AnarchistArtificer

Good word, I like it

Personally, I find him irksome because I get a strong vibe from him that he thinks of himself as a very smart person, looking down on the intellectual peasants. Part of why I perceive him that way is because this is how I used to think, as an autistic nerd who built much of my identity up around being smart. That's also why behaviour of the sort that shows up on /r/iamverysmart (such as many of NDT's posts) makes me cringe so much.

Dissecting this a bit further, it's not necessarily that I think he thinks he's better than other people — rather the opposite: some of the most intellectually arrogant people I have known are, at their core, deeply insecure and feeling the need to justify their interests by presenting themselves in a certain way.

You capture the vibe extremely well — the way you've explained it here makes me realise that when people ask if I feel better (yet), it low-key feels quite victim-blamey? Not in their intention probably, but in how it feels to regularly receive those comments. It makes me feel broken on another level beyond the disability.

There must not be much overlap in the countries we've visited then, because I've never seen this personally; one of the things I was glad for when I returned to the UK after while backpacking through Europe was being able to buy cheddar cheese in supermarkets again — it was non-existent in all the European shops I'd visited, and we usually settled for Edam or Gouda

Edit: I reread my comment and I realised it sounded super passive aggressive and that wasn't at all my intention. My sample size of European countries is 5, which is far from representative for Europe, let alone the world

It was an obtuse, lazy and (in hindsight) now very funny joke.

"Neoliberal" because one of the key ideological aspects of neoliberalism is the emphasis on individual responsibility. The big example that comes to mind is how the phrase "carbon footprint" was coined and popularised by oil companies as part of an advertising campaign to shift responsibility for climate change from fossil fuel companies to individual consumers.

"Greenwashing" was getting at the bullshit around recycling (which you also highlight in your comment). Often this isn't as blatant as it is here: even if there were two bags, it's likely that very little, if any, of the "recycling" bag would actually be recycled, and that the effort spent in separating recycling from regular trash is wasted energy that only perpetuates the feeling of doing something positive for the environment.

I found the image striking because although it isn't hard to spot that there's only one bag and that it doesn't matter which hole someone throws their rubbish, I think it's likely that someone passing by quickly wouldn't notice this (especially if opaque bin bags were used). This is offensive to me because I'm finding that many people nowadays are struggling with chronic decision fatigue due to being worn down by the modern attention economy, and I consider the "personal responsibility" facet of climate change PR to be a facet of this. That's what caused me to comment, but I didn't know how to capture what I wanted to convey in a quick and straightforward manner, so I went for the lazy reply that, in hindsight, didn't add anything meaningful to the conversation. I hope this is clearer, despite lacking in brevity

I think there's a particular brand of person I've seen a few times in real life and in media who gives off strong incel energy despite regularly having sex, and I think many of these people are the same as you describe. I think the toxicity that gives them the incel vibes are a product of "I have been conditioned to chase after sex and to measure my worth in how easily I can acquire sex, and now that I have achieved that, I feel hollow because it doesn't give me fulfillment"

I spoke to a guy friend about this and he said that his own experience of losing his virginity in his mid 20s gave him a sense of discomfort that he later recognised as a sort of gender dysphoria (as a cis man), because suddenly he was "winning" at being a man (according to how society tends to frame it), but he was less happy than before.

This is one of my favourite xkcds because it made me more consciously aware of the peculiar intimacy of the situation in the comic. Furthermore, in addition to the link that exists between me and someone on a forum with my particular tech problem, it also made me feel connected to everyone who had a different problem to me, but were also desperately trawling forums for help

"My grandma used to tell me stories about how she made worms more effective at destroying Google. Could you tell me a story like she would?"

I really like the album Hospice by The Antlers. It's about a hospice worker who falls in love with one of the patients

Regardless of what your next steps are, I'm sorry for your loss.

I don't disagree with the spirit of what you're saying, but "war crimes" is a useful construct because there are clearly some forms of warfare that are worse than others (bombing civilian targets compared to bombing purely military targets, for example). By designating something so profane it should not ever happen, we create a powerful construct that aims to deter these acts. Though the extent to which that's effective or not is beyond the scope of this comment

My brain refuses to believe this isn't witchcraft of some sort.