I’m pretty sure Temu is Chinese.

The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers is not modern, but it is what inspired Lovecraft, and Chambers is a far better writer. It’s several short stories, is pretty accessible, and has some moderate critiques or observations on society that are still relevant.

Important caveats - it’s not all horror. Chambers was mostly a romance author who occasionally did horror and it shows near the end of the collection.

The beginning of the first story is pretty jarring to modern sensibilities, but Chambers was probably not a racist, and it was probably meant to be jarring even for readers of the day. It’s a story where you have to remember the author is not the narrator.

The prequels were better

Well, actually…

Whichever editor let them post “100 thousand” should be spanked one 100 times with the severed hand of whatever asshole wrote it in the first place.

Actual penises would probably be more normal…

Why is Medium conflating trolls and shills?

People who are paid propagandists are shills, not trolls.

Yeah but if they don’t show which is which I ask them to show too.

Almost everyone gets screw turning right, it just weeds out a few people who say the right things in emails.

I did actually make the mistake of asking just “which way do you turn a screw” once and the person had the sense to ask “to tighten or loosen it?”

I’ve just started doing practical interviews. I basically get really young people with little overall experience and I just want to know if they can do common technical tasks.

So one question is to literally have them explain how to tighten a bolt. One person failed.

It’s censeless.

The complaint the photographer is making is that it’s an actual photograph where a small portion is made or changed with AI.

They list expanding the edges of the image to change the aspect ratio, and removing flaws or unwanted objects etc.

Removing flaws and objects at least is a task that predates modern computers - people changed the actual negatives - and tools to do it have improved so much a computer can basically do it all for you.

I think people should just say how they modified the image - AI or not - since airbrushed skin, artificial slimming, and such have been common complaints before AI manipulation, and AI just makes those same problematic things easier.

Are they networked? Mine are somehow connected and the one that beeps doesn’t always seem to be the one that detected the issue.

Even if they did damage anything their message is that anyone getting mad about damaging works of art or heritage sites through direct action should be just as mad about people destroying the actual entire planet indirectly and calling for their immediate imprisonment too.

As annoying as I find them and as much as I want to preserve these things, they’re exactly right that paintings and rocks mean fuckall if we ruin our only home.

Basically Eva spider tanks? Want.

I don’t see a lot of games actually make legs look like they’re reacting to the ground under them so the concept is cool and really makes things feel … grounded. The last I remember is MechWarrior 4 from forever ago.

Isn’t that kind of the point of Donnie Darko? Comparing it to The Count of Monte Cristo which did that for me, the Count seems like an amazing badass as a kid but just kind of an ass as an adult; he literally says so at the end of the story, but you gloss over it as a kid. Bringing that back to Donnie Darko, he comes to the conclusion the world is better off without him.

I’d prefer an empty can of beets.

That is awesome.

Can I also not hold my breath for a spider-tank game?

You don’t need the comma when you write it this way. The comma in June 12, 2024, is there exactly because it’s the wrong order.

It’s basically “I wrote the date. Oops, forgot the year!”

Computers order it correctly in that format because that’s the correct format. In the same way a computer will order any other correctly formatted numbers in the correct order - and incorrectly formatted numbers in the incorrect order - it shouldn’t be surprising that they order correctly formatted dates in the correct order.

Seminal. Heehee