Youtube has been serving me videos of these gadgets that are like "personal AI assistants" for people who want to carry around an extra device that is just chatGPT with a voice prompt. It's a super weird niche because we already have phones that do the same thing. It just seems like maybe they're just kickstarter scams for gadget nerds who are bricked up over AI.

Anyways, every time I see one of these things, my cursed brain goes immediately to "god, what if I was dating someone and they had just gotten this thing after having preordered the kickstarter 6 months ago. Now they're trying to find every possible excuse to use it in order to justify getting it."

We're at a restaurant and he's like, "what are the best qualities in a carbonara," or whatever.

Please help me escape this mental prison. Why am I doing this to myself?

"This is not an attempt to ban TikTok. It's an attempt to make TikTok better. Tic-Tac-Toe. A winner. A winner."

-- Rep. Pelosi

Edit: this is probably the wrong thing to focus on, but I'm increasingly upset they didn't do the alpha transparency right on their profile pic. It's 2024 ffs. More evidence this is boomer fueled.

No looter items (blue shells, bullet bills, stars, etc), and you're only allowed to shoot shells backwards.

I spent my morning productively: arguing on the internet with people who are defending the pig who drew the gun on Bushnell and ordered him (the downed man who was on fire) to the ground.

Whenever you argue long enough with people who defend the state backed death squads, they always come back to the same thing: "you don't know what it's like out there, you think you wouldn't make the same mistake?"

They always say that shit like noooooo one else has ever experienced emergencies and violence. A ton of people are in jobs where wild stuff happens regularly, and we don't start blastin: EMTs, social workers, anything to do with directly caring for folks in bad situations.

Besides which, there were other people there who DID act normally, and called out the guys drawing guns. It makes me sick that people can shut off any perception or judgement when looking at this stuff.

I don't want to go into detail, but one of the proudest moments of my career is saving a guy on fire. You know what I didn't do? I didn't pull out a gun like a coward. A lot of people will freeze, and that's normal, but pulling a gun is psychotic. But people will act like any other reaction is impossible.

Of course, I don't whip out my history in that context because it wouldn't make a difference and no one would believe it. But like, I guess I'm just venting here because I'm working through my own stuff.

They just always talk like cops are the only people who deal with crises, and that the cop-science answer of "shoot at everything that twitches" is the best answer because they're the only ones with that experience.

I remember watching one of Lunduke's video at some point, not knowing he was a massive transphobe antivax weirdo.

Or really any other company that jerks you around for profit?

Real question.

Every single time I interact with my healthcare, they drag me through some maze of processes where they're just waiting for some minor clerical error so they can deny a claim. Then like, they'll "screw up" and deny a claim through multiple rounds of review, only to approve it 6 months later after sucking away weeks of my life fighting it.

The maze they set up has me going to places multiple times, and getting turned away because X doctor isn't in Y system because it's two separate systems that are not meant to go together, but they were the cheapest options so my insurance will only cover them.

I actually need a better way to cope with this because I'm putting off healthcare because I dread the fight. And whenever I'm fighting it, I'm just picturing myself trying to fight claims when I'm fighting cancer on chemo or something and I just don't know how I'd manage.

How do you all manage? (if you even have healthcare at all)