in general, has been falling off. If people are still on x86, they are more likely to be on laptops.

For the average person, the idea that you need your OS to be updated every couple of weeks so that you can check your email and play Minecraft with your kids is insane.

If only it were possible to transport humans and goods without a network of cameras invading everyone’s privacy.

If only that was the natural state of the world for more of human history until just a few years ago.

Don’t get me wrong: I hate how consumerist Christmas is and how stores have started stocking Christmas decorations in September.

BUT

Living in America, the cutoff is Thanksgiving. Which does indeed cede part of the end of November to Christmas.

However, Halloween has encroached forward, pushed on by the goths. What started as merely Tim Burton fans has evolved. Krampusnacht has started to catch on as a more horror-themed holiday. So a lot of our Halloween decorations just stay up. And there’s no point on making a trip to the attic just to put stuff away so they stay out until the end of December with everything else.

Kind of gross how this article seems to be trying at every turn to say, “no ai is actually good! It helped us catch the bad businessmen that happen to be in the AI industry!” By focusing on a tiny trading period on November 20th.

Because I remember casually watching Hank Green talk about this same thing more than a month earlier.

Hank Green isn’t a finance bro or an AI guy or even really a tech guy. He’s just a guy reacting to things that are trending, and I remember I had seen the main graphic he was talking about floating around the internet for a while before I watched the video. People have been calling AI a “bubble” for much longer.

I am old enough to remember the report that 95% of generative AI companies failed to see returns from using it. That was back in August.

I don’t like giving credit to “trading algorithms” for things that humans figured out a long time ago.

I kind of like the idea of using the word “slop” solely for AI and finding other words to describe stuff that’s just poorly made. Trying to ascribe “slop” to other things dilutes the word and will help AI companies to keep doing what they are doing.

I believe that people’s views are shaped by… Almost everything.

Every movie, TV show, book, comic, song. It’s almost always a husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend. Or a single person looking for their “other half”. Or someone in a monogamous relationship who is cheating. Or getting cheated on.

Monogamous relationships in media can either be the focus or just a background detail. Non-monogamous relationships are almost always treated as gimmicks. TV Shows like Big Love or Sister Wives. Harem animes. That kind of thing.

I am really struggling to think of media that portrays non-monogamy as just a normal thing. Maybe media where casual hookups are a thing might count for you? But I see that as a person being fundamentally single usually, not polyamorous.

And there’s also incidental media. Advertisements, packaging, etc. The existence of “family size” implies a standard sized family.

Beyond media, there’s all of the other examples they have. Parents, grandparent, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers, coaches. I think everyone has a subconscious push to copy what they have seen elsewhere in relationships, and it takes a good bit of self-reflection and purposeful change to get out of that.

For me personally, my awakening was when I read Stranger in a Strange Land as a teen. The whole book got me in the habit of analyzing relationships of all kinds. That included a section of the book where the main character starts a cult, and the whole cult is basically one big polycule. It was just a small section of the book and it was presented as so… Normal.

We tend to think of “marriage” as like a combo meal at a fast food restaurant- it’s the #1, a burger, fries, and a drink. A small house, a white fence, a shared bank account. Someone to be with spiritually, emotionally, sexually, politically, financially, nutritionally (I’ve seen veganism lead to divorce), and in so many other ways. But it doesn’t have to be. Some people sleep in separate beds, or separate rooms. Some people get married but keep separate houses or apartments. Some people keep separate bank accounts.

Even then, I read the book as a teenager and was kind of open to the idea, but never thought it would work in practice. Eventually I started dating my wife who is bi, and the topic of threesomes came up. We ended up having a successful one with a friend of hers she had a crush on for a while. We briefly looked into trying some exhibition, so same-room sex with other couples. Found some people online and went to dinner with a few but never really materialized.

About a year ago another couple we were friends with propositioned. They were both bi, had been monogamous for roughly a decade, and wanted some gayness in their bedroom. I’m like, mostly straight, but for me this presented a lot of rare opportunities for new experiences. So now I have a boyfriend and a non-binary girlfriend in addition to my wife.

I also notice that I don’t pay attention to usernames on Lemmy

I’m not sure if this is a Lemmy-wide thing or if it’s just because I use the Connect app, but I can add User Notes that function as a little tag next to people’s usernames. Since I started doing that I’ve noticed just how small Lemmy is, or at least how few people actually are posting content.

Most of my notes are just to let me know not to bother getting into arguments with them on stuff. Conservative trolls, tankies, AI slop enthusiasts, people who steal content from others, etc. But occasionally I’ll mark someone down as a notable quality poster.

ISIS enforced abstinence too. It makes their members easier to agitate and more violent, less rational. Plus it lets them promise a reward in the afterlife.

at a concert

There’s your problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re buying Dasani or Aquafina or Arizona Tea. Venues have captive audiences and jack up the prices because they can.

As of June 2025, Mike Cessario’s estimated net worth is around $80–100 million.

The CEO is wealthy, sure, but very far away from being a billionaire.

I’ve occasionally bought liquid death at my local beer distributor for parties, and it’s a bit expensive but not crazy. Pretty much every drink at a festival is incredibly overpriced - that markup is usually going to the vendors selling it and the venue, not the manufacturer.

Taxing the rich is not just “oh we as a society want money to do things, so let’s take that money from the people who have it”.

Taxing the rich is about removing the incentives that wealthy people have to seek out and hoard more wealth. Get them to stop trying to control everything and seek rents. Convince them to just be satisfied with being, in 2025, a USD hundred-millionaire. Force them to enjoy an early retirement.

As an American I can confirm it goes back way further than 1950.