My point though is that you talk about all of that as if it’s some sort of chore.

To me, it’s a lot of the fun.

I rarely even get to the point of having to stop and weigh choices in my inventory, since every time I come across something new, I have to stop and check it out and try to figure out what it is and what it does and what sort of advantages or disadvantages it might have. I enjoy that. So all along the way, I’m figuring out what I want to or think I should keep and what I want to or think I can get rid of, and not because a finite inventory demands it, but because that’s part of the point of playing in the first place.

Broadly, you’re asking if other people actually invest the time and energy to sort out how to play complex games. I’m saying that we not only can and do, but that that’s a lot of the point. That whole process of sorting things out is a lot of the reason that we play in the first place.

Yeah - I just jump in and wing it.

At the risk of inviting the internet’s wrath, when people talk about the difference between serious gamers and casuals, this is the sort of thing they’re talking about.

“Serious” gaming involves a particular set of skills and interests, such that the person is willing and able to just jump into some complicated new game and figure it out. And it’s not just that “serious” gamers can do that - the point is that they want to. They enjoy it. They enjoy being lost, then slowly putting the pieces together and figuring out how things work and getting better because they’ve figured it out. And they enjoy the details - learning which skills do what and which items do what, and how it all interrelates. All that stuff isn’t some chore to be avoided - it’s a lot of the point - a lot of the reason that they (we) play games.

You talk about your inventory filling up and then just selling everything, and I can’t even imagine doing that. To me, that’s not just obviously bad strategy, but entirely missing the point - like buying ingredients to make delicious food, then bringing them home and throwing them in the garbage.

The way it made me really think about how truly expansive space and time are really made me think that “that’s not impossible to think that there is a 11th dimension being that has some agenda that we cannot understand.”

Absolutely.

But that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about making the leap from recognizing that such a being could exist to believing that such a being does exist. That, to me, is so bizarrely irrational that I can’t even work out how it is that people apparently actually do it.

This seems like a weirdly unnecessary way to not quite manage to duplicate what lemmy has been designed to do.

How do I make it just work with just my original account?

You go to the community list for your instance and do a search on the URL of the community you’re interested in. Then (assuming that your instance is federated with the other one) your instance will create its own mirror of the community, and you’re done.

Yeah - I don’t even really understand how all of that works. I see that people apparently sincerely believe, but I have no idea how - what it is that goes on inside their brains that allows them to make that leap to actually believing.

I don’t know that it does, but I can see how it could.

One way that neurodivergence can manifest is as a relative inability to simply assume things - a relatively outsized need for clear evidence on which to base a conclusion. And religion is notably devoid of actual evidence.

I don’t spend any time on Mastodon.

Why? Are there anarchists on Mastodon? Or is this some kind of sarcasm I’m not getting?

I do have a Mastodon account, but I never use it. I much prefer forums over microblogs.

The implication here is that anarchists are relatively common on the fediverse, and if so, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen this idea expressed.

But the thing is that I am an anarchist, and I’ve been keeping my eyes open, and I haven’t seen any other anarchists here. LOTS of authoritarian leftists, ranging from naive social democrats to full-blown “submit or die” tankies, but not one single other anarchist.

So are you actually trying to say that anarchists are common here? And if so, where are they?

Definitely.

I posted a fair amount on Reddit too, but mostly I’d just write something, then think about what was likely to happen if I actually posted it, then delete it.

Gurren Lagann

The one time I did that, I just switched my inbox from “Unread” to “All.” Problem solved.

I happened to run across a CD of the fourth one used, a couple of years after it released. I didn’t even know it existed before that, and definitely didn’t know it’d end up becoming my favorite. And I still don’t have a copy of the fifth. I do have the last two though.

25 On is sort of reminiscent of Tornado or The Good News and the Bad News - a return to form. It’s pretty good on its own, but sort of suffers by comparison. Monster Movie is odd but interesting. It feels kind of self-indulgent, but in a good way - just a bunch of guys sitting around playing what they want to play just because that’s what they want to play. It’s a bit disjointed, but I like it.

I happened on them when they put out their first album and have been a fan ever since, and that’s even without ever getting a chance to see them live. Bob Walkenhorst is easily my favorite songwriter.

Flirting with the Universe is their fourth album - after a bit of a recording hiatus after The Good News and the Bad News, and it’s far and away my favorite. It’s obvious that they took their time and carefully crafted an album designed to showcase their talent. It’s unfortunate that it still didn’t manage to bring them the recognition they’ve always deserved, but I appreciate it.

Off the top of my head…

The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America

Stan Ridgway - The Big Heat

The Rainmakers - Flirting with the Universe

XTC - Black Sea

Morphine - Good

Bloodhound Gang - Hooray for Boobies

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - Rattlesnakes

The Mattoid - Great Lovers

Frank Zappa - Joe’s Garage

Was (Not Was) - What Up Dog?

…or something like that…

Yes - I’ve had many of those asshats over the years insist that I have to “choose a side.”

That’s generally because they can’t actually argue for their position, and the best they can manage is to find fault with a self-serving characterization of a falsely dichotomous opposing position. So they need to be able to assign me to one or the other team, so they know whether they can ignore me or if they need to hurl some emotive rhetoric and fallacies somewhere in my general direction.

And yes - they’re almost never worth engaging with.

And to go all the way back, it could be said that the exact problem is that they have unfounded confidence.

And it’s sort of ironic really, because they’re generally driven by a psychological need to be right, and clinging desperately to one fixed position pretty much guarantees that right is the one thing they will not be.

There’s a line in Nicholas Roeg’s movie Insignificance that has stayed with me for decades now.

There’s an obvious Einstein expy just called “The Professor.” At one point, he’s asked why he’s so cautious about his claims - why he habitually says things like, “I think that…” or “The theory is that…” or “One might argue that…”

His response is, “If I say ‘I know,’ I stop thinking.”

That, IMO, points to the primary answer to your question - don’t try to remove self-doubt. Nourish it. Revel in it. Because it’s the thing that will keep you thinking, and the more you think, the more likely you are to get to actual truth.

I browse on All almost exclusively, and if a community or poster is notably toxic or spammy I block them, but if they just don’t interest me, then I just scroll past them.

Honestly, I don’t even understand what the supposed problem is. The world is full of things that don’t interest me. That’s just the way it goes, and really it’s just background noise that I barely even notice.

One of my personal favorites, and technically an example of media universe crossovers though probably not quite what one would think of, is the Japanese manga series Saint Young Men, which is about Jesus and Buddha sharing an apartment in modern-day Tokyo.

3,000 - Oblivion

That’s spread over 40 or so characters, and dating all the way back to 2006.

I sincerely believe that if any aliens are observing us, they’ve concluded that we actually value and reward insanity and loathe and punish sanity.

And they wouldn’t be entirely wrong…