EnsignRedshirt [he/him]

In philosophy, it’s called Pasta’s Wager.

Look into design thinking and in particular ideation. There are lots of formal processes, exercises, activities, etc. that are used by individuals and teams in all sorts of contexts specifically for coming up with ideas. The process is usually one of throwing a bunch of things on the table, sorting through them, getting rid of most of them, elaborating on the ones that seem interesting, then following one to completion, or at least to some sort of first draft/prototype/mockup. You then decide whether or not you want to work on the draft further, or decide that it’s a dead end and start from scratch. The thing with “ideas” is that all of them are terrible and only serve to help guide us towards doing something interesting. Creating things is an intensely iterative process, and what you start with is unlikely to look much like what you end up with after a number of iterations.

Ideas are also all derivative. There are no new ideas, just riffs on existing ones. Even most interesting and innovative works have been influenced by past works, or works from different disciplines, or inspired by nature. If you’re looking to make a short comic, start by figuring out what works and artists and styles you like. Try recreating parts of them, or emulating them, or combining elements of them, and see if the results speak to you. That’s one of the few actually useful applications of LLM AI. You can quickly test concepts, maintain some elements and discard others, do mashups, etc. When something grabs you, try to figure out what it is that resonates about it, then try to recreate it with your own spin.

Ultimately, ideas are just prompts for doing work, and having a good idea (to the extent that such a thing even exists) is far less important than being willing to test a number of ideas to find out what will motivate you to spend real time and effort on creating something.

“Living’ la vida loca” would translate roughly as “Ballin’ the crazy ball”, which sounds pretty fun, tbh

I tried opposing genocide but they threatened to put me in jail for antisemitism

If you can’t protest in support of innocent civilians going through an humanitarian crisis then how is the US different from the authoritarian police state fantasy that so many Americans love to project onto places like China or North Korea? What good is your freedom if you can only exercise it when it doesn’t inconvenience the state?

There is no argument that supporting innocent people is hate speech. If there’s no avenue to publicly support Palestinian victims of war then this is literally oppression of political speech by the state. It’s the only thing that the first amendment is supposed to protect and no one in power can even be bothered to pretend that this is a problem.

This is going to radicalize some folks and I am here for it.

There is no evidence that belief in Santa is harmful to children, nor is telling them the truth. They only believe in Santa for like maybe three years, and they’ll figure it out on their own. The vast majority of kids figure it out by age ~7-8. You can tell them whatever you want, it won’t matter either way.

If you do tell them the truth, or they figure it out on their own, be sure to also tell them that even if they don’t believe, other kids do, and being a Santa-truther will not win them any prizes or make them any friends. It’s a good lesson about living in a society.

He and Bashir should have hooked up at least once.

I haven’t been following it closely, but my understanding is that it wasn’t just a feature that people wanted, it was something that Blizzard promised with their whole chest when they announced Overwatch 2, and was essentially the main justification for making a sequel instead of continuing to support and improve the original. Absolutely wild that they went “yeah, sorry, too much work, but be sure to buy a battle pass this season” several months after they released.

The value of his ventures depends on him as a brand, and there are lots of people invested in his ventures, so it benefits a wide range of interested groups and individuals to carry water for him. It’s a mixture of his own PR, PR from related ventures and investors, grifters who want to appeal to his audience of rubes, and the rubes, themselves. There’s probably a limited amount of coordination at the formal PR level, but I’d assume a lot of it is emergent behavior.

Abortion rights are gone, might as well bring back Jim Crow laws, too.

Your position is impossible to argue against in good faith when you start with “any Estonian who is critical of both of their occupiers is a holocaust denier”.

I mean this with greatest respect: pointing out Double Holocaust Theory is not arguing in bad faith. It’s arguing that there has been an organized push by antisemites to trivialize the Holocaust by equating it with crimes committed by the USSR. This mostly comes from 20th century anti-communist propaganda efforts. The forces that are trying to push the equivalency narrative are aligned with Nazi ideology or similar. Liberals may not care about the distinction because they figure that they can point at both communists and Nazis as being bad and move on, but doing so only assists the antisemites in their efforts. Point being, regardless of how you feel about the USSR or communism, you are effectively carrying water for Holocaust-deniers by failing to recognize the difference.

To be clear, I am not calling you an antisemite or a Holocaust denier, because it is very clear you are here in good faith trying to sort out this mess, and have been doing so respectfully. I am only trying to explain the argument so that you and others can attempt to make sense of the obvious dissonance between viewpoints. It’s akin to unknowingly using ableist or misogynist language. If you’re ignorant of the issue, then no one should ascribe malice to your language, but upon being made aware of the issue, it’s expected that you should be more careful going forward.

Posting “[hammer and sickle] 10 reasons why we need communism…” is clearly not Kremlin propaganda. Posting “[hammer and sickle] Ukraine shouldn’t even exist, long live CCCP” is clearly Kremlin propanda.

Again, with respect, I don’t think this addresses the issue. I appreciate that you are open to the idea that advocating in favor of communism isn’t de facto Russian propaganda (the current Russian state and ideological bent bears no resemblance to communism). Hexbear users are, at most, critically supportive of Russia for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with Putin or Russian nationalism, and much more to do with criticism of NATO and the US, in particular.

I think what we’re trying to figure out is how to engage when anything that doesn’t explicitly agree with the Western narrative is immediately dismissed as Russian propaganda. As an example, the Snake Island incident last year smelled fishy, but to call the Ukrainian government’s statements about it into question at the time would get one accused of being a Russian shill. We now know that the Ukrainian government lied about it. That’s fair pool, as far as I’m concerned. It’s how you wage an information war. I don’t care if a state wants to lie about things (and states will do so regardless), but I do want to get as close to the truth as possible, and that means critical analysis and skepticism. If there’s no room for that analysis and skepticism then it’s effectively declaring not just an anti-Russian-propaganda position, but rather an active preference for Western propaganda over everything else. That, by the way, is a valid choice, but if that’s the party line then it should be made explicit. It’s valid to say “anything pro-Russia or anti-NATO is banned” but that needs to be said, rather than hinted at. “Kremlin propaganda” isn’t a self-explanatory phrase.

All of that said, I empathize with you in your attempt to make sense of all of this. While there is a lot of friction here, I think most of us are earnest in trying to reach understanding, if not agreement. The above is an attempt to shed some light on what might be causing dissonance. You’re very patient to try and work through this, and I hope I and my fellow hexbear users haven’t caused you too much stress. Most of us really are trying to play ball.

I’m surprised more politicians don’t go in for stuff like this. Even cynically, you’re forcing your opponents into a tough spot. “We should make sure that children don’t starve” is a brutal thing to have to argue against.

lmao flawless

He’s so bad at this. No wonder they barely let him say anything in public.

This is genuinely very disheartening. A lot of people have died and more will continue to die, but NATO can’t even talk openly about how the conflict might be ended. They really do want Ukraine to be the next Afghanistan in the forever war.

If you have those desires, it’s probably because you’re bored and want to alleviate the boredom. Helps to have hobbies that are cheap or free, and spend time doing them instead of thinking of things to buy. Also, odds are, a lot of your money is going to food and drinks out of the house. If you’re enjoying time with friends, go for it, but try to keep track of what you’re spending out of the house. A few meals and drinks here and there add up faster than making the occasional fun purchase.

This is in addition to the boring personal finance stuff, which you should also be doing.

lmao this isn’t going to work at all, but it’ll make literally everyone mad, including the people who think this is a good idea.

They probably hired some consultant who worked with the US Democrats to help them come up with it. It’s such a joke, like on the same level as the Kamala Harris’s loan forgiveness for Pell grant recipients who start a business thing.

This is dope. I didn’t realize that there was so much consistency with the annular engines on Vulcan vessels.

I love the idea that Vulcans would choose the most efficient design, foregoing performance, versatility, speed, etc. Very “I’m only driving to and from work, I don’t need anything flashy.” That’s exactly how Vulcans would design their ships.

The real problem is that the bit doesn’t require it. It’s just as good, if not better, if it’s just a regular Ukraine flag/symbol.