Replying to
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io It's getting harder and harder to find a decent browser nowadays. I just started using Vivaldi, so I really hope it doesn't turn out to be made by Nazis.
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sentientsponge
@sentientsponge@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Professional metrics analyst, tech and games journalist, fiction writer in WV. Into words, tech, 3D printing, food, plants, cooking, toys of various sorts. ADHD, parenting, mental health, and other related thoughts. He/him.
140 Followers
563 Following
38 Posts
Joined October 28, 2022
Replying to
@petrillic@hachyderm.io Yea, I was thinking about him a bit lately too. He's one of the few whose passing has lingered with me. Not long ago, I posted this passage from one of the Hitchhikers books that felt particularly spot on about insurance company CEOs.
Replying to
@skinnylatte As a mostly Italian-American, I was raised Catholic, although we weren't too devout about it, but it wasn't until around 2001 or so when I had to pivot my life from being a freelance writer to getting a day job in IT and had to work around these kinds of people that I realized I was an atheist, because their views are so toxic, vehement, and just utter nonsense that I knew whatever they believed was garbage. They're so very awful and dangerous.
Replying to
@gamingonlinux Goddammit. I despise AI, but now you've gone and found that one use case that makes sense to me. This is how the machines win.
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@unlofl@mstdn.social I inflict a similar bit (but with the dog) on my children and they never know wtf is wrong with their old man or why I'm talking about terrible things happening to little Timmy.
Replying to
@screwturn I hadn't heard of most of this, but I think the key factor to this is that the "men" spewing this kind of garbage aren't after relationships, just quantity sex to make themselves feel better about their fragile egos and bizarro sense of toxic masculinity. It sounds exhausting, honestly, but as you mentioned also expresses a worldview where women are little more than fuckable appliances. These guys must be garbage lays.
Replying to on tech.lgbt
@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt Same. Fuckin' clover.
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@lashman@mastodon.social Oh good, because what Blender really needs is the addition of LLM slop. Blargh.
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@Impossible_PhD From that height, it looks really nice there.
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@annaleen@wandering.shop Awesome news! I wouldn't normally ask this in public spaces, but are you folks looking for writers (I've covered gaming, movies, tech, geek things since the 90s for magazines, web, TV)?
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@evacide Can't speak for anyone else, but after years of that I've found learning to say no more and more vital.
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@lashman@mastodon.social I just can't imagine Anthropic or any other AI company doing anything that doesn't benefit them, so I'm immediately suspicious.
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@screwturn That's another point that should have immediately occurred to me (yet didn't) is that these people shilling this crap are mostly just con artists who don't really care what the subject matter is just as long as they can sell it. I think I hate completely self-serving amoral people the most, and influencer culture is just rife with them, as our politics in the US.
Replying to
@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net I wish more tech would do this. Actually, I'd like legislation requiring it. There are so many devices that went under in the "smart" era, leaving their owners with expensive paperweights. I'd especially love to see Logitech's Harmony remote system get opened up like this, since I still use mine.
Replying to on mastodon.social
@jessuvaleria@mastodon.social I also find console gaming (and movie watching) often suck for me for exactly the same reason.
Replying to
@AimeeMaroux @katemorley I haven't seen many stories about him, so that's a totally new and interesting detail for me. I'd like to think he had some good fortune in relationships, since he strikes me as one of the few not completely awful gods.
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@AimeeMaroux @katemorley Also, I'd imagine they were a lot nicer to him than his wife. Although, the main thing I remember from the Illiad was the seigers (seige-ists?) throwing a baby off the top of the wall, because gawd.
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@stux I'm still pissed off this show got cancelled. It was so damn good.
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@screwturn It took me a while to learn a lot of these things (certainly into my 40s), because I'm a slow learner I guess. But I find not speaking and letting people talk especially nice. People feel listened to and I mostly avoided having to really socialize, which I'm not fond of. That said, I really do love sex and would much rather do that than wind surf and stuff. But hobbies are important, whatever they are.
Replying to
@evacide@hachyderm.io Huh. Despite my many years of depression/burnout/anxiety/government IT work, I've weirdly never had the urge to make myself feel better by selling secrets to the damn Russians (or anyone else). I keep my self-destructive tendencies separate from my professional life like a grown-up, thankyouverymuch.
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@mikemathia@ioc.exchange Hey, I understood that reference!
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@Ask_aubry@mas.to Having to lead anyone sounds exhausting. This is just some asshole who wants to feel dominate, but is just some sad ass misogynist who almost certainly needs someone to lead him around so he doesn't fuck up quite as much.
Replying to
@Gargron@mastodon.social I had to look that up and now sort of regret doing so.
Now that I'm mostly stuck in a chair while my leg heals, my cheap bastardness is hitting me over the head since I didn't shell out for the Pro Controller 2 for my Switch 2. I'm happy with the original pad (and $90 is too damn much for the new one), but damn Nintendo for not letting it turn the damn console on.
It was a garbage move on their part and really damn annoying right now.
My ADHD absolutely hates the fact that I now have to stay still and in a chair for long periods of time thanks to the broken leg thing. But I at least can work from home for this week, which is quite a thing where I work. In other news, HBO's show, Rooster, is just terrific.
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@randahl I bet he was pretty damn comfortable that day. Pants suck.
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@ruari@velocipederider.com @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net Good to know! I like it so far.
Why doesn't every console let you categorize all your games? Like I want all fighting games in fighting tab and all horror in another just when I feel like browsing one genre. They all kinda suck about organization when you have a large library. #videogames
I'm used to something hurting fairly regularly on my body, like random aches and pains and the bevy of scratches, cuts, and bruises I tend to collect doing yardwork and whathaveyou, but immobilizing pain and injury is very new to me, aside from a couple times I put my back out. Until today, I've never broken a bone (aside from the occasional pinkie toe, which is an inconvenience), and as it turns out I hate not being able to move freely. It really makes my mind wander to anxious places.
Replying to
@argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net There were so many kickstarters and whatnot trying to survive that it's hard to keep any track. I used to cover things like "smart" thermostats and doorbells and mobile tech as a tech journalist, so most I saw were pretty single-purpose. I'd say almost every company I knew that wasn't already a giant either failed outright or got bought up (and then usually got discontinued). I'm sure there are notable exceptions, but I can't think of them at the moment.
Laying in bed doomscrolling and browsing weird cheap shit on sketchy Chinese stores when I should be and would love to be asleep is my weird weekend morning custom. Everyone does this, right?
Replying to
@Didthat1957 @screwturn not treating other people like shit isn't about getting acceptance or laid, although it certainly leads to that. It's about not being a shit heel taint stain of a human being like, say, you. Now fuck off and let the grown ups talk.
Got a cast put on my leg this morning and told I can't do much of anything for the next 4-5 weeks, but at least I don't need surgery. Not sure how this will work with my day job. My daily commute is about two hours of driving total to a place that can do work from home, but doesn't like to.
Fell badly today while walking the dog and managed to break my fibula, a smaller bone in my ankle/foot(?). I cannot overstate how much I don't enjoy this situation. It's going to screw up all my gardening plans for the next two months probably and the thought of how limited my ability to move flexibly is is causing much anxiety.
Replying to
@donni@mastodon.social It's awful, isn't it? All you weird old people who are somehow my age.
Day 2 of the broken ankle experience. Slept like shit in the recliner, the dog is afraid of the crutches, and pain is pervasive. On the bright side, everybody in the house gets the joy of learning to do all things I just normally do puttering about the house taking care of shit.