It’s weird how much effort you have to put into convincing people that the team who lost had a bad strategy…

I play video games, but my “identity” as a “gamer” is not important enough to me to care about defending the label.

If someone says “gamers are trash,” you either know exactly the type of person they’re talking about, or you are the type of person they’re taking about.

I have no desire to argue “well I’m a gamer and I’m not like those people” because I don’t give a damn about the “sanctity” of such an arbitrary label. Also, not only are there tons of toxic gamers who are guilty of all the -isms, but there are also a lot of gamers who are all-to-eager to minimize the shitty actions of the former group and I don’t want to be associated with them either.

“That’s just how online gaming is” or “You think that’s bad? You should’ve seen call of duty lobbies back in the day” are common refrains from people who may not be hyper-toxic themselves, but they’re completely adjusted to bigotry being the status quo for the hobby and they don’t even see it as a problem to be corrected.

Also, I’m white. Seeing people criticize racism in gamer culture and jumping to the defense of the label as if that’s the problem feels very on brand for the way that white people tend to prioritize things. The bigotry is a much bigger problem than my “right” to call myself a gamer without the extra baggage. It feels a bit like still trying to defend twitter. I play video games, but yes, gamers are trash.

The superiority of homegrown tomatoes is like THE universally agreed upon gardening fact that everyone who’s ever had a garden knows. People go their whole lives thinking they don’t like tomatoes or that they taste bland and then they try a homegrown one and they’re like “Wow, that’s what this is supposed to taste like?”

I kept thinking of Wishbone when watching the Odyssey, and I didn’t realize until the next day that the reason why is that Wishbone was the first time I’d ever heard the story. My original Odysseus was a dog.

I saw a movie last weekend and there was an ad before the film for tiktok. The ad was super “wholesome” and about this dude who I’m sure is legitimately a great guy. He uploads “Dad” lessons on things like tying a tie and whatnot.

I couldn’t help but think that both US political parties were in lock-step just a few years ago that tiktok was a national security threat because it was a vector for foreign propaganda. Now that the American side of tiktok is owned by Larry Ellison, it’s not only no longer a “national security threat,” it’s a wholesome place where you can find trusted information from real people who are doing it just because they care.

It made me wanna puke.

Wherever this thing ends up, it will be begging for the most obvious bit of vandalism ever. One little hole turns it from a “touching tribute” into a real-life kirkpost.

Haha, it’s why I added the “we’re white” detail near the beginning. I knew that the waitress confirming 3 separate times would probably sound weird to anyone who’s not white.

I imagine that, at least for Americans, the reason spice is such a macho thing is because our food isn’t very spicy, so it’s more of a novelty for “sometimes” meals instead of just a standard part of our cooking. Our palettes aren’t used to it, and Americans especially will compete over anything. I definitely don’t want to compete with anyone when it comes to spice because I still want to enjoy my food. My ideal spice level is for the dish to be just a bit of a struggle at the end. If I shed a few tears with the last few bites, that was the right amount of spice for me.

As for the poop memes, depending on the meal, my b-hole can detect spice just as accurately as my mouth, and that is… not fun. If your digestive system doesn’t work that way then I envy you. One sufficiently traumatic “ring of fire” experience is enough to get some people to decide that spicy food is not for them. Personally, I’ll risk it if the food is amazing. That’s a problem for future me.

All the “best” conservative arguments are just repurposed left-wing arguments that someone ran ctrl+f and replaced each identifying term with it’s counterpart.

The infuriating part is that the reason it works is because left-wing arguments are fundamentally structured better and are more compelling. At some point in the past, a lefty made that argument to the right-winger and they could feel that they were losing the argument, so they quietly adopted the aesthetic of the same argument and later deployed it like they came up with it themselves.

It’s why every right-wing argument has to construct a fiction where their enemy already holds all the power and has been in control for decades. Everyone can intuitively feel that they’re being scammed by an unfair system that’s rigged for the benefit of the wealthy. All right-wingers have to do is convince people that the structure of society can’t be blamed on the people with the power to shape it. They just need people to blame someone they’ve already been convinced to hate. Immigrants, minorities, queers, and anyone else who would tell them who their actual enemies are.

One time I was eating at an Indian restaurant that had a 5-star heat scale, and then “Indian hot” which was just another level beyond the scale. I ordered 3 star heat and my buddy ordered “Indian hot.” The waitress confirmed 3 times that was what he wanted (we’re white).

I was impressed that my friend was managing his meal pretty well so I asked if I could try it to compare. It wasn’t any hotter than mine. I’m sure the chef took one look at him and was like “I’m not remaking this dish when that white boy can’t eat what he ordered.” Not like my friend would’ve been a dick about it or demanded another dish, but yeah I doubt he could’ve handled the heat level he asked for. In the end, the food was great and my buddy didn’t feel cheated and didn’t destroy his guts.

I have always believed that video was the “shot across the bow” to get Crowder to shut the fuck up and let the divorce proceed. His wife wanted the divorce to move quickly and quietly, outside the public eye. Then Crowder got loud about it, announced it was happening on his podcast and basically said that he wasn’t going to agree to terminate the marriage.

Next thing that happened was that video getting released. One video, one argument, verbal only, but it still clearly painted him as a piece of shit. In my mind, that video was the wife’s lawyers telling Crowder’s lawyers “We have all of the home security footage. Do you really want to battle this out in public?”

Does anyone really believe that argument was the worst thing they could have released? Listen to how that man spoke to his pregnant wife and tell me you don’t think he ever got physical with her. They only ever released that one video. Crowder shut up about the divorce and that was the last of it.

I have a bad feeling that apple is going to release a pair of smart glasses and all of the social momentum of discouraging wearing these things will be lost overnight.