Asklemmy

I’ve watched shows, movies, read comics or listened to podcasts where there is a lot of build up around a mystery, only for the end to be lackluster. In these the journey itself was more riveting than where we ended up. What are some instances where the answer lived up to the hype?

As an American, the US participation in the Ukrainian conflict as well as the Palestinian genocide are beyond reproach. Many describe them as proxy wars, but I'm not there yet.

During the Cold War, there was the Afghanistan, Vietnam, South America, Cuba, etc. These were proxy wars because there was a clear adversary on the other side. The Soviet Union.

Now, who is that? Russia? China? Who is "our enemy"? I see it was war is good for business and projection of power.

Am I wrong?

As the title says, I’m looking for some advice about hobbies.

I struggle with depression off and on and recently it’s been quite tough to be motivated, but I tried indoor rock climbing and I’ve been going twice a week for around a month and I love it. I like the problem solving aspect and it being mixed in with physical activity, as I have a sedentary job as a software developer so it’s good to be more active.

This is where the issue is though, I have terrible hands. I have something called Dupytren’s Contracture, which essentially is extra collagen forms around the tendons and severely limits range of movement in the hands (I’ll post pictures of my hands in the comments).

So my question is would you continue this hobby even though it’s wrecking my hands and look at having another fasciotomy to get them less painful.

Or can you suggest any other physical hobbies that would also be engaging mentally to complete.

Perhaps I should have been wiser before getting hooked on this, but I’m devastated that I might not be able to do it long term.

This thread has convinced me to play Outer Wilds.

My picks are:

• Game: Portal 2.
• Book: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• TV show: Bojack Horseman.
• Movie: The Shawshank Redemption.

Pretty straightforward question! I know a lot of people went to Paris for the Olympics this year, and I wondered what you thought about it

Decentralized governments/leaders in small communties, decentralized power sources, decentralized market, currency and so on. On top, every community gets own decentralized social network.

It’s been a few years since I last shaved my beard. If I don’t get irritated skin after shaving should I still use an aftershave? If so, what do you recommend?

For most of my teens I (21) had a broad but distinct vision for what I wanted my 20s to look like. It was everything I liked, I was looking forward to it, and was planning around it. Unfortunately it now seems that a central tenet of that vision will not be possible and I'm gonna have to rethink my 20s to suddenly look radically different (not sure how yet) to what I had come to anticipate. What's more, some of the things outside of my influence that I was sorta expecting to have happened by now (first kiss etc) haven't and I've found myself waiting around for them before I feel prepared to move on (they were part of the vision).

Unfortunately, since I had come to identify myself with and live in expectation of this path for my 20s, even when the central thing became impossible I tried to salvage the rest and make the side things still happen – which, as I have found, takes much more effort without that central thing tying them together. Since I've been planning around it for so long, I've sort of forgotten what alternatives there are so I don't even know what else could be right for me (or how to find that out).

I think what makes it so hard to abandon the future I was expecting is that it gave me a sense of identity. This might also be because I didn't like the life my parents had arranged for me during my teens. I'm afraid that if I try to go with the flow, embrace my actual (unhappy) reality and don't try to correct my course to at least partially replicate the future that was supposed to happen, I would eventually become a different person, which discomforts me. It's also the reason I'm afraid to try new things that could distract me from the (albeit now impossible) trajectory that I have come to identify with.

I guess this really leads me to ask what the bigger mistake that I'm making is. Why do I constantly need this future path/plan of experiences to guide me and give my life a feeling of meaning? How do I learn to let go and embrace whatever I'm served by life and live in the present without caring about where the path leads? I liked the feeling of certainty that having a (retrospective, almost?) vision of the future gave me but it made me a control freak.

TL;DR: I blindly made my life decisions based on a future path that is now long obsolete, but gave me a sense of identity and my life/struggle meaning. How can I let go of it so that I can embrace my actual situation and retain my identity whilst on a path that may end up looking completely different and unfamiliar?

Every now and then I'll get an email from someone higher up in Wikipedia asking for a donation. I don't really mind a tenner but I don't know if it pads the pockets of corporate management or actual contributors. Also, are they really short of money or is this tugging at emotional strings a play at something else? I wish Wikipedia survives but there's a lot of projects I need to donate to and I have a budget.

inb4 "if it's legal it's not a crime"

Life is too short to be indecisive on what you want to do in life. I think that the 30s are really the period in your life where you have to maybe consider deciding where your life is to go. How you want it to be, where you want it to be, and such. Some people figure it out far earlier than others. Some people still are trying to figure it out.

All I'm simply saying is wherever and however you want life to be for you personally, is to not take too long. Try different things, try anything with the time you've been given. Because nothing will hit harder than being in a position in life later down the road. And you're unable to really do many things like you once did, because of the time you've taken too long when being indecisive.

Life is too short to be spending time word-jousting with plain idiots online. The most anyone may get out of me anymore is just a couple of responses. But mainly I will resort to instant-blocking. I'll read just a glance of what's said, write it off, and then block. Because I know some incredibly lonely people out there online, who want arguments to go on for hours and days.

That's not me, not anymore, because that used to be me like 2 years ago. All of the time I've burnt trying to fend off massive waves of stupid illogical people who work overtime to make themselves feel better at your expense while you're the one penalized at the end over it despite you having the moral high ground above it all.

So these days, I don't care what you have to say back to me, I'll say what I want to say and that'll be the end of it. I'll only expand if I think I haven't said enough.

I just don't understand can someone explain it to me because I didn't mean to spam just made posts about things I like

It's one thing that copyright/IP is such a matter of debate in the creative world, but a whole new layer is added onto that when people say that it only matters for a certain amount of time. You may have read all those articles a few months ago, the same ones telling us about how Mickey Mouse (technically Steamboat Willy) is now up for grabs 95 years after his creation.

There are those who say "as long as it's popular it shouldn't be pirated", those who say "as long as the creator is around", those who don't apply a set frame, etc. I've even seen people say they wouldn't dare redistribute paleolithic paintings because it was their spark on the world. What philosophy of statutes of limitation make the most sense to you when it comes to creative work?

Was wondering this in celebration of the fact dolphins have officially been confirmed to have their own translatable proto-language, a longtime speculation we kind of already knew and which fulfills a friend's prophecy. It's common to train animals to perceive and perform art, and/or for them to already have a sense of what it is. Give an elephant a brush and a canvas and they'll paint glyphs of other elephants, chimps can draw avant-garde "masterpieces", and pigeons can even be trained to recognize the difference between good and bad art.

Dolphins surpass all of these animals in intelligence. But there's just one problem, they live underwater. And water tends to destroy most art mediums. Paper canvases shrivel, residue washes and floats away, hammers made for sculpting tend to strike softer, sculpting ice floats, fashion requires sources of fabric you can't get underwater, you get the idea. A dolphin's life is Murphy's Law for an artist. But for an artist, if there's a will, there's a way, and humans are known to challenge what we expect to be ways in which art can be created, such as with crop circles, Nazca lines, shadow art, and soap sculptures made from microwaving soap into molds. What improvised method/means of artform would you coach dolphins to do who want to be artists if you had to do so in some way?

I see this trend lately where a lot of youtubers tend to face and look at multiple cameras while they are explaining stuff.

I don’t know if it adds anything to the experience. Sometimes I even feel dizzy, probably my brain not able to process so many movements while trying to understand them.

Do you find it amusing ?

For a few months now, these bot comments seem to be appearing more and more frequently. Always with a profile picture of a model making innuendos, accompanied by a generic comment praising the video and practically always adding some kind of emoji. Is this some new scam or is it just the current generation of spambots as per usual?

Not that I'm particularly interested in the YouTube comments, but I occasionally check them out and noticed this.

I just moved into a new area, well in area that I used to live in and I remembered how lame it is. Most shops close at like 9:00 or 10:00. No nightlife to speak of, super family friendly and squeaky clean. Picturesque suburbs but I feel like I'm honestly trapped. But then it occurred to me. There might actually be something I can do about it, I mean there must be some reason why this village in particular closes super early and all the surrounding ones have normal times right? It's a smallish town, I must be able to do something, right? Anybody have any idea where I can start? Start to maybe bring some nightlife into this place, maybe some culture that isn't just aimed at upper middle class families with young children? Please let me know if you have any ideas, I've never done something like this before