It’s worthwhile you mention Sarajevo, and in reference to that I will post this tidbit posted by a MetaFilter user in 2009 regarding their experience in the siege of Sarajevo. I have it bookmarked and post it from time to time where it seems appropriate. The reality is though, you’re correct, Americans by and large don’t know what they’re asking for.

Well, unlike the majority of you (I assume), I actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions.

Of those who couldn’t leave my city, Sarajevo:

Some people (very few) were prepared for what they thought would be the “long haul” - this tended to be a couple of months. These people were widely seen as lunatics and dangerously pessimistic ones at that.

Most people were not at all prepared. This included my family. Many of those - like my family - considered the idea of “preparation” to be an affront to the decency we felt most people possessed. Were we wrong? Well, I don’t know. We suffered greatly; my parents were killed. But speaking only for myself, I never felt I cheapened my soul by betting on calamity. Today, that still feels like it’s worth something.

But here’s the main point: “Preparing” for the disaster really didn’t do anyone much good. Those who “prepared” ate a little better for a while. They stayed warmer for a few extra days. They enjoyed the radio for a while longer (via batteries.) But in the end, they ended up hungry, cold and bored too, just like the rest of us. Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces. The worst parts of war were psychological - the fear, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, paranoia, bad dreams. Respite from those things came with sharing food with a neighbor, finding a piece of clothing that would fit someone you knew, commiserating with others in your position, figuring out how to make make-up from brick or french fries from wheat paste and spreading this newly-acquired war knowledge around the mahala.

We knew who had extra food and supplies. For the most part, they weren’t attacked or hassled or bothered. Contrary to what these survivalists say, those in dire times generally hold on to their personal sense of pride even more than they do in normal times. I’d take a bite of a friend’s salad without bothering to ask in normal times. I’d never have done that in wartime, no matter how hungry I was.

Within the domain of those trapped in the city, civility greatly increased.

You often hear how Holocaust survivors felt guilt at surviving. Well, during war, that was a feeling everyone was aware of - people started dying right away (my parents were killed near the start of the siege, for instance) - and there was a palpable enough common sense of karma to make everyone into good Samaritans. None of us understood why we survived while others didn’t. I shared food when I had it, even though I often knew I wouldn’t have a crumb the next day. Which was no big achievement, because nearly everyone did the same.

Those who’d prepared, well, the majority of them shared their food and whatever else they had as soon as someone else was clearly in need. I can’t swear it, but I think they felt a little foolish to have been so self-obsessed, and giving away that stuff might have lessened that feeling. There were a few people who hoarded things until they ran out of stuff - eventually everybody ran out of anything worth hoarding - and they soon became wishful beggars like the rest of us. Again, I can’t swear it, but I hear stories, and it seems that these people suffer from post-war trauma, guilt and nightmares more than the rest of us.

Those survivalists, I feel sorry for them. It’s no way to live.

posted by Dee Xtrovert at 9:33 PM on January 28, 2009

Trump never follows through on his promises especially if that promise is for anything pro-social. He occasionally follows through on his anti-social promises. Shouldn’t the whole world know this by now?

And the originals weren’t kids movies?

I guess the massive amount of Star Wars toys I had as a child somehow led me to believe otherwise.

Original trilogy are also kids movies, fight me.

I fell asleep while watching James Cameron’s Avatar in an IMAX theater on release.

Most tedious movie of his career until the sequels (guessing, didn’t give the sequels a chance because why would I?)

Tough call to just choose one.

Dead Man

Pan’s Labyrinth

Human Nature

Windows officially is more complicated and needs more jumping through hoops to use than fucking Linux.

Literally having to give up and resort to, not a Powershell terminal mind you, but the traditional command prompt.

Microsoft, fix your fucking shit god.

It’s not actually called “sex change surgery” it is called gender affirmation surgery and/or gender reassignment surgery.

So it’s not so much a misnomer as it is uninformed people using the wrong terminology entirely.

since I sit down

A man of culture and grace.

I drink a ton of water and only water. I also wipe because I sit down when I pee. (There’s nothin that crazy bout me, I’m just takin a whiz, mind your own biz, why’s everybody starin at me?)

So I mean, already do that, but I’m also very smell-sensitive in general, so maybe I’m just very sensitive to the smell.

Under the foreskin starts getting smelly fast, imho

Uncircumsized complicates this further and that smell increases more quickly.

Source: 😏

Do you want the mustache on or off?

Too bad.

Humans have the ability to actually think.

That’s a stretch for an inordinate number of humans, sadly.

I still think it’s funny that he went from working at Valve as their Economist in residence studying digital markets to being the finance minister of Greece. I think the Valve job was more prestigious, especially since the rest of the EU was committed to fucking over Greece at the time.

To be fair, you can’t control what humans optimize what you’re trying to teach them either. A lot of times they learn the opposite of what you’re trying to teach them. I’ve said it before but all they managed to do with LLMs is make a computer that’s just as unreliable (if not moreso) than your below-average human.

you’ll give up your PC to rent one from the cloud

Devs, fix this exploit, pls. Cheaters taking advantage.

also sorry if the seahorse is hard to see

I am emotionally damaged and triggered from seeing this seahorse. It was a very hard thing for me to see.

Somebody is doing something and that something is naming birds awesome names.