Checking in from NZ, sounds familiar to me

Well goddamn it. I was just having this convo on another thread. My main point: don’t spread lies especially when there is SO MUCH real shit to laugh at them for…

Edited from my other comments elsewhere:

JD is a creepy weirdo, but the couch story was made up.

I fucking hate it when people feel the need to make up stuff about someone who already has plenty of real red flags that need attention.

Yes it’s funny, and it’s working in the short term. But any lie, once uncovered, makes it so much easier for even the worst positions to be defended. ‘See, they have to make shit up about us, they have nothing’. Bam, now even all the other factual points are discredited in the eyes of many people who may have been on the fence.

You know the whole ‘fake news’ thing being thrown around a lot by one side in particular? It doesn’t seem like a good idea to give them more examples they can correctly point to when they want to discredit you and anything else you say.

Keep calling them weird, keep having fun with it. It’s fucking great. But use the real shit. There’s so much

The first Headless I encountered in Sekiro. I was seeing enough progress and understanding what was being asked of me just enough to be stubborn as hell and kept trying to fight it head on, without having any knowledge yet of any helpful items that make the fight less rage-enducing.

Outside of Fromsoft, my NG+ encounter with the green swamp monster thing in Lies of P seemed SO much harder than the first time. So I’m not sure if this boss is considered easy or hard, but I didn’t consider it to be very hard going in for a second time and got quite stuck for a while…

You gotta pace yourself, spread that evening beer out evenly across a year of evenings

Hmm. While I can see that and appreciate the inclusiveness of it, it still feels like the wrong choice to me. Maybe times are changing (obviously) and I need to get used to emojis being used in a more serious tone? But I don’t know… Are we there yet?

Holy shit I hadn’t clicked yet and hoped you were joking. I’m sure they mean well but I find that really disturbing, what a weird use of emoji…

Damn, yeah hard to give any benefit of the doubt when it’s so opaque like you say. Very concerning

Not arguing, just want to be able to quote this confidently - can you link a source for this?

I can find some info about Australian-made aviation parts going to other countries as per existing agreements, who use them in aircraft that are then supplied to Israel. Which is absolutely still shit, but I can’t find anything about direct weapon sales to / from Israel

Counterpoint - almost all jobs will have elements of this type of stressful fuckery. Use it as a learning experience, and do your best to navigate the constraints while maintaining professionalism and value to your employer.

It’s a balance; if it’s truly soul destroying then your health and happiness is more important, get out. However, the more you learn how to deal with this, the less likely you are to burn out in other jobs when they get shit like this. Not so that you can just suck it up and grind away for awful bosses, but so that you can give yourself the maximum options for you, and stress less while going through it.

You already seem to have the right mindset about trying to do this right, so the one thing I’ll say is this: everything in writing, straight away. It’s easy to get too relaxed about this when it’s all going smoothly, but then something catches you out and it’s too late (eg already been told not to bring it up again).

This part will feel awkward, but to protect yourself, you need to send your boss an email summarising your conversation and your understanding of the outcome (not updating). Frame it as a “I hear you, and I apologise for my previous insistence” if it helps smooth things over, but just make sure it outlines your previous queries and suggestions and their response to you. It’s the only way to cover your own butt in these situations, and it’s a great habit to get into after every conversation that has decisions or changes etc. Put it in writing as a summary: you can refer back to it later and it let’s the other person know you understood their position / instruction

Yeah, definitely more about the tone and narrative for me, so I’d go with that plan and see it through!

Ahhh I wanted to love it, it’s one of my favourite scifi concepts explored really well, but I wish the big plot points at the end were told in the opposite order. Feel like it would have hit way harder, for me anyway

Came to make the same recommendation. It depends on what aspect of the games you find intimidating. Most people recommending Elden Ring will likely be assuming that you mean mechanical difficulty, but in my case, the openness, variety, stat numbers etc of ER are all intimidating.

Sekiro is more approachable in this regard, the way forward is mostly clear, and the mechanics are clearly communicated, so you’re just left with practicing them until you’re good enough to progress.

I’d say that most people who say Sekiro is one of the hardest fromsoft games probably came from playing souls or Elden Ring and have the extra challenge of unlearning some of the foundations. I hadn’t played any, and though Sekiro is hard as hell sometimes, it clicked with me pretty quickly. Completed 3 endings and most of the optional, hardest content so far

TW: suicide

Similar happened to me about 15 years ago, and it still bothers me. Mine was out of the blue though, nobody had shared anything remotely violent or gory in the team. One guy decides to share a ‘funny’ video with a subject line of ‘always search your detainees’ or something. A guy gets seated in a room by a cop, asks for some water, cop leaves, guy sits for a moment, then pulls out a handgun and shoots himself in the head. I had headphones on and still remember the sound of his last ‘exhale’ after dying. Fucked me up for a while.

In short, don’t stand for this shit. It’s no joke how much it can affect you if you aren’t desensitised already, especially if you aren’t expecting it.

I only get half of the references in it, but it’s enough… Big feels, every time.

It was my first real Sci fi book haha. Definitely a struggle but I was hooked once I started grasping even a sense of what was going on in the conceptory at the beginning.

From there, I understood what I understood, and let the other concepts flow over me in a way. Sometimes they’d click once I was a few chapters deeper and something that was discussed earlier came into effect and I’d go back and re read, other things made more sense when I read the whole thing again years later.

Reading it, I definitely didn’t get the full intended effect that someone with more knowledge would have, but it still managed to stick with me for decades now and absolutely shaped my Sci fi tastes

Not quite what you’re after but I absolutely love Diaspora by Greg Egan.

It’s a different take on the same issues you’re asking about (not at first, but it’s not really a spoiler to say that it explores them whether or not it’s as necessary as your examples state), a take that leans more into different forms of existence rather than supporting our current existence in a different environment (but touches on aspects of that too, kind of). It’s mega-multi-generational while also not being that at all, depending on perspective.

Not quite what you’re asking, but I once fell asleep on a long haul flight listening to a Cinematic Orchestra album with some very comfy headphones.

I woke up to a little filler / ambient track that is mostly silence with a ship’s fog horn blown a few times… The cabin was dark, most people were asleep or quietly watching movies, and my half asleep brain forgot I was wearing headphones. I went from confused to creeping panic about what this horn meant and why no on else was reacting to it until I finally woke up properly

When this is your reaction to being asked for a source, people will immediately conclude that your claims are 100% made up

The universe is, and we are.

Oh hell yes