See, I am of position that in developing countries British colonialism (or whatever you prefer to call it it) right now seems to push pro-queer rhetoric, at least that was my experience. And I can’t accept opposing statements “Britain pushes homophobia” and “Britain pushes LGBTQ+ people acceptance”; at least if there is something of the former, the latter has larger effect it seems.

Thank you for a well-written response. I think I am just starting from the different position, having experienced more positive effects from English influence than negative ones, in my country at least.

My experience on social media mostly skewed my view towards “anyone can say anything, and it looks like there’s a lot of hateful things people want to say” for Britain or any other democratic country. As a result, I see the anti-queer sentiment, but know from what I see daily in real life it could be much worse.

In my experience, the Christian (well, orthodox for that matter) church is right now very reluctant to accept LGBTQ+ people, with state-wide position being non-tolerant, and individual priests being accepting, if you are lucky. This is wrong. This must be better. The same, I think, can be said about Catholic Church, yet I didn’t have direct experience with that. Still, it’s better (again, for my region) than Muslim-majority regions being in a murderous position about the same group of people. It’s a lousy choice, but still, in a choice between “you are a disgusting sinner” and “you don’t deserve to exist, and your own family will murder you” the latter looks much worse.

Maybe I am not opposing Islam per se, maybe I just think that Islam is inextricably linked with “non-secular form of governance”, and that alone is enough for me to condemn such states more than any form of British influence.

In Russia. I think it’s the perspective that matters but I’d take British colonialism any day over the genocidal shitshow we have here, even putting Ukraine aside and focusing on LGBTQ+ for the sake of the argument. In comparison, the homophobia in the UK/US, while problematic, is relatively tame, e.g., it does not call all the LGBTQ+ people terrorists and extremists as official government rhetoric. And as for pre-2022, number 1 rule for an LGBTQ+ person living in an Islamic regionin Russia would be “don’t you even try to suggest that you are queer if you want to live”.

I kind of get the grievances towards the British colonialism and homophobia of the past (which incidentally gets a lot of whataboutism from some Russians I know: “What about Alan Turing! What about India!”), but for the present the British/American media is THE BEST thing that has happened in Russia to stop vilifying and demonizing LGBTQ+, and I just can’t wrap my head around the reverse situation.

I thought the topic was the hate of LGBTQ+, and right now it’s Islam that’s acting with said hate most of all. British colonialism, and homophobia for that matter, ended (to a larger extent, at least) a while ago, and you can’t actively blame dead people for it (well, you can, but they aren’t going to fix anything, and you won’t solve anything by blaming them), while Islam is remaining anti-LGBTQ+ right in this very moment. Isn’t it more productive to oppose whatever’s present right now?

I guess it’s one of those “on a spectrum” things — for me, an ADHD person, reading before bed works.

It’s just other things mentioned in the post, like movies, games, are stimulating and not recommended before sleep even for neurotypicals, and even they still can’t live without screens before bed, that was my point.

I thought reading is actually often recommended though instead of all those other activities. Knitting too. Relaxing things like that.

It might be a specific “stay alert” trigger for some, but not generally.

Why isn’t Brazil on the list of countries that have their fees waived? Are they on the “rich” side of the spectrum for that to be considered or is there simply no agreement between Brazilian government/publishers?

Yes, I know this is treating a symptom rather than illness itself, but for the sake of today’s science and not the science of tomorrow, at least such an option should be available.

“Real” scientists try to put a spin on it akin to “You can’t properly hypothesise, reason or make predictions about anything based on a sample size of ~200 countries that are totally outside of your control and are very different from each other”. Few more arguments get thrown into a pot.

Doesn’t stop political scientists from mostly accurately describing things, so no harm is done here. The harm lies within pushing that opinion on general public, highlighting the that “proper” scientists don’t see any value in social “sciences”, hence contributing to public ignorance about societal problems.

And with how lousy political views of “rational”, “logical”, “critically thinking” people in STEM sometimes are, it’s awfully ironic.

Speaking as a disgruntled Russian STEM scientist who is horrified how willingly some of his collages ate Putin’s reasons for actions both against Ukraine and within Russia, including against fellow scientists (WTF, where’s professional solidarity?!).

A bilingual person would to a certain extent. I’ve noticed a tendency of English-speaking societies to gradually eliminate the gender from professions, while the languages with grammatical gender, like Russian or German, tend to incorporate previously missing feminine suffixes to the words that previously were male-gendered only.

Though your question (a rhetorical one I guess) regards English only, I suppose, and then yes, the combination is weird.

edit: from what I gather, German is already content with the use of “-in” suffix, so not much change needed, except the push for the use of a “gender gap” or “gender asterisk” (Genderstern) for language to be more inclusive when using plurals [looks extremely clunky to me, but I get the spirit]. In Russian, however, even the suffixes meet significant resistance, both from society and, especially, government, to the point that feminitives are considered “LGBT propaganda”, and since “LGBT is an extremist organisation”, that is extremism apparently. Anyway, “gender gaps” (usually as underscores) are also used in more “left” (for lack of a better label) communities, but are absolutely not accepted and misunderstood be the wider audience.

Both on Android, and iOS, opting out of notifications solves most of the problems. You can do all on your own time without constant nagging, and leave notifications on for the communication channels you really need.

However, what I hate with passion are shopping and delivery apps that suffer with disabled notifications (I don’t know when things arrive, and that would ideally be good to know within seconds), but enabled notifications mean that there would be a lot of spam notifications about ordering and buying more.

This serves well as a statement.

It is, however, delusional to think that at this point anything can become a viable alternative to Wikipedia, unless Wikimedia collapses because of reasons from within.

Trying frantically to remember some recs too but nothing that fits exactly comes to mind except those already mentioned. Probably Cultist Simulator? Though it has frustrating moments where you seem to exhaust all available options and hit the wall without noticing some seemingly random option you have to try. Maybe also Sorcery! series — the more branches you try, the more complete picture of the world you get.

Thanks for recommendations! Outer Wilds is phenomenal, and Obra Dinn was so-o satisfactory to complete.

I’ve seen vending machines with cameras 10 years ago at least. Allegedly to prevent people from shaking and pivoting them so that the goods drop. Which people did. And started doing less once the cameras appeared. However, at that time, the message that “you are being recorded” was printed quite clearly on the front of the vending machine. Not mentioning that seems unlawful to me.

That vile contraption may harm Blåhaj my beloved!

So, podcasts are not ADHD-friendly, it seems. Because for me it’s either full focus or none at all.

There’s a top comment here being kind and welcoming but I’m concerned about overburdening the person with responses after many other people have answered.

Similarly, it’s difficult in discord servers to provide some comment of substance (sometimes a find a right moment, post, and disappear for months lol), and talking without substance feels weird.

Or are they just exacerbating them?

en passo on quaso

I thought you had to die with weapon in hand? Or is it a fictional interpretation? (well, invented as a later interpretation, I mean)