There are definitely cultural differences, but for its size, the US is really homogeneous. As an example, Tom Scott’s video on “jingle bells, batman smells” shows way more regional variation in the UK compared to the US, despite being smaller than some states.

I get that, but this wasn’t really a “look at the opportunities I’ve missed”, it was more of “huh, my life could have been completely different by now”. I like my job, I like my social life, and I have an amazing fiance that I’m marrying in less than 2 months. I don’t know what would be on my other paths, but I’m glad I chose this one.

There are some I’m glad i didn’t take. I started a degree in computer science in 2020, and I had plans to focus on machine learning research. If I hadn’t dropped it at the end of that year, I’d likely have finished my degree right at the start of the chat gpt shitshow.

That’s an upgrade compared to most of the ai products

Go ahead. Also feel free to add “automated incompetence” to the list as well

“Artificial ineptitude”

He’s low on the list for sure

Given Americans, it wouldn’t surprise me

Using Field’s disease there is a huge false equivalence, for two main reasons.

A: you can’t just choose not to have Field’s, but a billionaire is capable of donating their wealth to charity or something, and no longer being a billionaire.

B: the existence of people with Field’s has little to no impact on the average person outside that group, but the existence of billionaires massively changes how much money everyone else has

This is a terrible analogy, because it insanely understates the importance of someone like uncle Ben, but think of him like one of your legs.

You’ve never known life without your legs. No matter what, you have always been able to count on the fact that tomorrow you will be able to walk. Sure, some days your legs hurt, and they clearly don’t want to do any walking, but they will if you need them to. Now imagine that you did something stupid that resulted in you completely shattering all the bones in one of your legs. The only option is to amputate that leg. You wake up after the surgery, missing a leg. Suddenly, that leg that you’ve never known life without is not there. You want to get up to take a piss, but you can’t because you’re missing a leg. You want to go over to get a drink from the tap over there, but you can’t because you’re missing a leg. The remote for the TV in the room is over there, but you can’t get it because you’re missing a leg. Almost every aspect of your life changes after that one surgery, and you know this is all because of your own actions.

That gives a glimpse at how much Peter Parker’s life gets fucked up when Ben dies. Uncle Ben was one of the few constant things in Peter’s rocky life. Now he’s gone. All because Peter chose not to take action. I don’t blame Peter for wanting revenge, then taking the memory of Ben and using it as motivation to do better.

As I said, terrible analogy because a person is way more than a leg.

If we’re continuing this analogy, did python or js take more drugs?

I think you can do a peaceful protest and still have it be effective, as long as it’s disruptive. Strikes are a good example. Rich people care about a protest as long as you can threaten their bottom line

All of Shakespeare

I’d actually expect it to be that way more often than not. If you’re poor you can’t spend recklessly, and if you have a big enough income there’s much less reason to budget much.

In most cases, yes. But it is better for carrying dirty stuff, and the canopy can be taken off of you need to carry something huge.

Still worse for most uses, plus utes and SUVs are way too big to be practical most of the time.

I’m not gonna bother with saying that the other losses that you’re discounting can be just as tragic as losing a romantic partner. Everyone else here has said it probably better than I could.

What I’ll bring up is that not only are there more kinds of revenge motivation than the loss of someone close to you, there are more motivations than just revenge. For other kinds of revenge, what about wounded honour? A hunter who’s prey keeps escaping them might feel the need to finally end that hunt before they can look themselves in the eye. That’s its own form of revenge arc, and it can make just as powerful a story as avenging the loss of a loved one. And for non revenge motivations, there’s far too many to list, but here’s a start

• duty
• repaying a debt to the world
• self improvement
• survival (usually more of a side character motive compared to a hero protagonist, but still good)
• seeking admiration (from people in general or from a few important people)

There was a guy who tried something similar. He got the custom number plate “null”, hoping the database would record any entries of his plate as null not "null" so it would not go back to him. Ended up doing the opposite, and he got all the tickets from whenever the cop didn’t record the plate.

AH is better. It’s all artificial hype, there’s nothing intelligent about it

I’ve got a reason for you: it’s profitable for there to be some scarcity.

What about an inverse centaur? Is it just a horse minotaur, or is the human head replaced by the front half of a horse?

To make it even worse