• The development of any software program, including, but not limited to, training a machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) system, is prohibited using the contents and materials on this website.

Random Thoughts....

Bah humbug. Yada yada.
 
Electronic jokes:

IMG_0531.jpeg
 
Has anyone attempted a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle yet? My sister gifted me this one, and since I'm always up for a challenge I'll try to solve it. The problem is that I don't even have a table big enough to lay out every piece of the puzzle to just sort out the corner and edge pieces, let alone puzzling it afterwards...

I think I'll just throw all the non-corner and -edge pieces into the original box so I'll be left with the corner and edge pieces. This way I am at least able to begin puzzling the edge...
 
Considering I began said jigsaw puzzle the day before yesterday pretty late at night and I cycled 50 km yesterday I think my progress is decent. The strategy of building all the edges first paid off, afterwards I looked for pieces with parts of facades and sky to gradually build from the top down. :) I think it'll get harder from now on since it's a drawn picture puzzle instead of a photograph or some geometric figure...

Puzzle.jpg
 
Last edited:
Framing is interesting. Somehow everyone feels like we are living in the dark time of war upon us because Russia and Ukraine are fighting somewhere east of the European borders.
Meanwhile, TV is full of documentaries on how free and careless and hedonistic and optimistic and peaceful the 90s were, and how people were happier and life better back then, and how much good this did for the economy as well...
...while 1992 to 1999 saw basically non-stop massacres, ethnic cleansing, Russian meddling, and fruitless NATO interventions right in the heart of Europe in the Balkans..

...framing...
 
The 90s benefits greatly from this due to the reduced likelihood of MAD due to the fall of the Soviet Union which causes western civilization to, for lack of a better term, relax.

It's still amusing to see it getting the same treatment the 50s used to get as this idyllic time where the US was basically giant chrome barges and everyone was just happy and wealthy and everything was chrome and art deco and cool and the rest of the world (not to mention quite a lot of the US itself) just didn't exist I guess.
 
Yeah, 90s for most was not amazing outside of the US. Cost of living was cheaper, wages were acceptable. We did not have the astronomical cost of education that started creeping up in the 2000s.

What I remember though was Gulf War, Oklahoma City bombings, that tank guy, OJ Trials, TerrI Schaivo, Clinton getting a BJ. Then 9-11 happened and the 20+ year war started. Fuel prices rose, education started going up and then the trope of people joining the military was to get their education paid for, started. Since I was of usual college aged graduation age in 2010-2011 or so, it was already, 4 bedroom family house prices for a 4 year college.

Now everything feels so goddam political no matter what you do, especially if you’re American or living in the country. Do this thing, oh you must republican or Democratic. It’s not something any of us who don’t live in the country can understand. You’d think it wouldn’t matter, but it fucking does. I experienced it myself and it pissed me off. I just want to be me and not thought of as rooting or blue or red team. I hate it so much, I’m close to blowing up at Germans that will consistently lead in with asking me or discussing American politics. Please fuck off.
 
93Flareside said:
I hate it so much, I’m close to blowing up at Germans that will consistently lead in with asking me or discussing American politics. Please fuck off.
Click to expand...
Totally understandable. Especially because over here people like to piss on the US very much, while ignoring our own problems.
 
Not to turn this into the politics thread, but it always bugged me how one sided the American system is. You’re either republican (and thus hillbilly and/or MAGA Trump lover) or democrat (woke communist pronoun shouting LGBTBBQ). There’s no inbetween.

Sad thing is the same is happening in Europe with extreme parties on both sides of the spectrum gaining in popularity.

What’s wrong with being middle of the road?
 
NooDle said:
Not to turn this into the politics thread, but it always bugged me how one sided the American system is. You’re either republican (and thus hillbilly and/or MAGA Trump lover) or democrat (woke communist pronoun shouting LGBTBBQ). There’s no inbetween.

Sad thing is the same is happening in Europe with extreme parties on both sides of the spectrum gaining in popularity.

What’s wrong with being middle of the road?
Click to expand...

It's not good for engagement ;)

Nowadays when online I try to go to places or groups where politics are explicitly banned (I'm down to, like, 2 #gear telegrams I believe). Otherwise it kinda devolves into dogpiling "The Other Side™", shitflinging between people who are absolutely sure they are absolutely correct on everything they believe, or it descends into this sort of malaise where everyone agrees everything sucks and the only discussion is more like bored nodding whenever a new article about whatever it is they agree on.
 
Something popped into my head into my head yesterday, with so many of The Youths complaining about the older generation fucking things up and becoming very greedy as they aged, what are we doing to prevent that from happening again, and are we actually doing something to change it, or are we just complaining? I do what I can and try not to complain about such things, as it gets us nowhere if we sit on our hands, moaning.
 
There's three underlying problems:
  • The defining power or economy over politics: Until the late 1990s, politics defined the limits of economic activity. Then a paradigm shift (call it "Neoliberalism" if you want to) happened and suddenly economists and corporate lobbying define the limits of political activity. This is something that can be solved if pressure on politics/voting patterns change enough.
  • Gerontocracy clinging to power. Schröder, Blair, Clinton, but also the Bushes or Thatcher were in their mid-40s to mid-50s when taking office. Now we have over-80s like Biden and Trump clinging to power. Germany's Scholz and the UK's probable next Prime Minister Keir Starmer also are in their 60s. This of course makes meaningful change harder.
  • Social Media having made politics the most polarizing and awful job in existence, meaning that only complete lunatics even run for power - which shows in the questionable quality of many younger leaders (Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Meloni, Macron). There are a few exceptions who do/did good jobs (Trudeau seems to be doing fine, Sanna Marin was pretty good if you ask me) but they are faw and few.
 
gaasc said:
The 90s benefits greatly from this due to the reduced likelihood of MAD due to the fall of the Soviet Union which causes western civilization to, for lack of a better term, relax.

It's still amusing to see it getting the same treatment the 50s used to get as this idyllic time where the US was basically giant chrome barges and everyone was just happy and wealthy and everything was chrome and art deco and cool and the rest of the world (not to mention quite a lot of the US itself) just didn't exist I guess.
Click to expand...
I feel it's always like this with all decades when it becomes more than 20-ish years ago. The rose-tinted-spectacles-effect comes in and we all forget what and how much things sucked, and we only remember the good bits. This condition is called nostalgia.

It's interesting that you mention the 50s there, as quite a lot of bad things happened then. For the US you still had racial segregation well into the 1950s, until the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of education ruled that unconstitutional in 1954. You had the Korean War in the first half of the decade, polio killed or paralyzed children at the highest rates ever recorded until mass vaccination happened by the middle of the decade.

Also, this shit:

View: https://youtu.be/dYJ5JfrK7KE?si=J6pRzvw9wAaQBm10The US made Atolls in the pacific uninhabitable through atmospheric nuclear testing there as a part of an arms race against the Soviet Union all through the 1950s and even into the first part of the 1960s.

As for us over here, we spent all of the 1950s trying to rebuild our country after the war with a heavy emphasis on industry. We were under a complete one party rule of the Norwegian Labour Party who won majorities in all elections held from 1945 until the mid 1965. Most of our boomers look at this time with a severe case of rose tinted spectacles, as that was a trouble free time for them.
 
Last edited:
BALLS ARE STORED IN THE PEE!

this has been coco's late-night brainworms

congratulations
 
it, too, yearns to scream into the void
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top