Haven’t seen F4. Thunderbolts was OK but a typical Marvel feeder movie where the story feels less important than setting up the sequel/next team up. Superman was a more interesting story but needed more room to breathe. It needed better editing and to slow down a bit.

I mean, they’re superhero movies, so the bar is low. No ones expecting a deep experience and maybe I’m experiencing superhero fatigue but as an old fart, my bar is the Donner Superman movies and the Nolan Batman movies. Maybe I need to go into them with less expectations.

Yep, it seems very well put together - I’ve chatted with the dev briefly and they seem very aware of the fedi side of things and how different services can interoperate.

Give Fedica a try - they have a very generous free tier which includes both Mastodon and Bluesky.

DRM free list

Yes its a swear word. Yes, there is a shrinking population where I am (UK) that still can associate it with its original meaning (but that is different in other places too) but you can apply that weak justification to a lot of other words too. ‘Cool’ literally means ‘not warm’ but it has also evolved to incorporate other totally different meanings, which can also vary slightly or a lot depending on geographical colloquial use.

You find it offensive because of your local cultural interpretations. I acknowledge that and respect it, hence why I have said things like ‘that word’ in my subsequent comments to you. What I’m asking you to consider is that, in places away from your local culture, it doesn’t carry that meaning and hasn’t for some time. The US is not the entire world.

I really don’t mind discussing this with you, but please at least make an effort to have your statements make some kind of sense. Just try and envisage the possibility that outside of the US the same or similar words have always had, or have evolved to have, different or alternative meanings. The people where I live who still interpret the word in the same way you insist is the only possible interpretation are of an older generation. Its in pretty common use by all genders in younger generations.

Also, if you ever get around to getting a passport (a document that lets you travel to other countries), you might want to leave Australia, the UK and Ireland in particular out of any travel plans you have.

Outside of the US, that meaning fell away and/or changed in some places quite sometime ago. I know it’s difficult for a certain type of American to envisage a world outside of their own borders but believe it or not, it does exist and even has different cultural language evolutions.

I’m assuming you’re American? If so you should be aware that word doesn’t carry he same baggage elsewhere in the world.

You say: “…prevailing orthodoxy to the dogmatic views of leftism…”

Most on Fediverse say: Just respect difference and don’t tolerate intolerance.

By the way, it’s OK to swear. Some examples might be: “You seem to be making a ham-fisted attempt to troll people. Stop being a cunt.”

Dunno if ‘they’ do, but I do. You baby.

The OSA is nothing to do with kids or parenting and everything to do with further developing surveillance of the UK and controlling what we can access.

I guarantee you, at some point after this will come prohibiting content deemed terrorism such as mentions of the word ‘palestine’ and ‘action’ in the same paragraph for example.

Sooner or later we’ll have our own pseudo or real great firewall. I expect them to come after VPN use at some point too.

“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind - except for Hulk Hogan” - John Donne, probably.

No, it happened in the early 80s so bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Budgie, Saxon etc

The ones where I have filterable control over what I see and who I interact with and who aren’t pushing ragebait at me or tracking me. So, fediverse services basically.

As I get older ebooks are simply better. I can adjust font, font size, line height, kerning, leading, margins, backlight warmth on a device that can carry all the thousands of books I have and which weighs ounces.

Sundial by Catriona Ward. No spoilers but its a very dark psychological horror. I’m not far into it but I’m already hooked.

Excession and Player of Games are my two favourite Culture novels.

If you don’t want to listen (which is cool, audio isn’t for everyone) you can download the transcript - head to the archive/resources page and you can grab the PDF from there :)

It wasn’t my first time reading it (its one of my favourite books!) but it was for my two comrades so the discussion was pretty far ranging, on both the surface level of the book and the subtext too.

Hate is too strong a word I think - I nothing them - but they produce the sort of soulless indie/pop ballad that you know will end up in the soundtrack of Hollywood paint-by-numbers romcom that would’ve gone straight to DVD a decade or so ago. The unending radio play rotation would force the song (and we could be talking about any and all Coldplay songs here) into your brain and then five years later you’d find yourself humming it as you suddenly realised a longe bar version of it is playing in the lift (elevator USians) you’re in.

The threadiverse tech is better (Lemmy/Piefed/MBin etc) and it is a great feeling to know I’m not getting tracked and profiled by big tech or inundated by ads, or force fed ragebait via an algorithm I neither want nor need. The users are better, mostly, although I have noticed an uptick over the last 3 or 4 months of reddit-style dickheads being dickheads - but I can just block them.

Niche content will come I think. If the threadiverse can resist the self-defeating drive to ‘grow at all costs’ and just let it organically grow, more people will come but a lot more slowly. But of course that will bring a change in the user culture too. Its quite nice being somewhere with low to no tolerance for right-wing shit.

As for Reddit, I don’t have an account any more. My main of almost Digg migration antiquity was deleted when Spez shit the bed over the API thing but I’d been on Lemmy prior to that anyway off an on. My alt got deleted about 6 months ago when I realised I hadn’t used it for months. If I absolutely have to visit a sub I use a front end.