Source: I was a mod on /r/soccer for a while.

You won’t win this “battle”, no matter what you do. Being a mod is a thankless job, and you’ll piss people off regardless of which side you take. The only thing you can do is be fair and balanced. List your rules out, enforce mostly to the rules, but add common sense, and regularly check in with the community to get feedback.

On the American Dad theory, there is a long-running theory that Roger’s ultimate goal is to replace all of humanity. The start of the show is just him, and then “learning” to put on disguises, but he’s become more and more people over time, to the point where it is hard for almost everyone (except the Smiths, who he trusts) to know it is him.

It isn’t inconsequential, but an interesting theory on whether the finale of American Dad will either be finding out that Roger IS everyone, or if Stan saving Roger actually saved humanity by allowing Roger to see humanity.

I interviewed for a part-time web developer role during the summer of my second year at university. The “employer” wanted the interview at their house. No problem, I guess it’s a small operation and I’d work remotely?

The interview was fine. It was a guy that worked with his wife, and they needed someone to pick up some work over a few weeks. Midway through the interview, the guy’s wife came downstairs - in what I can only describe as the kind of dressing gown you’d see in porn.

She walked over, asked if I was “the guy”. The man said, “oh yeah, he looks good don’t you think?”, to which she responded “yeah, he looks like he’ll do the job nicely”. She then came over and put her hand by the back of my neck, and asked if I wanted to help out with a problem they’d been having.

Being a socially awkward 20 year old CS student, I said something along the lines of “uhh no that’s okay thanks, I’d better get going soon”, and the man escorted me out. I had received an email minutes after to say the job was mine if I wanted it.

I turned the job down, saying that something else had come up. I’m 70% sure that the job was a threesome or some weird cuck thing, and if I didn’t have a girlfriend and wasn’t awkward as fuck I’d probably have gone back and plowed his wife/written some PHP. Either way, that’s my worst interview experience - and probably will be for the rest of my days.

On the other side, one guy I interviewed for a startup was really qualified and we wanted to offer him the role. I thankfully Googled him, and found a Twitter account against his name where he had pics of him balls deep in a blow up doll. We didn’t hire him.

Something I’ve noticed in British media as of late is that OnlyFans makes some serious money - enough so that a creator can essentially use local journalism as an outlet for promoting their page.

I doubt some of the figures, but if you were to dig into them you’d probably see that number after the media have basically told people “look! Lily Allen has OnlyFans!”

Alongside that, funny enough, OnlyFans is probably one of the UK’s biggest tech success stories. They make a lot of money, have only a few employees, and are basically leaders in their field. That’s probably another weighing towards this being a promo piece.

Hajime No Ippo!

It’s a boxing anime based on a manga (that’s still going after decades!) where a school kid is beat up and rescued by a passing boxer, who takes him in to a boxing gym to fix his wounds. It turns out he’s got some solid power from his family background in fishing, so he becomes a boxer and learns what it means to be strong.

If you like DBZ, you’ll probably love this. Alongside this, it’s refreshing in that it’s an anime that praises hard work, rather than being “the chosen one” or being gifted power. What I love about it is that several characters go through huge growth in ways that are truly unexpected.

It’s probably a safe bet that this AI artist was also a NFT artist or procurer a few years ago.

Something similar. Not necessarily the fear of death or a painful death, but the very real possibility that once the light goes off, you disappear for good.

I won’t get into religion or anything like that, but it all feels…very inefficient. IMO, reincarnation always seemed cool, because it’s essentially the reuse of consciousness in another being. I also remember reading a cool story years ago where it turned out that everyone was actually the same person, and in death you reincarnated as the next person, with the ultimate goal of having lived every life to ever live and becoming god. The idea that someone could live for even a very brief moment, and that energy is just gone is just so wasteful that the universe just seems cruel for it to even be a possibility.

Rule under Mufasa was essentially an oligarchy, with oppression everywhere. Unlike the other RACIST lions, Scar would spend time with the hyaenas, providing them food and protection. He skipped the crowning of a new pampered little shit, and after getting shit from his king brother he had had enough - he ended the bloodline.

His first act was to remove oppression, giving equality for all. Then a huge natural disaster happened, absolutely no fault of Scar’s, and life was harsh.

Then, Simba the little prick just fucks off, lives the dream in luxury like the pampered little asshole he is, and then decides “fuck it, this is too nice, let’s bring back the racism”. He comes back, plants doubt through a hate campaign and the hyaenas kill Scar. The drought ends, Simba brings back oppression, and has another little cunt kid.

Scar was a hero. He undid years of ruthless oppression against other species, and got shit for it because the land was left in a poor state and couldn’t handle a downturn in weather.

Scar was the hero in The Lion King.

Maybe you’re not old enough to realise this, but for a long time Wikipedia was seen as being a dangerous site to learn from, because “anyone can edit it”.

Every generation goes through shit like this. Stop pretending that TikTok is special, and let people enjoy what they want to enjoy.

The previous generation probably said the same about MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc.

Let people enjoy what they enjoy. There will always be idiots everywhere, and TikTok emerging won’t suddenly make Americans dumber.

Happy Birthday, just because it’ll be interesting to see what we all choose to do instead of singing that song.

I lick mine for several weeks until I get to the centre.

I imagine you get these questions all the time, but how did you get into stand-up, and how did you get the guts to get up on a stage and try to be funny?

I love the idea of stand-up comedy, but I’ve been to a few open mic nights and it almost always seems like drunk people showing off, people that are hilariously unfunny, or people in the crowd that try to shit on anyone remotely trying to entertain.

In my opinion, country-based immigration paired with needs-based works really well.

Ultimately, many of the best parts of the culture of a place are because of what people brought with them years ago. Some of the best restaurants are because someone in India moved to the UK, and then moved to the US and brought the culture of Curry Mile or Brick Lane with them, or because a community of Greek railroad workers decided to set up bakeries using their known recipes that all the locals love.

The same often goes for business. Look at the rise of Aldi and Lidl, and how cheap produce and great workers rights will suddenly make local supermarkets look in bewilderment at how markets they once dominated are being torn away from them.

IMO, if you have skills to offer, you should be welcome. I’m currently in the process of moving to the US on a high-skilled visa, and it is mad how one country will require thousands in legal fees and 24+ month waits while a country next door will say “Shit, you can teach?! Come join us! If you want to stay permanently that’s fine!”

In-game currency and microtransactions are fine, as long as the app can pay out for the same service/item. If I can buy a sword for $5, I can also sell that sword to the app developer and get $5 back. If I can pay $1 to skip a level, I can redeem $1 for beating said level.

Well, they’re dead, so not much else outside of that.

It goes to show just how effective the brainwashing is, though. So many people were afraid of what is essentially science fiction. If we could inject nanobots into someone to control their mind and body, holy shit we’ve made one of the craziest scientific breakthroughs in a century! They were so afraid they ignored the fact that they were incredibly ill and tried to leave on the assumption that they had been attacked.

The COVID denial was strong in so many people. I remember some stories where people would go to the hospital with extremely low oxygen saturation, be told that they have COVID, and for them to go into a blind panic about getting microchipped or tortured by experimental government treatment, and immediately discharge themselves - only to drop dead pretty much immediately after they left.

Someone I don’t really know all that well, last spoke at school, has an autistic niece. She lost her toy and was distraught, so her aunt put up a post on Facebook to say it was discontinued, and to ask if someone could locate a second hand one somewhere. I’m not really sure why, but I felt bad for her and thought that maybe I’ll use my Google-fu to help.

I did a reverse image lookup, found the original manufacturer, looked up one of the main execs, found their contact details against their personal domain, and asked them if they could help out. They said they’d be happy to help, and I said as a gesture of good will that I’d pay for the new toy - perhaps several so that she’ll always have one if it were to break.

After speaking to the owner, I had paid for several toys for an autistic girl I had never met - probably around £500 worth. The exec went a step further and flew to the UK to give her and her aunt the toys, probably for some good press. I never told the aunt it was me, and I told the exec to keep it between us. They put out a press release where I was referred to as a “mystery hero”, and said that for her they would resume that line of toys, with her receiving a custom version with her name attached. To their credit, he said her aunt and mother kept asking who the person was so they could thank me, but they stayed firm and said that it was up to me to reveal myself.

So, for £500 I made an autistic girl and her family happy, and got a nice photo of the workers with a note that said “thank you”. That money was supposed to go towards car repairs, but I decided that a month of walking and leftovers for lunch to make someone happy was worth it.

One of the two bosses didn’t turn up for work one Friday. On the weekend, we all received a call that he had died.

Monday was horrible. We had new starters that came into an office full of people crying, and people from our HQ joining to set people up with any counselling.

The worst part? We had deadlines to meet, and clients didn’t give a fuck that the person responsible had died. One large client outright said to me on the phone on that first Monday “that’s sad and all, but I don’t really give a fuck, have it done by end of day”. To HQ’s credit, after I had told them they asked me to stop what I was doing (had already delivered the work) and our CEO called them and told them we were to terminate our contract with them. One woman I worked with, a Project Manager, was repeatedly brought to tears by clients checking on work or trying to sort out meetings with a guy that was in a morgue. I was able to power through, up until the day of his funeral when we all went to the pub after and saw his children playing without a care in the world.

Initially, it brought us all closer together, but within three months people started to leave - and by the end of the year the HQ decided to just close the office entirely, firing everyone that was still there.

I hate to say it, looking back, but this gave me without question one of the best answers for behavioural interviews in tech, since I ultimately ended up having to help deliver everything and onboard people in a stressful scenario. Knowing the guy, it’s what he would have wanted.