A Jackie Brown meme? In my feed!?

I’m here for it

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy was made for pretty much this exact reason. But if that’s too open-ended, here’s a specific technique that’s worked for me:

The Technique

Identify a specific recurring bad thought. Each day keep a running count of each time that thought pops in your head. Do that for a few weeks and compare trends.

You have to keep an accurate count of the thoughts for this to work. I use a daily index card, but you could do a journal or an app or something. Do not try to keep running count in your head.

Example: Every time I think “Nobody will ever enjoy my art” I make a mark on an index card. At the end of the week, I add them up and compare to the previous week.

Why Bother?

Over a long term, you’ll probably notice that your daily count decreases. Over the short term, it may increase for a few days because you’re starting a new technique that specifically looks at the thought.

Keeping a count like this works for negative thoughts, bad habits, and probably a bunch of other behaviours. For instance, if you’re trying to eat better then counting calories has been shown to decrease your over-consumption even if you don’t intend to change your diet. It’s like a magic trick.

Next Steps

If this worked for you, this is an awesome and easy way to help with your mental health. If it doesn’t vibe with you, that’s okay, there’s going to be something else out there you can try.

This technique is also a gateway towards the broader lessons of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. While it’s recommended that you start with a therapist, CBT is largely self-directed - you can begin with little or no cost using online resources. If you’re in distress, especially about recurring thoughts, I strongly encourage you to learn more about it. I believe it has literally saved my life.

A lot of the time, people feel bad and they don’t know why they feel bad. A technique like this helps people learn to be more introspective, and mindful of what’s actually going on in your head.

Wishing you the best - I hope something works for you

I see basically two nefarious reasons for bots to pretend to be people on lemmy. I can’t think of a good reason why you’d want them.

A company shilling it’s product by appearing like a regular person. Bots have already ruined user reviews for products in basically every consumer industry. The best way to discover decent products now is word-of-mouth, so I could see a bot that pretends to be a user so it can show up in recommendation threads, like in Ask Lemmy or Buy It For Life.

The propaganda potential for bot users is tremendous. Kind of like the company shilling its product but on a grander scale. This could be orchestrated by those with economic interests, like promoting car-centric culture or climate change denialism which is of great interest to the oil industry. Or it could be as grand as foreign or domestic influence interfering with elections.

The fediverse isn’t a huge place, but it’s not nothing either. Operating costs are technically lower because you wouldn’t need to use as many bots to infiltrate communities. You could even spin up your own instances so that your own bots don’t get banned. I’m not really sure how you’d go about countering this sort of problem.

You could give the extra food to someone who needs it and wasn’t being a hugely entitled bitch.

The reason would be that the rudely impatient person has to wait in line again. Unfortunately the punishment will be lost on them, and they’ll take it out on the employees that don’t get paid a living wage.

I’ve worked for Loblaw (They own this brand, President’s Choice, and are probably Canada’s largest grocer).

They have this line of product called Always $10. It’s a package of food that’s pretty much devoid of branding except that the $10 price is part of the packaging and not a sticker. Twice a year we get planograms (a merchandising guide / map to make sure all displays across the company are the same) where we have to change all the Always $10 stuff.

It’s always the exact same product, but smaller.

Loblaw’s in the news recently for settling a class-action lawsuit over colluding with other retailers to fix the price of bread. That’s right, a bread cartel. And like, sure, a settlement isn’t an admission of guilt. But a monolith like this doesn’t settle unless they think they can lose, and they wouldn’t think they could lose unless they did a bunch of illegal shit.

Cogito my ergo until I sum

This isn’t that hard of a crisis, just excommunicate the nazis.

Boom, problem solved. Being the pope is easy, next try selling some of your gold and jewels to feed the hungry.

I mean, you got it totally right about how it works, that’s better than most people. I work in retail and you hear some pretty crazy beliefs about how it works.

Totally agree with you about nationalizing. Food is a universal right and we should treat it as such.

This is not a law, it’s a common and voluntary thing by the retailer.

I wish it was a law, that’d be sick and nip this whole surge thing in the bud.

$15 in Quebec now, that’s neat

Well, pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs! Who doesn’t like a pangram?

This is the first I’ve heard about the reaction from BZZZT - which is a shame because I thought it was a cute game. In any industry customer feedback should be taken with as much grace as you can manage. You don’t want to alienate your community even further. Then again, with a solo developer and the sort of people this industry attracts, I’m not surprised to see an emotionally driven response to negative feedback.

I’ve dabbled in game dev, and I have to say that - especially as a solo developer - localization is an intimidating problem. Ignoring the technical concerns, for me the biggest problem is in being assured of the accuracy of the translation. Getting that right is important to me, but I don’t have a very good way of verifying that a language I don’t speak has been accurately translated. I’ve played lots of games with poor English localization and it can be quite jarring, especially when the rest of the game is quite polished.

This is a tough problem for me too, because like, accessibility is super important to me. I want everyone who wants my game to be able to play my game. But at the same time, I’m intimidated into inaction when it comes to localization. It feels paradoxical.

As far as how to localize your games, I like the community-driven approach. Sooner or later, I’ll have to take it on faith that the quality of the translation is good enough for the community, and if the community does the translating, well that makes me feel better about it. I could also see hiring a professional translator, but I’m not really sure how you vet those services, nor do I have the budget to hire them. You’ll definitely see AI grow in this area, but I’m staunchly against its use so it’s a non-starter for me.

A question for you: how do you feel when a game provides no localizations? I understand feeling slighted if other languages are included while your market is excluded, but if the game is only available in the developer’s mother tongue does that bother you too?

Okay, I’ve completely derailed that without addressing what you actually asked.

Your reasons for leaving good and bad reviews resonate with me. I feel the same way about most of them, although not being Chinese I naturally don’t have a particular draw to Chinese culture and localization. Marketers who misrepresent their games and the betrayal aspect definitely motivate me to leave a negative review.

To your point 3: I don’t automatically feel that way about my own country’s games and culture. However, I do thoroughly enjoy a game that feels culturally significant while being authentic to its people. Particularly if those stories feel deeply personal or are an underrepresented culture - especially indigenous peoples or queer stories. I also thoroughly enjoy a game that is satirical or otherwise critical of the establishment.

I’m far more likely to leave a good review than a bad one. Reasons for a bad review:

• The game is no longer playable. Either because of OS incompatibility or required online services are defunct
• The game disrespects my time. This is difficult to quantify exactly, and the things I have gripes with I could be forgiving of depending on implementation. Things like endlessly grinding to upgrade a piece of equipment that works the same but a little better, so you can now endlessly grind to upgrade it again. Constant long loading screens and other breaks in the action. Poor management of inventory/collectibles/maps
• The game grossly misrepresents what it is

If the game is good, it gets a good review. Goodness is entirely subjective. Sometimes I think about value for time/money, sometimes I think about how fun it is, and sometimes it’s about the level of polish on the little details. A game that is a joy to play is ideal, so a game that is accessible and has low friction when interacting with its systems. Bonus points for cozy games.

For me, the best reason to leave a good review is if the game evokes an emotional response. For me this is commonly a heartfelt story, or a plea for activism.

I had an involuntary wellness check once.

During the whole thing I kept thinking, “If I make a play for his gun, he’d have to shoot me, right?”

This in another long line of reasons you shouldn’t send a poorly trained man with a gun to do a wellness check.

Man, fuck the fire department

Last time my neighbours had a fire, the fire department shows up and knocks on my door to tell me that they’re confident they have the blaze contained but to stand by in case we need to evacuate. And I should close my windows just in case.

I look out the window, and what do I see? They helped a bedridden invalid out of the building and they’re giving her first aid for smoke inhalation. My taxpayer dollars going to work to help someone with first aid even though there’s a perfectly good healthcare system that will take care of them in four to six business weeks without crossing departmental lines.

Like can you believe that? Making sure their community is safe and preemptively controlling panic before it catches like wildfire, and helping people who need it to boot.

Courteous, respectful, and they didn’t even shoot my dog. You can believe if the police bothered to show up it would be a whole different scene.

“Grandma didn’t make it”

“…gg”

Mozza sticks (breaded, fried cheese) are frequently seen as a restaurant appetizer

So the idea is that six string cheeses is too much food, but if you dress it up somehow it becomes a first course

As confusing as it might seem, “I trust you as far as I can throw you,” and “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you,” essentially mean the same thing.

One could probably argue that the negation is explicitly saying “I don’t trust you,” while the standard phrase implies a limited amount of trust. But in practice, throwing ability is never considered, and both mean that trust is in short supply.

I also grew up in Canada, I do my spelling freestyle. Half my apps use my system settings so they use the Canadian dictionary, and the other half seems to default to US spelling

Sometimes I’d look up the spelling on a word, and you’d see the charts that show US, UK, and Canadian spelling for words. Usually the Canadian entry would show both other versions as acceptable.

At the end of the day, as long as you’re understood, it doesn’t really matter

Embrace the red squigglies, follow your heart and don’t let your computer tell you what to do

I’m actually guilty of skipping to the end of the post, but it looks like maybe you didn’t make it that far.

The point still stands though: if one does not want to be ejected from the plane, one ought to listen to the directions of the cabin crew.

I’ve heard a rumour that someone in my town is suing the city because they put up one-meter tall concrete dividers for a bike lane, and they drove into one and flipped over their car. Total write-off

Like, you absolute buffoon, you drove into a wall. Where do you think the blame should lie?

If the cabin crew tells you not to put your seat back, then don’t put your seat back

You don’t want to be kicked out mid-flight