Robert Silverberg’s “The man in the maze” is a cool science-fiction book based on the Greek play Philoctetes. Iirc it’s a very short story (maybe about one or two hundred pages), I don’t remember the exact length but I recall reading it in one sitting. It is a very character-driver story where the “maze” itself is an allegory about mankind, isolation and disability, but it is very much enjoyable as a casual read as well.

The protagonist (“man in the maze”) is an astronaut who has been somehow cursed to always radiate its emotions in such a way that others, even his family, find repulsive, so he self-exiles to a remote and long-dead planet to live the rest of his life in isolation. But when an alien species makes hostile contact with humans, he is needed again, as his “curse” is the only way to properly communicate with them and maybe convince them that humans are sentient beings and thus their equals.

Is this a meme I’m too Italian to understand?

Do they work, though?

I’m Italian. School explains all there is to know about sex and stuff, so I never needed the “talk” with my parents. I also had a bigger brother that would tell me everything way before the time lol

About drugs, I think I already got everything from TV? I certainly didn’t need my parents explaining to me that drugs are bad.

EDIT: For those curious about how/when SexEd is taught in school in Italy: I had SexEd in my 5th year of elementary school (10yo), 3rd year of middle school (13 yo) and again in high school (I think it was the second year, so 15 yo, and then in my fourth year as well, when I was 17 yo). My parents were required to consent to the school teaching us SexEd only in elementary school; no consent form was required from middle school onwards, it was mandatory.

And I think that drugs were discussed in school as well. I think in middle and high school, around the same time as SexEd.

Hitchcock didn’t make Birdemic

No, but he sure wishes he did.

Oversexualization. Panty shots, ass shots, boob physics, the same old jokes from the ‘80s about a guy “accidentally” groping a woman, guys peeping into a girls’ space, suggestive poses, barely-disguised fetishes (included, but not limited to, harems, incest and pedophilia).

It got to the point where a friend would recommend an anime, I’d watch it, and walk away halfway through the first or second episode because it was just unbearable. Friends would tell me to turn a blind eye, but why the fuck should I put up with sexualizing minors in a show? I’d rather spend my time doing something that doesn’t make me feel sick.

It also attracts the wrong kind of audience. Since the medium is so keen to produce oversexualized content, that’s all people look for and talk about. Any anime discussion thread degenerates into gross memes about “flat is justice”, “twincest is wincest”, people patting each other in the shoulder while calling the other “man of culture” for sharing their kinks, and shit like that. It’s so extenuating that, back when I was interested in the medium, I still actively refrained from interacting with fellow fans because I felt grossed out by them. Fun fact, I had a female classmate back in highschool who was interested in anime, and I thought that I could find common grounds with her, but no, it was the same thing, just reversed (she would only watch anime with sexualised boys).

The medium also forgot what its name stands for. I haven’t seen “animation” in “anime” in years. It’s just still frames and more still frames and whenever there’s an action sequence, the characters will constantly interrupt them to explain or think about the thing that I’m already watching and needs no explanation, or having flashback sequences, because it’s cheaper to animate. The fact that Ghost in the Shell and Akira from thirty years ago had better and more fluid animation than the shit they produce now is just sad.

Never heard of it, but it sounds like it was a great place. Sad to see it fail against established giants of the internet. I would’ve been interested in trying it out before the end.

I think this is a problem that multiple small realities like this (including Lemmy) are facing. There are people interested in them, but they don’t know them, so they can’t join.

Oh boy. Just one?

I guess I’d go with “signing up to a random online forum back in 2012”.

I was a very shy and introverted kid back then, without friends or social life to speak of. I would spend all my time playing videogames and reading books.

That online forum gave me a chance to speak to other people while staying “safe” in my shell. Without realising it, I slowly gained confidence and social skills that helped me make friends both online and irl, some of whom I still speak with to to this day. Thanks to one of the people I knew on that forum, I now have a job that I like.

I wouldn’t recommend online forums nowadays to fight depression/lack of social skills, as the internet has become a cesspool. Online chats are breeding grounds for political extremists. But in my case it definitely helped.

A close second would be having a girl in college confessing to me. I had never really thought about my sexuality back then: it just wasn’t on my mind, like, ever (which should’ve been a red flag, but whatever). She was really nice and wasn’t pushy at all, but I knew that I couldn’t leave her hanging forever, and I had to give her an honest answer in a relatively short time.

Well, long story short, I realized I wasn’t straight. At first I thought I was bi, then gay, but a few years later I understood that I am ace (again, should’ve been obvious by the fact that I literally never thought about sex for the entirety of my teenage years, but I’m dumb).

But seriously, there are so many important moments in one’s life, it’s difficult to choose only one or two. Watching nature documentaries with my brother as a kid turned me into a huge animal lover, to the point that I’m literally unable to kill a fly because it makes me sick. Thanks bro, those are some of my most treasured memories!

Oh don’t worry, they hate foreigners playing soccer as well.

https://www.euronews.com/2019/11/09/racism-in-football-are-italy-s-ultras-the-problem-or-the-solution

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240120-milan-s-match-at-udinese-halted-after-racist-abuse-of-maignan

The brothers Grimm for me. I don’t see many people discussing it online, but I enjoyed it. That scene where the horse eats a kid is still distressing to me years later.

There are no mechanics for that, but my DM so cool that he would’ve allowed it :D

Jokes on you, my Undead Warlock was already dead to begin with.

I used to listen to Rise Against a lot when I was younger. I pivoted to other genres since then, but reading their lyrics again was super nostalgic. Thank you.

Europe is in a very sorry state lately. A lot of far-right parties are gaining ground and/or winning the elections. Italy has elected a far-righr politician, France and Germany are very close to electing one.

I feel like the 2016 US elections have had a profound influence on ours as well. (Not faulting Americans for how the situation evolved, of course; it’s our fault in the first place).

People crying for these Russians, who are in relative safety and who were free to go, are just comical to me.

There is no “relative safety” in war and “free to go” means abandoning their homes and belongings, which is a fucking awful thing to do. Who are you, random armchair commentator, to speak like that?

Where were you when all these Ukrainian cities were shelled and other war crimes happened?

I was crying for them as well, just as I’m crying now, just as I will always cry for people caught in the flames of war, which is one of the worst experiences a person can be asked to live through.

Y’all think that having fucking empathy for civilian lives means rooting for Putin, which is not true. Putin is a dictator, a criminal and an abhorrent human being, and I hope he pays for his crimes. Here, I said it again. But this article is not about Putin, it’s about a woman lamenting that her government lied to the population instead of doing anything to protect them, and now she hasn’t heard from her elderly parents for days.

It’s something that I wouldn’t wish happened to anyone, ever. The fact that they are Russians doesn’t suddenly change the tale into a comedy. Laughing at the expenses of random civilians who happened to live under the autocratic rule of a violent narcissist is not something that I will ever condone. I can root for the Ukranians while also keeping my humanity. But apparently you can switch it on and off at will depending on who you are looking at.

I said nothing about Ukranians’ actions being unjustified, nor do we have any reason yet to think that war crimes are being committed in the area. If this brings them an inch closer to winning the war, I wholly support them.

Still, laughing at people suffering because of war is such an abhorrent behaviour to exhibit, and the fact that people are bending logic to justify it is wild.

You all should learn some empathy.

You are underplaying the struggles of civilians in a war zone just because they happen to live on the wrong side of the border.

Civilians have all the rights to not want war on their country, at their doors, no matter which side of the border they are, and they are allowed to lament the incompetency of a government that hides critical information from them in an attempt to cover up its failures.

The Ukrainians have the right to keep fighting, and I hope they win this war. Putin is a criminal and he must pay for his crimes. This doesn’t mean that civilians caught in the crossfire are being petty.

I really liked GI. No drama, no ignorance, great articles: quality journalism, which is rare today, and even rarer when talking about gaming publications.

I’m not much of a gamer myself now as I was in my youth, but GI was still one of my main connections to the gaming world that allowed me to keep in touch with the hobby.

It’s sad that the talent of all those people is being unceremoniously dumped like this by executives who only care about money. I wish them all the best.

It’s more a figure-eight of life.

Dude, you literally say at the start of your comment that:

nerds used to be a little more “I know oh-so-much more about this media than you ever will” and a little less “I’m eternally uncomfortable about the changes being made to my media.”

You then proceed to call a movie director “selfish” and “fart-sniffing” for telling the story the way he wanted to tell it. You’ve got to admit the irony in all this.

Also, it’s true that big companies are following trends and fostering memes to drive engagement, but I very much doubt that they are willingly antagonizing their own fan bases to drive negative engagement. That sounds like a nightmare that no social media manager would purposely walk into. Nobody is willingly stirring the pot by making people theorize conspiracy theories about a secret leftist agenda. That’s just humanity for you. Some are good people, a lot suck.

The entities that are willfully stirring the pot are social media platforms, who have a lot more to gain by having those people scream at one another in their feeds, because controversial takes can populate comment sections more and faster than mild takes, which drive engagement on those social platforms even further.