SaraTonin
@SaraTonin@lemmy.world
- Comment on The moment we've all been waiting for: you now can have targeted ads on your 2k smartfridge 7 minutes ago:
I once asked why anybody would want a smart fridge. Most people didn’t seem to know. The most common answer was that it could act as a focal point for a busy family for keeping track of things like appointments.
So, like a blackboard/whiteboard, cork board, or even a normal fridge, some paper, and magnets.
I’m no Luddite. I’ve got smart lamps so i can change the lighting in my living room & bedroom without getting up. And I’m looking into heating so i can have my heating come on when i leave work, rather than at a specific time. That saves effort and money.
But i just see no reason whatsoever for anybody to have a smart fridge.
- Comment on Truth is way more fucked up than fiction 23 minutes ago:
More significantly, he’s one of the key instigators and powers behind the current us government. Explicitly wants to create a technocratic dictatorship.
- Comment on They were well informed. 15 hours ago:
I don’t think this is accurate. I think they’re brought in by the dinosaurs.
- Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026] 1 day ago:
I’ll buy the VR headset if, as well as streaming games, you can also play video/mirror your desktop. I know that’s not the market they’re going for, but it seems to me that those are the main use-cases of VR headsets aside from gaming and to my non-tech way of thinking it doesn’t seem harder than streaming a game.
- Comment on The holy trinity 1 day ago:
There’s a Korean film called A Tale Of Two Sisters. In the commentary, the director says that the actor playing the younger sister had three modes: “eat, sleep, and run”
- Comment on UK Pension Age Changes: Workers Warned They May Work Until 80 4 days ago:
Once upon a time, that was basically the idea. Retirement was expected to be a year or maybe two if you were lucky before you died, and the reasoning behind it was so that you could get your affairs in order.
I know that retirement has to be paid for, but the entire point of progress is supposed to be that people are better off. Instead, simply because they’re the largest generation and therefore the largest voter block, everything has always been catered to the Boomers. That’s the reason the triple lock exists in the first place, because it benefited the Boomers. Now that later generations look like they’re going to start benefiting from it, suddenly it’s a problem that they have to deal with by making sure the later generations don’t get as big a slice of the pie.
- Comment on This is exactly what it feels like to watch some ads with motivational slogan, by some company who want just to sell you useless shit. 1 week ago:
I remember when, to make a point,a blogger put Hitler quotes over images of Taylor Swift and people shared them around
- Comment on What 1 week ago:
I once saw a Japanese person post that if you can’t think of a word in Japanese and instead just say the English word in a really racist Japanese accent, then you’ve got about a 50% chance of being right
- Comment on What's the name of the early-mid 2000's song that sounds like Beyonce, starts with a "dun...dun... dun DUN!" guitar part, and the singer makes this "dabudabudabu" sound? 1 week ago:
Oh, I misread the “oooaaaaahhhaaaaaaahhh” bit, so my mind went Kelis, I Hate You So Much Right Now
- Comment on 3-bean soup 1 week ago:
Is this some strawberries aren’t berries but cucumbers are stuff?
- Comment on My friend got hacked and of course microsoft will not even try to help 1 week ago:
There’s no way Microsoft support hand-writes each email. This would be a form letter, written by corporate, which they then insert relevant details in to.
- Comment on My friend got hacked and of course microsoft will not even try to help 1 week ago:
Oh come on! I’m sure that all genuine Microsoft support emails start with “Greetings [customer name]”…
- Comment on NOW! 1 week ago:
When I was in school a teacher told us that washing powder manufacturers would have a way of getting around “advertising needs to be true and accurate” laws. What they’d do is gradually reduce the strength of their product over time (normally by just cutting it with something cheap). Then they’d revert it back to its original strength so that they could announce “Now TWICE as strong!”
- Comment on Over 47% of Stop Killing Games Signatures Have Already Been Verified 2 weeks ago:
My favourite thing about this post is that it doesn’t explain what Stop Killing Games is, and links to an article which also doesn’t explain what Stop Killing Games is.
- Comment on How can a US state block porn? 2 weeks ago:
It’s more sinister than that - Project 2025 explicitly says that one step in the plan is to classify anything pro-LGBTQ as porn. Make porn illegal, and you’ve just made being LGBTQ or an ally illegal.
Be openly LGBTQ or say anything supportive in front of someone under the age of 18? You’ve now committed a sexual offense involving a minor.
And, even before Trump was elected, Republican lawmakers were making the first moves towards mandating the death penalty for sexual offenses involving a minor.
- Comment on LEARN YOU PIECE OF SHIT 2 weeks ago:
Yes. All three are in a lot of these stock pictures, which are often variations on a theme or on each other.
Someone once took a lot of them and made a story out of it. The guy ends up dead and the two women end up married, IIRC.
FWIW, every time I’ve seen the most common meme where she’s getting jealous of the guy looking at the other woman my first immediate thought is “…but the brunette’s much hotter!” Maybe it’s just me.
- Comment on Are there communities online where artists share their art for free / donation? 2 weeks ago:
Oh yeah. Thanks!
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
What an odd response
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
They entertained TVs first interracial kiss
This is not true, in several ways.
Firstly, it needs the modifier “American” in there. The UK’s first interracial kiss on TV, for example, was in 1962.
Secondly, if we’re defining “interracial” as specifically between someone Black and someone white, then Nancy Sinatra & Sammy Davis Jr. preceded Star Trek by a year.
Thirdly, perceptions of race change. The studio which made I Love Lucy was extremely hesitant to allow Ball & Arnaz to portray themselves as a married couple, precisely because the fact that Arnaz was Cuban meant that the marriage was “interracial”. The kiss they shared in the first episode - in 1951 - would have been seen at the time as an interracial kiss.
Fourthly, even without a changing definition of race there had been previous interracial kisses on the lips on US television - William Shatner himself had previously twice shared a romantic on-screen kiss with someone of Asian descent, once actually in Star Trek.
None of this is to diminish the importance, impact, or progressiveness of the Uhura/Kirk kiss, but it is often overstated. It doesn’t need to be the first ever interracial kiss on TV to be significant. If it really does have to be the first ever something, then it’s the first ever kiss on the lips on US television between a Black person and a white person.
- Comment on Are there communities online where artists share their art for free / donation? 2 weeks ago:
Itch.oi is like the old flash games sites like Kongregate
- Comment on concert 2 weeks ago:
This is why so many festivals just fill up their lineups with tribute acts. People mostly want to sing and dance to songs they know. If the band is a few years old then chances are the tribute act will be more fun, because they’re mostly fans enjoying pretending to be The Stone Roses or whoever, while most artists who were famous a while back resent having to do the songs they wrote 30 years ago.
Just this summer I was talking to one of the managers at a semi-large festival. They used to always have original artists whose moment had passed, but one year the orgniser was persuaded to go with tributes. His expenditure went down to about 10%, and his takings, reviews, etc, remained the same. It’s been tributes ever since.
- Comment on But why 2 weeks ago:
I’ll just quote what you said:
If it were brought up as a suggestion that didn’t happen, that would be even weirder than it actually happening. As a writer, you don’t go around finding reasons to block your character’s ideas, because that’s a horribly anti-climactic thing to do, teasing your readers for no purpose, but worst of all, you don’t get to see how the action pans out if it does happen, which is the primary thing that makes fiction interesting to begin with.
My characterisation of what you said is s lot closer to reality than yours is. Perhaps that’s not what you intended to say, but it is what you did say.
- Comment on But why 3 weeks ago:
It is a major plot point in the book. The fact that you skipped over it doesn’t mean that it isn’t.
And to claim that the main thing that makes fiction interesting is every character’s expressed desires being istantly granted is a wild position to take. In this particular instance there are any number of ways you can make a child sexual abuse survivor expressing herself in an unhealthy way into a meaningful, cathartic moment without her go through with what her initial instincts suggest.
- Comment on But why 3 weeks ago:
People always praise his characters, but they always come across as flat caricatures to me. And he seems to have maybe 10 of them that he just repeats over and over again.
- Comment on But why 3 weeks ago:
Clive Barker says that the story is him working out his feelings about discovering he’s gay, and his experiences at BDSM nightclubs
- Comment on But why 3 weeks ago:
Oh, trust me, I’ve had the “right, I need you to do x for the plot”, “well, I wouldn’t do that so I’m not going to” conversation with characters I’m writing.
But, let’s give King the benefit of the doubt and say that that’s how and why he came up with the idea…that’s a reason to have Beverly suggest it. Not a reason to have it actually happen.
Also, if “relating to people sexually” was a consistent character trait of hers, I don’t remember it actually coming up in the novel before that point. It’s been a long time since I read it and maybe she does proposition people often and inappropriately, but I remember thinking that the orgy came somewhat out of the blue, and I’d have thought that if it was the natural conclusion of a theme woven carefully through the narrative more people would bring that up as a defence whenever this topic comes up.
- Comment on More than 1,200 games journalists have left the media in the last two years | VGC 3 weeks ago:
Go to Steam page. Scroll to bottom. Filter out negative reviews. Read 5-10. Update filers to only show negative reviews. Read 5-10.
That’s never let me down when it comes to determining whether or not a game is one I’ll enjoy.
- Comment on But why 3 weeks ago:
This is a very well-made point which does make a very good case for her actions fitting with her backstory.
However, a) it really only works as a post-hoc rationalisation for the scene, rather than an explantation for why the book is better with it, and b) speaking about consistency and foreplanning is somewhat undermined by the climax of the book being “…actually, it’s a…giant alien spider!”
- Comment on You never missed anything important 3 weeks ago:
You’re a relatively large mammal. Your body is not designed to be productive all the time. It’s designed to have frequent periods of doing absolutely nothing. You’re also a pack animal whose survival depends on being social with other members of your pack.
So, wasting productive time by conversing nonsense? That’s how we evolved. It’s good for us.
- Comment on Upload Me Into The AI God Hivemind 3 weeks ago:
Or, let’s say that it is a utopia and you somehow get in. Congratulations, you now have to spend an eternity with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg.