Khrux

Gal Godot.

I’m very impressed with Lemmy here for not doing what Reddit would have and naming a long list of women. That being said, if I didn’t feel a moral obligation to boycott Gal Godot, she is so talentless that she hasn’t made anyone else’s list because it’s such a low hanging fruit.

She’s very typecast, but she can act. If she actually got a role where she could show strong emotion, I think she could rise to it well. She’s good in Challengers and great in Euphoria.

He’s the only actor I can think of I actively boycott other than Gal Godot. Aside from his violent racism and American nationalism which is all well documented, I just absolutely loathe the type of character he likes to play; the macho snarky asshole who feels like he got kicked out of basic training and makes being a veteran his whole personality.

There’s few archetypes I hate more than the “former soldier who could kill a man, harbouring some deep unnerving instinct”, or the “American in a truck who loves the flag and is just a hard working guy”, and somehow he always plays and glamorises both, despite not actually being either.

This was my hometown’s team. It’s super strange having it put on the map, where basically everybody knows this story, and before then nothing at all.

It’s absolutely just a random investment in a potentially very lucrative industry. 21st century football is massively swayed by who can spend the most money, especially below the very top level where the money becomes too ridiculous. Wrexham had the oldest active ground in the UK and the ground itself is particularly goodnfkr the level of play. Wrexham had dropped from 3rd division to like 5th, near 6th when he bought it (I think). But Wrexham as a city isn’t small, it’s the largest population centre in North Wales, and before it gained city status in 2022, was a larger town than many of the cities near it. All it really needed to do well was investment, where it had the facilities to be tenfold more successful if anybody actually paid for it, it’s the same for probably a dozen other teams across the UK.

But the investment worked of course, and the team has done amazingly well since then. But don’t consider this anything but an investment where two celebrities used their image to aid it’s success.

He is very involved in the branding that results in his typecasting, so I have no pitty for it.

I agree, I think he could have pulled off the same persona written for both Bale and Patterson’s batmen. He’s also played a lot of assholes, and I’m not sure how much that just develops into a feeling that gets under your skin.

He wanted the weird image. He implied he was intending to start some sort of harem cult a few years back, which was really a hippie holiday for millionaire women in a very LA way. He absolutely played up his image as a self obsessed creep looking to be worshipped to sell this experience. I honestly feel everything kinda gross about how Jared Leto feels is marketing, although God knows why, as it must hurt his career.

I agree about Palestine, where there was a huge, disheartening cry from America in October - December 2023, when the general attitude was that this was all a terrorist attack, and not the beginning of a genocide. I am definitely wary of celebrities who made pro Israel statements then, but I feel many felt expected to, or were just grossly misinformed.

He does sort of just suck though. I feel the internet’s perception of his soured so fast in the 2020s, from beloved to loathed, and all he did was keep doing what he always does, just with a tiny amount more selling out, which was enough to snowball the hate.

The internet made him his darling and then turned on him pretty quickly, a similar thing to what most female stars face, such as Jennifer Lawrence hugely had to deal with in the 2010s. Not that I’m fond of the guy, but this his internet attitude stinks and I think has coloured his image since. However:

He’s had a really strange rise to fame. He was in Parks and Rec as the lovable goofball type, then the US army literally put him in Zero Dark Thirty (a film with unbelievable rewriting and military control) to be a recruiting tool, “Even Andy from Parks and Rec can Kill Bin Laden.” Even though he was put on the map by nationalist military propaganda, I don’t blame him for that.

He also attends a church (Zoe Church) which was modelled of an openly homophobic church (Hillsong), and founded by a former pastor of the homophobic church, although this church specifically has no open statement on LGBTQ+ people. This church and it’s pastor are absolutely suspiciously absent on this stance, to the point many assume it’s homophobic and transphobic but in LA and not wanting the backlash, particularly as the pastor has funded a Christian film, The heart of Man, that has an openly homophobic messages.

There was also a controversy with his wife and ex-wife that I think was more of a fuck up than anything else. He parted with his first wife who he’d been with since before his fame, not long after she had a baby that was born premature. He then married again and announced his gratitude for a healthy child. Obviously people didn’t like this, but I don’t think he meant it how it comes across. People also feel he showed disloyalty to his first wife in leaving her once famous, but even if fame did change him, that’s still a forgivable reason for parting ways with someone.

Although I don’t avoid movies with Pratt, I feel he wants to be funny like Robin Williams, and a hero like Harrison Ford, without the charm or wit to come close to either. What we’re left with is a bland, typecast actor who feels he’d abandon any tolerance and compassion in his image if it stopped being in vogue, but maybe we just want to see him fall from grace.

I feel that’s old enough not to be in the Tom Cruise produced issue area. In the 2000s, he was in War of the worlds, Collateral, The Last Samurai and even showed he still had range in Magnolia, Vanilla Sky and even Tropic Thunder. It wasn’t quite the same as the 90s where he was cast in a huge range of great roles, and it definitely became less common over the 00s.

I’d say from 2010 onwards, he’s stared in 0 films that don’t feel warped to be an advert for his specific style of masculinity. Even if one was good, Edge of Tomorrow, it’s still a Tom Cruise movie.

It’s going to suck. There’s no getting away from the fact it’s going to suck. You are going to have a lot of pain ahead, and so is he. You’re going to see people who know you both, and need to choose between which of you they’re seeing, you’ll drift away from some people who he was closer to, and he’ll drift away from people you were closer to. Eventually you’ll date someone else and he will too. You’ll have photos, trinkets and many other things that are bound to him as memories. You likely will never get closure, and just have to let the pain fade.

When I reflect on memories, I often feel that the good ones change how they feel to think about after six weeks; they start to feel that they happened to someone else, a very long time ago. Maybe this is how memories feel when they change from short term to long term, I have no idea. The bad memories take longer, it’s different for each one. You are in mourning, in a manner of speaking, and that’s okay to acknowledge. Give yourself a time to mourn, to leave those items up that make you think of him. Get rid of the photos now, put the digital ones in a folder to be forgotten, change your lock screen, if it’s him, to something you love, a friend, pet, parent etc. Let yourself otherwise have a mourning period and let yourself feel the emotions. Set a date, perhaps a month from today, or a month from the breakup. On this day, clear away those little trinkets you bought together. If they’re valuable or you’ll miss them for another reason, don’t bin them. Don’t go overboard, just because that dress was his favourite, or he bought your favourite book or whatever doesn’t make it his, it’s yours. But some things will only bring pain to dwell on.

A poet, Richard Silken once said “Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.” You are going through something that is nearly a universal pain that every adult faces. Mourning, without closure, about someone who is still out there, who you may see at parties, in the street or with your shared friends. This is a pain we all have experienced, that colours so much of our happy memories with pain and despair. There are people I wish I could hold when they cry who I’ll never speak to again, and there’s people I wish could hold me who I’ll never see too. They may hate me more than the last time I saw them or have forgiven me and wish things went differently, but they definitely have not forgotten me, as I haven’t them.

These memories need to fade into that back part of your mind, and that takes time, and every memory that reignites that pain, perhaps the better word is trauma, will delay it. But eventually those memories together will feel like they’re not wrapped in the same emotion, but the memory of emotion. Until that point comes, it’s okay to let the feelings in, to mourn.

I hope you read every comment, even the worse ones about finding someone else quickly, to rebound. That is a tool to move these memories into a more distant part of your mind faster, but you won’t get to process them. You may never get closure but you’ll get even less if you don’t let the emotions in. Turn to positive distractions, do exciting things, do things with friends and family. Reach out to those friends you’ve seen less because you made so much time for him, they will be happy to have you back. Don’t mask the pain with drugs, weed or alcohol; nothing good comes of that. I had to avoid drinking when I had similar experiences. Seek process therapy, it’s not always too cheap, but this is a terrible pain that deserves professional check in, being young doesn’t make it easier, and most of us can empathize with the pain, and know not much is worse. Let yourself spiral today, this week, this month, but don’t make decisions that close you off from the world. Don’t stop seeing friends and family, do more activities, take up a hobby like the gym that you didn’t find time for when your hobby was time with him. Make your guiding light who you want to be next month, next year. You don’t have to be them now.

In a few months, this pain will be sadness, and nothing more. Let it in now but prepare for that day. Forgive yourself, you’re going to be okay.

Also worth addressing that people are using large language models exactly because the ad driven web was enshitified enough that people clambered for this new option.

There will be at least one LLM that’s good for web searching and doesn’t give in to advertising, and in the meantime, we’ll just need to keep jumping ship whenever one becomes awful, as we did with the old web.

I have a surprisingly forgiving opinion on AI. There are many cases that I think it’s purpose is stupid or defeats the point but it has the potential to cause such a large break to employability and capitalism in general that it has it’s upsides.

People are right to take issue with the fact that it is causing people to lose their jobs or be unemployable by no fault of their own, but underlying that issue is the fact that society shouldn’t function on the employment being necessary (which I am aware is an opinion).

Even in its absurd energy and water usage, this is largely an issue with how we currently get our energy and water. Having our technocrats suddenly more invested in new and better forms of energy, even just for powering AI has the potential to be a path to better clean energy options.

AI is fundamentally a neutral tool, but as much as it may be sued for evil, it may accelerate flawed economic and environmental systems to a breaking point where a redesign of those structures will be required, which could be the greatest opportunity to implement better structures that we’ve had since the industrial revolution.

This is what the US have encouraged Taiwan to do. Taiwan wanted to purchase a few incredibly expensive fighters and ship from the USA, but basically all war simulations just had China target these and secure a fast win. The USA instead encourage Taiwan to take the “porcupine” technique, spreading many small weapons, particularly handheld anti-aircraft type weaponry across the country. The plan is to make invasion too inconvenient. The flip side is that without a reliable way to show a display of strength, anywhere the larger aggressor does pick on (USA to UK China to Taiwan) can focus on one part of the country and reliably cause massive damage there.

The chances of a future where the UK and USA go to war where those military bases aren’t long since gone is nearly impossible.

This is definitely a selfish opinion but people who block adverts or torrent being a small percentage of users can be a good thing.

If they lose even 5% of their userbase to Firefox over this decision, they’ll find a way to make grand modifications to Google search and YouTube in a manner that stops you blocking ads from alternative browsers, and while I’m happy swapping to an alternative search engine, it’ll definitely becometedious to sidestep Google’s gaze.

But if it’s 0.1% of people who swap due to this, and Google already don’t care about the small percentage they lose to Firefox then I would rather sit under the radar and not be cracked down on.

To be fair, modern AI voices sound pretty real. Making it artificial would have been a tell in it’s own right.

Microsoft will definitely have the power to bulldoze all other things named copilot, like Facebook did to meta. I’m still not over AI being a lame word now. I miss the time when it felt sci-fi and not like a corporate buzzword.

The most common cheat is probably gaining money or experience, but there have always been pretty extensive mod menus for GTA Online with tools from invincibility to making your vehicles rainbow, to randomly causing other players to explode or setting hundreds of muggers on them.

In 2015ish, I used to cheat, other than getting rich, all I was interested in doing was making an indestructible chrome bus with smoke trails that I’d drive around picking up players in, to teleport us all to North Yankton and back like a tour guide.

I moved to Bristol, UK around 3 years ago and joined here around 1 year ago. I’ve never been able to tell if the world has just become more pro anarchism / communism or if both Lemmy and Bristol are so strongly intertwined with those mindsets. I’m always amazed by the intense parallels between here and Bristol that I’d never seen between the internet and a physical place before.