Yeah, that name thing threw me for a loop for a while. The explanation was that >!memories are passed down through generations, so they kept names as well since they are kind of a continuation of the same person!<. I also read the second book, Children of Ruin, and it also plays around with similar names for different reasons. If the trend continues, I expect similar on the other books in the series.

I’ll need to read the other books you mentioned. They sound interesting! I’ve come to enjoy the books I’ve read with people living through long stretches of time. It’s a completely different genre, but Circe by Madeline Miller also deals with this.

Children of Time was an interesting concept that I thought came together well. It’s a science fiction book with a split narrative where one half is about science experiments on a distant planet, and the other is about a colony ship that is searching for a new home. Because of the vastness of space, there are long stretches of time that are covered (I believe the book ultimately takes place over a thousand years). The two narratives overlap at different points.

Dungeon Crawler Carl may have one of the weirdest and fun plots I’ve read in a while. A guy named Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat named Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk are given the opportunity to be on the galaxy’s favorite game show. The show is very similar to an RPG with fighting monsters, level ups, rare items, etc. Also, due to unfortunate timing, Carl is participating in the game without wearing any pants.

Right now, I am reading Neuromancer by William Gibson (physical book) and Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky (e-book), as well as listening to Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (audiobook).

I haven’t gotten far enough into Neuromancer to form an opinion yet, but I’m enjoying the other two books. Children of Ruin is the second book in a series about future humans trying to speed up evolution on distant planets and dealing with the consequences thousands of years later. Alexander Hamilton is a biography on the US founding father from childhood until his death. It has a lot of interesting facts I never knew.

I have a hard time picking just one favorite of anything, but I think my favorite book might be World War Z by Max Brooks or Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer.

World War Z is a novel about a zombie apocalypse. It stands out from other books in the genre by having a frame narrative where a journalist is compiling a bunch of interviews with survivors telling their stories. Each chapter is its own short story with new characters from everywhere on the globe, and you get a lot of different perspectives this way. If you pick up the audiobook, each chapter is voiced by a different person, and there are some famous people lending their voices.

Annihilation is about a mysterious zone that appears in a remote wilderness. Things in the zone begin to act strangely and mutate into otherworldly objects. Over time, a government agency closes down the area and begins sending in expeditions to try to discover its secrets.

Obviously this is my opinion based off observations I’ve made, and not every user or sub in each instance falls under this generalization.

Both instances have a lot of users, and they have ideological differences, so they inevitably butt heads. Depending on who you ask, ML mainly has socialists, communists, or tankies. World seems to be more centrist leaning to the left, but it seems to be accepting of a more varied range of political opinions. Considering a lot of Lemmy users came from Reddit, I think a comparison can be drawn. My opinion is that World users have an ideology similar to most of Reddit and seem more likely to have left Reddit because they took issue with specific Reddit admin policies. On the other hand, ML users would have had an ideology that was more fringe for Reddit, and while they may have had issues with Reddit admins as well, they seem more likely to have left Reddit because their views were not well accepted among Reddit’s general population.

TLDR: No.

Looking at conservative responses online, in the news, and from real people, they don’t seem to care about these emails. I’ve seen explanations that Democrats selectively blacked out names and words to make Trump look bad, that the emails are entirely faked, or that the emails actually are good for Trump because they prove that he was only aware of Epstein’s crimes but didn’t partake in them. This last explanation usually includes talk about how Trump was an undercover operative that brought down Epstein (but he doesn’t want to brag about it for some unknown reason) or that he obviously couldn’t report his suspicions of crime occurring since he didn’t have hard proof (you can definitely report crimes without giving evidence).

I think if an email was released that explicitly said Trump committed crimes, they would say the email was a fake that was planted by Democrats during Biden’s term. If photos or videos of the crimes were released, they would say they are AI generated. If Trump himself said he did it, they would say that it wasn’t actually that bad because of some reason or another. Idk what the specific excuses would be, but I know that a lot of Trump supporters would buy them while simultaneously believing the evidence when it pertains to people who are not Trump. I think there may even be many that know the excuses are lies, but they refuse to turn on Trump because it means they would have to accept that they spent the past decade publicly supporting a bad person.

Don’t get me wrong, there will definitely be conservatives that break from Trump with each new scandal that comes, but what are they actually able to do about it? Trump runs the organizations that would be in charge of investigating him, so it is unlikely that any legal action would happen unless he is impeached. Republicans could call their representatives and say they will vote them out of office if they don’t impeach Trump. The representatives likely will not listen because they know that at this point, Republican voters will never vote for a Democrat.

I think it is possible (but unlikely) that Trump could lose much of his base’s support, but I personally don’t think there will ever be a grand fall from power or punishment for misdeeds. I’d love to be proven wrong, but I think the best we might get is that a decade after Trump has died, some conservatives will feel comfortable enough to say that he may have done some bad things.

There was a misunderstanding with a neighbor earlier that night because he heard my dog yipping and whining and thought she was in pain. He called the cops, they confirmed everything was fine, and told him that my dog just sounds like that.

A little after midnight, the neighbor pounded on my door so hard it shook in its frame and screamed cuss words at me at the top of his lungs. The neighbor moved to the parking lot and was pacing back and forth, running around in small circles, and jumping up and down, all while his eyes were locked on my apartment’s windows. I called the cops. I later learned that the neighbor called the cops a second time at this point saying he definitely heard me beating my dog, despite my apartment being silent since the first incident.

The officer that arrived acted like the neighbor’s behavior wasn’t an issue at all, and he kept cutting me off whenever I tried to give an explanation or evidence that my dog wasn’t hurt. He basically treated me like I was guilty the whole time without listening or checking. Ultimately, he said there was nothing to be done and left.

I found out the neighbor called a third time to say I was hurting my dog at 3 in the morning while my dog and I were asleep, but nobody was dispatched. My apartment management didn’t bother even talking to the neighbor after I told them everything.

deleted by creator

I’m on the Gen Z/Millennial border for reference.

I’ve done a few puffs of cigars at big celebrations with friends/family, but I’ve never smoked a whole cigar or used any other tobacco. Never really cared much for the idea, and the little bit I did try didn’t make me want to do more.

I’ll drink when I’m at a social gathering, but it’s rarely ever enough to get drunk. I don’t like beer, which is frequently the only alcohol offered, so there are quite a few times where I don’t drink anything. I never really drank outside of social situations before, but I’ve recently started to appreciate the taste of good bourbon, so I’ll occasionally pour some at home.

I recently started Blood Meridian. It’s too early to tell if I like it yet, but I like McCarthy’s other works I’ve read. I’m also listening to the audiobook adaption of Alien: Covenant. It’s part of the Audible subscription right now, so I thought I’d give it a try. I like it a bit better than I remember liking the movie. It’s pretty similar, but I feel like it adds a little more nuance to some character actions.

I was really into Rooster Teeth for a few years, including when Ryan was there. I liked Ryan for a while, but I slowly moved away from Rooster Teeth in general as I found more channels that I enjoyed watching. I eventually decided that I was going to give Rooster Teeth another try to see if I wanted to get back into their content, and it was like 2 days later when the news about Ryan and Adam dropped. I peaced out again after that. It seemed like any time I decided to take another look at Rooster Teeth, there was some new controversy.

Ryan Haywood from Rooster Teeth was fired after a number of allegations that he was cheating on his wife with fans. These allegations also included statutory rape and sexual assault. Some evidence was provided to corroborate the allegations. Rooster Teeth removed some videos involving him and publicly distanced themselves from him. He tried to make a comeback on Twitch and got a ton of pushback from it. I believe he ended up getting banned shortly after.

I don’t have a ton of sets, but I absolutely love Rivendell. It is beautiful to look at, has all of the fellowship, and has so many tiny details. Truly one of LEGO’s best sets in my opinion.

I bought the LEGO Rivendell set close to when it came out. It was a fun one to build, and I would do it again. Honestly, I’ll probably need to disassemble and reassemble at least some of it whenever I move.

I check friends’ Snapchat stories from time to time, and Snapchat suggests public stories on the same page. I think Snapchat has the same sort of singular data point on me that “this account is likely a straight man”, because most of what they show me are sports clips, woman influencers in revealing clothing, and right-wing influencers talking about culture war stuff. I never view any of that sort of stuff, but it still shows up any time I try to check my friend’s stories. I guess I view public stories so infrequently that they just give me a default generic man feed.

You are correct. He used a VPN for several US locations in the video. He then compared what content was shown in different regions of the US to see if everyone sees the same thing or if the content is radically different depending on where you are.

I had to log back into an account for an app (I think Taco Bell) that decided to remove passwords entirely without any notice. You typed in your email address, had to open your email account and click a link they sent you, it would open a webpage, which would then have a button to open the app again. If I remember correctly too, it would only work on Chrome, so I had to copy and paste the link since Chrome isn’t my default browser that automatically opens from my mobile email.

Besides that, I remember some website required a special character from an extremely small list and wouldn’t allow two of the same letter back-to-back.

I swear we live in different worlds

I couldn’t agree more. A lot of my family are conservative and talk politics all the time, and whenever any scandal or poor decision is brought up from Trump’s first term, they always downplay it as if it was barely an issue. According to them, just about everything was outside of Trump and the Republican party’s control, taken out of context, or just outright didn’t happen. It doesn’t matter how much evidence you provide, they refuse to accept that someone they voted for may have done something bad.

I’m on mobile, so maybe the photo isn’t loading at high resolution, but I don’t think your points lead me to believe AI generated this.

The finger looks a little odd, but it could just be the way the shadows fell. The garbage can doesn’t look flat against the wall. If you look in the reflection of the mirror, one corner is closer to the wall than the other, which would account for the distortion you mentioned. The blue coat of the back of the chair might just be a coat. The chair legs seem like they should be behind his leg and the trash can. The foot pedal on a plastic trash doesn’t seem like the sturdiest thing and can just bend. The lid seems symmetrical to me personally. There just aren’t enough pixels in the image for me to see if there are buttons or not.

Maybe I’m completely wrong and it is AI, but it seems to me like too many of the fine details match up with reality. It may also be the low resolution that makes things seem more realistic. If it is a fake image, I think it would be more likely that the photo was taken out of context or staged.

I have a “This is Fine” dog Funko Pop on my desk at work. He works well for rubber ducky programming, and he encapsulates the feelings I typically have after dealing with some of my clients.

This isn’t my picture, but it’s a similar setup:

I don’t think the person you are responding to is talking about Trump winning the election like you are. Unless I am misunderstanding, it sounds like they are saying that Republicans will point to this case being dropped as a win and that they were right all along. In other words, they will say that the Democrats were just unfairly trying to prosecute Trump, and dropping the case proves they had no evidence (even though that isn’t why the case was dropped).