I’m trying to remember, was there ever even a conversation like this in Spiderman? Trying to figure out where the meme started.

It can be bad to demonize all forms of pride coming from one gender. I get what you mean, but we also want to encourage things people should be prideful for. The classic image of being a gentleman, which we can continue to redefine based on what society most needs. Sometimes even just people using their physical, gender-granted strength for societally positive ways can be good.

We just happen to be in a rut of people lost in a vein of toxic masculinity because they don’t see/know of any good ways to flex on the world, and feel some agency within it.

This is basically the premise of Cabin in the Woods, isn’t it? Though it’s not clear exactly what the guy was smoking.

I even think our current view on machismo is too product-driven, rather than traditional male values.

Don’t learn to build a cabin, because that’s old fashioned. But do DRINK BEER, and drive a big truck, and mock clean energy initiatives because real men love the ROAR of an expensive motor paid for by oil companies!

Old values would’ve been about treating a lady right, or standing up for what you believe in - even if it was as simple as punching someone who mocked your wife.

Man, you’d likely be a boon to marketing companies - help everyone realize what markets they’re underserving by targeting one gender demographic.

In some ways, I try to acknowledge the original race to the voting on prices was sometimes bad for indies. The Factorio dev even saw the writing on the wall and decided to head it off, declaring “This is the game’s price floor. Buy it or don’t.”

I mean, you can criticize the reaction, but be aware that much of the world is going to have it, as a natural human thing.

You’ve been lonely in your life, you feel like you’re getting along well with someone of the opposite sex (potentially misreading friendliness as romantic interest) and make an offer, working past many layers of butterflies in your stomach. The worst she can say is No, right?

No, turns out, the worst she can say is “Maybe. I’m kind of busy with finals and some other stuff going on, but we’ll see.”, which your mind takes as a Yes, getting you all excited - you then text them later, at a polite rate, to try to follow up and make something work. Only weeks later, after conflicting possibilities and doubts clash in your mind from a bunch of unreplied or vague messages, do you concede to the fact that not only were you not good enough, you were so scary and horrible to the person in question you weren’t even good enough to give a direct answer to. You’re a destructive, potentially murderous monster they needed to protect themselves from. All because you were just interested in spending time with someone attractive, as all of us are wired to try.

Not all of that is an honest, objective take, but that’s still how it comes across in the mind of the receiver. Similarly, there’s no legal requirement that each person say “Good morning!” to each other each day, but being denied basic pleasantries and human interaction, even as much as receiving an honest and flat rejection, can wear on someone, even if I fully understand (as I said) why it happens.

Any individual does not owe any one individual their attention. But each individual is owed some attention by someone.

Uh… Arugula ad for hummus!!

1. Panel shows a man with a canvas and palette. He appears to be a man.
2. ”I am going to make an art.”

Commenters furiously scrambling out to reject the premise that all men are artists capable of producing the Mona Lisa

Between the comic and even this thread, you’re the first person to mention incels. This isn’t a gotcha and even if it was, it’d be a pointless observation.

Sorry, pal, but:

• I’m a guy
• I’ve been ghosted when I expressed interest in a woman who was possibly scared of me
• I’ve been incredibly upset about it
• I still understand the comic and feel okay with the reaction

The thing is, I don’t blame women for valid self protective instincts. Ghosting is antisocial bullshit, but it’s the easiest solution available to a potential for real, serious harm, especially when you are only one of some dozen guys one woman might be dealing with on the subject.

I know the women who’ve ghosted me are making generalizations. I know they’re wrong, but I can’t blame them based on what they knew. It always feels personal, even when you’re seeing learned behavior by trends.

I agree problems would be solved if women did the approaching more often, but I get why that’s hard (for everyone), and I can see how they get used to the routine of being approached and deciding based on that.

I upvoted you because this has been my experience.

When W10 got cut off, I made one more bid for CachyOS and enjoy it, but even then, I had to prep myself with “I’ll run into stupid shoot that annoys me, question is, is it more stupid shit than I get on Windows”.

I genuinely hate all the Linux ads that try to use the Mac “It just works” mantra without recognizing all the stuff people will have to do, not to mention the discovery process of those things.

“Want to install an app? Simple! Just ‘sudo pacman -S app’! Want to find the name of a package to install, so you can start figuring things out for yourself instead of doing exactly what the tutorial prescribed character by character? Er, sorry, not in this guide, also your wildcards are used wrong!”

Electricity (optional)

Damn, I’m going to work hungry because I stuffed my breakfast banana in a car’s tailpipe.

Recently this channel came up in my feed. There’s a few like this, that will highlight interesting games on Steam that haven’t had much attention.

https://www.youtube.com/@IndirectGames

I’ve had an idea of making a visual novel with gen AI, but I’d want to attach “Placeholder: AI Artwork” in a visible location for each sprite. And I only even consider that because I’m not exactly a known game dev and don’t have ready access to artists.

Larian should likely expect if they’re taking shortcuts in their position, they’d get backlash. I can at least recognize that they’re trying to be moderate about it.

We’ve seen the buyout/burn down methodology against a lot of smaller companies; it sounds a bit like Microsoft is doing that internally to Xbox division. It’s all I can think of to explain so much of the intentional damage.

So, the console war is now basically Nintendo, Sony, and Valve.

Ah yes, the Galbrush problem; in which designing something and then swapping a character’s gender suddenly makes it a gender commentary.

I won’t really fight anyone suggesting “Yarr-harr” approaches, but if you’re just looking for something to watch and legality becomes a hurdle as you describe: Libraries offer a huge backlog of stuff (watched some old Disney stuff I’d targeted, without sending the mouse money) as well as some digital services. It should be pretty easy to rip the DVDs they have on offer too.

This concern exists regardless of what device is running on the TV.

If you have a wireless keyboard that’s comfortable on the couch, use that. Otherwise, just use a controller and launch in Steam Big Picture mode (now basically looks like Steam Deck’s main screen).

Good launchers (not all of them) also take controller input.

EDIT: But I think to reinterpret your question, yes, the device on the TV generally should have the input connected directly. That can be done with Android TV and I think Apple TVs.