I read all the Jack Ryan books. Jack Ryan has a daughter (cisgender) and I think she’s a teacher like her mum. He has one son, Jack Ryan Jr, ego isn’t trans either.

I don’t know about his real family. No minor characters spring to mind.

Also a bunch of people write as Tom Clancy now.

I’ve never been scared by scary movies. I’m reading IT by Stephen King (for the second time, I first read it when I was 11 or 12, or about the same age as the kids in the book) and it’s good, but it’s not scaring me. Neither did Pet Sematary. Next up will be The Shining. King makes some good scary situations, but they don’t really make me scared.

The only thing that’s really triggered a fear-like response (more like anxiety though) is movies with scenes of domestic violence (particularly towards kids).

Black Mirror had an episode about this.

Surprised it took someone this long to actually make it.

I forget the name of the episode. If you’re curious, it’s on Netflix, it’s in season 3, and it’s right before San Junipero. It was bleak AF, which is why the only happy (and arguably the best) Black Mirror episode came right after it.

Gen X here. My mother (boomer, hippie) would have friends over and they’d smoke, they’d send the friend’s kid up to my room, upstairs and around the corner. Didn’t matter if the door was open or closed, they were in the makeshift den (converted garage) stoned outta their gourds. I had a few girls up, and I remember one flashing me and being nervous about it. Looking back I think she was giving me a hint, somewhere between “I wanna see yours” and “come get this.” But I was a dumb teenage boy and I think I just played on the Nintendo or the computer (had both in my bedroom). But yeah, had a few girls up there, and it didn’t matter if we had the door open or closed, if we wanted to hook up, our parents wouldn’t have known (except my bedroom was directly above the garage, though my mother would also play her records, so maybe they wouldn’t have heard thumping).

Straight guy, but again, I wasn’t really interested in hooking up in those days. And when I say “friend’s kid” I mean boys or girls, as young as 5 or 6 and as old as 16 or 17. I was 13-15 when I lived there. If it was a little kid, I was designated the babysitter and would entertain the kid. I was pretty good at it. Only one or twice was it a girl my age. About half the time it was a boy, and about 3/4 of the time they were way too young — not that I was really into girls, or enough to try to make a move even if they were the right age. They were all, as the guy says in Fight Club about airplane neighbors, “disposable friends.” Or was it “single-use”? So I never made a move on the girls my age; whether they were attractive to me or not, we just played Nintendo or computer games or looked at comic books or something.

Yeah, no shit. But they nearly doubled the price. I canceled my membership, but I doubt enough did to actually matter.

I was fine paying $60 a year for Office. I was never gonna use the AI stuff. When they said it was $100, I bailed. So now they don’t get the $60. But enough people will go on paying that they will actually make more money on Office in the next year, not less.

Not enough people are willing to vote with their wallets or even their feet to effect any meaningful change. At least not when it comes to their tech toys.

Greater than zero.

You wanna tweak your melon a bit? Look up “Last Thursdayism.” It’s a thing — due to the way short term and long term memory work, the theory goes that anything before “last Thursday” is a lie. It’s an arbitrary day of the week. The movie Dark City played off of this, when the — I forget what they were called — did their tuning and rearranged things and swapped peoples’ memories around.

The sound of silence. I don’t mean Simon & Garfunkel, and I definitely don’t mean Disturbed (though, it’s a good cover).

Honestly though, I can sleep to whatever. My younger brother used to sleep to death metal. I’m not kidding. It was annoying for about a week. We’ve had noisy neighbors and my wife will ask if she should go yell at them or something when I’m about to go to bed (she stays up all night, I wake up early). I say nope, it’s not an issue. And it never has been. I don’t think I can sleep to a baby crying or a shrill alarm though. Anything high pitched. I’m pretty sure I even fell asleep to loud sex one time. As I was drifting off, I could have sworn I heard moaning and thumping. I remember having a bit of a chuckle over that. Hot college girl used to live next door, she’s getting railed TF out of like 2 feet away through a wall, and she’d be embarrassed if I saw her in her underwear (I never tried to look, just saying). But you don’t really think, there’s another room right there, another bed up against the same wall, and somebody who always leaves before the sun comes up is probably in there. So yeah, anyway, I’m a heavy sleeper.

You don’t believe it’s ever happened?

I don’t know why the CSS isn’t loading on this CNN link, other than maybe because the link is 16 years old. (Probably older than the waifu in question.) But here you go: https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/16/japan.virtual.wedding/index.html

Rest of the world: Yeah, we know. Except, it wasn’t just in Poland.

X is owned by a guy who supports fascist causes in Europe. He used to support one in the US until they had a falling out. He did the Nazi arm gesture (albeit with the wrong arm, IIRC). Then (or perhaps before) he got rid of a bunch of content moderators.

We know exactly where he stands and what he stands for.

That said, there are still good people on Twitter. My wife and a bunch of her artist friends. I keep telling her, it’s bad news up there, it’s supporting a bad dude… but this whole community is up there and they won’t move. I’m not sure what it will take at this point.

Honestly all social media is kinda trash these days.

Facebook has literally had people killed. Some anti-government rebels were using Facebook in some third world country (I forget the name), and Facebook gave their location data to the government. Volunteered it even. Guess who stopped using Facebook. Wonder what happened. Oh yeah, and you know what Mark Zuckerberg calls his users? “Dumb fucks.” Literally. Can’t make this shit up.

Reddit was built on CSAM, they even sent one of their early moderators a physical award for running a subreddit with upskirt shots of underage girls. (He was very publicly outed. Guess who didn’t even protect the guy who helped build their empire?) They also tried to falsely accuse a third-party app developer of blackmailing them, but the guy recorded the conversation. A bunch of people rebelled but they all came back around. I myself got banned for suggesting stiffer penalties for child abuse, and I lost the appeal (I figured maybe an AI tagged me but a human would overturn it, but no). So I figure they did me a favor.

I think it’s mostly the same people who use all these services, from Facebook to right here on Lemmy. And in any group of people, you have a few bad apples. But I think you have to look at the people leading it. What they stand for, how they see the world, the kind of world they want to make.

Honestly wish you’d written this comment without the profane hyperbole. Because it’s correct. You didn’t need to be offensive — the truth stands on its own; hell, you didn’t even need the links — but here we are.

I think it’s an interesting solution to a growing problem (the industry of meat). But I’ve never had “fake meat” that tastes like real meat, though I don’t actively try a lot of them.

I remember when the Impossible Burger came to Burger King. I got one of each, a regular Whopper and an Impossible Whopper. The regular Whopper was the typical Burger King sad burger, the same taste you expect. The Impossible Burger tasted like what I imagine a well used ashtray tastes like. To simply say “it tasted burnt” doesn’t cover it. I took a couple bites and threw it into the trash.

I think vegetarianism and veganism are noble causes, but they aren’t for me — I say, eating an omelet with pepper jack cheese and turkey sausage. I’m also a bariatric patient, so I need 80-120g of animal protein a day. Vegans will say “um no actually you don’t…” but before any wanna start, I’m gonna take the advice of my medical team over some people on the Internet with an agenda who won’t lose a wink of sleep if I get sick. I’m not the one. I can’t be the one. But I’ll root for you from the sidelines (and offer a bit of an olive branch — ahead of chicken and turkey, I find fish to be the best protein).

Replies are more valuable, but I’m finding the replies to be not much higher quality than Reddit, which is a bit disappointing.

That said, for every 10 replies, you may get a good one, and that one is worth sorting through the rest.

The three people who replied before you said they don’t get the sponsor plugs.

When I had YTP (I had a trial, it was like 3 months for $1), I got the sponsored segments. So either those other people are lying, or they don’t understand what I’m saying.

So you’re using SponsorBlock as well, or you’re watching videos without sponsors.

Friendly reminder that when they redact information, it’s because they fear that the information they’re keeping from you is worse than you think it is.

In this case, believe them.

They might target, but sometimes they buy information too.

For example, my wife and I use Visible. It’s Verizon but cheaper (and it’s owned by Verizon). They also sell your number to scammers. So we get a lot of scam calls and voicemails. We just ignore them. Reporting them does nothing because the carrier is who you report them to (on an iPhone) and the carrier is the one that sends them. But I do it anyway. Most of them come in when I’m at work (and without my phone) anyway. So yeah, so they know who we are (name, town we live in). We just don’t engage with them.

It really is. The DS9 story is done anyway, and Garak was the most interesting person on the station by far.

I’m thinking a limited series formatted like Luther. Short seasons, high quality, but spy stuff instead of cop stuff.

Like an agent? Actors and sports players have them. People who get paid in the millions. So they can hire people to act on their behalf to get them work while they sip martinis by the pool.

Why pay for premium anyway? Let alone a family plan. You still get ads. They can be skipped too — SponsorBlock will do it for free. Google could use this but chooses not to.

They want YouTube to be like cable TV. You pay for it. You watch ads. You pay more for premium channels.

Because it’s fun to?

A few years back this guy called Brad said they fired his wife — same restaurant chain — and for a minute, everyone rallied behind “Brad’s wife.” If her name was ever known, it wasn’t widely spread.

The funny thing about the logo was, they supposedly changed it to be more inclusive (e.g. to people who aren’t white like the guy in the logo), but last time I checked, they still don’t do business in California because CA has left leaning laws that protect minorities, so they’re not being less racist/sexist, they’re not being more inclusive, they just want you to think they are.

Anyway, release the damn Epstein files