#not endorsed

[maklodes]

Being part of a culturally normative religion -- being an Italian Catholic, or a Thai Theravada Buddhist, or an Egyptian Sunni -- is cringe because it shows you're a conformist sheeperson who can't think for yourself.

Being an atheist or skeptic is cringe because, what, you think you're hot shit, smarter than anyone else? Because after Dawkins and Harris held your hand, you were able to get to the conclusions of Charvaka and Lucretius more than two millennia ago, and now you think you might as well have proved the Riemann zeta hypothesis? Get a grip.

Being part of a culturally non-normative religion like Wicca, or Neo-Pagan revivalism, or UFO cults, or whatever, is cringe because you're a kook. No one even forced you into it -- you don't have the excuse of being a Provo-raised Mormon or a Gujarati Hindu. You just went off the deep end yourself.

Being avowedly agnostic is cringe because you're so open-minded your brain fell out. Your response to one person saying π = 3.1416 and another person saying π = 15 is "neither of those are really the ultimate true value of π, which is fundamentally beyond what we humans can easily express, so the best we can do is seek the wisdom in all perspectives and stay open minded." You dodge judgment and discernment like they're Touhou bullets.

Being silent on religious matters is cringe because it shows you're either a coward who is afraid of revealing what you really think for fear of being offensive or cringey, or you're a vapid idiot who has no real thoughts on the Fundamental Nature of Reality, and only cares about shit like which graphics card can give you the highest frames per second on your shooter games, which basketball teams will make it to the playoffs, which skin-care products/mascara/lipstick will make your face the prettiest, etc.

[caprice-nisei-enjoyer]

I've been doing this really cool Vampire: the Masquerade hack where I use it to simulate a combat-heavy, survival focused dungeon crawl

[max1461]

Everybody's basically Chinese because obviously East Asians are Chinese, and then Indo-Europeans are basically Chinese (because they come from the steppe, like the Mongols, who are basically Chinese), and Native Americans are basically Chinese because they migrated across the Bering Strait. So everybody's basically Chinese except Africans, Papuans and Aboriginal Australians. Even Papuans and Aboriginal Australians are definitely Chinese adjacent like they're definitely a little bit Chinese, over there near China. Middle Easterners didn't start out Chinese but got Chinesified by the silk road and shit so let's say they're half Chinese. There's two races African and Chinese.

[that-starlight-prince]

If it's possible for people to make decisions they might regret or might feel pressured into making, the obvious solution is to simply take away that person's freedom to make the decision in the first place. No decision, no problem!

[misanthropiccatboy]

if fundamentally people do often try to be good and intend to be, and every villain thinks themselves in the right, then being a 'good person' is not a matter of feelings, values, or intention, but one of self-critique, clarity, and awareness

[o-craven-canto]

Three attempts at mapping the major cultural spheres of the world from the mid-20th century (though replicated on maps with modern borders), found in Broek (1973), The Geography of Mankind.

For comparison, the infamous "clash of civilizations" map by Huntington (1996), which seems clearly based on the previous, particularly Toynbee's (both Toynbee and Huntington lump all Muslim-majority areas into a single "Islamic civilization", despite being places as different as Morocco, Somalia, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, and both dubiously combine all Buddhist-majority areas outside of China's historical sphere of influence):

For a more recent, and IMO more plausible effort, here's the Country Similarity Index map, made a few years ago by one Jeff Jones who came up with an algorithm to calculate the cultural, geographic, political, economic &c similarity between any two countries:

[straightlightyagami]

if c++ was a person id shoot them

[selfmaderibcageman]

the real flaw in deindustrialization is that it allows for people to not feel that they have to chase education in order to avoid being condemned to a life of agrarianism or factory labor & premature death

[toy-sitting-anon]

it's called wife-eye because the internet is for looking at women

[fipindustries]

isnt it a weird coincidence that nazis are always the ones accused of antisemitism, is like people had something against nazis, this is clearly targeted prosecution

[maklodes]

Has anyone talked about the idea that it's advantageous for straight guys who have no intention of giving up women themselves to encourage others to go MGTOW / for straight girls who have no intention of giving up men themselves to encourage others to go 4B?

[caprice-nisei-enjoyer]

Why does the US, the wealthiest nation, not simply purchase all the other nations?

[max1461]

there's another thing outside the ∀ but you can't get to it. it's outside of the ∀. and there's something underneath the ∃ too and you can't get to it either. just thought you should know.

[that-starlight-prince]

Annoying how I get more work done when I don't spend most of the day with Tumblr open 😾

[mashivan]

That’s so bizarre. Or well.

Ok so, there’s people out there who read machine translated fiction and genuinely like it. All the artistry of language gets crunched down to literal meaning and you get rote and awkward sounding lines. But. Some people really like it. And I kinda have to have the same opinion about having AI finishing others works.

Cause like, unless the author is an unoriginal hack, there 0% chance this machine generated ending will turn out like the author intended. At that point it’s an entirely different story. Plus, if you ask it to regenerate an ending, now you’re helping coauthor a story with an AI, which, it definitely won’t be the original author’s then.

Right now, AI isn’t good enough to faithfully and accurately recreate an author’s imagination, so it’s kinda telling the author that you only need an ending to the story, you don’t don’t care about the authors ending. It treats the authors vision as replaceable, fungible. Which is pretty evidently disrespectful.

But, that’s fine. Like, one, are the readers you care about those who’re interested in the story and the direction you’re taking it, or a reader who treats every story as content to consume. And two, yeah it’s disrespectful, but people being disrespectful assholes towards internet strangers is nothing new (whether that ought to be the case is a different question, but it’s never gonna go away)

Hi,

It’s your friendly neighbor fanfic author here. In the light of this apparent new trend of people feeding unfinished fics to AI to get an “ending,” and some people even talking about “blanket permissions,” let me just say this:

I EXPLICITLY FORBID ANYONE TO FEED MY FICS TO AI. DUDE, THAT IS ABOUT THE LEAST RESPECTFUL THING YOU CAN DO. IF YOU DO IT, SHALL YOU BE EXCOMMUNICATED FROM YOUR FANDOM AND WALK ON LEGOS BAREFOOT TILL THE END OF DAYS.

That is my anti-permission.

Thank you for your attention.