Ramblings

Christianity

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-27T10:33:17+00:00

This page is an incomplete draft that may only contain notes for later. The notes may be talking about the difficult parts of a topic while leaving out the easier parts. Assume that what you are reading may not be related to my real thoughts on a topic in any way and wait until the page is complete.

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Religion/
Christianity

The factuality of this page may be dubious. I am writing this without having checked the facts. See my full page on Factuality.

Profile

The "rational" people over at RationalWiki have an article on Christianity.

Christianity is one of the major global religions. Centrally, Christianity believes in the abrahamic god and the creation. It derives these claims from its holy scripture, the Bible.

Christianity is the largest and most influential religion in human history, spanning the length from the Roman Empire all the way to the modern times. Being history, I wouldn't usually really care, but since Christianity still affects our daily lives quite significantly I will address its influence here on this page.

Quick Profile

Head of Faith	Text	Meaning
Spiritual	The physical world and the spiritual world are not alike. We must ensure the spiritual world has it's own leader, to guide us and to protect our faith from being profaned by physical desires.	The head of faith is a medium to the spiritual. Their word is what god told them, so they have near-executive control over the religion. This is only constrained by how much the religion allows its believers to stray from official doctrine.

The Papacy, Rome

Category	Name	Text
Theism	Monotheist	Only one god is worshipped. Other so-called 'gods' are at best empty idols, and at worst attempts by some malign deceiver to tempt the faithful away from proper worship of [High God].
View on Gender	Male Dominated	Men are stronger and better equipped to lead us in this harsh and unforgiving world, so we shall entrust them with governing our society.
Religious Attitude	Righteous	As mortals we cannot fully comprehend [High God]'s will, but our priests still have a pretty good idea of what is holy and what is profane.
Pilgrimage Attitude	Encouraged	This faith encourages its members to visit earthly locations deemed to be of spiritual significance as a means of demonstrating reverence for [High God].
Marriage	Monogamous	Marriage is a sacred bond between two individuals. Attempting to form such a bond with multiple people at once is sacrilege.
Divorce	Must be Approved	While the bonds of marriage should not be taken lightly, extenuating circumstances can sometimes make divorce a necessity.
Bastardry	Legitimization	Marriage is holy, so children born outside of it must be blessed in another way if they are to be considered legitimate.
Funerary Tradition	Bewailing Funeral	The soul has begun its long journey to [afterlife name] and we will never see them again in the living world. It is imperative that all who knew the dead gather and offer their grief in a public show of bewailment. This both honors the dead and cleanses our souls of the grief felt by their departure.

Crime	Doctrine	Text
Same-Sex Relations	Shunned	It is unnatural for two men to engage in sexual relations with one another, regardless of the circumstances.
Adultery	Shunned	It is sinful for one to engage in intercourse outside of marriage, but like all sins it is the divine who must judge them for their failings.
Deviancy	Shunned	There are some sexual practices which are simply abnormal and strange. It stands to reason that people with those desires are equally abnormal and strange.
Witchcraft	Shunned	The divine have the rightful jurisdiction over supernatural forces in this world, so any attempt to coerce those forces into obeying a mortal's will is inherently misguided.

Clerical Doctrine	Doctrine	Text
Clerical Function	Control	The priest derives its authority from the divine, and that still applies here on Earth.
Clerical Gender	Only Men	Only men can shoulder the great responsibility of serving as priests of our faith.
Clerical Marriage	Disallowed	Becoming a priest means devoting one's life to the divine. It is inherently unfaithful to consider taking a mortal spouse in addition to that.

Tenet	Text
Communion	Our rituals are not merely symbolic — they invoke the very presence of the divine itself. Those who cannot or do not join us in their practice cannot be true believers.
Pacifism	Violence is an abhorrent act that only leads to suffering, pain and regret. By working to avoid it whenever possible we can build stronger, more secure societies for the faithful to live in.

Primer

Because Christians come in many shapes and forms, Christianity as a whole is hard to pin down. For example, some Christians consider certain things sinful, others don't really mind. Some take the Bible literally, others see it as an interpretative piece from a certain timeframe that they think should be cherry-picked because the times have changed (as if slavery was moral then but is immoral now). In fact, what people believe “is Christianity” is interpreted so differently by each individual that some Christians don't even think they're Christians, they just think they're special.

The point is, whatever you say about Christianity, you will probably always find someone who will point out that this actually isn't true and doesn't apply to them. Or they will point out that what you're saying is true, does apply to them, but doesn't apply to every Christian denomination. Christianity is very, uh, popular, so Christian denominations spread as colorfully as their beliefs. The variety you will find here is so large that the Christians themselves don't know and actual scientists named an entire field of inquiry after it. Getting an overview of the Christian religion is an undertaking that will take you back to the beginning of larger-scale civilization and is an appropriately epic task.

This page does not aim to chronicle Christianity. It is meant to provide an interesting perspective into the kind of concept that I've gotten to learn about what calls itself “Christianity”. That is, Christianity as it is found in my time and in my sphere of knowledge, and a historic Christianity as I know it and how it has shaped the societies, politics and scientific inquiry throughout the ages. When I talk about Christianity, I will try to talk about the kinds of sentiments that seem to most appropriately describe Christianity as it relates to me. This means that my evaluations of Christianity may disagree with invidual members or even the central scripture itself.

The Bible

The "rational" people over at RationalWiki have an article on Bible.

The overwhelming majority of “Christianity” are traced, in one way or another, back to what is called “The Bible”. The bible is a collection of texts written by various writers a few thousand years ago and collected into one book. These texts, according to Christians, lay out the fundamentals of the world: How the world came to be, who's the real ruler of the world, how people ought to act, how people ought not to act and a bunch of stories of things that allegedly happened to a few people, including the saga of one guy in particular who let himself get beat up to make a point. I mean, if I was the child of god then my self-preservation instinct would be reduced too.

In my interpretation, the bible has basically two sides: One side is a I'm 14 and this is deep story of reality-defying pacifism and forgiveness that makes everyone think they're smart by understanding, but then not actually following through. I've not seen a single person ever actually do as Jesus did and show vulnerability in conflict. The idea is to advertise your humanness and go out of your way to give the person you're in conflict with an obvious opportunity to realize that they're being cruel. From personal experience of trying this exact strategy I can tell with absolute confidence that this strategy is ineffective for 100% of the population, and the vulnerability you're showing will be mercilessly exploited. Not even outside observers are smart enough to recognize this and they'll just call your strategy dumb.
People want what they want, and they'll take the shortest path to get there. If you show your other cheek, you are guaranteed to get that cheek slapped also because that's the shortest path. I mean, an actually laudable sentiment, but very much divorced from reality. But the much bigger problem is that people's ethical/moral mental development seems to largely end with such one-dimensional stories about love, justice and forgiveness (which they then don't even adhere to). Right and wrong is a lot more complicated and the bible's stories are only a primer into a field of study that is very expansive. Many people, however, think that they've got a good understanding of what is right or wrong just by getting old enough to understand the bible's teachings.

The other side of the bible is the part that Christians either don't like talking about or have mentally twisted beyond recognition to avoid the confrontation. The bible is riddled with problematic sentiments, teachings, data points and contradictions. It is scientifically inaccurate, ie. factually wrong. RationalWiki has a fully annotated bible that lets you read the entire goddamn thing meticulously taken apart from a scientific standpoint. If you don't feel like reading the whole thing, you can find a more condensed account from RationalWiki at RationalWiki: Biblical scientific errors and RationalWiki: Biblical scientific foreknowledge. Hey, RationalWiki even has a full category on the bible: “Light iron-age reading”. Needless to say, while RationalWiki has many explicitly Christian editors, it isn't particularly popular with the more devout demographic of Christians.

One thing about the bible is that people really, really love derailing conversations because of individual words. Can we stop bickering about words? Every time you get even a little bit into the weeds with the bible all you're seeing is nobody being able to agree on words because to them these individual little words seem to matter significantly. The constant bickering about how to translate Hebrew is one of the worst things humanity has come up with since the invention of language. And they do this even though anywhere else in the bible these people are 100% capable of dismissing anything they don't like as “allegorical”. It's just these select words they need to be really picky about because otherwise their whole worldview falls apart.

And this already leads me to the one thing I think about the bible. The bible is an interpretative, historical piece that is interpreted differently by every single human under the sun. And I'm not talking about subtleties, the differences are so large that many Christian denominations even produce their own translations, which is then published for their members to re-interpret again. And then they switch around and around, interpreting individual words or sentences however they feel like it at any given moment. Big numbers exist, but I doubt there are numbers large enough to describe the amount of times that a Christian denomination has changed their interpretation of Bible passages. And all this, even though the bible is not authoritative. It is a book made by man for man, with self-referential stories that offer nothing more than “trust me bro”-stories¹⁾ and pre-enlightenment level understanding of ethics.

God

Christians believe in the abrahamic god, an entity common to all abrahamic faiths like Christianity. As an agnostic I'm not fundamentally opposed to the idea of a god, but the problem here is that people are making claims that cannot be verified. God, to them, has a particular identity, with a particular history, things the god did and values the god espouses. Over the course of hundreds of thousands of humans wandering Earth, humans have come up with tens of thousands of different gods to worship, where the Christian god is roughly about as unsubstantiated as all the other ones.

Even if something measurably divine were to happen, every religion would claim that it was their god who did it, and the advantage Christians would have in that debate would be exclusively the number of their adherents, not any actual veracity of their argument. Really, the annoying thing about all of this is that even if the god tried to identify itself, we could never be 100% sure because any god could pretend to be anyone. Or, for that matter, it would probably be very hard to know whether something that happened was divine at all (though I guess with that one I would be open to convincing).

Now, a god would be free to literally just rewire my brain to make me 100% convinced that god is real, and that would solve a lot of problems. But at this time their excellence seems to be rather unbothered and leaves that work to its subjects. If Christianity just said that “we believe in god, and we worship them” then that would be fine, but Christianity makes a lot of falsifiable claims about the nature of its god, none of which are really substantiated in any particular way.

Unfortunately I cannot find the scene anymore, but there is a Caleb and Sophia video from Jehovah's Witnesses that essentially tries to make a line of argument that goes like this: Beautiful things exist, therefore god exists. Or, here is a more involved one:

“

I forget where I got this, but I found it interesting. Good for those philosophical types we might run into.

The Argument from Efficient Causality
We notice that some things cause other things to be (to begin to be, to continue to be, or both). For example, a man playing the piano is causing the music that we hear. If he stops, so does the music.

Now ask yourself: Are all things caused to exist by other things right now? Suppose they are. That is, suppose there is no Uncaused Being, no God. Then nothing could exist right now. For remember, on the no-God hypothesis, all things need a present cause outside of themselves in order to exist. So right now, all things, including all those things which are causing things to be, need a cause. They can give being, only so long as they are given, being. Everything that exists, therefore, on this hypothesis, stands in need of being caused to exist. But caused by what?

Abridged Content

Was this first cause God? Which makes more sense?:

Order, intelligence, and life come from an intelligent, organized living being. e.g. An intelligent cause, or
Order, intelligence, and life come about by random chances from nothing, therefore without the involvement of intelligence and/or life, e.g. unintelligent cause

It could only be one or the other. What does your intelligent mind tell you?

”

~PJDriver on jwtalk.net

What does my intelligent mind tell me? Well, my intelligent mind tells me that you should have called it Argument from Incredulity instead. Additionally, it tells me that I don't have sufficient evidence for god's existence and that, even if I agreed that a god must exist, it would not prove that the god in question is indeed Jehovah (as opposed to any other god).

I'd say that the “things exist, and they can't just come into existence by themselves, so originally ultimately there must have been something that was that was uncaused (god)”²⁾ argument is about as good of an argument in favor of god as “an omnipotent god couldn't create a stone that it itself can't lift because of its omnipotence” is as good an argument against god. Nice thought experiments, but neither prove anything in a way that could be demonstrated or, ideally, be tested, measured.

As far as intelligent design goes, I will say that this is merely a matter of having or missing the intelligence to find natural explanations for complicated processes. The idea is that god must exist because life as is is way too complicated to have come about randomly. As the character from above is saying, many things in our world are way too orderly to just have happened that way. Well, it is true that many things around us, at least on a large scale, are quite random. Perhaps the better term for that would be “chaotic” instead of random. Weather is a perfect example for something very chaotic but in no way random. The thing is that, on a small scale, many things arrange themselves very orderly and unchaotically indeed. The laws of nature seem to have some kind of order built into them, like for example these hexagon-shaped basalt columns arraging themselves more orderly than any line of human beings ever could. There are mechanical, physical processes going on here that make these columns orderly just by the nature of how things are.

Now, when it comes to life, life is capable of sustaining itself (that's just the definition of life, really), and this continuity allows life the process of iteration. Iteration is crucial to living beings because it has the ability then to evolve beyond hexagons. Random mutation, among other things, causes some living things to be born different, and “fitter” beings have a better chance of being naturally selected. Or in other words, fitter beings have a better chance of reproducing than less fit beings, which means their genes propagate better. At each generation, new variations are introduced, which - if fitter - have a higher chance than others to reproduce. This generational iteration over billions of years is what allowed for the formation of not just single-cellular living beings, multi-cellular living beings and finally living things as complex and well adapted as the human.

While evolution can explain the development and diversification of life, it does not explain how life came into being in the first place. Unfortunately, the evidence on that front is a lot less substantiated than desirable, but the general consensus at this time is that it is likely that life emerged spontaneously in a process called abiogenesis.

The "rational" people over at RationalWiki have an article on Abiogenesis.

Functionally, abiogenesis is beyond me. I wasn't in school for long enough (or didn't pick the right classes) to learn about it. I'm not qualified to explain most of the things I try to explain on this website, but this topic is so deep in the “biomathematics” that even I have enough respect for it to not try at all. If repeated billions of times over billions of years concurrently, naturally occurring chemical processes could have produced increasingly complex systems, until self-replication emerges. From there, evolution would do the rest³⁾. As I said, I don't fully understand this and, if I am informed correctly, a strong scientific consensus doesn't really exist, but we at least have a potential mechanism by which life could have emerged, which makes it reasonable for me to believe that a supernatural explanation is not necessary.

The point of all of this: We need not invent gods to explain life. Complex things can arise from less complex things, and we don't need an ultra-complex magic being to create beings of our level of complexity from thin air. In comparison to the complexity of a god, we are still quite basic living beings anyway. There is no reason that god couldn't have made us more complex, more sophisticated. I mean, birds have some very breathtaking, highly adapted and extremely optimized feathers, but that level of complexity/optimization is just a tiny speck in comparison to the sophistication of life that a god could have given us if god had just wanted to. Why instead create life so lowly, deplorable and simple that it's just uncomplex enough to leave the door open for it to be explained away with just a bit of chemistry and evolution? I mean, seriously, they're a god. What's stopping them? Why would a god need to create animals with wings just so that they could fly, they're a god, goddamnit. Why is it always that with anything god supposedly does, god always does it in a way such that natural explanations are better explanations than a god? This has been an ongoing thing for centuries now.

¹⁾

Yes I know a person named Jesus was real, and I know there are pieces of cloth.

²⁾

Or Self-Caused

³⁾

For further reading on why some people think this is wrong, read RationalWiki: Tornado in a Junkyard - Hoyle's Fallacy.

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-27T08:49:47+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Ship of Theseus

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-26T09:13:51+00:00

Major trains of thought
Philosophy

Trainwrecks

Value Judgement
Personal Preference
Nature of Things
Fact of the Universe
Toleration
Ship of Theseus
I'm 14 and this is deep
Words
Claim
Court
Redemption

This cute, little dictator is still the same human he was when he first heard the word “assassination”.

Philosophy/Existential Philosophy/
Ship of Theseus

“

The idea that you have a “body” is an enormous oversimplification. Atoms enter (by themselves, and in the form of molecules) and leave the vicinity of what you think of as your body continuously. They are used or not, and some stay around for a while, while others leave.

”

~Stumpy-the-peg, in this brilliant Reddit post.

“Imagine that a ship which fought a great battle, while captained by the hero Theseus, is stored in a harbor as a museum piece. As the years go by some of its rotten parts are replaced by new ones until, eventually, all of the parts from the original ship are replaced. If someone were to recover the original parts and rebuild the ship at another location, which of the ships should be considered the true ship of Theseus? Is there a point at which the structure at the first location stopped being the ship of Theseus?” ~RationalWiki

Is the Ship of Theseus still the same ship?
Yes.
Unless you believe that you in your mother's womb, you when you were born, you when your were a toddler, 10 years, 20 years or when you will be 90 years old or even DEAD - if you believe that those are all different humans, THEN it's not the same ship.

What about the other ship?
That's another ship built from old parts of the Ship of Theseus.

But some parts in the body don't replace so quickly!

But if they did, would you then suddenly be a different person? If the atoms making up your DNA were replaced on a daily basis, would you THEN be a different human? The point is that there are obviously some properties of things and objects that transcend the realm of the physical and, as long as they continue to apply to the physical human they are tied to, the exact physical makeup of that human does not matter.

Words

If you think about it then you literally are just a particularly dense part of the atomic cloud we call reality, with no “real” body to speak of. As with most things, the issue over Ship of Theseus is mostly a Words problem. My arm is the same arm I was born with as far as I am concerned, the question over whether it being of a different physical makeup makes it a different arm is so incredibly far removed from anything resembling a meaningful or reality-based conversation that it is absolutely pointless to talk about. If one day you found out that you were not the son of your mother but were indeed artificially bred in an incubator - would that make you a different human? Surely you would feel like you were different from what you thought you were but essentially you are still the same human being and retain all of the qualities you previously had, just with a different context than what you had originally presumed to be true. This is the core of the problem - “being” a human is a thought in monkey brains. People attribute different things to “being a human”. For one a new human might start and end where for someone else there have already been three different humans - not because there have actually been different humans, but because their perception of what makes a human a human is different. REALITY only knows the presence or absence of atoms, things like “being” or “continuing to be” and “ceasing to be” are ridiculed on this level. Down here, the only thing that “is” is math.¹⁾

¹⁾

YouTube: CGP Grey - The Simple Secret of Runway Digits “Okay look, 'whirl around' and 'spin' don't mean what you think, down here, because in the land of quantum words mean nothing, there is only math.”

Slashed Zero

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-26T09:08:14+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Writing/Legibility/
Slashed Zero

This page is a love letter to the slashed zero. Do not take it too serious.
No! Fucking take it serious! That text above me, the one that isn't forced to live in a corner with the subtlety effect applied like me, should be told to fuck off! This shit matters and I will die on that hill!

Rule 1

When designing letters for an alphabet, or numbers for a numbering system, it is important to make sure that individual characters are clearly distinguishable, even under adverse conditions. It should be easy to tell letters apart even in poor lighting conditions, from an angle, when the character is moving, if parts of the character are cut off/not visible (within reason), viewed from a distance and, of course, quickly. The goal of good letter and number design is to avoid a situation in which a reader needs to double check that they got a character right, even if they only caught a glimpse of it. Rule 1: Individual letters and individual numbers should be very clearly distinguishable. Characters should have clear, defining features that set them apart from other characters.

Example: a, e, o.
All of these share commonalities, but have serious differences that you can easily spot if you're prepared for it. a less so, depending on how you actually write it, but even if you write it like an o with a funny stroke on the bottom right and a straight line up on the right side, that's still good enough to distinguish it.

O's and Zeroes

Now, everywhere around us there are strings in which both characters from the alphabet and numbers can appear. This text is one such string. License plates are such strings. Any one of the plastic cards in your wallet will have multiple such strings, especially your bank card. Any email will contain such strings. Passwords. In fact, most strings you see throughout the day can probably contain both letters and numbers next to each other. This means that the number zero and the letter o can appear in the same string. The problem between an uppercase O and the number zero is that they have no distinguishing feature. Yes, the O is usually wider than the zero, but that's only usually and depends on the font or the style of someone's writing. Without a distinguishing feature, you as the reader have to hope that the writer is consistent with their styling of zeroes and O's. Without a distinguishing feature, you as the reader will have to go back and cross-reference any O-shaped characters and verify that they indeed are what the context implies they are.

And sure, it's possible to work it out. It's possible to find another character to cross-reference, to estimate character widths, to work it out based on context, but here's the problem: Recognizing characters should not be a riddle. A reader should never be forced to compare an unknown character in the text against one they already know - especially under non-adverse conditions (ie. good lighting, not cut off, good visibility). If you can see the characters clearly and still need to compare them to make them out, your lettering system has failed. And even then, a reference character might be far away, making it hard to compare. Or a reference character might not exist at all, forcing you to guess based on your intuition of the width of the character you're looking at. Every character should be, nay, needs to be individually recognizable without context, without needing to cross-reference it.

The Solution

Slash that zero. O and o are on the edge of acceptable, but O and zero are not acceptable. Give one of them a distinguishing feature, and since was born: The slashed zero - 0.
A beaute. I love slashed zero. It's sleek, it's rare, it's kinda special, and it's extremely satisfying to write. A slashed zero is like hitting the enter key after writing a sentence. Slash - it feels like the satisfying conclusing to a thrilling story, it makes me feel like I'm right back in the 2000's.
Slashed zeroes are just plain cool, alright. They express personality, but they're pragmatic about it because, ultimately, it is done for a very practical purpose: Legibility.

Interestingly, I see a lot of resistance against slashed zero, the primary argument being the Scandinavian Ø. Now, first of all, the Ø has the distinguishing feature that the slash extends beyond the O, but hey, it could be argued that in handwriting this may get unclear. Yeah, I actually agree on that and think that, overall, this is a valid argument. For Scandinavians, this could genuinely be a problem. For anyone else, though, this is not a problem at all. Most people are not Scandinavian and I have never, not once in my life, seen a Ø except in a discussion about slashed zeroes. Much less have I ever used one. The mathematical diameter sign may get close, but it is even more distinguishable and still very rare. The reality is that any string in our lives will have a 0 and an O, not a 0 and a {Ø or ⌀}. So while I agree that the slashed zero may not be a perfect solution, I am sure it is a very good one.

Therefore, since a few years I've been working to change fonts I like to have slashed zeroes. The font on this website, ScienceGothic, did not come with a slashed zero, so I edited it and gave the zero a slash. I have done that with many other fonts before as well. I am very proud of my 0, and any other fonts I will use extensively in the future will be edited to contain slashed zeroes as well. Muah, my beloved.

Stupidity

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-26T09:03:23+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Sociology/
Stupidity

Stupidity is the property of a person, action or belief instantiated by virtue of having or being indicative of low Intelligence or poor learning abilities.

“Being indicative” is the operative term here, however, as most accusations of stupidity often come down to the failure or inability to comprehend another person's perspective. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it is an expression of illusory superiority at work, whereas people tend to believe that they are smarter, better, more rational than others. Usually this presents as “what X is doing is stupid” when really all that's happening is that they don't understand why another person did a thing. The problem is that what people do usually always makes sense to oneself, because your thoughts make sense to yourself, but an outside observer doesn't have all that information. When you make mistakes or even just do normal things, you know why you do them and why they make sense from your perspective, while from someone else's perspective, especially if they are doing their own things rather than fully focusing on your stuff, your actions may not make sense. Once they “don't make sense” and if emotions are involved, then this will quickly devolve into “what they are doing is stupid”. This (“X is/did something dumb”) can be observed in soccer games, Rocket League, driving/traffic, politicians (who usually have more intricate motivations beyond what is presented on surface level, which often causes them to act in what seems to be highly contradictory ways - see Donald Trump), etc.

Anyone will have been accused of being/having done something stupid, and many times you will find that the only thing that happened is that they just weren't aware of the circumstances that made one act that way in the first place¹⁾. People seem to be very quick to fling around accusations of stupidity (whether directed at a person or action).

Usually, even if a thing that was done actually is stupid, serious cooperative deliberation usually leads to sufficient understanding on all involved sides, more often than not to a point where those accusations are voluntarily rescinded (unless conflict has evolved beyond this point). It's not a point about actually being intelligent or not, it's about misunderstanding and expectations.

Illusory Superiority

On average, people are of average intelligence. Thank you, Randall.

People tend towards thinking of themselves as being very smart. Everyone does it, myself included. It probably comes from a very long history of one making sense to oneself (rationally, not emotionally) while others tend to be beyond comprehension. No front, though, I think it's pretty human to be inclined to think this way, however this means that it will take active effort to counteract. I do this by generally assuming that, on average, I am probably a very average human being and that when I don't understand why a person is doing something that irritates me and which I do not understand, the failure probably lies with me in not understanding it. I try really hard - though admittedly fail more often than I am comfortable with admitting - not to get annoyed or pissed off and instead either just carry on (when dealing with people I don't have to deal with for very long) or try to talk it out (when repeated interaction and therefore the emerging issues are likely to repeat and therefore worth the effort to address). xkcd has a very nice strip on this that also nicely captures the “sigh” element of repeatedly dealing with people that say things like “people are so dumb”.

This, by the way, does include everyone who might actually be considered stupid. They aren't any dumber than you are. Political enemies (liberals, conservatives, etc.), conspiracy theorists (flat earthers for example), cult adherents (Jehovah's Witlesses), those who do not believe in conspiracy theories, and everyone else. If you have ever committed the grave sin of calling someone stupid (I certainly have), this is the context for that. Ever since, I try to reserve that for the most dire of situations because, well, while it is not to me to make assessments on other people's intelligence, sometimes things are stupid. Averages are just averages. While I may be thinking of myself in those moments to possess the necessary authority to make such claims, this is way out of my depth. There are experts who have dedicated their lives to the study of intelligence and even they can't really define it quite yet, so who am I to fall such judgements. That would be arrogant.

Must be stupid

Remember, everyone thinks they're being reasonable. You, me, everyone around us. It always makes sense from our perspective, but if someone else does something that doesn't make sense from our perspective, then clearly they must be dumb.

Actually I take it all back, some people really are stupid and they're fucking annoying and please just shut the fuck up already. I spent three years in total isolation, never saw a human soul, and now that I am somewhat back into society I remember how painful some aspects of dealing with other humans were. One of these aspects is people that are very, very slow. Like, unreasonably slow. Please, get out of my way. Please, if you can't do this then let me do this alone. Don't stand in the way, taking up time and resources if you're not gonna contribute anything anyway. Let me do it on my own, I never chose you to be here anyway. Jesus christ.

¹⁾

Whether whatever happened was stupid doesn't even matter here. Maybe you had good reasons to act in a way that doesn't make sense to outside observers, but maybe you were just overthinking (or underthinking, for that matter) and what you are doing is dumb.

Conversation Advisory

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-26T09:00:27+00:00

Caution

You are currently approaching the limits of the conversation you are intending to have. Continuing ahead presents a major sanity risk and you should turn around now.

You will only get this warning once.
Only proceed if you know exactly what you are doing.

You are being warned that the conversation ahead is likely off-topic and mostly irrelevant to what you are actually trying to talk about. Engaging with it will probably continue into a thorough dissection of individual words or interpretations of sentences. The conversation will die in the graveyard of semantics, philosophy or game design, and with it a good chunk of your time. With a bit of experience with me, you will probably also know exactly the things I have to say, as in the grand scheme of things I don't have very many things to say and I typically just go in circles.

This advisory is intended to warn you of your probable fate, and you should continue only if you know exactly who I am, what you want to discuss with me and know which words to use to avoid me getting stuck on your semantics. For everyone else, it is safer to abandon your attempt and to retry from a different angle.

start

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-21T08:32:16+00:00

Welcome to ultracomfy.net

Good day! I am ULTRACOMFY.

If you're here for the first time, you're encouraged to just take a look around and see if you find anything interesting. Probably the best way to enjoy this website is by typing words of things that interest you into the search bar and seeing if anything pops up that catches your attention. Alternatively, these may be a good place to start:

>> All Pages >>

>> Ultrablog >>

>> Super Secret Special Area >>

Use of AI Disclosure

Contact Form

Complaint Form

Helldivers 2 Guide

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-19T09:18:37+00:00

Highly interactive
Video Games

Entertainment medium of the future

Extraction
Helldivers 2
DEFCON (Game)
The Crew
Rebel Inc.
F1 Manager 2023
Stop Killing Games

Video Games/Helldivers 2/
Helldivers 2 Guide

To play Helldivers 2 at a reasonable level, you need to understand a few basic principles from which all gameplay emerges. It should give you a general perspective on which priorities to set during gameplay, giving you a useful, robust structure to work around.

1. Stims and Survivability

1.1 Staying alive and Stims

At its core, Helldivers 2 is a game about staying alive. It is that because, even though it might look like a game where you will just naturally die regularly, it actually gives you pretty much all the tools you need to survive at any given moment. The game offers a variety of things that threaten your survival. For example, an enemy would rather see you dead than alive, but you have options for dealing with these enemies. For one, you can try shooting them in the face. But you can also send an Eagle 500kg, you could call in a laser, you could bring and equip a shield generator or a jump pack. Or - most importantly of all - it can mean using a stim. Before we talk about anything else, we really need to talk about stims.

The first realization a new Helldivers player needs to have is how obscenely busted stims are in this game. When you launch the game for the first time, you get hit by an enemy and then press the stim button, the amount of health you recover, and the speed at which it happens, should be a mind-warping experience. In most games, regenerating health is a slow, sluggish process. Minecraft regenerates health very slowly, in other games using a healing item only restores a set amount of health, other games do it quickly but only after you haven't taken damage for a while, and only until your health pool is full. And also, any other impairments like broken limbs or various debuffs will oftentimes stick around.

Not in Helldivers. Helldivers stims make you virtually INVINCIBLE¹⁾. To kill you while you have a stim active would require either (1) killing you early into the stimming process when the stim didn't yet have the chance to actually heal you (2) overwhelming yourself with an obscene amount of enemies - like, you must be in a sea of enemies so large that they actually block you from going anywhere ²⁾ (3) you must run into something that oneshots you or (4) you run into something that has a ridiculous damage output if it can keep its gun focused on you (Factory Strider Gatlings, Sentries, Devastators if you get unlucky). Some enemies don't outright “oneshot” you, but there are certain enemy sentries, for example, that ragdoll you and will kill you with a followup.

The point is, as a helldiver, you have a unique ability: You have what is essentially a temporary invincibility button. By default you can use this button up to four times (ie. you have four stims), but your number of uses can be replenished with in-game pickups. As long as you still have uses on your invincibility left - and you don't commit one of the four mistakes mentioned above - you should never die. If you die with stims left in your inventory, you did something wrong.

Seriously, this might sound silly, but it is not. Stims are the unit in which helldivers are counted. Do not run out stims. “But I am on full health” is not an argument. If you disregard this and allow yourself to run out of stims, you have no right whatsoever to complain about the game. The game is specifically designed around your temporary invincibility button.

Additionally, keep in mind that you need to stim early - from pressing the button to the stim actually activating will take about half a second, during which the stimming can be interrupted (This is unless you're diving, in which case the stim can only be cancelled with a ragdoll). And even once a stim is activated, it will take another brief moment until you have regenerated enough HP to actually survive another hit.

1.2 Diving

Taking damage will often stagger you. Staggering isn't quite ragdolling, but it will make you recoil for a moment and stop you from doing something - including stimming. Enemies that can cancel your attempt to stim are scary (and dangerous). This is particularly brutal with enemies that have combos (bugs, especially Predator Strain). This is where diving becomes important. Diving lets you escape (almost) any and all enemy combos, without restrictions. You can still take damage, you can still be ragdolled, but it will cancel (almost) all staggers and gives you back full control instantly. Crucially, it means you can also stim instantly as well. Helldivers are powerful not because they are amazing combatants or because they have immensely powerful Eagle and Super Destroyer support - it's because they have one single move combination in their moveset that lets them become invincible, no matter what happens (except when you get ragdolled):

Dive + Stim
Dive + Stim is the only reason Helldivers are feared. This seemingly inoccuous move is what makes a Helldiver scary. Use it. Dive. Dive for your life. When it says “Dive, dive again. And again. And again.”, this is what that means. “Helldivers” means using your Alt key, diving like hell. It's not about being sent onto hellish planets. Stimming alone is already useful, but on the field you will quickly realize that enemies often tend to interrupt you before the stim becomes active, and you will die. You can not die by pressing Alt and then stimming.

1.3 Survivability

So, what's the problem? You use stims all the time and you understand how powerful stims are, but you still keep dying. Obviously, it's not that easy, right? Yes, you're right. It's not that easy. Stims are one half of the formula, but we spend most of our time in the game not actively getting the effects of stims. If we had permanent stim-like effects, this game would be very, very boring. With the limitation being as it is, we need to think about what to do before stimming. We don't need stims all the time, but the situation can change from “I'm fine, I don't need to use a stim” to “I need a stim right now” extremely rapidly, sometimes in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, with the wrong strategies and loadout, it can change faster than the game allows you to stim at all. The goal is to extend the amount of time we get to stim, and to stretch out the amount of time we need between stimmings. Or in other words: Survivability.

Survivability, simply put, is the ability of our diver to resist dying. This is more than just the amount of hitpoints our player character gets, and the amount of damage resistance they have. It's about the ability to avoid damage in the first place, it's about damage mitigation of all kinds. The easiest way to do that would be to run heavy armor and, honestly, as a beginner you probably should. Armor rating is the one easiest way to give yourself more time to stim and to avoid bullshit deaths (I'm talking to you, contact mines). However, there is more to it. Mobility is directly linked to survivability, as mobility allows you to just, well, run away from your damage. An easy example here is the jump pack, which serves as an easy “peace out” for 90% of scary situations (if used correctly, mistakes happen).

Survivability also means your ability to take a hit in the first place. If you aren't at full health, it will take less hits to kill you, which means you have less time to stim. The only reason you'd ever try to not be at full health is stim conservation, which is great if you know how the game works and have things under control. But, for a beginner, stim conservation often ends up costing lives, which tend to be more expensive than just taking a supply pack. Helldivers is largely designed around Helldivers at full health, and most enemy combos leave you with just a sliver of health if you dive out of them correctly. This does not work when you begin the encounter at already reduced health.

Outside of maneuvering (diving) better and using stims, Helldivers 2 gives you all kinds of additional tools to increase your survivability. You can take a jump pack. Bring a shield generator. A walker. Bring a gun that stuns/staggers enemies (Slugger). Bring heavy armor. Bring medic armor (+2 stims & +2s stim effect duration). Bring crowd control weapons. Bring a sentry. Keep your stims stocked, loot stims from POIs, learn what POIs look like and where to find stims. Heck, bring a Supply Backpack for a virtually infinite supply of stims.

Additionally, use your Eagle and Super Destroyer support mid-fight. The cool thing about Dive + Stim is that it makes you invincible for multiple seconds (you already know this), so you can Dive + Stim and then just stay on the ground to take your sweet ass time to punch in a stratagem code. Nothing will kill you while you're stimmed. You can Dive + Stim + Reinforce. Dive + Stim + Eagle 500. Dive + Stim + Laser. Nothing can bring you down, especially if your stim duration is longer with the medic armor. There can be 20 bugs behind you that will dogpile onto you during a Dive + Stim + Eagle 500 - but what are they gonna do about you? The entire horde of bugs can keep hammering into you until they're old and grey - as long as you're stimmed, you are invincible. And if you call in the Eagle 500, they will be dead before your stims run out³⁾.

The alternative here is Jump Pack + (maybe) Stim + Stratagem, or alternatively (if you prefer) Hover Pack + (maybe) Stim + Stratagem. While midair you're unlikely to get hit, so that's a perfect opportunity to punch in a stratagem.

If you're gonna learn anything at all from what I'm writing here, it's this:
Stim Stim Stim Stim Stim Stim or
Dive + Stim or
Dive + Stim + Stratagem

on occasion you should try
Dive + Stratagem

Whichever you're comfortable with. This, at its most fundamental, is how Helldivers works. Once you start surviving your first few encounters, you'll eventually learn how to not be forced into using stims all the time in the first place. Your encounter will become more controlled and deliberate, rather than just you responding to what the enemy is doing. This is all you need. Happy helldiving!

2. Objectives

2.1 Helldivers is actually about objectives

Well. Maybe I've been lying a little bit. Maybe Helldivers isn't just about staying alive. It is true, your absolute priority in Helldivers should always be to stay alive, but if that's the only thing you do then you'll never actually get anything done. The truth is that Helldivers 2 is a walking and terminal simulator, with the occasional enemy encounter thrown in. Yes, the first and most important realization of a Helldivers player should be the absolute brokenness of stims, but up there on the list is also the realization that nobody is standing to gain from a dead enemy (except on certain mission types). There is no inherent value to killing an enemy. When you kill an enemy, you should do it to increase your survivability. Maybe you want to go somewhere and you would die doing so if the enemy was left alive. Maybe you want to work on a terminal and you'd die if you left that enemy alive. Either way, it's about giving yourself room, not about the dead enemy.

If you don't believe me, take it from this guy.
He's only the best Helldivers player on Super Earth.

Eventually the key realization should be that a game of Helldivers is just you running lines between several terminals and opening/closing some valves or operating some levers. A helldiver is never “fighting on a front”, a helldiver is either walking towards an objective or a helldiver is on an objective.

When a helldiver is walking towards and objective, there is almost never a need to address enemies on their path. Enemy breaches or drops generally do not need to be addressed, they are a waste of lives and resources. New players waste most of the team's reinforcement budget on fighting enemies they never needed to address.

This is particularly true of breaches at objectives when the objective is cleared during the breach. Players have this weird fixation on killing enemies until a breach is ended, even though the moment the objective is cleared it is possible to just disengage and move on. While teammates like this are useful on the objective (because they are quite good at giving me room to work on the objective), they stop being useful as soon as the objective is complete. Too many times I've transferred across the whole map wanting to work on the next objective, while seeing my teammates still on the other end of the map dying to and wasting lives on the bug breach that has been going on for the last five minutes - at a completed objective.

2.2 When you are NOT on an objective

Literally any time you are not on an objective, your first priority is to pick a direction towards an objective. You should always know where to go next. Once that is established, go there. Ignore bug breaches or drop ships. If there is an enemy on your way towards an objective, push it out. If there are multiple, it might be worth to just take a small detour. You have places to be, you can reach your objective without engaging with these enemies.

Funnily, most enemies will literally just let you sprint past them. If you're scared, you can dive past them as well. As long as you walk past them with a bit of confidence, enemies will probably not hit you (with some Illuminate exceptions).

Generally, if you're at A but you need to be at B, why fight enemies at A? Just go to B. And, for your info, B can be whatever. It can be the next mission objective, it can be a shiny, a side objective, whatever. It is important to have a B. As a Helldiver, there is no dawdling around, you always have somewhere to be next. Once you reach B, you will work on the objective and by the time the objective is completed, you should already have decided on where to go next (B). Don't fall asleep, and don't think that there's any reason to stop for an enemy if you just want to go to B. I will be using the term B a lot here.

2.3 When you ARE on an objective

So, anytime you are on an objective, it is actually just the same stuff. Where you are is A, the next step of the objective is B. Say, the objective requires you to work on the terminal first, then that terminal is B. Push your way towards that terminal, push enemies out of your way to the terminal, then push enemies away from the terminal. Note that working on a terminal does not require radio silence in the general vicinity. All you need is to push enemies far enough away from the terminal to allow you to work on it without getting killed. Really you're just trying to punch a small hole around the terminal to give yourself a second or two to do whatever needs to be done on the terminal. If the terminal then asks you to turn valves, you rinse and repeat:

Push enemies out of your path towards the valves. Ignore enemies not on your path to a valve. Create enough room to turn the valve without dying. Any enemy further than 5 seconds away from a valve is irrelevant to you, unless the enemy is between you and the valve. Similarly, you don't need to kill all the enemies around a shiny, you only need to kill all enemies that can get to the shiny in less than 3 seconds, as that's the amount of time you need to loot it. Any enemy further than 3 seconds away from the shiny is irrelevant to you. By the time you have completed all the steps for an objective, you should have already decided where to go next. Set a new B, carve your way towards it - everything else is distraction.

90% of the time, failure to do this is the reason why teams leave players behind: More knowledgeable players don't want to spend 5 minutes or more of their time fighting a bug breach they already know is pointless to fight, draining resources, reinforcements, time and their nerves. They would rather actually be productive, so they're just gonna carve paths on their own⁴⁾.

It helps to learn what objectives look like, where enemy spawners are (bug holes, automaton fabricators, etc.), what the sequence of certain terminals is, where the valves are, where the connection towers are, etc. etc., because it will make it a lot easier to know where to go (determine B). If you have to search for where the valves are, it means essentially clearing the entire search area of enemies, which is costly on time and resources. This is why it's good to start on lower difficulties - they let you get familiar with objectives and let you learn navigation without too much drama. It helps teaching that there are things to do in a game of Helldivers and that you can fight enemies, but after killing them all you only have a lot of dead enemies, no completed objectives.

However: Staying alive supersedes objectives. If enemies are pushing you out of an objective, that's OK! You can always retreat and come back later. Try to hold the objective as long as you can, but if it's hopeless then a retreat is rational, not cowardice. You're trying to win wars, not battles, and by the time you're forced to retreat you've already lost the battle anyway. So? Instead of dying, win the war. Solo players specialize in circling around to objectives, as there is physically no way for a solo player to fend off an entire enemy reinforce on their own (except in some special cases like the Napalm Barrage). They will disengage and do something else.

3. Team

3.1 There is a team game in Helldivers

Ultimately, Helldivers also has a team aspect. There are skills you need to know for yourself, independently, which I've told you about in 1) and 2). When you understand 1) and 2), you are a functional Helldivers player who can engage with the fundamental ideas of the game, ie. you can engage in meaningful gameplay. 3), the team, is now a layer on top that you don't strictly need to complete the objectives, but which you need if you're gonna have any good amount of fun with the game.

The team can be considered to be a modifier to all the things previously discussed. It is beneficial for some things, it is detrimental to others. For example, two obvious examples are Resupply usage and stratagem placement. Resupply is one of the major sources of stims - everyone relies on them, so it is imperative that everyone gets them. If you call in supplies only for yourself, this might lead to someone else running out of stims and dying because of it. Therefore, resupplies should only be called in when a substantial part of the team is present, or only in an emergency when strictly necessary to prevent yourself from dying.

Sticking with your team is cool, because having someone close by means fire support and stim support. In the same way that you can't die when you have stims, someone else can help you not to do die when you run out of them. That means taking a serious amount of damage before you can be stimmed - ie. it's very risky - but it's still very much useful. The real problem with the team comes from stratagem placement, ie. don't throw 500kg on the head of another Helldiver.

There isn't very much to say about this - learn SOS diving and not communicating. You should expect an Eagle 500 on top of your goddamn head at all times. You might be behind a wall and a player thinks you're further away than you really are. A player might have just genuinely not noticed. A player might have thought that you would for sure see it. A player might have gotten ragdolled. A player might just be fricken stupid. Doesn't matter. The threat is real, and you need to look out for it. Check red beacons. Check for sentries behind yourself. Oh, talking about sentries: Defend them. A sentry is essentially a fifth player that packs unfathomable amounts of damage. Your primary weapon can only dream of the DPS a gatling sentry can put out. Team playing means defending other people's sentries. Team playing, however, also means removing sentries behind friendly positions that are likely to cause friendly casualties. Keep an eye on the map, watch friendlies and the situations they are in. If they run low on stims, think about helping them. And don't get hit by allied player's stratagems. That really is a thing you can just get experience with. You'll get killed by friendly Eagle 500s very frequently, but you'll begin noticing them more and more over time.

Finally, the team is why the “carving paths” concept is almost never followed to the letter. You're meant to only strictly kill the enemies that are directly a threat to progress, but considering a team you have to consider human factor. Especially with that amount of enemies around, a single player cannot cover all 360 angles around him. To enable safe play, it is necessary to kill or push away more enemies than only the strictly necessary ones. I still teach “only kill strictly necessary” first because that's the basis upon which we should start learning, but the truth is that when together with other people, we need to be a bit more generous with which enemies to kill, to make sure our friend doesn't get surprised. Passing a tight alley might have worked for you, but by the time your friend gets there the enemies might have doubled in number or taken up better spots. Therefore, you should carve a path for your friend as well.

¹⁾

Uh, correction. I'm told this is apparently only true in Heavy armor? More on that in a moment.

²⁾

And even then, rigorous stimming can often get you out of that situation, granted you run heavy armor.

³⁾

Throw the 500kg at your feet, not towards the enemies. When you run away, the enemies will follow you, so you need to throw the 500kg to where the enemies will be, not to where they are. If you throw the 500kg at your feet, you should run about 30 meters until the 500kg lands, which is the perfect distance to have.

⁴⁾

Interestingly, it is this being left alone with enemies that first forced me to find directions on my own and start carving paths instead of just fighting every enemy I saw. I was good enough to not die, but I eventually realized that I wasn't getting anything done, so I started looking at my map and pushed into certain directions, paying only as much attention to enemies as I had to.

Tools

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-19T07:59:56+00:00

Tools

I keep a large set of tools for all kinds of purposes. In fact, it is so many tools that I am beginning to lose count of them all. Following is a list with all of them as I use them:

A word of caution:
Some programs and websites listed here as tools may not be safe and merely being on this list should not indicate trustworthiness. While I never add things to this list that I have already determined to be malicious, I can always make mistakes or they may have become compromized in the meantime. It is the responsibility of every individual user to verify the legitimacy of a webpage or service they are using and to take proper cybersecurity precautions.

AIM

AIM for Windows patched for Chivanet
AIM for Android patched for Ninachat⁵⁾
AIM is deprecated by AOL but continued by community projects like Chivanet or Ninachat for nostalgics or users with severely outdated tech.
Set shorter password, long passwords seem to cause issues. Nina AIM Client Host: login.oscar.nina.chat:5190
#Instant Messaging #Old #AOL Instant Messenger #AIM

Asset Studio

GitHub/Asset Studio
Unity game files exploring and extraction utility. Open program and load in the Gamename_Data folder. Extremely powerful.
#Extraction #Unity #Unity Game Engine #Data Mining #Datamining #.assets #.resource

Audacity

Audacityteam.org
Community-driven Digital Audio Workstation for all sorts of audio editing work.
#Audio Editing #Audio Production #Audio Processing #Music Production #Sound #Sound Effects #DAW #Digital Audio Workstation #Audio

Audio to Video Converter

GitHub/Audio to Video Converter
Made by myself using FFMPEG.
#Audio #Video #YouTube #Soundtrack Uploading

AutoHotkey

AutoHotkey.com
Scripting program for system-wide, programmatical hotkey programming.
Saved scripts in Documents\AutoHotkey, programming is done by editing .ahk files with Notepad++.
To compile, run AutoHotkey Dash and use “v1.1.37.01c1 U32 Ahk2Exe.exe” base file for compiling scripts.
#AutoHotkey #Hotkey #Compiling #Killing Programs #Killing Processes #.ahk #Keyboard Shortcut #Keyboard Shortcuts

Cheat Engine

D:\Programs\Cheat Engine\
Application memory editing tool used for editing process memory during runtime.
Needs to be compiled manually from CE's Github or paid for on CE's Patreon. Using the free, pre-compiled release is cumbersome and painful, and using the paid installer from CE's Patreon will ask for Patreon Membership before installing, making the installer worthless after ending the membership. Copying an existing installation seems to work.
#Cheat Engine #Memory Editing #Single Player

FModel

GitHub/Fmodel
Premier utility for exploring and extracting Unreal Engine games, specifically .pak, .utoc (with their associated .uasset and .ubulk's). Works for Unreal Engine 5.
Add game as “New Game”, then use the Settings Menu to set up how the program reads the files. May or may not auto-detect the game version and will probably require manually generating a mappings file (.usmap). If extracted files don't look like they're from your game, then they're probably generated using Fortnite's mappings. Play around with the settings until it doesn't do that anymore. If it errors with unversioned properties and missing mapping file, use jmap to generate a mapping file.
#Extraction #Unreal Engine #UE #Unreal Engine 4 #UE4 #Unreal Engine 5 #UE5 #Data Mining #Datamining #.pak #.utoc #.uasset

FreeFileSync

FreeFileSync.org
File and folder backup and synchronization tool with extensive transfer options capabilities.
#Backup #Synchronization #Folders

Hitmaps Media Browser

Hitmaps.com
In-Browser Hitman: World of Assassination audio and image asset explorer based on transcripts of audio files. Allows user to search for dialogue by text (ie. text of the voice line, not just the file name) and download them.
#Hitman #Hitman: World of Assassination #Media Browser #Extraction

jmap

GitHub/jmap
“Unreal Engine reflection data format and extractor”
Powershell application, use a command like $env:PATTERNSLEUTH_RES_EngineVersion=“5.6” to set up the game's version, then run .\jmap_dumper.exe --pid 11528 output.usmap (Powershell, pid number replaced with Process ID of the running game) to generate a .usmap file that can be used in applications like Fmodel.
#Extraction #Unreal Engine #UE #Unreal Engine 4 #UE4 #Unreal Engine 5 #UE5 #Data Mining #Datamining #.usmap

Open Broadcaster Software

OBSproject.com
Desktop recording and streaming software based on an empty canvas that can be filled with static or dynamic elements.
NVIDIA Kepler architecture support ended after OBS version 30.2.3 - versions after this no longer support hardware encoding, forcing device to use CPU for rendering instead.
#OBS #Streaming #Recording

Planetary Names USGS

Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature
United States Geological Survey insitution focused on maintaining accurate records of internationally recognized planetary names, specifically features like craters, rimae, paludes, dorsa and many more none of us have ever heard about.
Extremely useful index for astronomical data based on the information from the International Astronomical Union. See this example for a list of all IAU approved, named craters on Earth's moon.
#Space #Resource #Celestial Object #Planetary #Names #Website

QuickBMS

QuickBMS Homepage by Aluigi Altervista (that name turns me on)
“Universal script based files extractor and reimporter” or “QuickBMS generic files extractor and reimporter”.
Download the base and then additional scripts, like Unreal Engine 4 Extraction Script, to extract contents from a huge variety of container formats used by thousands of games, for example .pak files used in UE4. Directly extracted content may still need further processing and/or conversion into a useful, properly readable format. In the extraction process for any game (except Unity), QuickBMS is probably the first step.
#QuickBMS #Unreal Engine #Extraction #Data Mining #Datamining #Scripts #.pak

Rufus

Rufus.ie
Open Media Creation Tool-type of utility with full functionality. Allows use of downloaded .iso files to create bootable devices from anything that acts as a storage device.
#Windows #Boot #MediaCreationTool #Installation #Boot Volume

SceneryAddons

SceneryAddons.org
Website offering otherwise paid Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 addons for free download, most notably the Asobo Premium Deluxe Airport pack. See also SimPlaza. SceneryAddons distributes specifically airports and scenery, while SimPlaza primarily focuses on aircraft, liveries and other customization.
Downloaded files should be extracted and then placed into the game's community folder, which for me was located under C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Packages\Community. #Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 #MSFS2020 #Airports #Aviation #Addon #Addons #Free

Ship of Harkinian

ShipofHarkinian.com
Native wrapping/emulation program for the N64 version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Features extensive customization, randomization and modding capabilities. Download Archipelago + SoH instead for multiplayer play.
#Ocarina of Time #The Legend of Zelda #Emulation #Multiplayer #Mods #Randomizer #Cooperative Play #Ship of Harkinian #Archipelago

SimPlaza

SimPlaza.org
Website offering otherwise paid Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 addons for free download, most notably the Asobo Premium Deluxe Aircraft pack. See also SceneryAddons. SimPlaza distributes specifically aircraft, liveries and other customizations, while SceneryAddons primarily focuses on airports and environments.
Downloaded files should be extracted and then placed into the game's community folder, which for me was located under C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Packages\Community. #Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 #MSFS2020 #Aircraft #Aviation #Addon #Addons #Free #Planes

Sound Switch

SoundSwitch
Program for switching default audio devices via configurable hotkey.
#Default Output Device #Default Input Device #Default Audio Device #Hotkey #Keyboard Shortcut #Keyboard Shortcuts #Control Panel

System Informer

System Informer
System monitoring utility useful for forensic analysis and tracing process activities.
#System Informer #Forensic Analysis #Malware #Process #Processes #Tracing #Tracking

UE4SS

GitHub/UE4SS
Deprecated injectable LUA scripting system, SDK generator, live property editor and other dumping utilities for UE4/5 games. For generating .usmap files, use jmap instead.
Drop contents of .zip into the folder that has the WinShipping.exe file, run the game and then press Ctrl+NumPad 6 to generate a .usmap mapping file, which other programs like FModel can work with.
#Extraction #Unreal Engine #UE #Unreal Engine 4 #UE4 #Unreal Engine 5 #UE5 #Data Mining #Datamining #.usmap

Universal Unreal Engine Unlocker

Universal Unreal Engine Unlocker
Unreal Engine manipulation program that hooks into running games and allows for Freecam, Console Use, HUD Disable and some other useful, albeit surface, applications.
#Unreal Engine #UUU #Universal Unreal Engine Unlocker #Unreal #Epic Games #Universal UE4 Unlocker #Redout #Screenshots #Photo Mode

UWPHook

GitHub/UWPHook
Allows UWP applications (many Microsoft Store applications, including Minecraft) to be added to Steam as a Non-Steam game while retaining rich presence.
#UWP #Minecraft #Store #Microsoft #Microsoft Store #Steam #Non-Steam Game #Rich Presence #Steam Rich Presence

WinDirStat

WinDirStat.net
Disk usage analyzer. Useful to break down disk usage by files and by folders.
#Disk #Storage #Drives #Files #Large Files #Folders #Folder Size #Large Folders #Analysis

WinSCP

WinSCP.net
Visual file transfer client using SFTP or FTP, though it can do that much more.
#SFTP #FTP #Client #Wrapper

WinSetView

GitHub/WinSetView
Windows Explorer viewing options manager. Allows setting folder view settings for Windows explorer that actually stick, applying to subfolders, libraries or the entire program if wanted, without constantly resetting or not actually carrying over or applying to subfolders.
#Folder View #Windows Explorer #Settings #Customization #Manager #Fixes

x360ce

x360ce.com
Xbox 360 Controller emulation application. Can be used with virtually any input device, starting from Keyboards, Mice, Playstation controllers, generic controllers, external keyboards, generic input devices, steering wheels, pedals, HOTAS setups, xinput devices, Wiimotes and so much more. Inputs from these devices can be freely bound to Xbox 360 buttons, sticks and bumpers according to needs/tastes. Good for games that understand Xbox 360 Controllers but for which you want to use basically anything else.
#Controllers #Input #Devices #Device Emulation #Xbox 360 Controller

⁵⁾

Might need to officially join their Discord server, first.

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-18T14:43:02+00:00

“Where am I when I really need me?”

“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

“The beatings will continue until morale improves.”⁶⁾

“I have concepts of a plan.”

“That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.”⁷⁾

“Yesterday's future is today.”⁸⁾

“The storage for fossil fuel waste is your lungs.”⁹⁾

“My first victim was myself.”

“Self worth should be based on how much your dog loves you.”

“Debates are more for entertainment [rather than any sincere desire to change things].”¹⁰⁾

“Your dick too small can't fit the piss”¹¹⁾

“I thought you'd want to know--I've never seen a contract with more zeroes on it than yours. They want you bad, pal.”
“That's nothing new.”
“No, no. Trust me on this. This is something new. You've pissed in everybody's beer now. You need to leave Chicago while you can, because the fixers will catch up to you. It's only a matter of time.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“Yeah, yeah. You're gonna ignore it, but I thought I'd try.”¹²⁾

“Why is it anybody's business if I'm going to hell or not?” on Reddit by Silver-Amphibian7650

“A fuck must be earned. There are only so many fucks I can give, so if I feel that you've earned one, I will give a fuck.”

“It may help to remember that problems exist only where you choose to see them.”¹³⁾

“Civilian aircraft this is Royal Air Force interceptor on Guard, one two one decimal five, I have been instructed by the Ministry of Defense, on behalf of her majesty's government of the United Kingdom to confirm your intentions. Acknowledge.”
“Civilian aircraft this is Royal Air Force interceptor on Guard, one two one decimal five, you've been intercepted. Follow me if able. Acknowledge.”
“Civilian aircraft this is Royal Air Force interceptor on Guard, one two one decimal five, I have been instructed by the Ministry of Defense, on behalf of her majesty's government of the United Kingdom to offer you assistance where appropriate. Acknowledge.”
“Civilian aircraft this is Royal Air Force interceptor, follow me. Acknowledge.”
“Russian aircraft this is Royal Air Force interceptor on Guard, one two one decimal five, I have been instructed by the Ministry of Defense, on behalf of her majesty's government of the United Kingdom to escort you into international airspace. Acknowledge.”
“Russian aircraft this is Royal Air Force interceptor on Guard, one two one decimal five, I have been instructed by the Ministry of Defense, on behalf of her majesty's government of the United Kingdom to warn you, that if you do not respond immediately to my orders you will be shot down. You must turn away. Acknowledge.”

“You can never have too many arrows. Unless you have some many that you are unable to walk and have to sit for the rest of the match jealously guarding your massive collection of arrows.” in Darwin Project, Darwin_Anouncer_Sam_VO_YouCanNeverHaveTooManyArrows_01.wav

“I had to write a formal letter to god, and now he doesn't want me in his garden anymore”¹⁴⁾

“Humor: Two unconnected things are suddenly united by a paradigm shift. It is hard to describe, but we all know it when it happens. Weirdly, it causes us to make a barking noise.”¹⁵⁾
Comes with a full example of humor, ie. the concepts of “jokes” and “dog barking” being united in a paradigm shift to mean laughing.

⁶⁾

In conjunction with “Morale will not improve until the beatings stop.” | Other words can be substituted for “beatings”.

⁷⁾

Oftentimes shorted by a few lines.

⁸⁾

South Park S5 E13, “Alder Research Group” van at 01:53

⁹⁾

As a response to nuclear fuel waste.

¹⁰⁾

People with extreme beliefs insulate themselves from being wrong by creating a world in which they cannot possibly be wrong.

¹¹⁾

@MittronR randomly in one of @ridetheline's streams.

¹²⁾

Jordi Chin in Watch Dogs after the mission “The Defalt Condition”

¹³⁾

Subnautica PDA

¹⁴⁾

RundGong on Twitch, screenshot in photo gallery

¹⁵⁾

The Art of Game Design 3rd Edition by Jesse Schell, p. 136: The Game Is Made For A Player, Examples of hard to classify pleasures.

Juice Jacking

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-16T10:20:27+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

It's not religion if it's true
Science

Objective inquiry

History
Philosophy
Inclusion
Doppler Effect

Falsified Hypotheses

Science Says

Technology/Computers/Cybersecurity/
Juice Jacking

Juice jacking is a theoretical type of compromise of devices like smartphones and tablets which use the same cable for charging and data transfer, typically a USB cable. The goal of the attack is to either install malware on the device, or to surreptitiously copy potentially sensitive data. Allowing data transfer between the phone and whatever it is connected to can expose it to bad actors. The phone uses quite a bit of logic for USB communication and if any of that has a vulnerability that allows, for example, for remote code execution, this could be used to compromise the phone.

However, USB implementations in smartphones are widely deployed and are maintained by a lot of people for many years. While the risk of course is never zero, there is very little publicly documented evidence of widespread, opportunistic juice-jacking attacks against ordinary users (assuming the device is reasonably modern and up-to-date). Anyone who were to find such an exploit would not waste it on indiscriminately harvesting data of random public utility users. An exploit letting you freely access any significant number of phones (probably depending on OS, chipset, etc.) is the kind of stuff nation state actors dream of and would use on big, valuable targets. Spying on other nations, digging out megacorporations, a vulnerability like this is not worth deploying on a few random public charging stations for funs where it might get found.

This was figured out by smart developers more than a decade ago.

The reason why you're not meant to plug USB devices into computers at work is because Windows, and most computers at work, do not use a zero-trust architecture. They are quite open systems that aren't nearly as locked down as mobile phones.

USB Data Blockers

This thing connects just as far into your device as an USB cable plugged into your phone. In airplane mode, your phone has to actively refuse to communicate or do anything as a result of anything it may be sent by the tower. If it works for cell towers, it works for USB connections too.

There are products sold online that are meant to mitigate the risk of infection from public charging ports. These devices often come in the form of USB cables or adapters with the data transfer pins removed, making it physically impossible to transfer any data. The benefit of this approach is that it sets the risk of being targeted by an attack to zero. The problem is that this comes from people who think that this meaningfully increases their cybersecurity.

For a comparison, it is useful to know that phones receive information from the outside world in several ways. One is through electrical signals sent over a USB cable, where changes in voltage encode data. Another is through radio waves, which the phone's wireless hardware receives and interprets as data. In both cases, the device's hardware and software determine how incoming information is processed and what it is allowed to do.

Neither interface is inherently immune to malicious input. Vulnerabilities in the code that processes incoming data can theoretically be exploited, whether that data arrives through a cable or wirelessly¹⁾. But unlike data blocking USB cables, we do not store phones in Faraday cages, because the risk of actually being targeted that way for an ordinary end user is extremely low (though examples of past attacks like this do indeed exist!). The point here is that attacks like this exist theoretically, but theoretical attacks should not be conflated with attacks that can reasonably happen in the real world.

¹⁾

Disabling WiFi and Bluetooth, and turning on Airplane mode reduces exposure, but doesn't fully stop data processing either.

Extraction - external edit

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-15T12:40:50+00:00

Highly interactive
Video Games

Entertainment medium of the future

Extraction
Helldivers 2
DEFCON (Game)
The Crew
Rebel Inc.
F1 Manager 2023
Stop Killing Games

Video Games/Assets/
Extraction

Welcome! This is my hub for video game asset extraction related information and guides. I will be going through everything one step at a time to explain how everything works.

Please note that these tutorials presume a basic, general understanding of how to work with a computer. It demands that you are comfortable with the Windows file system, understand file paths and are capable of performing basic PC procedures like installing and running applications, able to use WinRAR (or whatever alternative you use), editing standard file formats like .txt, download files or programs from Github and can perform basic operations in Command Prompt or Powershell. For example, I will not be teaching how to open the Command Prompt or how to navigate between folders with it. However, this tutorial does not expect you to be advanced enough to actually build Github projects, for example.

Step 1: Basics

Before you can work with video game files, you need to understand some basic game development concepts.
I have compiled the most important ones here:

Extraction Basics

This page includes only the strictly necessary information related to extraction. You can skip this, but I do encourage you to at least fly over it to check if there's anything in there for you that you don't already know.

Step 2: Identify Game Files

The approach to extraction depends on what the game files look like.

Games on Android, for example, come packaged as .apk files. That's all you need to know for now and you can already move to Step 3.
On Windows, you will now need to dig into the game's folder and see what you can find.

Unreal games, for example, tend to place their files into the \<gamename>\Content\Paks folder and contain .pak and .utoc files.
Unity games often have their files in the \<gamename>\<gamename>_Data and contain .assets and .res files.
In some cases, the game might store middleware files outside of the game engine's files. Rocket League for example stores many Wwise files in rocketleague\TAGame\CookedPCConsole.

Optional: Make Copy of Game Files

Instead of messing with the game's original installation, it is always a good idea to instead just make a copy of the full game folder (ie. everything). All extraction tools work just fine, even if you select to extract assets from the copies rather than the live installation. The benefit of this is that you can mess with copied files as much as you want without accidentally breaking the installation you use to actually play the game. Some games may also not like seeing foreign files in their folders and may delete them without warning. By keeping a copy of the game files, you are protecting it from game changes in the future that remove assets, and it allows you to re-extract assets from the game easily at any time in the future without needing a live installation of the game.

Step 3: Select Approach

Depending on the file identification, follow the following links:

screenshot_20261013-124830.png - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-13T11:00:06+00:00

screenshot_20261013-124849.png - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-13T10:57:02+00:00

willmycelltowerbecomeobsolete-900x1200-1.webp - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-13T10:52:06+00:00

Unity Extraction

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-12T08:40:31+00:00

Highly interactive
Video Games

Entertainment medium of the future

Extraction
Helldivers 2
DEFCON (Game)
The Crew
Rebel Inc.
F1 Manager 2023
Stop Killing Games

Video Games/Assets/Extraction
Unity Extraction

Scared? Return to overview.

What You Need

I have good news and good news for you. Unity games are by far the easiest games to extract from. Unlike Unreal Engine games which have only recently become easier to extract from, Unity games always have been and probably will continue to be easier to extract from. All you need is one tool:

Asset Studio | Download from Github

Step 1 - Setting up Asset Studio

Asset Studio comes with a AssetStudioModGUI.exe file. This is the file used to start Asset Studio. If it is your first time opening Asset Studio and you haven't already installed it, the program may prompt you to “install or update .NET”. Click “Download now” and let it do its thing. When complete, you may have to try launching Asset Studio again. If you did it right, it should no longer give you that prompt and instead you should be seeing the glory of what is the uninitialized Asset Studio.

Step 2 - Loading the Game Folder

Every Unity game has a folder called Gamename_Data (ie. in the case of Air Defender, it's called Air Defender_Data). This folder contains files with the extension .assets, .resS and .resource. Maybe not all at once, but at least some.

In Asset Studio, you will find a menu “File” at the top left - click it, then “Load Folder”. Select the Gamename_Data folder. Asset Studio should then start pulling assets from the files in the Gamename_Data folder.

By using “Load Folder” as described in this tutorial, you will need 16GB of RAM to open a 16GB game. If a game's total file size exceeds your available RAM, you may consider loading the game's archives individually by using “Load File” instead. For a variety of reasons, this is a lot less convenient and I would generally encourage you to avoid that practice unless you don't have a choice.

Step 3 - Extracting

When done, you should be seeing a file tree with the game's archives on the left, called the “Scene Hierarchy”. This lets you browse the assets by archive. Personally, I prefer to switch to list view (“Asset List”) which shows me every single asset in a complete list. If you are looking for a particular type of asset (in my case that's usually Audio), you can sort the list by “Type”. If you are looking for one specific asset you can use the search bar above the list to filter the list by search term. Since you don't know what name was given to a particular asset, you might have to experiment around until you find what you are looking for. Sound is “AudioClip”.

Once you have what you are looking for you can right click the asset (or select multiple assets and then right click) and click on Export. Specify where to export the asset to and hit Enter.

Profit

That's it! I encourage you to just click around a bit in Asset Studio and see what each of the asset types are and do. Unity's nomenclature for different types of assets may deviate from what you expect. Select an asset on the left and preview it using the preview feature on the right to confirm that it is what you are looking for.

Unreal Engine Extraction

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-12T08:40:11+00:00

Highly interactive
Video Games

Entertainment medium of the future

Extraction
Helldivers 2
DEFCON (Game)
The Crew
Rebel Inc.
F1 Manager 2023
Stop Killing Games

Video Games/Assets/Extraction
Unreal Engine Extraction

Scared? Return to overview.

What You Need

You are lucky! For the longest time, extracting assets from Unreal games was the biggest pain in the ass you could imagine. In fact, I collected an ungodly list of tools for entering Unreal games, but you only need two:

FModel | Download from GitHub
jmap | Download from GitHub (You will probably be interested in the jmap_dumper-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip file.)

Fmodel is quite amazing - for beginners, It does the job of dealing with .pak and .utoc archives. Back in the days, you had to do this with a funny script that you downloaded from a funny website, which then revealed .uasset files which you had to load into a different program that then let you extract files from there. Back then you needed QuickBMS, and then you needed UModel, and then you needed a way to figure out WWise. Fmodel does all of this for you!

Step 0 - (Optional) Make working copy of the game's files

In many cases, it can be useful to make a copy of the game folders. This way you can work on the game files without touching the actual installation of the game, ie. you don't break anything. This is not strictly necessary but I like to do it to have a distinct “working directory” instead of working with the live game files.

Step 1 - Setting up FModel

Your main weapon of choice will be FModel. The important step to working with Fmodel is configuring it correctly. If it is your first time opening the application, it might greet you with a screen like this:

If it does not, click the Directory button at the top of the application and then select Selector.

This is the Directory Selector screen of FModel. The first thing you need to set up with FModel is the directory that contains the game's .pak and/or .utoc files. You can do this either by dragging and dropping that folder into the FModel modal, or you can type out the path to the folder in the “Directory” field. If you drag & drop, the application will continue immediately. If you select a file path manually you will also have to set the “Detected Game” and the UE Versions fields. Detected Game is a drop down list which will probably give you the option between Fortnite, Valorant and Paks. Paks in this context means that you are purely pointing it to Pak files without any additional context. If you select Fortnite or Valorant, it will treat and read from your files like it is Fortnite or Valorant, which is not what you want unless your game is either Fortnite or Valorant. If it is not, select Paks and move on to select the version of Unreal in which the game runs. If you need help determining the version of Unreal that your game runs on, I provide extra help below.

Additional Help: Determining Unreal Engine Version

Once you are set, hit OK. The program might ask you to reload. Let it do that. After the program restarts, you should open the Settings menu from the main ribbon. A screen that looks something like this should open: Ignore the exact settings shown in the screenshot. This is to be used for orientation so that you know where to look at. For now, you should focus only on the strictly necessary settings. The strictly necessary settings here are marked with a star. You are already familiar with some of them:

Output Directory is the folder to which Fmodel will extract when you extract files. This can be anything, select something convenient.
Archive Directory is the folder containing the game files. You set this up in the Director Selector and it should show the file path here.
UE Version is the version of Unreal Engine that was used during development of the game. See above for help on determining this.
Texture Platform is a setting that determines how the game's textures will be read. Unreal Engine saves them differently based on platform, if you are extracting from the files of a Desktop game then you will want to select Desktop/Mobile.

Lastly, you should also toggle on “Convert Audio during Export (.wav)” further down on the settings page. That way you will not have to deal with Wwise or other middleware dramas.

Step 2 - Loading In

During settings or after, FModel will potentially ask you to restart. Let it do that and you should now be looking at something like this: Again, the exact details here don't matter. What matters is that you see a list of files on the left and a blank screen on the right.

On the top left you will see an option called Loading Mode with a dropdown menu. Open the dropdown and select All. Then hit the Load button underneath.
You should now be looking at something like this:

Congratulations, you are in! (You will have to do this every time you boot up FModel. It does not automatically load in the archives when opened.) You may or may not still have to do some extra things, though.

Step 3 - (Probably Required) AES

In many cases, Unreal Engine archives are encrypted with AES encryption. Like a .zip file, FModel can decrypt the files if you provide it with a key. If you can't find the assets you're looking for, are missing assets or FModel prompts you for an AES key, the paks are encrypted and you will have to get the decyrption key, the “password” so to speak.

To enter a key, click “Directory” at top left of your screen, then “AES”. However you find a key, this is where you will have to place it. Below are two ways for finding an AES key for your games.

Step 3.A Finding Keys Online

Luckily, AES keys are the same for every user, and once one user finds a key, they can share that key with everyone else so that you don't have to find it. CS.RIN.RU has a thread where AES keys for some of the more popular games are listed. You should click the link and potentially bookmark or note it down somewhere so you can find it again in the future. You might also be forced to create an account to actually be able to see the keys. If your game appears in the list, copy out the key.

Alternatively, it is well possible that someone else on the internet found the key and posted it outside the cs.rin.ru thread. Google is your friend.

Step 3.B Finding the Key Yourself

Try this.

Step 4 (Required for Unreal Engine 5 Games) .usmap and jmap

What I have covered so far is, I think, a good start and will often already get you pretty far into the game's assets. Thanks to FModel, you don't even have to worry about WWise or other audio handlers, as FModel lets you play .wem and .bank files right inside the application and allows you to export them to .wav so that you don't even have to ever touch any WWise related stuff.

However, in many cases you will be wanting to look into .uasset files, in which case the program will throw an error in the console below. It will mention “Unversioned Properties” or “Missing Mappings”. These errors are related to how Unreal Indexes its files and is a bit involved to explain. In short, FModel needs a file that maps assets stored in files to.. something? I'm not 100% sure myself, but the importantly what you need now is a .usmap file. To do that you will need to use jmap.

Step 4.1

After downloading jmap you should have a file called jmap_dumper.exe. This is a command line program that lets you generate a .usmap file for your game. To do that, you will need to open powershell and navigate to the folder that jmap_dumper.exe is in.

Note that the folder depends on where you downloaded/stored jmap to. I put my jmap dumper in D:\Programs\Extraction\Unreal Engine\jmap, but you are free to put it anywhere, you just need to be able to find it and its directory path again.
On Windows 11 you should be able to right-click into the window where jmap is in, and then select “Open in Terminal”.
However, depending on your settings it might open Command Prompt instead. jmap requires powershell.

jmap only works when the game is running, as it pulls its data from the active game process. Therefore you will also need to start the game you're trying to extract from.

Every time you want to use jmap, you will need to enter the game's version as an environment variable. These variables are deleted between each session, so you will have to execute the following command every time:
$env:PATTERNSLEUTH_RES_EngineVersion=“5.6”
Remember that in Step 1 you will have determined the version of Unreal in which the game runs. Instead of the 5.6, you should put in the version here that you determined. If you hit Enter and the powershell just moves to the next line, you have done everything right.

After setting the Unreal version for jmap, you are now ready to tell it what to actually do. For that, you will need the following command:
.\jmap_dumper.exe --pid 12200 output.usmap

Enter the command with the correct PID into the powershell and hit enter. After jmap completes it work you will see an output.usmap file in jmap's folder. This command uses the Process ID 12200 as an example, you will have to replace that number with the process ID that your game actually has. Note that a PID changes every time you run the game, so you have to find the PID yourself. If you need extra help for that, I have added extra information on PIDs below.

Additional Help: Determining a PID

Step 4.2

This mappings file can now be used in FModel. Open the Settings in FModel and toggle the switch “Local Mappings File (Drag & Drop)” to on. You can drag and drop your output.usmap file directly into the settings window, or you use the Mapping File Path option below the toggle to specify the directory. Click OK and FModel will probably want to restart. Let it do that, and now when you load in the game files (ie. Step 2), it will do that using the mappings file you provided. From here you can now freely explore the game's archive and extract at your leisure. Feel free to click at every type of file and see what it does. To extract, right click and select what you need (for Audio, for example, you would want “Save Audio”).

Profit!

That is all. With this knowledge you should now be able to work with Unreal Engine games and extract assets from them. Note that you will need additional software to work with more involved file types, like those used for 3D assets/meshes and others. I am not touching on them, though, as there are standardized pieces of software like Blender that, if your goal is to work with 3D assets, you probably already know how to work with (that is to say, I don't, and I don't personally care about 3D assets, I'm just here for the music and sounds).

To use FModel, you will now be primarily interested on the right side of your screen that acts as an explorer for the game's files. Use it to navigate through the folder structure, double click to open files and right click to see options for extracting the selected files. After opening a file it will often show a preview - use the left button on the bottom right to get back to the file/folder view.

Man or Bear?

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-09T09:54:18+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Misogyny/Feminism/
Man or Bear?

“Man or Bear” is a longstanding social media trend that got popular after a viral tweet asked women who they'd rather encounter alone in the woods—a random man or a bear. It sparked widespread debate, with many women saying they'd choose the bear, pointing to how unsafe they often feel around unfamiliar men. The trend quickly morphed into commentary on gender-based fears, safety, and societal norms. There are two primary methods this question can be answered, and I will deal the boring, statistically informed answer first.

The content of this page may, by the strict meaning of its words, be inaccurate. I am writing this with the intent to inform, specific numbers here are less important than the general idea I'm trying to point at. Please read the full article on Accuracy.

Statistics

I will go through a few examples to try to find, with you the reader, some of the limits that are involved here. You have to decide which of the two options you'd prefer. The numbers in the first few examples are not approximations of real odds. They are thought experiments. Some better approximations come later.

Finding the Limit

1. 100% chance to die, mauled to death by bear OR 100% chance to die, raped, humiliated and traumatized

Which one would you prefer?
I can say for myself that, in this example, I would definitely rather be mauled by a bear and I'd assume 99% of humans will agree with me on this. Let's move forward from here and see what we can learn.

2. 100% to get bear'd OR 100% to get raped, but left alive

Which one would you prefer?
Now this one is a lot more difficult to answer because in one you'd at least get to continue to live. Would that be a worthwhile life? You will continue to be shamed and victim blamed after the incident. I could see both sides here and personally I hope I'll never have to make such a decision myself.

3. 50% chance to get bear'd OR 25% to get raped, but left alive

Which one would you prefer?
We're now getting into the territory of what the “Man or Bear?” question is trying to get at. Relatively certain death is better than a comparatively unlikely, but absolutely possible rape. Women, so the argument, would rather just throw in the towel than risk the rape, and I can understand them. Taking the bear here is very reasonable. Now we get to the statistical part and the question that is being asked by the “statistical response” to Man or Bear: Where is the limit?

4. 20% chance to get bear'd OR 5% chance to get raped, but left alive

Which one would you prefer?
This is now the ultimate question and where we will move from to find some kind of conclusion. I hope these are some estimates that everyone can at least work with. Bears aren't all that interested in humans and we also know that most men wouldn't rape women even if they could get away with it without consequences. Are the odds 5%? No, probably not, but that's exactly the point of the next few comparisons:

5. 20% OR 1%
6. 20% OR 0.5%
7. 20% OR 0.1%
8. 20% OR 0.01%
9. 20% OR 0.001%

Number 9., 0.001%, is interesting. Using the following two assumptions I am going to arrive at the conclusion that 0.001% is the average daily chance of a woman to get raped on any given day:

On average, 1 out of 3 women get raped in their lifetime
On average, women live 80 years

Statistically 1/4 or 1/5 women get raped in their lifetime depending on who you believe, so accounting for non-reports - because sexual crime often goes unreported - I think 1/3 is quite acceptable as a number.

From this, I derive that women experience, on average 240 years (3 * 80), or 87,600 days (240 * 365), of life before being raped. 100% divided by 87,600 is 0.0011415525114155 or 0.001%. Yes, almost all women are raped earlier than their 80th year of life, but in most cases they don't get raped again until they die, so it doesn't really matter when they get raped as the timing of it averages out to “once every 240 years” anyway.

The point here is that somewhere here, most women would definitely stop taking the bear. I know this because at 0.001% - as calculated above - you'd be insane to still take the bear. If 0.001% was too high of a chance for a person, they wouldn't be able to exist at all.¹⁾

So…

Where is your limit?
It is now upon you to decide where your cutoff is. Even at 10x more likely than normal daily chance you'd probably still rather take that than the bear. But when does that stop? It might be useful to really think this through and think about where on the scale you'd go, and where too much is too much for you. Of course any of the rape chances above daily normal chance are too much if repeated multiple times, but this is a one-off thing. Whatever you choose happens once and then, if you didn't die, you go back to the rest of your life with normal daily rape chances.

The Dangers of Men

The other question is, how dangerous really is a man? Like, what's the actual statistic for the likelihood of a man just sexually abusing a woman if they happened to meet in a space devoid of help and witnesses, ie. devoid of accountability?

All of us are going to find very different estimates here. Personally I think that a woman could probably go through at least 1000 men before finding someone who will actually sexually assault her. Of course many more men are going to be indecent or abusive towards her before that (which is shocking in its own right), but I think the overwhelming number of men won't do anything life-changing to a woman even in a space with no accountability. You might, and probably will, come up with your own calculations here, but I personally would put the chance at 0.1% and, while maybe not a good number, I would not think of it as utterly unreasonable either.

Comparing Cutoffs

What we do now from here to reach a conclusion is easy. Where is your cutoff, where is your expected chance, and is your expected chance above or below your cutoff? Now in my case, my calculation would go roughly like this: For me, 10% risk of getting raped is too much. I know that with a 10% (or less) chance of it happening, I'm comfortable enough with my odds. The previously established 0.1% are below 10%. So, if 10% is the highest amount of risk I'm willing to go with then I'm perfectly fine with 0.1% and the correct answer to the original question is indeed man.

For some extra flavor we can also use the bear chance as a coefficient. Since I'm not guaranteed to die to the bear I can be cocky and reduce the limit of what I'm willing to take. If I take a 20% bear chance (ie. 1 in 5) then I can divide my limit like this: 10ppt / 5 = 2%.
I think this is reasonable because the bear chance matters in the chance calculation. If I am willing to accept risks with the bear then I can afford to accept less risk with men. In my case, 0.1% is still well below 2%, but this might change something for you.

Fear

The cool thing is that we can use the above-established framework to explain what women's real problem with men's justification of the Man or Bear question is. Some of the properties in this model are fixed. Whether you used the same numbers as me, the bear chance and the chance of getting raped are just fact numbers. Even if we estimate them differently, that is only because we all work with different information and have different guessing skills. But, the one thing that will be different between everyone's mental model of the formula is the limit, the amount of risk a person is willing to take before they'd rather take the bear.

This limit is, to a degree, informed mathematically, but for many (especially women) it will be an expression of their fear. While there may truly be a rational, mathematical solution to the problem, people who are afraid of things will naturally try to avoid falling victim to it. Even within women, the reported limits will differ from one person to the next and they are exclusively a measure of how afraid they are of men. For some women this limit might be above the actual odds, for some it's below, for some it's right on.

It doesn't really matter. The online phenomenon here is the fact that many women, upon hearing the original question, were reminded of the fear that men cause in them and chose the bear because of it. Men do not know this fear, so for them this inevitably becomes a matter of statistics. As far as my understanding goes, for women this discussion is not about statistics, whether their assumptions are right or even that many women choose bear; this discussion is about the fact that, for men, unaware as they are, this discussion so often does end up in statistics. They do this because they do not know the fear, and they have no other way other than to tackle this question statistically.

In fact, that was my reflex too and it forever will be. Considering that men do in fact not have these experiences to draw from to inform their man or bear decisions, it will be very hard to try to use it to teach men that they are scary. Now personally I don't need to be told that I am conceptually capable of overpowering most women, I know that and I don't plan to actually do it. I also know that this means that most women unfamiliar with me won't trust me, because they can't. I guess the point of this question is that many men do not? And yes, most men are decent to women, but the point is that many men do not, a reality that is actually so common that unlike rape, male indecency towards women is a daily occurrence (I mean, women are raped every day, but not every woman is raped every day. But every woman does become victim of male indecency on a daily basis.)

¹⁾

Obviously 0.001% is still “too high” and needs to be reduced, but it's not “too high” in the sense that people would rather die to bears, as proven by the fact that people don't just spontaneously throw themselves at bears all day every day.

Fear Coefficient

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-10-09T09:53:34+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Human Psychology/Fear/
Fear Coefficient

The Fear Coefficient describes the attitudes of individuals humans to as threatening perceived possibilities. It is a versatile tool that can be used to analyze human behavior in a multitude of ways. Specifically, it can be used to express:

The difference between how likely an event really is and how likely an individual thinks it is.
The difference between how likely an event really is and how afraid a human is of it, regardless of how likely they think it is.
The difference between how afraid an individual is a thing in comparison to other individuals.
The amount of risk a person is willing to take for an averse thing to happen, in comparison to others or actual risk.

Someone with a high fear coefficient is influenced strongly by their fear, whereas a low fear index indicates boldness (although being bold isn't necessarily a good thing).

1. Difference in Actual Believed Likelihood

Humans may, depending on how they've been raised and what they've been told, miscjudge the likelihood of averse events. Many people think of nuclear power as dangerous when it really isn't. In many cases, this depends on the individual's available knowledge. Flying, for example, is exceedingly safe, and that fact is well known. But for those who do not know this, they may misjudge the risk.

This fact difference can be easily established by asking yourself “How likely is X to happen?” and then looking up how likely it really is. If your guess was spot on, you have a fear coefficient of 1. If your guess was twice as likely as reality, you have a fear coefficient of 2, and so on.

2. Difference in Felt Likelihood

You can think of a coefficient differently though: When going into a dark attic or a dark basement, or even just at home late at night, we might sometimes get anxious. What if someone jumps out at us from the darkness? We know for a fact that the odds of that happening are virtually zero, but we can get afraid of that anyway. Even when we know that the likelihood of this is exceedingly low, we still feel fear as if it was quite likely to happen.

Humans are masters at making up threats where there are none, and humans are great at blending out threats that are really there. Cars, for example, are quite dangerous (especially in comparison to flight), but we routinely underestimate the risk of driving (though this may perhaps be a survival strategy to reduce stress in situations where no alternatives exist anyway).

In this case, the fear coefficient may be used to describe the actual likelihood of something happening in comparison to how much fear the person feels. If, for example, in the dark basement a person has so much fear that the person feels like there genuinely might be something, say, 50%, they have a very high coefficient. Their brain is preparing them for odds many orders of magnitudes higher than what is really there, so the fear coefficient may be around 100,000,000. In the same way, we get into cars with a confidence as if the odds of a crash approach zero, when in reality that isn't the case, we might have a fear coefficient of 0.2.

3. Difference between Individuals

Perhaps more interesting than 2. is the comparison between individuals. In this metric, we compare a person's felt amount of fear to the average. Perhaps more statistically significant, we may also compare a person's guess on how likely something is in comparison to the average guess. If you think of something as twice as likely as what the average thinks, you have a fear coefficient of 2.

4. Fear Cutoffs

Another interesting way to measure fear is to consider how much risk a person is willing to take in certain situations. For example, car driving is a risk most of us take very frequently, and whatever odds of a crash we believe we do take is obviously not too much to stop us from driving cars regularly. The question is then about how much of a risk car driving would have to present to a person before they stop driving cars. These numbers can be used to derive a fear coefficient, either by comparing them to the real chance or by comparing them to the average or other individuals.

For example, if I boarded a plane on the condition that I'm okay with a 1:1000 chance of crashing, I would be comparatively bold because the real chance of a crash is ~1:12,000,000 roughly.

A big conversation about how fear is experienced between individuals was the Man or Bear? discussion.

beschweren - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-29T08:36:30+00:00

This page has been moved, the new location is Beschwerde.

Beschwerde

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-29T08:33:48+00:00

Accurately describes the things coming out of your mouth
Ramblings

Technically yes, but fuck you:

Ramblings
Factuality
Accuracy
Perspective
Systems
Humor
Pages

Ramblings/Kontakt/
Beschwerdeformular

Nutzen Sie dieses Beschwerdeformular um Probleme mit dieser Webseite, mir selbst, oder allem wofür ich persönlich verantwortlich bin, zu reklamieren. Dies kann alles beinhalten das ich persönlich sage oder schreibe, vor allem aber Inhalte auf dieser Webseite. Bitte beachten Sie dass ich nicht für die Inhalte von anderen Personen auf dieser Domain verantwortlich bin, mit der Ausnahme von Inhalten die eindeutig rechtswidrig sind. Diese bieten möglicherweise ihre eigenen Beschwerdemöglichkeiten.

Nutzen sie diesen Link um zur Homepage zurückzukehren.

Kontakt Wer sind Sie? ^* Ihre E-Mail-Addresse: ^* Alternative Kontaktmöglichkeiten (ie. Discord, Steam,...) (optional) Wesen Ihrer Beschwerde ^*

Beschwerde

Nutzen Sie dieses Feld um Ihre Beschwerde auszulegen. Besonders, beschreiben Sie was Sie nicht mögen und wie ich zu dem Problem beigetragen habe. Beschreiben Sie warum Sie glauben dass ich so gehandelt habe wie ich es habe.

Betreff ^* Beschwerde ^*

Entschuldigung

Only edit this fieldset if “Wesen Ihrer Beschwerde” is set to “Persönlich/Privat”.

Erfahren Sie warum dieses Formular ein Bitte um Entschuldigung-Feld enthält.

Bitte um Entschuldigung? ^*

Schnellverfahren

Ist diese Beschwerde ein Notfall und muss schnell verarbeitet werden um Schaden zu verhindern?

Notfall

Fertig

Please fill all the letters into the box to prove you're human. K L N K K Please keep this field empty:

Complain

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-29T08:32:35+00:00

Accurately describes the things coming out of your mouth
Ramblings

Technically yes, but fuck you:

Ramblings
Factuality
Accuracy
Perspective
Systems
Humor
Pages

Ramblings/Contact/
Issue Complaint

Please use this form to report any problems with this website, the host or anything I am personally responsible for. This may include anything I say/write personally, or publish, especially things on this website. Note that other individuals posting on my domain are not beholden to me unless they are breaking the law. They may or may not be offering avenues for complaint themselves.

Use this link to go back to the homepage.

Contact Who are you? ^* Your E-Mail Address: ^* Alternative Contact (eg. Discord, Steam,...) (optional) Nature of Your Complaint ^*

Complaint

Use this field to lay out your case. Particularly, describe what you didn't like and how I contributed to bringing it about. Please also explain what you think my rationale was behind doing it.

Complaint Subject ^* Complaint Case ^*

Apology

Only edit this fieldset if “Nature of Your Complaint” is set to “Personal/Private”.

Learn more about why this form contains a Request Apology field.

Do you request an apology? ^*

Speedy Process

Does this complaint require speedy processing to avert damage?

Emergency

Done

Please fill all the letters into the box to prove you're human. G F W X V Please keep this field empty:

Organ Donation

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-28T09:00:56+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Medicine/Humans/Sensitivities/
Organ Donation

I'm a proud organ donor.

Organ donation is the process of giving authorization to healthcare providers to remove one or more of one's organs and transplant it to someone else who needs that kind of organ to live. In the overwhelming number of cases, this is done after someone's death if they have declared consent during lifetime, though certain organs (like a [one] kidney, a piece of the liver, and certain other organs and tissues) can be donated while still alive. This page will focus on posthum organ donation.

Like a car, the human body is made of parts which are, in many respects, largely interchangeable. While the human body hasn't evolved to be modular, advances in medicine have made it possible to replace many parts in a functional and healthy state despite the difficulties. Humans die when one or more life-supporting parts have failed. However, in most cases many other parts of the body stay intact and would work just fine if the rest of the body wasn't, yknow, dead. Like after a car crash, the wreckage can be harvested for parts that are still intact and may be useful elsewhere. In fact, you'd be surprised how much of a human can still be useful to someone else.

As explained, this process typically happens when a person has died, since at that point the person no longer exists and their body has no use of its components. The exception here is, for example, one kidney, as a person can live just fine with just one kidney instead of the two that most come with out of the factory¹⁾.

Process

An organ donation begins with the person's death certificate. When rescued from, say, a scene of an accident, a person is admitted to the hospital where they will receive the full breadth of the nation's emergency medicine apparatus where possible. At this point, nobody is looking or even thinking about the person's organ donor status. In many countries, doctors work to save patients until brain death, as brain death is entirely irreversible and the gold standard in modern medicine. Clinical death involves the stopping of both lung and heart activity, but using resuscitation it is possible to restart either in the right conditions. Clinical death, if prolonged and if the person is not supported by a heart-lung machine ('life support'), leads to brain death.

This is a whole philosophical field about death and how to define it, but for medical purposes it is good enough to know that we think because of neurons and brain cells. When these die, the foundation of what enables us to feel, think and experience things, is destroyed²⁾. If this state is reached, doctors will cease life-saving efforts. This happens thousands of times a day and is entirely normal. If in the future brain death somehow became reversible, a new line will be determined by when doctors will stop trying.

The point is, once a person is brain dead, they will not be helped anymore. Nothing in our current medicine will bring them back, noone ever has come back from brain death³⁾, this is the point by which nobody, including any doctor on Planet Earth, will help them anymore. They're dead. Now, a death certificate is issued and only now will the person be checked for donation status. If they consented to donation, they will be brought to a different team that handles the harvesting. The doctors who originally tried to save you are never aware of your donation status and wouldn't care either way, as they have no incentive for you to die. These doctors in the emergency department have long, illustruous careers in medicine, having went through the entire medical system and whose career depends on them having a good safety record.

Politics: Opt In, Opt Out

One of the longest lasting discussions in our society since the enlightenment and our medical advances is how to handle organ donations. Fundamentally, a person's body is generally considered to be under the authority of that person, and that continues even if the consciousness inhabiting that body 16 out of 24 hours a day has ceased to be. Funerals are done at the behest of the dead person, using their will as stated during lifetime to put their body to rest. In cases where such a will does not exist, they are presumed to have wanted to be buried anyway. Under this, a person has to explicitly state that they want their body to be used for charitable means instead, and this basis is how we have come to the system we have today: Boringly called “opt-in”, opt-in means that the government is providing a service (organ donation) that you pro-actively have to sign up for to become part of it. You have to explicitly state in writing that this is what you want in the case that you happen to die.

Organ donations are a good thing. People who need an organ can be given many more years of qualitative life when receiving an organ, but in all cases they have to wait long times to get one, if they ever get one at all. Waiting times of 9 years are the norm. The arguments against organ donations on the other hand are pretty weak. In most cases, individuals are either largely unaware of how badly organs are needed, how much more organs would improve the people's lives and as a result aren't particularly motivated to opt in. Opting in would involve not just getting a donor card or signing up online, but for most it would also involve confronting some doubts that they still have about organ donation. For example, the idea of being harvested from before being properly dead, or the idea that doctors put in less effort when trying to save a donor are doubts that can be easily overcome, but doing so would involve confronting fear and some education.

Specifically for these people, the idea is to reverse the system and make it so that everyone would be harvested by default, unless the person has stated in writing during their life that they do not want this. Some countries have already implemented this, and, as a strong advocate for organ donation, I am personally enthusiastic about this because this is a way to make a major impact, and it is politically realistic. I know that most things I advocate for are unlikely to actually get passed by lawmakers, but a proposition to switch to opt-out has genuine odds of making it through, which would cut waiting times for donations substantially and give millions of people more healthy lifetime at no cost whatsoever. Dead people are dead, the only one you're hurting by harvesting organs are people's sensibilities, but they are nothing in comparison to the joy donation recipients will feel by getting to spend another 6 years with your loved ones.

And of course, those who really don't want to still have the option to opt out. If one, for any reason, decides that they don't like the idea of things being done with their body after death (besides getting liquified into ashes, I guess that's A-OK) they may opt out at any time for no cost either.

Reasons Against

Fear of Death

Most arguments I see against organ donation typically revolves around some kind of fear of death, and the refusal to accept that one's life will at some point end. Most people I've talked with want to believe that, at any point in this, they either will or at least might be harvested when alive. Doctors might put in less effort, they might not be properly dead, maybe they'll just wake up randomly, why should brain death be irreversible… these kinds of things. They seem to think that as long as “they” exist in some meaningful form, even if just as skin and flesh, they're still them in some way and get very squeamish if someone proposes doing something with their body, even if they're so dead that the last thing that would be done with them is being burned to ashes in an oven; which they would do even if somehow their body got up from the stretcher and started walking around. They like seeing themselves alive, and just the thought of being dead is scary.

Religion

The other reservation to organ donation I've seen is religiously motivated. Something about the human body is sacrosanct, and even though harvesting organs here to put them into another body there violates the sacredness of the human body. This is entirely feels-based and has no grounding in either reality OR the bible, neither of which would tell you that making the life of a living person better at the cost of a dead person's organs is in any way bad or an affront to god or his perfect creation. His creation obviously is not perfect, and god knows as much.

Unsuitable Body

One of the things that made me unsure for a long time was whether I even have anything healthy in me that could be useful. Well, it turns out that it is possible to transplant body tissue that you'd never even think of. Even if your heart sucks, and your lung sucks, and your liver and your kidneys suck, they can still use your retina. Many tissues can be transplanted in general and, even if an organ itself sucks, it is at least functional which is better than what the people on the organ donation waiting list have.

Be An Organ Donor!

If I don't make it to something in my lifetime, maybe I can at least help someone else live a better life.

Becoming an Organ Donor is the easiest, fastest and cheapest way to make a life-changing impact on another person, available to anyone! In Germany, government buildings sometimes prepare flyers with a donor card, and these days citizens can sign up in the digital organ donation register via the internet. The best way is probably to just google and see the results. I already googled it for you, just click the link: Google Search: Organ Donation.

¹⁾

And these kinds of donations still only happen if you actively give consent, these are months-long procedures where you get medical consultation, appointments, hospital visits and so on and so forth, this is not done ad-hoc.

²⁾

Think of a car engine not just being ruptured, malformed, destroyed, but entirely pulverized. Outside of building a new engine, this engine can not be rescued in any way. Classically, brain death occurs when it fails to receive oxygen for a prolonged amount of time. After a few minutes cells will die which, for our purposes, can be considered pulverization. If enough cells of the brain die [“pulverize”], the brain becomes functionally useless.

³⁾

Yes, nobody. While some individual aspects of life may still occur in the brain, like commands to breathe in and out, the brain is damaged [“pulverized”] too much to actually meaningfully continue to exist. Any reports of people “coming back” from brain death are individuals whose brain displayed lower forms of activity, but nothing coherent.

organdonorcardfront.jpg - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-28T08:24:48+00:00

organdonorcardback.jpg - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-28T08:24:46+00:00

dsc_0058.jpg - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-25T10:47:49+00:00

dsc_0057.jpg - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-25T10:47:47+00:00

Redemption

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-22T11:49:56+00:00

Major trains of thought
Philosophy

Trainwrecks

Value Judgement
Personal Preference
Nature of Things
Fact of the Universe
Toleration
Ship of Theseus
I'm 14 and this is deep
Words
Claim
Court
Redemption

Philosophy/Religion/
Redemption

Depending on your specific definition, Redemption denotes the idea of clearing oneself of wrongdoing or the guilt of wrongdoing. “Salvagability” and “redeemability”, ie. “redemption”, are not philosophical terms, they're theistic and rely on theistic principles. Bad deeds don't just vanish from the earth or get neutralized. There is no ledger that keeps track of good and bad deeds. When we do something bad, all we can do is regret our actions and change for the better.

Redemption can be “turned” into a philosophical term by further defining it using philosophical ideas. For example, if you consequentialistically define “irredeemable” as “this person will never be able to do more good in their life than they have done bad” (which are value judgements) then you have a question of philosophical merit. However, even then it is hardly practical because

you cannot really determine a person to be irredeemable until they are definitively dead, because a person might just happen to save a passenger plane seconds before their death¹⁶⁾.
saving a passenger plane in their dying breaths doesn't mean very much on its own. If you got the opportunity to save a passenger plane from crashing, you probably would do that. Not because you're doing it for the the passengers or even because you value your own life, but because it's the prudent thing to do. In other words, doing a good thing doesn't mean you're a good person, or that you did it for good reasons.
Lastly, and this is the most insidious problem with this calculation, a person just might not get much of an opportunity to do good things. If you never get the opportunity to save someone from a burning building or help someone with some things, you're just shit out of luck¹⁷⁾.

This is why we, as people, should not really focus on what a person does, has done or will do, but about the person's state of mind: has the moral compass of the person who did a bad thing since improved (ie. are they saving the plane out of compassion/out of the goodness of their heart?)? A person who committed heinous murder might have had a broken moral compass but might realize later on and change - redemption. In this sense, redemption is nothing more than a progression from a broken moral compass to one that is healthy, and this can happen spontaneously at any time, even to people who have done some of the worst crimes imaginable. Whether this happens just seconds after the murder, 5 years into their prison sentence or on their death bed. Anyone's moral compass can at any time change for any reason.

Humans improving, “fixing” their moral compass is why the penal system is originally meant to focus strongly on rehabilitation¹⁸⁾. People should be imprisoned if they pose a threat to other people (amongst other reasons), but if their moral compass improves then even perpretrators of some of the worst crimes imaginable should not be imprisoned for any longer than necessary to satisfy the pillars of sentencing¹⁹⁾. Every human deserves to live the best possible life they can possibly have; to say that perpetrators of serious crimes deserve less even if they have underwent major change and the pillars of sentencing are satisfied would be immoral in my eyes.

Ultimately, “salvage” and “redeem” (redemption) are all terms used by victims (those who have been wronged) to describe their (in-)ability to forgive. Their (in-)ability to relinquish resentment or some other form of morally inflected anger²⁰⁾. When we talk about someone who is irredeemable, the easiest definition after all is still “I personally will never be able to forgive that person”. But, this is inherently subjective (and will never not be subjective) and cannot be generalized into “this person is irredeemable in general”. Any person can fix their moral compass.

¹⁶⁾

or an equally great good, proportional to how bad the bad thing was

¹⁷⁾

And this invites a conversation about, what would you call this, ethical relativism? Like, if you are 100% nice in what little opportunities everyday life gives you, that should count, yes?

¹⁸⁾

That's a penology term right there, and yes I know that prisons suck but it's not because of a flawed philosophy behind it, it's the capitalistic incentives coming before it.

¹⁹⁾

Pillars of Sentencing

²⁰⁾

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Forgiveness, Winter 2025 Version

Toleration

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-20T18:54:57+00:00

Major trains of thought
Philosophy

Trainwrecks

Value Judgement
Personal Preference
Nature of Things
Fact of the Universe
Toleration
Ship of Theseus
I'm 14 and this is deep
Words
Claim
Court
Redemption

Philosophy/
Toleration

Toleration is the absence of objection to behaviors, attitudes or similar things where others unrightfully believe that they justify objection. This, I believe, is a reasonable definition when one puts the word “Tolerance” at the beginning of the sentence; however, I think that tolerance is much better categorized and contextualized from a more fundamentally philosophical perspective:

Decisions, acts, beliefs and so on and so forth are moral or immoral based on how they affect you and the people around you. Some beliefs would cause harm, others not so much. Now, in a perfect world we would all agree on what beliefs cause harm, at which point the creation of the words “tolerance” and “intolerance” would never be prompted. The word “intolerance” emerges only when disagreement over the effect of a belief or act exists. Commonly, the word “intolerance” is used to describe such things that unnecessarily, ie. immorally, hurt individuals or groups of individuals. Not all hurt is “bad”, but that which is bad is intolerant if the motivation for that hurt is based on prejudice. Theft isn't necessarily “intolerant” if it is motivated by personal gain only, but if it is motivated in part by prejudice then at least the motivation for the act is considered “intolerant”. From this, tolerance emerges as the word that simply means the opposite, being accepting of things that others are not accepting of.

A distinction needs to be made, again, that objecting to actually immoral things is not considered intolerant. If an act or belief is actually harmful - like, say, a murder - then calling this out is not based on prejudice but on moral principles. From this, calling out harmful sentiments - like, say, “all blacks are evil” - is not intolerant either. It is a rejection of intolerance. While, sure, calling this out may “hurt” the person who actually believes it, “hurting” them is not unnecessary or immoral.²¹⁾ In fact, the intended effect is to stop that person from hurting more people by hurting them; ie. hurting them is intended to have a positive impact in the long run.²²⁾²³⁾

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Classic examples of intolerance include racism and bigotry. Racism is a misguided belief in the superiority of a specific group of people over others, which satisfies the “unrightful”, the “prejudice” and the “objecting” condition. Recognizing the unrightful part and therefore not objecting to other races is not prejudiced and therefore widely understood as being “tolerant”. Bigotry works the same, just that the target group is usually different and the prejudice expressed in a different form as well.

Objection	Rightful	Not Rightful
Not Prejudiced	If you object to something but do so rightfully, you are not intolerant. Objection to racism is rightful, therefore not intolerant.	If you object to something without being right about it, but not out of prejudice, you are wrong.²⁴⁾
Prejudiced	If you object to something rightfully, but out of prejudice, you are lucky to have come to the correct conclusion. The objection itself may not be wrong, your reasoning likely is intolerant.	Your average racist. Intolerant.

No objection! In that case you may be prejudiced, but not intolerant, as you are tolerating things you may falsely believe are objectionable. If you make no objection on something that is rightfully objectionable, you are merely indifferent/not acting on it.

Perspective

Now obviously, toleration is dependent on perspective. Someone who objects to black emancipation on what he truly, from the bottom of his heart, believes to be justified objections will not consider themselves intolerant.²⁵⁾ Restricting that person's freedom of speech will be seen by them as intolerance towards them. Now, this doesn't mean that doing so may or may not be justified, but it implies that any person who just believes in their wrongness strongly enough will feel that way.

²¹⁾

Here, “hurting” can mean, for example, the limitation of that person's freedom of speech. CANCEL CULTURE.

²²⁾

And to protect the person who is actually being discriminated against.

²³⁾

Care should be taken at how much hurt to inflict. One should inflict as little hurt as possible while maximizing the beneficial effect. Excessive hurt may end up somewhere in the realm of intolerance (towards the intolerant) if your reaction is excessive, which can quickly slide into the sphere of yourself being prejudiced against the intolerant.

²⁴⁾

Racists will say that their hatred towards black people is founded on evidence and not just personal belief, but that is ~~usually~~ not true.

²⁵⁾

Unless they decide to take it up as a patch.

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-20T18:35:09+00:00

Ctrl + S

- removed

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-18T21:06:57+00:00

awdasd

Deficit

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-18T11:55:53+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Words/Economy/
Deficit

Deficit is a term used to describe a numerically negative disparity between two things.

Deficit typically comes out of the field of economy and is one of the last things you would find me write about. After all, economy is politics, and I am not a political commentator. I am an amateur philosophical commentator trying to cover philosophy-related things. Usually, it is very easy for me to stay out of political topics, because - especially with economics-related topics - I have basically nothing to add, anyway. However, in this case I have found myself actually having something to add.

It is about a social media post Donald Trump made the other day:

Trump: Deficit = Loss, the USA is losing 1.5Tr USD annually

To be very clear, to me this isn't about Trump. I don't care about Trump. He was democratically elected and delivers the kind of politics all of us roughly expected him to deliver, regardless of what that means to either you, me, or the other side of the political spectrum. No, this one is different because I have general knowledge of what he is talking about, and in addition I also have words this time that I think would constitute a nice and clean response to that social media post.

Spending Deficit

That answer, specifically, is: Being out of money and being bankrupt are not the same. Similarly, deficit and loss are not the same. All of us should know that many people store some or much of their value in assets. For these people, running out of cash on hand doesn't mean a lot and certainly doesn't mean that they're bankrupt now. If you are capable of making this distinction, then you are capable of distinguishing between loss and deficit, too.

So, typically the term deficit is used in economy to describe government spending. When a government spends more money than it makes through, for example, taxes, it is running at a deficit. Spending more than you have accumulates to debt. Accumulating debt and operating at a loss are not the same. Because even if your government has a spending deficit, they are still getting things for their spending. For example, the United States routinely imports semiconductors and microchips, the spending for which is added to the national debt. But, critically, the United States is actually getting those semiconductors and microchips, so the money wasn't just lost. This spending adds to the spending deficit, but it is not the same as just losing money.

This is the reason why deficit is called deficit, because the calculation of deficit is a calculation of subtraction. Not all subtraction calculations equal loss. Real losses happen in investments (which are not the same as spending), when the revenue does not match or exceed the original investment. Movies can run at a loss. Companies might sell products at a loss, the United States might export goods at a loss if it sells at a price lower than what it cost the United States to produce the goods. There might be a discussion about whether some government spending could be considered a loss if it doesn't align with one's personal values on what the government should or should not spend money on in the first place. But that's not the kind of conversation that I want to have, and it's not the conversation Trump is having, because he talks about the trade deficit.

Trade Deficit

The United States of America is a country that, economically, does a lot of imports. Particularly, the US imports a lot of machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers, and electrical and electronic equipment. These alone constitute an import value of over 1.1Tr USD or, in other words, the United States buys machinery and all of the above worth over 1.1Tr from other countries.

The United States has one of the biggest economies of the world, buying as much as 1Tr USD worth of stuff from other countries isn't unusual, right? What's happening here is that the United States wants a particular product and, instead of bartering cows and goats like savages, uses money as a means of exchange to complete the transaction. This is basically a trade deficit. If the new year just started and this was the first ever trade of that year, the United States would have a trade deficit of 1.1Tr USD at that moment. Importantly though, the United States hasn't “lost” any money. It bought a product for money. It received goods in return. The most you could say is that money has exited the United States, but that isn't a loss. Deficit isn't loss, and trade deficit isn't loss either.

The deficit is a result of a mathematical operation called subtraction, in this case that the United States buys more from other countries than other countries sell to it. This is just how trade works, all of this is voluntary. If the United States is unhappy with the prices then it can just not buy, or not sell. The United States is engaging in normal global trade and it just so happens that the United States needs more stuff from other countries than it has on offer for others. Again, deficit is not inherently bad, a deficit is the result of a subtraction. In the US's case, this is because the US is a service economy and doesn't rely on exports to work. Countries with oil or bananas typically rely on their exports and therefore have a trade surplus, but that too only means that they sell more than they buy, not that anyone is losing money.

Any transaction where a good is bought in exchange of money necessarily implies a trading deficit. To avoid trading deficit, one would have to go out of their way to buy something in exchange for another good instead of just using money. In a way, Trump disliking the trade deficit so much kind of implies that he thinks that all transactions involving money are a bad thing, and that we should indeed go back to bartering with physical items.

Of course he does not actually believe that (especially considering that Trump values the United States Dollar quite a bit and wants to continue using it and wants it to continue to be the world's reserve currency) but that is because he does not know what the trade deficit really is. Now personally, as a true United States patriot, I am fully in favor of more “Made in USA”. But even if that would reduce the trade deficit, it only means that the United States would be exporting more. That's all. There is no loss here, no problem to be solved, the United States is not victim of a global trading conspiracy, nobody is losing money. Countries are trading money for goods, and that has been like this and will continue to be like this for a long, long time to come.

deficitlosstrump.png - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-18T10:39:06+00:00

rationalwiki_logo.png - removed - external edit (Unknown date)

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-17T18:37:41+00:00

dokuwiki.svg - external edit

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-17T18:32:22+00:00

dokuwiki-128.png - external edit

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-17T18:25:55+00:00

Spotify

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-15T11:57:30+00:00

The immortal art
Music

Dropping their beat

Spotify
Bad Apple!!

Music/Music Industry/
Spotify

Spotify is a music licensing and streaming service from Sweden founded in 2006, a time dominated by peer-to-peer filesharing using applications such as Limewire or Kazaa. Limewire and Kazaa were programs that let two and more users send files to each other directly, making it possible for users to very easily share audio between users, directly, for free. While this was great the users, it came with multiple drawbacks that Spotify would later solve. For example, of these drawbacks was that filesharing is rather risky business. You do not know who is sitting on the other end of the connection, and you do not know the exact contents of the file you received. While you could see the file name, file extension and the file size, any information beyond that was hard to ascertain, and the user always risked malware intrusion. Secondly, filesharing like this is illegal because it constitutes piracy. As an end user, you were at risk of getting sued yourself (though that happened much less than they wanted you to believe), but much more problematic was that Limewire and Kazaa were going to be shut down over copyright lawsuits. Therefore, programs like these were only temporary solutions.

Spotify provided a convenient alternative: For the low low price of nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, you could listen to all the music for free, legally, and on-the-fly. One of the particular advantages of this is that, fundamentally, users don't want to pirate. In the same way that commuters don't want to fare dodge, it is often a hostile environment (ie. things cost too much) that would compel people into doing it anyway. However, if users can find a way to listen to their music and make sure the artist gets paid, that would be ideal. Spotify offered all that at a reasonable rate. This was in part because music production, so far, required expensive storage mediums such as CD's. But with Spotify, you could now listen to virtually all the music. Whether you listened to 20 songs from what would be just one CD, or 500 songs from 500 different CD's, you were still paying the fixed price of 9.99, and you wouldn't have to go through the hassle of either switching around CD's or downloading all these tracks manually, which was always kind of risky with Limewire or Kazaa. In many respects, Spotify was objectively cheaper and a natural evolution for both the consumer and the industry. ….and the industry.

1. Monetization

See me? Yeah, it is time for your monthly payment. If you can afford it.

So, back in the day you would have bought a disc, a digital album, a cassette or even a record. This could have been a ~15€ purchase and then you'd stick that into the playback device of your choice and you'd be good to go. These 15€ would go to the label of the artist, who has a contract with the artist regulating their payout. In general, a label needs to balance its spending on manufacturing (CD's or cassettes cost money), employees, equipment etc. with their spending on the artist. This hasn't changed today (except you don't pay for CD's or cassettes anymore), but with Spotify in the mix it's now a bit more complicated. Consider this example: Instead of buying a disc, you now pay 13€¹²⁾ to Spotify and listen to Artist A exactly one time. Then, you log off and don't use Spotify for the rest of the month. At the end of the month it's payout time: First things first, Spotify takes a 30% cut for the amazing service they provide you with. The remaining 70% are distributed to the artists/their labels in a way very intelligently designed and calculated by Spotify.

When you listen to music from Artist A, your “listen” is thrown into the pool of all listens out there. This means that if you listen to Artist A once, and you are Artist A's only listener, Artist A will get paid the same as every other Artist on Spotify that had only one listen. Even though you paid the price of what could have been a full CD from Artist A, they now get 0,004€¹³⁾ and the remaining 12,99€ - 30% - 0,004€ ≈ 9,93€ now go to Taylor Swift¹⁴⁾.

The way this works is that the total amount of money collected from end users is, at the end of the month, distributed to all artists equally, proportionally to their share in plays. This isn't about how many plays they got in absolute terms, it's about how many plays they got in comparison to everyone else. Example: If 30% of all plays in a month go to Taylor Swift (completely made up number), she will get 30% of the available money. So, regardless of how much you play Artist A, 30% of your money put into the platform will go to Taylor Swift. Trying to change this, for example by inflating Artist A's numbers (which is mathematically impossible to do legally)¹⁵⁾. Spotify has - of course by “accident” - created a zero-sum game that will make everyone pay the big ones while small artists are fighting over the scraps. And the cool thing about not being one of the big artists is that it is essentially impossible to become one, because to do that you would have to the percentage of plays of other artists. If Artist A does somehow win, then that by design means that other artists will get (proportionally) less plays¹⁶⁾. If you, as an artist, become successful, you are doing that by increasing your proportional share of plays, which necessarily comes out of the share of plays of everyone else.

You can imagine this as trying to sell books from your garage, but you only get 0,004€ per book sale - not because your books are shit, but because Amazon just sells more. Your books are perfectly fine and you could easily sell them - depending on the book - for between 5€ and 50€ but, because you only sell 3 books, you can only sell them for 0,004€ per book because, on the same day, Amazon sells 5 Million books (I don't know what the real number is). You would be a big winner if Amazon only sold 2 books themselves, but as long as your sale volume is as low as it is, you have to accept selling a 25€ at 0,004€.

In music terms, this means that even if you are a local legend and hold concerts in your hometown with a few thousand listeners from your community, that still only puts you ahead of 0,00000245% of artists on Spotify. Therefore you get paid like a 0,00000245%.
Making Spotify a zero-sum¹⁷⁾ game means that it is - by design of the structure - impossible to win.

2. Consolidation of power structures

Another thing about Spotify is that people like its algorithm. We get music recommendations from Spotify, which has a pretty big influence over what kind of music people listen to. Now, I'm an outstanding observer, and I see how much people rely on the algorithm, a program designed and deployed by Spotify, giving them a lot of power over what people listen to. It makes me think… Isn't it convenient how Spotify is structured in a way to benefit big artists and, with its algorithm, also gets executive control over who the biggest artists are in the first place? Like, it just so happens that Spotify went out of its way to create a monetization “system” that works like an oligarchy and with its recommendation system also has a major, if not overwhelmingly large, say in who becomes an oligarch? And here is a little, dark secret that you may not even want to know - if they control who most people listen to… they also control who will not be listened to. So, uh, any bets on who we think is not going to get recommended a lot by the algorithm? Because, I think I have the hunch that Spotify will like to use its algorithm to reinforce the rigid and hostile monetization structure.

Because, ultimately, this isn't so much about the exact names of the oligarchs at the top as it is about keeping the total number of oligarchs low. The goal is closing the door behind yourself so that the top keep earning a lot more than anyone else.

The invisible loser is, always, the local legend, the community rock band or even just renowned bands from your state (especially those). Ask any actual music person who is passionate about their work and wants to immerse themselves and others with their artistic way of self-expression - nobody, nobody likes Spotify. The only reason they use it is because they have to. If you don't, you get overrun by the monopoly and eventually have to close down.

3. Loss of ownership, loss of control and prisoners in walled gardens

As much as Spotify is designed to not compensate small artists, it is also problematic on a societal level. Spotify puts a price tag on not just listening to music that month, but on listening to music at all, for as long as they can keep you tied to their platform. The problem here is that having 12.99€ in a month for music is a privilege, not the norm.

In the same way that small artists get fucked on Spotify, we get fucked when we put ourselves under the employement of another company. Admittedly, if you can buy a Spotify membership you may not be a Taylor Swift, but you definitely enjoy a good amount of Privilege. That's good for you, but in this case the privilege is required. For many of us this problem is real. Very real. Some of us have to accept massive cuts in their quality of life if they want to do something as basic as listening to music through Spotify. And this may sound acceptable if you consider that Spotify is a service offered to you, but people have their entire music library on there. If you stop paying for Spotify for whatever reason, then that's it for you (Covid happens? Trump tariffs happen? Inflation? Price hike? Job loss? Healthcare/Surgery costs? Had to fix your washing machine? Just “didn't get as lucky and were born into a poor household”? Make your pick!). Even the music you downloaded is gone. You do not own anything on Spotify. When you submit yourself to Spotify, you accept that Spotify is in control of your access to music. If they don't like your face, or if you stop paying the membership fee for any of the three quadrillion possible reasons, you get kicked out.

Spotify is a deliberately designed walled garden with no way of migrating to another platform easily. You do anything on Spotify that you care about - for example finding new music or creating playlists - then now that's it. You have to keep paying Spotify until the end of your life, 13€ per month. If you live another 60 years then you'll be paying 9360€ just to keep being allowed to listen to your music. Does any normal person ever get close to spending anywhere that much on music? My friend, you could buy a car from that and listen to music on any other platform instead. Subscription prices rack up fast. And if you fail to pay, at any time, for any reason, you're excluded from the party.

And also, you will listen to music the way Spotify wants you to. So you will be using their audio player, regardless of whether you like it, you will not be getting access to the actual audio files to use them in personal/private projects, Spotify controls for you which music they allow or disallow on their platform, and if you want to do anything with their music you will use only the tools Spotify gives you to do it. If their tools don't allow you to do what you want to do, then you're just another subscription-paying customer. Spotify killed its external API's and 3rd party playback support. Everything is kept proprietary so that only Spotify has control over how their product is used¹⁸⁾. If Spotify changes their tune in the future and becomes more predatory to the consumers, either through monetization practices or restriction of functionality, then you can be outraged for a bit, but then you will go back to paying the membership again, because that's what you'll do anyway.

That reminds me, I have a story to tell you about how YouTube has been enshittified over the years but, because it is not a walled garden, people created tools to make it not shitty again. But Spotify is different. When Spotify enshittifies, and it's already on its way of doing that, the only option you have is to give up Spotify entirely, including all your playlists and everything, and restart form zero. Spotify by design offers no inter-compatibility, and uses only proprietary standards to make sure that your way out of Spotify is as hard as it can possibly be.

EVEN if you read a page about Spotify online and decide “honestly, yeah, fuck this platform”, you'll probably still think to yourself “well, but how am I gonna migrate away from it? There's no way to export your playlists and all”, which may or may not ultimately make you think that it's not worth the drama. Every good platform has the kind of inter-compatibility needed to leave you with a choice and to give you the data you need to exist and function independently of the platform… but not Spotify¹⁹⁾.

4. Piracy

To executives, piracy is a variable to consider in business, not a matter of ethics where we are trying to “do the right thing” or “care about the artists” (right, as if they haven't designed a monetization model that goes out of its way to fuck them over). Remember, these are the same kind of people that would prefer people dying and paying for the resulting lawsuits, rather than paying for proper staffing, maintenance and safety checks. You know, unlike executives, people are conceptually actually willing to do the right thing (especially when you make it as convenient as Spotify does). People are willing to pay if companies get the pricing right. That's why Spotify is working, at least a little bit, to reduce piracy.

Ultimately though, Spotify is another in a long list of companies trying profit at your expense, with the objective “Reduce piracy” being a literal stand-in for “maximize profit margins”. Whatever good you think lessening piracy will do is not what Spotify is aiming for. You might think less piracy means artists get paid, but that is not the case with Spotify, even when it demonstrably does reduce piracy.

If you want, continue reading on Spotify (Level 2)

¹²⁾

12.99€, as of September 15, 2026

¹³⁾

Based on various sources that claim an average rate of 0,003 to 0,005 per play.

¹⁴⁾

This is a joke on the basis that Taylor Swift is the most streamed businessperson on Spotify, which means that she will get the largest cut. I am using “Taylor Swift” here as a stand-in for all the largest and large creators on the platform.

¹⁵⁾

Even if you go out of your way to listen to your favorite artist a lot to bolster their numbers. Not only would 1000 listens or 10,000 listens barely make a dent in the overall percentages, you as someone trying to help are still competing with listeners from other artists, who do the same thing. Proportionally, you're just cancelling each other out. And, funnily enough, that doesn't even matter because you will never outcompete stream farming bots who can inflate stream numbers at unimaginable rates.

¹⁶⁾

And sure, they may get more plays in absolute terms, but that means nothing if you still get less of a share.

¹⁷⁾

ie. capitalistic

¹⁸⁾

Which, to be clear, isn't inherently wrong, but makes the product inherently shitty.

¹⁹⁾

This is beginning to sound more and more cult-like, they make it hard to leave, too. Hmmmm…

Inane

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-11T10:02:56+00:00

Somewhat informative grunting
Words

Some important words

ULTRACOMFY Style Guide
Aggression
Sleeping
What a moment
Drama

Dictionary

Declarate
Blame
to figure that out
Classic
Pointer
discriminate

Dictionary/
Inane

lacking significance, meaning, or point; silly

Every restriction and rule we put in place must be justified. Classically good reasons for rules and restrictions are safetey and making sure that individuals don't infringe on each other. As is my personality, I tend to generally resist rules imposed on me if they get in my way. The first step in that procedure is evaluating the validity of a rule. If I find a rule to be inane, it should be expected that I may not follow it (depending of course on the amount of resistance to expect from the local rule/law enforcement).

I may judge a rule to be inane if it has no or frivolous justification
The most classical example that I've been in on countless occasions involves some kind of prescribed methodology for solving a particular task. In school or at work, teachers or employers might insist on certain things being done a certain way. Many times in the past I have found better ways for solving the task at hand, so instinctually that is what I want to do instead, creating a conflict between my method and the method I am supposed to use.

The way ISTP me handles this is by evaluating the justification for why I am meant to do it another way.

Many genuinely safety critical rules masquerade as inane. As someone who independently evaluates nearly every rule, restriction and law, I have run into hundreds that seemed inane. Naturally I wanted to break them. Most people don't really understand why their rules are in place and then poorly explain the rules. In those cases, I would often find the reasoning invalid and be tempted to break it. In many cases, ultimately, these rules turned out to be safety critical rules. The moral of this story is that with every rule I evaluate, the first thing I think about is whether the rule might be safety related. Often it is.
In school, the argument was often that I am supposed to learn something from the basics, and then upwards. That I accept as an acceptable justification (I can understand why learning the fundamentals is important), but I follow this up by asking myself “do I have strong grip on the fundamentals?”. In cases where I thought that I did (and I typically did), that brought me around to say “yes but I already know the basics”, to which I was then told that I should do it that way anyway. That then is typically the point where I declared the rule inane and did it my way anyway.
Outside of school, or later in life, the justification for most inane rules was typically some kind of Authority. “Because I said so” and it's many variations. Trying this on me has a 100% failure rate unless you have the ability to cause me substantial headache. Typically this involves some kind of authority having an idea of how things should run and not having the flexibility to allow for variation. The problem here is that I evaluate authority in the same way. You have to justify your authority to me, and I calculate it accordingly. In most cases, an authority is in place to ensure the smooth operation of a thing, but if something I want to do differently does not jeopardize the smooth operation of the thing, then the limit of their authority is in front of the thing I want to do differently. People like this then typically attempt to reach beyond their authority, which they cannot justify before me. In that case, I evaluate the rule inane and do not follow it (again, unless you can cause me greater pain than what I gain from breaking the rule).

My run-ins with authority actually are a problem. When discussing one of their rules with them, they often make up weird pseudo-arguments for why a rule is in place, primarily to make people stop asking. It seems as though a lot of people are relying on their authority to explain rules for them. The problem is that I push these invalid arguments because I don't even think of the idea that someone would make up justifications to avoid discussing the actual justifications of a thing. (Apart of course from the people who makes up their own rules and justify it with it being them, an authority figure, that made the rule and it therefore being valid.)

Relationship Partner Comparison

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-11T09:39:01+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Humans/Human Emotion/Sensitivities/
Relationship Partner Comparison

People seem to strongly romanticize romantic relationships. Perhaps this might strike you as a somewhat silly statement to make, but please indulge me for a bit here. Whenever two people fall in love (or even just one person falls in love with another, without reciprocation), there seems to be some kind of expectation that this person treats their love interest as both the most beautiful and most intelligent being out there. As I said, romance is romanticized, and there exists only undying, everlasting, self-evident love, or no love at all. Any amount of objectivity in this matter is typically met with criticism and often even hostile attitudes. What do I mean? Well, here is an example for you:

I'm kind of uncomfortable with putting this picture so prominently on this page. It draws a lot, and I mean a lot of criticism. To a large degree it does it rightly so. Just “Biblicalgenderroles”. The title “Shit tests women give their men” just flatout declares all women to be manipulative (probably because biblical gender roles generally see women with suspicion, it makes sense this account would post this shit), this picture is AI generated slop, reinforces stereotypes about women having long hair and wearing feminine clothes, and the picture presents the man as strong and powerful and in control, with how he looks and how his wife holds onto his arm with her terrified and insecure facial expression. The whole picture is just one big fail, and that's how the post on Reddit where I found the picture treats it.

…however. For this analysis, let me break down this picture into its essential parts. If we strip it of all the unnecessary and inflammatory elements and keep only what's strictly necessary, what would this look like? Well, I think I have an idea:

“

A: Do you think C is prettier than me?
B: Yes, I think C is prettier than you. I find many people prettier than you, but my commitment to you is not based on that.

”

From here on forward, this is what I will be analyzing. This breakdown is part of why I like text more than images in most cases. It lets you focus on what's necessary - for example, note how in my breakdown there is no mention of genders. There are no ages²⁶⁾, no facial expressions, no interference of any kind or anything that would give unnecessary context to this interaction. And, well, as much as I hate the original picture for its many faults, the message of this breakdown I think is actually quite reasonable.

The reality is that, out of the 8 Billion people on Earth, it is very unlikely that A is going to be the prettiest or most intelligent of them all. Sure, beauty (or even intelligence, for that matter) is subjective, but even if you rank people based on your personal subjective taste, it is still unlikely that A is going to be Pos. #1 out of 8 Billion people. When objectively ranked, even if ranked based on your personal preference, it is extremely unlikely that out of 8 Billion people you will find the prettiest person. You will always bump into people who you find subjectively prettier if you're honest to yourself. If A is in your 99th percentile then this will happen less frequently, but it will (basically) never not happen.

Now this might sound harsh and distasteful, but really this is the part that I think makes human love so valuable. Humans are not perfect. You will not find the perfectly beautiful and perfectly intelligent human out there. In fact, I'd argue that being together with the perfect human being might actually be boring and “imperfect” in its own right²⁷⁾. Humans love each other despite - nay - because of their imperfections (of course there are limits to this as well, but you get the point). While beauty and intelligence could be considered resources that we bring to the table, it's what we make out of these resources that matter in a real and dedicated relationship. That's why we can openly and honestly admit that we don't think our partner has achieved visual perfection, because - well - our commitment to them is not based on that. In fact, what really is beauty good for anyway? What is anyone going to make out of that resource? Hah, we've basically arrived at the modern sentiment that, actually, beauty does not and should not matter²⁸⁾.

There are a lot of concepts that play into this that I have not mentioned. For example, this whole question is a trust thing. And it's why I personally choose to give the straight answer. If I am always truthful, people around me know what they're dealing with. There aren't any games being played, no dancing around uncomfortable questions, no moments of uncertainty where a person can't be sure whether what I said is really what I think. Does he really love me? Does he think I'm ugly? There is no ambiguity with me. Of course this involves accepting a reality that is inherently imperfect and, at times, quite ugly, but once the trust is there it makes things a lot easier. If you've ever been worried about something in a relationship… that doesn't happen.

Reassurance

There was one comment that I thought was actually quite reasonable: “This isn’t about facts: the fact that someone is prettier. It’s about empathy, connection and feeling secure. But obviously this guy lacks awareness”

The problem I see here is that A asked for an opinion. I can understand the interpretation that A maybe just wanted emotional reassurance, and that's perfectly reasonable, but A could have just asked for reassurance (“Do you love me even if other people are prettier?”). But A didn't, and as far as B is concerned, B's response is perfectly valid and reassuring and there is no reason not to say it. If you interpret it the way this commenter lays it out, my conclusion would be that there is a mismatch of personalities. A expected reassurance from B, but B just gave a “straight” answer. B gave an answer that responds to the question literally.

But, in fact, I would argue that the way B responded actually was quite emotionally sensitive. B could have just said “Yes” (“Yes, I think she is prettier than you”) and left it there. Imagine that. But instead, B added that beauty is not what B's commitment to A is based on, which is a good explanation for why A shouldn't need to worry about prettier people.

I think that whether you give someone a reassuring answer or a straight answer, both options are acceptable. You, as a potentialy reassurance-seeker just have to think about whether this kind of stuff matters to you. If you are the kind of person who needs and values reassuring answers, then you probably shouldn't get together with someone who doesn't provide that. For example, I'm the kind of person who gives straight answers, but I tell people that ahead of time and then it is their choice as to whether they are okay with that or not. Some people need reassuring answers, some people don't care. This is individual preference. Now, would I reassure if asked specifically? Definitely. This is a personal incompatibility between A and B. Now, if you're already married and have yet to find this out then this is a failure on both sides that neither identified this as a problem early. This is why we spend time together before entering a romantic relationship or even marrying. Of course you can marry despite problems like this - this is not a marriage-ender - but it will put strain on the marriage. Though at some point A should wisen up to this incompatibility and realize that they're not getting the kind of response they want.

Finally, when I used the term acceptable up there to say that both a reassuring answer as well as the straight answer are actually OK, I originally used the term “good”. However, I think only the honest/straight answer can truly be classified as “good”. For utility purposes I can understand the reassuring answer being used. Still, you shouldn't ask questions where you know you'll hope someone else will lie for you to make you feel better. The honest answer provides encouragement for A to reconsider how good of a question their question was, and to hopefully not ask those kinds of questions again in the future. Or, at the very least, make it very clear next time that “hey, I'm asking this question right now for reassurance, could you give me reassurance?”, which I don't think many people will decline. I certainly wouldn't.

Outtakes

What confuses me is what people think about this. I will be using the Reddit post where I found the picture originally as an example here. Most people seem to treat this like an equivalent to B saying that they don't actually love A. Or even that B hates A. What am I saying, let's just throw the word out there: ABUSIVE.

Another says that noone should ever objectively visually compare their partner to anyone else, even if asked. What? I mean, to say that your partner is beautiful you have to compare them against your own preferences at least once, and during that process you will get some kind of idea of how beautiful you think they are. But I guess maybe you shouldn't compare them to someone else, which brings me to…

“They have not fell in love, that's why. Love literally rewires the brain to see that person as the most beautiful person.”
Now this is a scientific argument! …and on what basis? I'd like to see where the guy got this from, especially since he would probably agree with my statement that we love people's imperfections. No, we don't lose all sense of objectivity when we fall in love. An even better counter to this from another user: “Is this actually a universal experience? I find it unlikely that everyone loves the same way. Polyamory exists.”
Now, get this: “I don't know about polyamory, because I don't find it interesting at all. But norepinephrine triggers total focus and attachment to another person. And it is released a lot when falling in love. There is also release of dopamine, adrenaline and oxytocin.”
This response haunts me in my dreams. It makes me laugh and cry at the same time. First, he dismisses an argument because he is not interested in the concept that the argument is about. Secondly: Yes, good job, you did it. You mentioned all the scientific buzzwords, you did the words, well done.

²⁶⁾

I say this because, in thinking about this I came to the conclusion that this “comparing yourself to others” deal is something I do most typically remember from girls during my years in school. But again, this is intentionally stripped in this breakdown because the context does not matter.

²⁷⁾

And I use “might” very deliberately here because maybe perfect is literally just absolute and actually perfect. I might just be wrong here.

²⁸⁾

Well, let's just agree that beauty is a resource you bring to the table and does lead to a more satisfying relationship, but crucially it is only one of many resources needed for a good relationship.

Probably Wrong

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-11T08:47:53+00:00

This page is part of a series on
Systems

Systems

Emotions Engine
Comms Engine
Direct Engine
Core
TRANSCOM
ULTRACOMFY Ethical Jurisdiction System

Mechanics

Interceptions and Encounters
Claim
Social Jurisdiction

Other

Statistical Inevitability
Malus Necessarium
Conversation Difficulty
50%
Probably Wrong
Traits
Apology

It's not religion if it's true
Science

Objective inquiry

History
Philosophy
Inclusion
Doppler Effect

Falsified Hypotheses

Science Says

Science/Philosophy/Scientific Method/
Probably Wrong

In essence, “probably wrong” is my reason to stay humble, in general and in particular about my beliefs. As a humankind, we have learned a lot and often thought there isn't more to learn. As good scientists, we change our beliefs when we find evidence that contradicts our current understanding. I think it is our duty as scientists to inquire, to find more ways in which we are wrong. If we think we are right, we think so because we probably just haven't yet found the evidence that contradicts the current scientific consensus. We should always assume that such evidence exists, and that we just haven't found it yet.

See this example: Early people attributed lightning strikes to wrathful gods. Aristotle thought lightnings were caused by dry “exhalations” in the sky that ignited when compressed in clouds. Scholars in the middle ages put lightnings down to vapors, maybe fiery vapors. Later on, the combustion of sulfurous or oily substances was taken as the reason for lightning. It was only in the 17th century that people started thinking about static electricity, which lead us to our modern understanding of lighting.

However, this isn't just a matter of “humankind” and “science”. We are individuals, you and I. My personal beliefs have undergone several complete paradigm shifts throughout the years. I have grown a lot and learned even more, so I feel like my current views on, say, Utilitarianism, are refined. But, I should really probably just assume that this is yet another step in a long, long path for me to find the truth. Why wouldn't my current understanding of a thing be just as wrong as my previous understanding of it, where I thought equally as much that I was right? I should assume that I am wrong about everything.

I've learned over the years that I should stick to a few guiding motives:

Assume you are wrong, about everything.
If you think you're right, you just haven't been proven wrong yet¹⁾.
Look for ways in which you might be wrong. Find the weakest links in your argumentation.
Test your beliefs, have a go defending them to see how well they do.
When working on your beliefs, never settle for “I'm not sure”. If you're not sure about a link in your argumentation then you “don't know” and are probably wrong.
Think about what it would take you to convince yourself otherwise. Think particularly hard about whether you could even be convinced by anything at all in the first place²⁾.

I am probably wrong about the shape of the earth, too. I think spheroid earth is the most likely explanation to be correct, but I should be looking for evidence to contradict spheroid earth. And that's what we do! We and you and I and us, we're all looking… if anything comes up that contradicts spheroid earth, we will stop believing it. However, this also means being very pragmatic about beliefs that we do hold, which brings us to a conversation about….. politics. I'm so sorry.

Just.. let us all just stay humble, yes? We definitely know much less than what we defend online. Or IRL, for that matter. Leave the debating to scientists. If you really wanna get into the weeds, become a scientist yourself.

Also, don't even think about freebooting this as an easy anti-science talking point. This is not about discrediting the scientific consensus on the basis of “science was wrong before” (or even “Science is probably wrong”). In fact, the assumption that we are wrong about things is exactly why science so often is less wrong than any other mode of persuasion. Scientific consensus is almost always the best approximation of the truth that we can get to with our current technology and knowledge. No other mode of persuasion allows you to change your mind on a thing as quickly as science does. All you need is strong evidence that contradicts the current paradigm. So, I want to be very clear, this is not about discrediting the scientific method. In science, assuming that you're wrong works, and that is exactly why science is so good. It is actually the best argument in favor of science.

A bit of perspective on being wrong

It is easy to get mad at people of, for example, other political persuasions. When I look at the other side of the coin and see how they try to falsify some of the claims of my political persuasion, it is sometimes very hard not to think that these people are utterly stupid - how can they not see how obviously wrong it is what they're saying? These people defend the shit they say passionately, how fucking stupid are they?

Looking back at my life, I can tell you that I am a fucking moron. I am fucking stupid. I have, with inexplicable confidence, defended the dumbest and wrongest beliefs imaginable. Whatever picture I have in mind of those other people, I am literally the perfect match of that picture. So what do we do with this?

Well, I think it is very human to be confidently wrong about the most obviously wrong and contradictory things. We just are not rational creatures. It's not just that I was wrong about really dumb thing in the past, but it's also that I cannot possibly know what I am wrong about these days. This is why I don't think we should judge people too hard for being wrong in the dumbest, most obvious ways - whether it's yourself or others. What I judge myself for is for being vocal about things that I was wrong about. No clue what you're talking about? - Just shut up and inform yourself. That's what I should have done. And make myself more aware of the emotions that were guiding me into being stubborn about a belief. It is very easy to cross the point of no return beyond which your brain just cannot allow itself anymore to be wrong and will do the funniest, jankiest mental gymnastics to see itself right, even in the face of the most overwhelming and undeniable evidence. This is why I say to check whether you are still at a point where you even could be convinced at all, because oftentimes your emotions can make you feel like you just cannot allow yourself to be wrong and will just refuse any evidence regardless of merit.

Wrong as a political philosophy

“

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

”

~Evelyn Beatrice Hall in “The Friends of Voltaire”

The possibility of being wrong is why freedom of speech and freedom of thought exist. We like to think that we are smart because we don't burn witches anymore. Back in the days, trying to argue that burning witches might actually be bad would have been outrageous and would have seen you burned along with them. They weren't even capable of fathoming a world without burning witches. Fast forward to today, we can fathom a world without burning witches, but there are still things us today can't fathom to live without. Those things are, by their very nature, very contentious. Some would say, for example, that a world without capitalism is impossible. Some say that a democracy is the only way we can live, but maybe in 500 years a technocratic society will laugh at our naivety. Maybe the vegans were right and killing animals just because they “taste well” is wrong after all³⁾. Or here is one that even I cannot see past: Murder is bad - I think that, but who am I to say whether it really is?

Either way, it is important for our society to at least allow even the fringest and most outrageous opinions. Injecting ourselves into that process and dictating which opinions are acceptable - no matter how good our reasoning - commits the same mistake that has stopped/slowed societal progress for all of human history. Not to mention the political implications of letting the government police which opinions we get to have. This all applies to thoughts as well - you should be able to reign freely in your head, no matter how abhorrent someone else would find those thoughts.

¹⁾

Or refuse to. / Or are unable to understand it.

²⁾

This one takes a big shot at all kinds of religions, who will constantly move the goalposts to avoid changing their minds.

³⁾

Honestly, I find this one pretty convincing. I hope I won't forget to think more and eventually write about this.

RationalWiki

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-08T11:54:48+00:00

A brain in square brackets! The RationalWiki logo.

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

To boldly go where no RationalWikian has gone before!

Society/Science Education/
RationalWiki

RationalWiki (RW, or lovingly called just RatWiki) is a wiki-based community working together to explore and provide information about a range of topics centered around science, skepticism, and critical thinking. RW is owned by the RationalMedia Foundation (RMF), an incorporated 501©(3) nonprofit. The primary purpose of RationalWiki consists of the following:

Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement;
Documenting the full range of crank ideas;
Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism;
Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.

I like to think of Rationalwiki as the Wikipedia that doesn't beat around the bush. As RationalWiki puts it themselves: “Wikipedia has NPOV: Neutral Point of View. RationalWiki has SPOV. […] In line with the “not an encyclopedia” guideline, RationalWiki is not required to present “neutral” articles. RationalWiki articles should uncompromisingly explain what is bullshit, what is not, and (most importantly) why. […] The scientific method and the information gained from its application is better than just about anything else humanity has come up with”²⁹⁾.

The key point of RationalWiki's description of itself is that “Rationalwiki is not neutral”. The reason I quote so much from RationalWiki statements directly is because they make true on that promise. They write about topics like alternative medicine, pseudoscience and conspiracies uncompromisingly and unapologetically from a scientifically hardline position that I will never be unable to appreciate. As part of their mission, RationalWiki is specifically targeting these topics, analysing them, calling out the bullshit and giving good, scientifically based alternatives for what really is true. A very classic example of this is RationalWiki's pages on Flat Earth³⁰⁾, which points out how Flat Earth is wrong, how we know it's wrong and what really is true, using the kinds of resources scientists in the field use to find the scientific consensus (think studies/papers).

RationalWiki was born as a response to Conservapedia; Conservapedia itself was created as a response to Wikipedia, because some editors believed that Wikipedia is riddled with a “liberal” and “atheist” bias. Editors on Conservapedia use the platform to blame liberals, atheists, migrants, gay, trans or any other kind of people for any perceived problem in society. It states Jesus, Christianity and god's creation as fact, denies evolution and describes heteronormativity as the only way to have sex. From there it goes on to pander to virtually any intelligence-based topic under the sun - climate change, conspiracies about 9/11, conspiracies about the moon landing, gun laws, conspiracies big pharma, sexuality, it just never stops. Look, flat earth is a tactial conspiracy made up by, ehem, “evolutionists” (ie. people who believe in evolution) to make Christians look bad.

The result is RationalWiki, a very comprehensive documentation of pseudoscience, crank, quackery and fundamentalism complete with a full, scientifically grounded analysis. While not as influential as Wikipedia herself, RationalWiki is definitely by far one of my favorite internet projects regardless and stands as one of the prime locations on the internet for science communication.

Wiki Culture

RationalWiki traces its roots as far back as 2007, and it not only looks like that, but it also has a trail that long. As you browse the site, you will stumble on content and culture actually made nearly 20 years ago. For example, RationalWiki has a really cute fixation on goats. Largely defensive weapons of gun. There are so many in-jokes you'll only get by browsing the site a bunch. Furthermore, RationalWiki has a pretty lax approach to moderation and grants most users sysop permissions in a process they lovingly call “Demotion to Janitor”, as this gives you the powers to clean up the occasional vandalism on the page. Seriously, they will appoint you Janitor and leave a message on your talk page congratulating you for your “demotion”. Similarly, RationalWiki, like Wikipedia, uses citations to back up claims. However, it uses the citation feature for light-hearted writing as well, for example with the {{lie}}^{[Do you believe that?]} tag as indicators for jokes, and {{nofact}}^{[Citation NOT needed]} for some claims that are too trivial to mull over. Some of my style here is inherited from there.

As lax as RationalWiki is with its moderation (at least in comparison to places like Wikipedia), RationalWiki is similarly lax with its style. Due to its nature of wanting to be an encyclopedia, Wikipedia needs to retain a professional tone. RationalWiki can do away with all of that. Instead, RationalWiki likes to have some fun. We're all skeptics in our own little skeptic community, after all. However, and this part is important, the primary objective of each RationalWiki page is to do science education/communication. It's just that RationalWiki can afford to have some fun while it's at it.

RationalWiki also makes it clear that it is a mobocracy. Vandalism and problematic edits are removed, and quite quickly so, but fundamentally most bigger problems will end up being put up as a vote. Whatever the vote decides then becomes law. Hell, even user suspensions (think bans) are done on a vote basis.

One problem I have with RationalWiki is that it tends to get tangled up in political stuff. I like RationalWiki for its pages on pseudoscience, alternative medicine and the like, I don't like to haggle over what individual people are saying. Or in complex words, I like to learn about concepts, not the people using concepts. But, and I admit this, RationalWiki is a collaborative effort. If I want more pseudoscience articles, I can just be the change I want to see in the world.

IrrationalWiki

This joke is probably older than the wiki itself. Whenever someone finds RationalWiki and doesn't like it, IrrationalWiki is the absolute first comment they come up with. RationalWikians, myself included, have seen so many variations of IrrationalWiki comments that we'd have to reinvent the Dewey Decimal System to categorize them all. RationalWiki goes into this at length themselves (see I thought this was supposed to be RATIONALWiki), but the short version is that RationalWiki, like any good scientist, isn't making a claim on being right/correct. It's about the method of inquiry. The reason RationalWiki calls itself RationalWiki is because it uses the method of rationalism to arrive at its conclusions. RationalWiki knows and fully acknowledges that they are probably wrong, but, and this is the point, the way they are thinking is correct. Poor science is improved only by better science.

²⁹⁾

RationalWiki: SPOV

³⁰⁾

RationalWiki: Flat Earth

to_boldly_go_where_no_rationalwikian_has_gone_before.jpg - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-08T07:58:38+00:00

Singularity

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-08T07:39:40+00:00

Major trains of thought
Philosophy

Trainwrecks

Value Judgement
Personal Preference
Nature of Things
Fact of the Universe
Toleration
Ship of Theseus
I'm 14 and this is deep
Words
Claim
Court
Redemption

Philosophy/
Singularity

A singularity is a proposed ethical imperative that is so strong as to harm, overwhelm or destroy all other ethical structures.

My meaning of singularity has nothing to do with how the word is used by people who actually know things about things. For how Singularity is normally used, see the RationalWiki page on Singularity (and even that page does not talk about the physical phenomenon).

The "rational" people over at RationalWiki have an article on Singularity.

Humans generally make choices based on both their interests and ethical constraints. There are a lot of competing interests and many ethical restrains. A person wants to get their work done fast, but they also don't want to hurt other people. Due to the multitude of factors in play, the many interests and ethical considerations generally keep each other in check, resulting in most people being mostly mild personalities.

However, for an individual this can be broken up if an ethical consideration is introduced that vastly supersedes all other interests, considerations or constraints. There are many cults that consider themselves to be the only righteous representatives of God, and who consider everyone who isn't part of the group to be Satan's personal demons trying to erode and destroy the cult. To members of the cult, god and the cult are undeniably the only good path in existence. With this, their life and their conscience is on the line, and they will do absolutely anything to protect god and the cult. This opens the door to murder, terrorism and general attacks on everything considered hostile to the cult. These people generally understand murder as something bad, but the defense of god and the cult override all other considerations (not to be confused with Jehovah's Witnesses, who believe all these things but also have the Pacifist doctrine and do not assault people outside of their faith).

In practice it is not unusual to have moral considerations supersede others. That's just how we make our decisions. What makes something a singularity is when it becomes the focal point of one's worldview and all other considerations break apart. If a person judges an act or event exclusively through the singular lens of one individual consideration, that is a singularity. In their mind, nothing exists seperate from that consideration and the calculation of that consideration is absolute, with no other factors considered (as all outside the singularity is secondary - and really, an outside of a singularity doesn't really exist anyway).

Analysis

Ethics

An example is “Roko's Basilisk”: Originally started in the development of artificial intelligence, the idea is that - if it ever gets out of hand - an all-powerful artificial intelligence from the future might retroactively punish those who did not help bring about its existence, including those who merely knew about the possible development of such a being.

With this proposition, the only rational response we would have from here is that all human manpower be immediately diverted towards the development of the artificial intelligence to minimize our odds of being punished. This is the perfect singularity: It immediately and instantly overrides all other human and ethical considerations and forces us to accept one singularian idea³¹⁾.

Singularities end up justifying courses of actions that are, by all accounts, extreme. This… wouldn't inherently be a problem if they were right, which is the other side of the problem.

Logic

There is nothing inherently wrong with singularities. While a singular issue will never fill 100% of all ethical considerations³²⁾, there are many that are indeed very important. Climate change for example, which will end up very catastrophic and causing an unforgivable amount of suffering if not combatted properly. For a more theoretical example, a utilitarian considers human experience a singularity, and societies will invest a lot of effort to rescue “agents that have human experience” (ie. humans) from death. In other words, in an emergency almost all rules are out of the window to make sure human life can be saved.

Many churches consider themselves singularities and attempt to force one into belief one way or another. Classically this is done by promising eternal paradise for believers and sometimes eternal damnation for those who don't (or something to that effect). If a cults brands nonbelievers as hostile, that is a way to force you into belief directly (rather than indirectly) by threat of divine punishment (that's the prime Jehovah's Witnesses tactic).

There are many philosophical (like Roko's basilisk) and religious singularities (like Jehovah's witnesses), but there are also countless political ones. Tankies for example seem to have fallen for the idea that anything to oppose the West is, if not good, at least justified; the West is the source of all evil and anything opposing the evil is better than the evil. In fact, believing in anything less makes you a fascist and a Nazi (key term: “centrists are de-facto fascists”).
Something similar happens with singularity vegans, who say that “true left-wingers™ are de-facto vegans”, as anything short of fully rejecting all animal exploitation is equivalent to support of global animal torture. There are also singularity anti-ableists, singularity feminists and many, many more. As far as my knowledge and understanding lets me, I support the causes of veganism, anti-ableism and feminism, I just don't do it to a singularian degree.

And since we are talking about politics now (and I know I might have gotten that kind of crowd since I mentioned Tankies and Vegans) - NO I am not pandering towards hardline centrism. Centrism is the idea that not being extreme is automatically good by virtue. This is already nonsense, but especially doesn't make sense to believe in for a utilitarian like me, who doesn't believe in virtues to begin with. What I am doing is to pander towards avoiding ethical structures that flatten all ethical considerations into a singularity if reality itself isn't as flat as the singularity (ie. is more complex than what the singularity makes it out to be).³³⁾

Individual

For an individual, singularities tend to be very firm and hard to dislodge. That is mostly because singularities seem easy, obvious and self-evident. It is common for someone believing in singularities to assert the simplicity and self-evidence of their singularity, sometimes to a point where they will reject any outside attempt to discuss the singularity (except for full agreement with it), and disparage those who even consider the singularity to be open to debate. That in particular is in the nature of singularities, as singularities are the exclusive moral authority to the believer and questioning it means questioning the entirety of the moral values held by the believer.

³¹⁾

This is similar to Jehovah's Witnesses, who argue that, once an individual was told about Yahweh (“witnessed”), they are forced to choose his side. Rejecting to become part of the cult would be similar to refusing to help bring about the superintelligence, and they say that anyone who rejects god's word (ie. anyone who doesn't fully and 100% agree with it) will die during the rapture.

³²⁾

Unless a non-entity god does turn out to be real?

³³⁾

And yes I know it actually is that simple and I'm just a western/carnist chauvinist, I know. You've heard westerners/carnists say “it's more complicated than that” a thousand times and you're prepared to put it all down as propaganda/absolving oneself of responsibility. Am I right? Oh how well I know you. Look, we'll get along swimmingly in our not-getting-along.

Absurdism

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-08T07:38:53+00:00

Major trains of thought
Philosophy

Trainwrecks

Value Judgement
Personal Preference
Nature of Things
Fact of the Universe
Toleration
Ship of Theseus
I'm 14 and this is deep
Words
Claim
Court
Redemption

Philosophy/Existentialism/
Absurdism

Absurdism refers to the notion that concepts like the Meaning of Life, ie. whether life has intrinsic values, constitute an absurdity. My personal, short answer is: Yes, without anything else we have no reason to assume that there is intrinsic value to life or, well, anything. Deep topics, some would say, but there really isn't very much to it.

Absurdity

In terms of words, an absurdity is a non sequitur based on a false premise. Non sequiturs are wrong logical conclusions based on sound premises, however when not only the conclusion is wrong but also the premises are flawed, the entire logical construct becomes absurd. This is a relevant field of discussion in philosophy where statements and conclusions will very quickly hit the limits of logic and reason. It has been the subject of study ever since and many have come up with different interpretations. Absurdities arise where humans attempt to describe physical realities even though humans see the world not as it is but through patterns.

Contact

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-07T14:18:12+00:00

Accurately describes the things coming out of your mouth
Ramblings

Technically yes, but fuck you:

Ramblings
Factuality
Accuracy
Perspective
Systems
Humor
Pages

Ramblings/Contact
Send E-Mail

While I offer various forms of contact, I am somewhat to very old-school (depending on how old you are) and prefer E-Mail for a number of reasons. I typically check my mails in the evening and do not respond until then. If your inquiry is more involved, I may take several days to respond. Always expect up to an hour of delay until the message is delivered. Please do not use this feature to send me spam. While it will take you longer to send mails than it will take me to delete them (probably using automated tools), it will still waste my time. That is even if it wastes more of your time than mine.
Use this link to go back to the homepage.

Want to send a complaint instead?

ToDo

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-07T08:37:56+00:00

Here is a full list of pages that have been linked to but do not exist yet. Please create links to topics that are relevant, because they will then appear here and can be written at a later point. It's like writing a note 'Hey, here is this interesting topic you need/want to write about!'

#	ID	Links
1	misogyny	37 : Show backlinks
2	overton_window	37 : Show backlinks
3	secularization	37 : Show backlinks
4	philosophy	31 : Show backlinks
5	fact_of_the_universe	20 : Show backlinks
6	nature_of_things	19 : Show backlinks
7	video_games	16 : Show backlinks
8	flags_formula_1	4 : Show backlinks
9	formula_1	4 : Show backlinks
10	bible	3 : Show backlinks
11	communism	3 : Show backlinks
12	emergence	3 : Show backlinks
13	kurzgesagt	3 : Show backlinks
14	law	3 : Show backlinks
15	lonerbox	3 : Show backlinks
16	penology	3 : Show backlinks
17	politics	3 : Show backlinks
18	rape	3 : Show backlinks
19	youtube	3 : Show backlinks
20	axiom	2 : Show backlinks
21	blog:first_strike	2 : Show backlinks
22	blog:stellar_commanders	2 : Show backlinks
23	climate_change	2 : Show backlinks
24	consent	2 : Show backlinks
25	crusader_kings_3	2 : Show backlinks
26	european_union	2 : Show backlinks
27	human_nature	2 : Show backlinks
28	legislature	2 : Show backlinks
29	mario_kart_wii	2 : Show backlinks
30	minecraft	2 : Show backlinks
31	moorhuhn_kart_2	2 : Show backlinks
32	over-apologization	2 : Show backlinks
33	qualifier	2 : Show backlinks
34	racism	2 : Show backlinks
35	sexual_intercourse	2 : Show backlinks
36	transgender	2 : Show backlinks
37	twitch	2 : Show backlinks
38	wikipedia	2 : Show backlinks
39	wwise	2 : Show backlinks
40	112_operator	1 : Show backlinks
41	abrahamic_god	1 : Show backlinks
42	african_american	1 : Show backlinks
43	agent	1 : Show backlinks
44	alcohol_abuse	1 : Show backlinks
45	antisemitism	1 : Show backlinks
46	apex_legends	1 : Show backlinks
47	appeal_to_authority	1 : Show backlinks
48	assetto_corsa	1 : Show backlinks
49	aurateur	1 : Show backlinks
50	biblical_literalism	1 : Show backlinks
51	bigotry	1 : Show backlinks
52	biological_sex	1 : Show backlinks
53	blender	1 : Show backlinks
54	blog:accessibility	1 : Show backlinks
55	blog:european	1 : Show backlinks
56	blog:ground_of_aces	1 : Show backlinks
57	blur	1 : Show backlinks
58	car	1 : Show backlinks
59	cgp_grey	1 : Show backlinks
60	chat_gpt	1 : Show backlinks
61	communication_synchronouity	1 : Show backlinks
62	computer_science	1 : Show backlinks
63	conflict_resolution	1 : Show backlinks
64	consequentialism	1 : Show backlinks
65	consumer_protection	1 : Show backlinks
66	consumerism	1 : Show backlinks
67	container_file	1 : Show backlinks
68	continuity	1 : Show backlinks
69	conversation	1 : Show backlinks
70	cooperative_game	1 : Show backlinks
71	counter-strike	1 : Show backlinks
72	creationism	1 : Show backlinks
73	darwinism	1 : Show backlinks
74	democracy	1 : Show backlinks
75	deontology	1 : Show backlinks
76	depression	1 : Show backlinks
77	discrimination	1 : Show backlinks
78	doctrine	1 : Show backlinks
79	dokuwiki	1 : Show backlinks
80	donald_trump	1 : Show backlinks
81	dougdoug	1 : Show backlinks
82	dsm	1 : Show backlinks
83	emotions	1 : Show backlinks
84	english_language	1 : Show backlinks
85	ethics	1 : Show backlinks
86	existentialism	1 : Show backlinks
87	extrinsic_value	1 : Show backlinks
88	f1_2020	1 : Show backlinks
89	falsification	1 : Show backlinks
90	family	1 : Show backlinks
91	fitness	1 : Show backlinks
92	foobar2000	1 : Show backlinks
93	forgiveness	1 : Show backlinks
94	fortnite	1 : Show backlinks
95	free_will	1 : Show backlinks
96	gendering	1 : Show backlinks
97	george_floyd	1 : Show backlinks
98	git	1 : Show backlinks
99	god	1 : Show backlinks
100	grand_theft_auto_5	1 : Show backlinks
101	grid_2	1 : Show backlinks
102	grip:combat_racing	1 : Show backlinks
103	gun	1 : Show backlinks
104	hateboner	1 : Show backlinks
105	heinz_dilemma	1 : Show backlinks
106	hitman	1 : Show backlinks
107	hitman_world_of_assassination	1 : Show backlinks
108	holy_scripture	1 : Show backlinks
109	homosexuality	1 : Show backlinks
110	https:bsky.app:profile:ultracomfy.net	1 : Show backlinks
111	https:cozy.talk:ultracomfy	1 : Show backlinks
112	https:discord.com:invite:ddmzyjhenb	1 : Show backlinks
113	https:en.wikipedia.org:wiki:user:ultracomfy	1 : Show backlinks
114	https:github.com:ultracomfy	1 : Show backlinks
115	https:open.spotify.com:user:o5q5q84b6qhsy87caqaig748s	1 : Show backlinks
116	https:paypal.me:ultracomfy	1 : Show backlinks
117	https:rationalwiki.org:wiki:user:ultracomfy	1 : Show backlinks
118	https:steamcommunity.com:id:ultracomfy:start	1 : Show backlinks
119	https:twitch.tv:ultracomfy	1 : Show backlinks
120	https:twitter.com:ultracomfyeu	1 : Show backlinks
121	https:www.16personalities.com:profiles:43f3fc19e8f9f	1 : Show backlinks
122	https:www.chess.com:member:eu_ultracomfy	1 : Show backlinks
123	https:www.reddit.com:user:ultracomfy_eu:start	1 : Show backlinks
124	https:www.speedrun.com:users:ultracomfy	1 : Show backlinks
125	https:www.virustotal.com:gui:user:ultracomfy	1 : Show backlinks
126	https:www.xbox.com:en-us:play:user:ultracomfy	1 : Show backlinks
127	https:www.youtube.com:ultracomfynet	1 : Show backlinks
128	humanism	1 : Show backlinks
129	icd	1 : Show backlinks
130	imperative	1 : Show backlinks
131	international_court_of_justice	1 : Show backlinks
132	intrinsic_value	1 : Show backlinks
133	islam	1 : Show backlinks
134	jan_marsalek	1 : Show backlinks
135	language	1 : Show backlinks
136	life_experience	1 : Show backlinks
137	logic	1 : Show backlinks
138	logic_operator	1 : Show backlinks
139	martin_luther_king	1 : Show backlinks
140	maxim	1 : Show backlinks
141	monopoly	1 : Show backlinks
142	moral_right	1 : Show backlinks
143	morality	1 : Show backlinks
144	moving_the_goalpost	1 : Show backlinks
145	multiplayer	1 : Show backlinks
146	multiplayer_game	1 : Show backlinks
147	multiverse	1 : Show backlinks
148	narcissism	1 : Show backlinks
149	narcissistic_personality_disorder	1 : Show backlinks
150	new_year_s_eve	1 : Show backlinks
151	nintendo	1 : Show backlinks
152	non_sequitur	1 : Show backlinks
153	occam_s_razor	1 : Show backlinks
154	overwatch	1 : Show backlinks
155	pakexplorer	1 : Show backlinks
156	parent_s_jewel	1 : Show backlinks
157	parenting	1 : Show backlinks
158	pattern	1 : Show backlinks
159	peer_to_peer	1 : Show backlinks
160	people:0x0000001	1 : Show backlinks
161	people:0x0000034	1 : Show backlinks
162	people:0x0000035	1 : Show backlinks
163	people:0x0000036	1 : Show backlinks
164	people:0x0000037	1 : Show backlinks
165	people:0x0000038	1 : Show backlinks
166	people:0x0000039	1 : Show backlinks
167	people:0x000003a	1 : Show backlinks
168	people:0x000003b	1 : Show backlinks
169	people:0x000003c	1 : Show backlinks
170	people:0x000003d	1 : Show backlinks
171	people:0x000003e	1 : Show backlinks
172	people:0x000003f	1 : Show backlinks
173	people:0x0100016	1 : Show backlinks
174	people:0x0100017	1 : Show backlinks
175	people:0x0100018	1 : Show backlinks
176	people:0x0100019	1 : Show backlinks
177	people:0x010001a	1 : Show backlinks
178	people:0x010001b	1 : Show backlinks
179	people:0x010001c	1 : Show backlinks
180	people:0x010001d	1 : Show backlinks
181	people:0x010001e	1 : Show backlinks
182	people:0x010001f	1 : Show backlinks
183	people:0x0100020	1 : Show backlinks
184	personality	1 : Show backlinks
185	personality_disorder	1 : Show backlinks
186	perspective	1 : Show backlinks
187	pimo	1 : Show backlinks
188	plague_inc	1 : Show backlinks
189	player_versus_environment	1 : Show backlinks
190	playground:playground	1 : Show backlinks
191	police	1 : Show backlinks
192	prejudice	1 : Show backlinks
193	prescription	1 : Show backlinks
194	programming	1 : Show backlinks
195	projective_identification	1 : Show backlinks
196	quantum_physics	1 : Show backlinks
197	ramblings:good_page	1 : Show backlinks
198	randomness	1 : Show backlinks
199	redout	1 : Show backlinks
200	reverse_discrimination	1 : Show backlinks
201	rubberbanding	1 : Show backlinks
202	satan	1 : Show backlinks
203	science_was_wrong_before	1 : Show backlinks
204	seperation_of_powers	1 : Show backlinks
205	server	1 : Show backlinks
206	sexual_reproduction	1 : Show backlinks
207	shooter	1 : Show backlinks
208	sin	1 : Show backlinks
209	single_player	1 : Show backlinks
210	skyrim	1 : Show backlinks
211	social_construct	1 : Show backlinks
212	social_media	1 : Show backlinks
213	some:namespaces	1 : Show backlinks
214	spook	1 : Show backlinks
215	steam	1 : Show backlinks
216	strings	1 : Show backlinks
217	subnautica	1 : Show backlinks
218	super_mario_party	1 : Show backlinks
219	system	1 : Show backlinks
220	templates:profiles:fornicator	1 : Show backlinks
221	templates:profiles:profilgate	1 : Show backlinks
222	terf	1 : Show backlinks
223	the_long_journey_home	1 : Show backlinks
224	theorem	1 : Show backlinks
225	tiktok	1 : Show backlinks
226	traits	1 : Show backlinks
227	trolley_problem	1 : Show backlinks
228	twitch_plays	1 : Show backlinks
229	ubisoft	1 : Show backlinks
230	united_states_of_america	1 : Show backlinks
231	unreal_engine	1 : Show backlinks
232	utility	1 : Show backlinks
233	ux	1 : Show backlinks
234	validation	1 : Show backlinks
235	veganism	1 : Show backlinks
236	verifiability	1 : Show backlinks
237	vgmstream	1 : Show backlinks
238	video_game	1 : Show backlinks
239	video_game_design	1 : Show backlinks
240	vigilantism	1 : Show backlinks
241	virtual_machines	1 : Show backlinks
242	virtue_ethics	1 : Show backlinks
243	virtue_signalling	1 : Show backlinks
244	wiki:nonexisting	1 : Show backlinks
245	wiki:pagename	1 : Show backlinks
246	world_war_2	1 : Show backlinks
247	wreckfest	1 : Show backlinks
248	wwise_extraction	1 : Show backlinks
249	wwise_unpacker	1 : Show backlinks
250	xkcd	1 : Show backlinks
251	zero-sum	1 : Show backlinks
252	zero_sum	1 : Show backlinks

NOTES:

Restart Christianity

Sex

Discussion: Meaning of Life

Emergence - Conway's game of life

Fun/Jokes - Elitarianism where it seems like people (especially younger people) always act like they are in some kind of competition to be the funniest and always passive-aggressively attack others for their “poor” jokes while praising others. It seems like people don't really objectively “judge” jokes and instead are amused when they want to be. YouTubers playing together aren't that funny if you really dissect it, they just laugh at things a lot and if you're predisposed to the YouTubers then you will be entertained (it's like the laugh track in sitcoms, except the people laughing are people you know, and they at least give you a good excuse to laugh), laugh at jokes from their friends and even will laugh “for” (!) their loved ones even if the jokes were horrendous. On the other hand, they will reject otherwise good jokes if they don't feel like they want to be entertained (or at least so it seems).

Incest - Parent/Child might create power dynamics?

Penology - How it works with Utilitarianism, why we should still punish people despite it technically hurting people

Vigilantism - Reasons against (Seperation of power, ie. Judge-Jury-Executioner and that it is susceptible to absue (misguided moral compass, external influences); Bad people doing things and then calling it “vigilantism”; How governments would never approve of vigilantism for these reasons) and Reasons for (Insufficient justice system; bad justice system (ie. not prosecuting certain crimes because of flawed ideology); people's own moral compass (though this is a bad argument))

Mitteilungsbedürfnis

Working Hypothesis

Online Statuses and Read Receipts

Gender - Make a “gender binary” section but write it entirely in 010101001 binary.

I assume that everyone wants the best world there possibly can be

Car - Favorite Car, Bull Bar, Cars in society and the industry

Christianity

Parent's Jewel

International Court of Justice

Gendering “Don't we have better problems?” = “The problem is too insignificant to deserve attention” to which I would respond “If you feel so”. Apparently there are quite a few people who care about it, and language is one of the many ways in which oppressive gender roles are hardcoded into our society. Removing them at the very least cannot and does not hurt.

Over-Apologization Distraction or virtue signalling method with mostly empty (almost insincere, as in they don't really care about it) apologies I have a hard time believing that they don't realize are unnecessary. Alternatively, an appeasement method (during conflict/stress).

Value Judgement

Climate Change Talk about how climate change is a complicated topic and can generate results that are counterintuitive, like in the case of “Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current”. See https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1ojaql5/comment/nm1p835/

Abusive Parents - Abuse - Parenting What parents give to their children, if they have been good parents, is not measured in money but in values, ideals and good memories. If, as a parent, all you can claim your child is being ungrateful for is the material things you've given them, then you haven't given them all that much to begin with. Helping your child with their misaligned teeth very squarely rests in the “things you're obligated to do if you have the resources” area of parental responsibility.
Comment by chronicallylaconic on Reddit

Path of Least Resistance

Jon Stewart

On Trump accusing other countries of being mean to the USA: "But we continue to blame everybody else in the world that we designed and policed after World War II. We're the richest country in the world ever. We're not the world's victims. If we have inequalities in this country, that's on us. It's not a supply problem. It's not unfair trade for the most part. It's an investment and distribution problem. It's our [BLEEP] fault. And I'm not saying we can't make adjustments and renegotiate things, but it didn't have to be this reckless."

On Social Media: It's speech incentivized for engagement and profit. It's manipulated. [...] Social media is a machine designed to stimulate the reptilian parts of your brain that would otherwise beg you to ..go outside...!. It's like being impressed that casinos give out free food - it's not free."

On the war in Ukraine: "Hitler wanted to end the war, just not the way it ended. You're pretending that we have no other options. [...] But in your little zero-sum formulation, you are correct. Total capitulation by Ukraine, loss of all their mineral wealth and no security guarantees is still better than World War III-- for now. But you know, everything sounds better if the only other option you're presenting us is World War III."

0x0100015 - Created from the form at people:create

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-07T08:34:29+00:00

User ID Lookup/

0x0100015

Status

Good

Trust

Default/Fallback

Traits
More info about traits can be found here.

Paranoid - If a betrayal didn't actually happen, this character will force or stage one just to make sure that their fears are confirmed.

End of short profile preview. You can, at any time, request your own position through the contact form. You may also request your full length profile, which includes diagnostic data points like permissions and policies, incidents and further relevant memories.

0x0100014

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-07T08:32:56+00:00

User ID Lookup/

0x0100014

Status

Good

Trust

Increased

Traits
More info about traits can be found here.

Brave - This character has learned that attacking problems head-on is often the fastest and easiest way to solve them.

Diligent - This character expresses themselves through their work, which is always at the highest of their abilities, even if nobody will notice.

Humble - Affirmation and recognition by others are not this character's source of self-worth.

ULTRACOMFY Style Guide

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-01T11:32:52+00:00

Somewhat informative grunting
Words

Some important words

ULTRACOMFY Style Guide
Aggression
Sleeping
What a moment
Drama

Dictionary

Declarate
Blame
to figure that out
Classic
Pointer
discriminate

Language/Standardization/
ULTRACOMFY Style Guide

Dates and Times

Dates

DD.MM.YYYY = 13.06.2026
Numbers only, leading zeroes for days and months.
ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD or YYYYMMDD) would be preferred, but is not established (ie. is impractical). The American MM/DD/YYYY is rejected and strongly discouraged.

Times

HH:MM or HH:MM:SS = 22:07 or 22:07:57
24 hours with leading zeroes, typically without seconds.

When talking to Americans, h:mmAM/PM = eg. 7PM, 7:52PM, 11:05AM
Short hour (without leading zeroes) with long minutes, omitted on full hour. AM/PM marker appended without space, both letters capitalized and no points (ie. not a.m.)(in line with abbreviation capitalization rules).
May be used for its colloquiality in some other informal settings.
HH:MM:SS AM/PM (= 05:30:21 PM) used as long format. Leading zeroes, AM/PM capitalized with space but still no points.

Words

Language

English, then Chinese, then German
More speakers of a language is better. English is best, Chinese is a viable backup. Personally I cannot speak Chinese, the only language I know besides English is German. In cases where I must speak German (like 99% in IRL) I do so begrudgingly.

General Style

American English and British English: Clarity-Based, then Consistency-Based, then American English, then Both = Soccer (Clarity), “the police is” (instead of “the police are”, for Consistency), Declarate (Consistency), Democratization (American English), Flat/Apartment (Both) Per case basis, in most cases American is preferred. In many technical contexts British English is preferred, although some exceptions exist.
British English may be used in some cases to sound posh, especially in formal matters.

Semantic Adjustments

Non-Standard Clarifying Letters
eg. Zeroes (not zeros), Consentual (not consensual); attempts to eliminate some special rules where appropriate for consistency.
Typically chosen depending on which style maintains previously established word style. If one deviates, the other is chosen.

Grammar

Punctuation

All sentences end with some punctuation mark (. , ? ! ‽ etc.). Punctuation marks used inside of parentheses or quotation marks do not terminate a sentence (ie. He said “Hello.”. is correct, despite the awkward looking period). This is for clarity and maintaining consistency.

If the punctuation mark at the end of the parenthesis is a period, it may be dropped for reconcilability: He said “Hello”.
If the punctuation marks at the end of the parenthesis is anything but a period, it must be included: He said “Hello?”.
The final punctuation mark after the parenthesis is used under all circumstances to clarify the end of that sentence.

Comma

Standard comma rules, Serial comma (Oxford comma) discouraged (considered Non-Standard) but sometimes accepted as useful, particularly in very long lists.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations are generally used for technical purposes and highlighted, ie. mostly capitalized. = WR, AM/PM, PC, DOA, NASA, ESA
Exceptions in capitalization in some more advanced abbreviations where only specific letters are capitalized. Very casual abbreviations (“gg”) are typically not capitalized, but can be capitalized at any time.

Welcome to your new DokuWiki - removed

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-01T09:50:57+00:00

Welcome to your new DokuWiki

Congratulations, your wiki is now up and running. Here are a few more tips to get you started.

Enjoy your work with DokuWiki,
-- the developers

Create your first pages

Your wiki needs to have a start page. As long as it doesn't exist, this link will be red: start.

Go on, follow that link and create the page. If you need help with using the syntax you can always refer to the syntax page.

You might also want to use a sidebar. To create it, just edit the sidebar page. Everything in that page will be shown in a margin column on the side. Read our FAQ on sidebars to learn more.

Please be aware that not all templates support sidebars.

Customize your Wiki

Once you're comfortable with creating and editing pages you might want to have a look at the configuration settings (be sure to login as superuser first).

You may also want to see what plugins and templates are available at DokuWiki.org to extend the functionality and looks of your DokuWiki installation.

Join the Community

DokuWiki is an Open Source project that thrives through user contributions. A good way to stay informed on what's going on and to get useful tips in using DokuWiki is subscribing to the newsletter.

The DokuWiki User Forum is an excellent way to get in contact with other DokuWiki users and is just one of the many ways to get support.

Of course we'd be more than happy to have you getting involved with DokuWiki.

Formatting Syntax - removed

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-01T09:50:53+00:00

Formatting Syntax

DokuWiki supports some simple markup language, which tries to make the datafiles to be as readable as possible. This page contains all possible syntax you may use when editing the pages. Simply have a look at the source of this page by pressing “Edit this page”. If you want to try something, just use the playground page. The simpler markup is easily accessible via quickbuttons, too.

Basic Text Formatting

DokuWiki supports bold, italic, underlined and monospaced texts. Of course you can combine all these.

DokuWiki supports **bold**, //italic//, __underlined__ and ''monospaced'' texts.
Of course you can **__//''combine''//__** all these.

Note that the formatting markers have to directly enclose the text, so ** bold ** with spaces inside the markers will not be formatted.

You can use _subscript and ^superscript, too.

You can use <sub>subscript</sub> and <sup>superscript</sup>, too.

You can mark something as ~~deleted~~ as well.

You can mark something as <del>deleted</del> as well.

Paragraphs are created from blank lines. If you want to force a newline without a paragraph, you can use two backslashes followed by a whitespace or the end of line.

This is some text with some linebreaks
Note that the two backslashes are only recognized at the end of a line
or followed by
a whitespace \\this happens without it.

This is some text with some linebreaks\\ Note that the
two backslashes are only recognized at the end of a line\\
or followed by\\ a whitespace \\this happens without it.

You should use forced newlines only if really needed.

Links

DokuWiki supports multiple ways of creating links.

External

External links are recognized automagically: http://www.google.com or simply www.google.com - You can set the link text as well: This Link points to google. Email addresses like this one: andi@splitbrain.org are recognized, too.

DokuWiki supports multiple ways of creating links. External links are recognized
automagically: http://www.google.com or simply www.google.com - You can set
link text as well: [[http://www.google.com|This Link points to google]]. Email
addresses like this one: <andi@splitbrain.org> are recognized, too.

Internal

Internal links are created by using square brackets. You can either just give a pagename or use an additional link text.

Internal links are created by using square brackets. You can either just give
a [[pagename]] or use an additional [[pagename|link text]].

Wiki pagenames are converted to lowercase automatically, special characters are not allowed.

You can use namespaces by using a colon in the pagename.

You can use [[some:namespaces]] by using a colon in the pagename.

For details about namespaces see namespaces.

Linking to a specific section is possible, too. Just add the section name behind a hash character as known from HTML. This links to this Section.

This links to [[syntax#internal|this Section]].

Notes:

Links to existing pages are shown in a different style from nonexisting ones.
DokuWiki does not use CamelCase to automatically create links by default, but this behavior can be enabled in the config file. Hint: If DokuWiki is a link, then it's enabled.
When a section's heading is changed, its bookmark changes, too. So don't rely on section linking too much.

Interwiki

DokuWiki supports Interwiki links. These are quick links to other Wikis. For example this is a link to Wikipedia's page about Wikis: Wiki.

DokuWiki supports [[doku>Interwiki]] links. These are quick links to other Wikis.
For example this is a link to Wikipedia's page about Wikis: [[wp>Wiki]].

Windows Shares

Windows shares like this are recognized, too. Please note that these only make sense in a homogeneous user group like a corporate Intranet.

Windows Shares like [[\\server\share|this]] are recognized, too.

Notes:

For security reasons direct browsing of windows shares only works in Microsoft Internet Explorer per default (and only in the “local zone”).
For Mozilla and Firefox it can be enabled through different workaround mentioned in the Mozilla Knowledge Base. However, there will still be a JavaScript warning about trying to open a Windows Share. To remove this warning (for all users), put the following line in conf/lang/en/lang.php (more details at localization):
conf/lang/en/lang.php
```
<?php
/**
 * Customization of the english language file
 * Copy only the strings that needs to be modified
 */
$lang['js']['nosmblinks'] = '';
```

Image Links

You can also use an image to link to another internal or external page by combining the syntax for links and images (see below) like this:

[[http://php.net|{{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png}}]]

Please note: The image formatting is the only formatting syntax accepted in link names.

The whole image and link syntax is supported (including image resizing, internal and external images and URLs and interwiki links).

Footnotes

You can add footnotes ³⁴⁾ by using double parentheses.

You can add footnotes ((This is a footnote)) by using double parentheses.

Sectioning

You can use up to five different levels of headlines to structure your content. If you have more than three headlines, a table of contents is generated automatically -- this can be disabled by including the string ~~NOTOC~~ in the document.

Headline Level 3

Headline Level 4

Headline Level 5

==== Headline Level 3 ====
=== Headline Level 4 ===
== Headline Level 5 ==

By using four or more dashes, you can make a horizontal line:

Media Files

You can include external and internal images, videos and audio files with curly brackets. Optionally you can specify the size of them.

Real size:

Resize to given width:

Resize to given width and height³⁵⁾:

Resized external image:

Real size:                        {{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png}}
Resize to given width:            {{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png?50}}
Resize to given width and height: {{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png?200x50}}
Resized external image:           {{https://www.php.net/images/php.gif?200x50}}

By using left or right whitespaces you can choose the alignment.

{{ wiki:dokuwiki-128.png}}
{{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png }}
{{ wiki:dokuwiki-128.png }}

You can also set the alignment explicitly with a ?left, ?right or ?center parameter. This takes precedence over the whitespace alignment above and can be combined with a size.

{{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png?100&right}}

Of course, you can add a title (displayed as a tooltip by most browsers), too.

{{ wiki:dokuwiki-128.png |This is the caption}}

For linking an image to another page see Image Links above.

Supported Media Formats

DokuWiki can embed the following media formats directly.

Image	`gif`, `jpg`, `png`
Video	`webm`, `ogv`, `mp4`
Audio	`ogg`, `mp3`, `wav`
Flash	`swf`

If you specify a filename that is not a supported media format, then it will be displayed as a link instead.

By adding ?linkonly you provide a link to the media without displaying it inline

{{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png?linkonly}}

dokuwiki-128.png This is just a link to the image.

Fallback Formats

Unfortunately not all browsers understand all video and audio formats. To mitigate the problem, you can upload your file in different formats for maximum browser compatibility.

For example consider this embedded mp4 video:

{{video.mp4|A funny video}}

When you upload a video.webm and video.ogv next to the referenced video.mp4, DokuWiki will automatically add them as alternatives so that one of the three files is understood by your browser.

Additionally DokuWiki supports a “poster” image which will be shown before the video has started. That image needs to have the same filename as the video and be either a jpg or png file. In the example above a video.jpg file would work.

Lists

Dokuwiki supports ordered and unordered lists. To create a list item, indent your text by two spaces and use a * for unordered lists or a - for ordered ones.

This is a list
The second item
- You may have different levels
Another item

The same list but ordered
Another item
1. Just use indention for deeper levels
That's it

  * This is a list
  * The second item
    * You may have different levels
  * Another item

  - The same list but ordered
  - Another item
    - Just use indention for deeper levels
  - That's it

Also take a look at the FAQ on list items.

Text Conversions

DokuWiki can convert certain pre-defined characters or strings into images or other text or HTML.

The text to image conversion is mainly done for smileys. And the text to HTML conversion is used for typography replacements, but can be configured to use other HTML as well.

Text to Image Conversions

DokuWiki converts commonly used emoticons to their graphical equivalents. Those Smileys and other images can be configured and extended. Here is an overview of Smileys included in DokuWiki:

8-)
8-O
:-(
:-)
=)
:-/
:-\
:-?
:-D
:-P
:-O
:-X
:-|
;-)
^_^
m(
:?:
:!:
LOL
FIXME
DELETEME

Text to HTML Conversions

Typography: DokuWiki can convert simple text characters to their typographically correct entities. Here is an example of recognized characters.

→ ← ↔ ⇒ ⇐ ⇔ » « -- — 640×480 © ™ ® “He thought 'It's a man's world'…”

-> <- <-> => <= <=> >> << -- --- 640x480 (c) (tm) (r)
"He thought 'It's a man's world'..."

The same can be done to produce any kind of HTML, it just needs to be added to the pattern file.

There are three exceptions which do not come from that pattern file: multiplication entity (640×480), 'single' and “double quotes”. They can be turned off through a config option.

Quoting

Some times you want to mark some text to show it's a reply or comment. You can use the following syntax:

I think we should do it

> No we shouldn't

>> Well, I say we should

> Really?

>> Yes!

>>> Then lets do it!

I think we should do it

No we shouldn't

Well, I say we should

Really?

Yes!

Then lets do it!

Tables

DokuWiki supports a simple syntax to create tables.

Heading 1	Heading 2	Heading 3
Row 1 Col 1	Row 1 Col 2	Row 1 Col 3
Row 2 Col 1	some colspan (note the double pipe)
Row 3 Col 1	Row 3 Col 2	Row 3 Col 3

Table rows have to start and end with a | for normal rows or a ^ for headers.

^ Heading 1      ^ Heading 2       ^ Heading 3          ^
| Row 1 Col 1    | Row 1 Col 2     | Row 1 Col 3        |
| Row 2 Col 1    | some colspan (note the double pipe) ||
| Row 3 Col 1    | Row 3 Col 2     | Row 3 Col 3        |

To connect cells horizontally, just make the next cell completely empty as shown above. Be sure to have always the same amount of cell separators!

Vertical tableheaders are possible, too.

	Heading 1	Heading 2
Heading 3	Row 1 Col 2	Row 1 Col 3
Heading 4	no colspan this time
Heading 5	Row 2 Col 2	Row 2 Col 3

As you can see, it's the cell separator before a cell which decides about the formatting:

|              ^ Heading 1            ^ Heading 2          ^
^ Heading 3    | Row 1 Col 2          | Row 1 Col 3        |
^ Heading 4    | no colspan this time |                    |
^ Heading 5    | Row 2 Col 2          | Row 2 Col 3        |

You can have rowspans (vertically connected cells) by adding ::: into the cells below the one to which they should connect.

Heading 1	Heading 2	Heading 3
Row 1 Col 1	this cell spans vertically	Row 1 Col 3
Row 2 Col 1		Row 2 Col 3
Row 3 Col 1		Row 2 Col 3

Apart from the rowspan syntax those cells should not contain anything else.

^ Heading 1      ^ Heading 2                  ^ Heading 3          ^
| Row 1 Col 1    | this cell spans vertically | Row 1 Col 3        |
| Row 2 Col 1    | :::                        | Row 2 Col 3        |
| Row 3 Col 1    | :::                        | Row 2 Col 3        |

You can align the table contents, too. Just add at least two whitespaces at the opposite end of your text: Add two spaces on the left to align right, two spaces on the right to align left and two spaces at least at both ends for centered text.

Table with alignment
right	center	left
left	right	center
xxxxxxxxxxxx	xxxxxxxxxxxx	xxxxxxxxxxxx

This is how it looks in the source:

^           Table with alignment           ^^^
|         right|    center    |left          |
|left          |         right|    center    |
| xxxxxxxxxxxx | xxxxxxxxxxxx | xxxxxxxxxxxx |

Note: Vertical alignment is not supported.

No Formatting

If you need to display text exactly like it is typed (without any formatting), enclose the area either with <nowiki> tags or even simpler, with double percent signs %%.

This is some text which contains addresses like this: http://www.splitbrain.org and **formatting**, but nothing is done with it. The same is true for //__this__ text// with a smiley ;-).

<nowiki>
This is some text which contains addresses like this: http://www.splitbrain.org and **formatting**, but nothing is done with it.
</nowiki>
The same is true for %%//__this__ text// with a smiley ;-)%%.

Code Blocks

You can include code blocks into your documents by either indenting them by at least two spaces (like used for the previous examples) or by using the tags <code> or <file>.

This is text is indented by two spaces.

This is preformatted code all spaces are preserved: like              <-this

This is pretty much the same, but you could use it to show that you quoted a file.

Those blocks were created by this source:

  This is text is indented by two spaces.

<code>
This is preformatted code all spaces are preserved: like              <-this
</code>

<file>
This is pretty much the same, but you could use it to show that you quoted a file.
</file>

Syntax Highlighting

DokuWiki can highlight sourcecode, which makes it easier to read. It uses the GeSHi Generic Syntax Highlighter -- so any language supported by GeSHi is supported. The syntax uses the same code and file blocks described in the previous section, but this time the name of the language syntax to be highlighted is included inside the tag, e.g. <code java> or <file java>.

/**
 * The HelloWorldApp class implements an application that
 * simply displays "Hello World!" to the standard output.
 */
class HelloWorldApp {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello World!"); //Display the string.
    }
}

The following language strings are currently recognized: 4cs 6502acme 6502kickass 6502tasm 68000devpac abap actionscript3 actionscript ada aimms algol68 apache applescript apt_sources arm asm asp asymptote autoconf autohotkey autoit avisynth awk bascomavr bash basic4gl batch bf biblatex bibtex blitzbasic bnf boo caddcl cadlisp ceylon cfdg cfm chaiscript chapel cil c_loadrunner clojure c_mac cmake cobol coffeescript c cpp cpp-qt cpp-winapi csharp css cuesheet c_winapi dart dcl dcpu16 dcs delphi diff div dos dot d ecmascript eiffel email epc e erlang euphoria ezt f1 falcon fo fortran freebasic freeswitch fsharp gambas gdb genero genie gettext glsl gml gnuplot go groovy gwbasic haskell haxe hicest hq9plus html html4strict html5 icon idl ini inno intercal io ispfpanel java5 java javascript jcl j jquery julia kixtart klonec klonecpp kotlin latex lb ldif lisp llvm locobasic logtalk lolcode lotusformulas lotusscript lscript lsl2 lua m68k magiksf make mapbasic mathematica matlab mercury metapost mirc mk-61 mmix modula2 modula3 mpasm mxml mysql nagios netrexx newlisp nginx nimrod nsis oberon2 objc objeck ocaml-brief ocaml octave oobas oorexx oracle11 oracle8 oxygene oz parasail parigp pascal pcre perl6 perl per pf phix php-brief php pic16 pike pixelbender pli plsql postgresql postscript povray powerbuilder powershell proftpd progress prolog properties providex purebasic pycon pys60 python qbasic qml q racket rails rbs rebol reg rexx robots roff rpmspec rsplus ruby rust sas sass scala scheme scilab scl sdlbasic smalltalk smarty spark sparql sql sshconfig standardml stonescript swift systemverilog tclegg tcl teraterm texgraph text thinbasic tsql twig typoscript unicon upc urbi uscript vala vbnet vb vbscript vedit verilog vhdl vim visualfoxpro visualprolog whitespace whois winbatch wolfram xbasic xml xojo xorg_conf xpp yaml z80 zxbasic

There are additional advanced options available for syntax highlighting, such as highlighting lines or adding line numbers.

Downloadable Code Blocks

When you use the <code> or <file> syntax as above, you might want to make the shown code available for download as well. You can do this by specifying a file name after language code like this:

<file php myexample.php>
<?php echo "hello world!"; ?>
</file>

myexample.php

<?php echo "hello world!"; ?>

If you don't want any highlighting but want a downloadable file, specify a dash (-) as the language code: <code - myfile.foo>.

RSS/ATOM Feed Aggregation

DokuWiki can integrate data from external XML feeds. For parsing the XML feeds, SimplePie is used. All formats understood by SimplePie can be used in DokuWiki as well. You can influence the rendering by multiple additional space separated parameters:

Parameter	Description
any number	will be used as maximum number items to show, defaults to 8
reverse	display the last items in the feed first
author	show item authors names
date	show item dates
description	show the item description. All HTML tags will be stripped
nosort	do not sort the items in the feed
n[dhm]	refresh period, where d=days, h=hours, m=minutes. (e.g. 12h = 12 hours).

The refresh period defaults to 4 hours. Any value below 10 minutes will be treated as 10 minutes. DokuWiki will generally try to supply a cached version of a page, obviously this is inappropriate when the page contains dynamic external content. The parameter tells DokuWiki to re-render the page if it is more than refresh period since the page was last rendered.

By default the feed will be sorted by date, newest items first. You can sort it by oldest first using the reverse parameter, or display the feed as is with nosort.

Example:

{{rss>http://slashdot.org/index.rss 5 author date 1h }}

Ink Droplets In Motion Snag Top Prize In Nikon Small World Contest by BeauHD (2026/10/29 07:00)
Bank of America Kindly Asks That You Don't Share Your Password With Your AI Assistant by BeauHD (2026/10/29 03:30)
Anthropic Engineer Declares the Coding Interview Dead by BeauHD (2026/10/28 23:00)
Massive Leak Exposes 41,000 Homeland Security Workers by BeauHD (2026/10/28 22:00)
Amazon Puts a Camera In Its Echo Studio So Alexa Can See by BeauHD (2026/10/28 21:00)

Control Macros

Some syntax influences how DokuWiki renders a page without creating any output it self. The following control macros are availble:

Macro	Description
~~NOTOC~~	If this macro is found on the page, no table of contents will be created
~~NOCACHE~~	DokuWiki caches all output by default. Sometimes this might not be wanted (eg. when the <php> syntax above is used), adding this macro will force DokuWiki to rerender a page on every call

Syntax Plugins

DokuWiki's syntax can be extended by Plugins. How the installed plugins are used is described on their appropriate description pages. The following syntax plugins are available in this particular DokuWiki installation:

Bureaucracy Plugin 2026-09-05 by Andreas Gohr
Create forms and generate pages or emails from them
Button Plugin 2026-07-14 by Remi Peyronnet
Add button links syntax
Clock Plugin 2024-01-21 by Luis Machuca Bezzaza
Shows a clock in a Dokuwiki page
CSV Plugin 2025-06-04 by Andreas Gohr
Displays a CSV file, or inline CSV data, as a table
folded plugin 2023-07-22 by Michael Hamann, Fabian van-de-l_Isle, Christopher Smith, Esther Brunner
Foldable page sections
Gallery Plugin 2026-09-02 by Andreas Gohr
Creates a gallery of images from a namespace or RSS/ATOM feed
hidepages plugin 2013-08-02 by Matthias Schulte
Hide pages from search results and/or sitemap
include plugin 2026-10-27 by Michael Hamann, Gina Häussge, Christopher Smith, Michael Klier, Esther Brunner
Functions to include another page in a wiki page
Info Plugin 2020-06-04 by Andreas Gohr
Displays information about various DokuWiki internals
keyboard 2023-02-23 by Gina Häußge
The keyboard plugin provides a combined syntax and action plugin in order to markup text as keyboard keys, similar to (and making use of) the existing (X)HTML tag <kbd>…</kbd>. A quick button for the markup is automatically inserted into the toolbar of the edit form.
orphanswanted plugin 2023-05-30 by Doug Edmunds, Cyrille37, Federico Ariel Castagnini, Andy Webber, Matthias Schulte, Christian Paul, alexdraconian
Display Orphans, Wanteds and Valid link tables
Pagelist Plugin 2023-08-27 by Matthias Schulte, Michael Hamann, Michael Klier, Gina Haeussge
Lists pages in a nice formatted way
Page Redirect 2024-03-01 by Elan Ruusamäe, David Lorentsen
Redirects page requests based on content
PageTitle plugin 2023-08-30 by Satoshi Sahara
Define a title of the wiki page by <title> tag. This plugin allows to write decorative title on the page with setting plain title text in metadata storage.
Typography plugin 2020-07-31 by Satoshi Sahara
Enable typesetting capabilities with CSS font properties such as font face, size, weight, and color of text
Video Sharing Site Plugin 2025-12-10 by Andreas Gohr
Easily embed videos from various Video Sharing sites. Example: {{youtube>XXXXXX}}
Wrap Plugin 2026-06-02 by Anika Henke
Universal plugin which combines functionalities of many other plugins. Wrap wiki text inside containers (divs or spans) and give them a class (choose from a variety of preset classes), a width and/or a language with its associated text direction.

³⁴⁾

This is a footnote

³⁵⁾

when the aspect ratio of the given width and height doesn't match that of the image, it will be cropped to the new ratio before resizing

DokuWiki - removed

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-09-01T09:50:49+00:00

DokuWiki

DokuWiki is a simple to use and highly versatile Open Source wiki software that doesn't require a database. It is loved by users for its clean and readable Formatting Syntax. The ease of maintenance, backup and integration makes it an administrator's favorite. Built in access controls and authentication connectors make DokuWiki especially useful in the enterprise context and the large number of plugins contributed by its vibrant community allow for a broad range of use cases beyond a traditional wiki.

Read the DokuWiki Manual to unleash the full power of DokuWiki.

Download

DokuWiki is available at https://download.dokuwiki.org/

All documentation and additional information besides the syntax description is maintained in the DokuWiki at www.dokuwiki.org.

About DokuWiki

Installing DokuWiki

Using DokuWiki

Customizing DokuWiki

DokuWiki Feedback and Community

Copyright

2004-2020 © Andreas Gohr andi@splitbrain.org¹⁾ and the DokuWiki Community

The DokuWiki engine is licensed under GNU General Public License Version 2. If you use DokuWiki in your company, consider donating a few bucks .

Not sure what this means? See the FAQ on the Licenses.

¹⁾

Please do not contact me for help and support -- use the mailinglist or forum instead

discriminate

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-22T21:13:11+00:00

Somewhat informative grunting
Words

Some important words

ULTRACOMFY Style Guide
Aggression
Sleeping
What a moment
Drama

Dictionary

Declarate
Blame
to figure that out
Classic
Pointer
discriminate

Dictionary/
discriminate

recognize the difference between (two or more things)

A coin counting machine discriminates between different coin denominations based on their size.

Discrimination on its own is not a bad thing. If you think it is, you are probably thinking of the term “discriminate against”, which is indeed a bad thing. Often, just the term “Discrimination” is used to mean discrimination against, but it is different from discrimination between.

When one discriminates between people based on their color, they simply just categorize them into races. When one discriminates against people based on their color, they mistreat them based on the notion that one race is superior to another. Discrimination between things is necessary in our day-to-day lives. Discrimination against things is a sickness in our society for which we have yet to devise a cure.

Moment

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-22T21:06:23+00:00

Somewhat informative grunting
Words

Some important words

ULTRACOMFY Style Guide
Aggression
Sleeping
What a moment
Drama

Dictionary

Declarate
Blame
to figure that out
Classic
Pointer
discriminate

Words/
Moment

“

Guys, I know in a literal sense of the word moment, every moment is a moment, so you don't have to say it in chat, okay? As far as Twitch moments go, I will decide what the twitch moments is, and you'll have zero say on what's a moment or what is not a moment on twitch. Okay? Not everything, is a moment.

”

~Aurateur Copypasta¹⁾

Anything, whether it be an object, an event, a person, or literally just a way something is, can be a moment. If it is noteworthy, it's a moment. If it's noteworthily un-noteworthy, it's a moment. Literally anything you could possibly conceive in your brain is a moment if, for whatever reason, it has even the slightest bit of significance to you. If it comes up, physically, emotionally or mentally, and it has even a minimum of significance to you (or is significantly insignificant) then that's a moment. Why?

Well, the livestreaming platform “Twitch” had, for some time, a feature called “Moments”. Livestreams are interactive TV, and most streams are not scripted. This means that, depending on what exactly the host is streaming, cool things can happen at any moment. The “Moments” feature was meant as a way for hosts to capture moments in which cool things happened: When a cool thing happened, the host could press a button that would create a video clip of the cool thing that happened (for the memories) and award a digital, commemorative badge to all viewers who were there for when it happened.

This feature was very well received. Now, on the Twitch channel Aurateur it actually gained a life of its own, where users eventually started actively asking for “Moments” even when nothing of note actually happened. But the host, Aurateur, reserved Moments for when he thought cool things actually happened, which lead his community to try to work around it by labelling anything and everything as a “Moment”, in hopes of convincing Aurateur to capture it as a moment. Even when the most benign things happened, chatters would write “WHAT A MOMENT!!” in all hype as if something cool happened, that it was “worthy” of being a moment. Of course, when something cool did actually happen, chat went completely off the rails and pressured Aurateur that, yes, this was a fucking moment. The phrase “What a moment!” is now a meme inside that community. I can tell you, these were good times.

Unfortunately, Twitch eventually killed the moments feature. But, its legacy lives on, with users still trying to convince Aurateur that things are a moment, and by me taking it to the real world and labelling anything and everything as a moment if I feel like it - just like Aurateur's Twitch chat.

Moments in the Wild

“

I remember when I first got my moment badge like it was yesterday. It was yesterday. Aura was as bald as usual. Chat was still a bunch of annoying fucking hooligans. And there is was. The beauty, its magnificence. It descended into my life and found its way to me choosing me as a worthy beholder. I never felt anything like it. I finally feel like a somebody in this life. I'm proud. I'm honored. I truly am. I will carry this moment with me to my grave. This, was my moment.

”

~Aurateur Copypasta

“

Aura, my wife was very concerned, she said when you two were having sex earlier today, you yelled out “THIS IS A TWITCH MOMENT” as you orgasmed. this is obviously disturbing to me, as i was not there and thus could not claim my badge. so, do you mind if i sit in next time?

”

~Aurateur Copypasta

Aurateur's own fandom wiki is notoriously incomplete, but I just found out that their page on "Moments" is actually one of the really good ones. It describes moments better than I ever could have:

“Twitch Moments or Moments were a stuck-forever-in-beta feature where streamers could clip a unique or special occasion and reward viewers for their presence with a cool looking commemorative chat badge. Ever since its introduction and up until its removal, chat has constantly asked, nagged, and begged Aura for moments, as everyone wants that shiny small golden looking circle thingy behind their usernames. However, when questioned bald man replied, “not every moment is a moment.”

In fact, Twitch chat liked moments so much that they even started claiming at times that they were being “robbed” of moments that they felt entitled to²⁾:

“After being sent a picture of Howard on the floor, Aurateur remarked how “Howard looks like he is dead.” The Twitch chat immediately erupted in rage by Aurateur's comment; catalyzed by the fact that the chat was just robbed of a moment.”

AurShock - What a moment!
This is the bald man experiencing a moment right now!

¹⁾

This is so funny to me. I wasn't there when he said this, but the fact that he clarifies that he knows about the literal definition of a moment tells me that chat probably tried to argue that every moment is a moment (literally). So good.

²⁾

In good fun, to be clear.

momentuous - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-22T20:51:37+00:00

This page has been moved, the new location is Moment.

Pornography

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-22T13:22:16+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Humans/Human Sexuality/
Pornography

The "rational" people over at RationalWiki have an article on Pornography.

Pornography has been defined as sexual subject material “such as a picture, video, or text” that is intended for sexual arousal. Indicated for the consumption by adults, pornography depictions have evolved from cave paintings, some fourty millennia ago, to virtual reality presentations. A general distinction of adult content is made classifying it as pornography or erotica.

Usually one would think of pornography as just another thing that people do to pass time or enjoy themselves, however there is no fun or good thing without someone co-opting it into their agenda. Fundamentalist Christians can call themselves first to get that. They say that pornography is bad, because it's a sin²⁰⁾²¹⁾. And because even religious people realize that just saying “it's bad because it's forbidden” isn't a strong argument, they then fall back to other arguments, like it's gay, brainwashing, causes crime (rape!), or it ruins lives - anything, surely something will stick. Some more interesting points come from modern day mysogynists who will say that your sex drive is what makes men wake up and do things, and by masturbating one robs themselves of motivation. What else could motivate a man to be god-fearing and hardworking if not his desire for a woman? (Not to exclude women, but these arguments are typically aimed at men.)

Porn Addiction

Some people seem to be quite ~~strong~~ stubborn in their belief that a thing such as “porn addiction” exists. Allegedly you get “used” to certain aspects of your porn to the point where real life sex isn't “good enough” anymore. If you watch too much porn of women with unrealistically attractive (and probably artificially inflated) curves then that “raises your standards”.
Now, while sexual tastes can be acquired, there is no scientific body on earth confirming that new tastes necessarily replace old ones. You will find plenty of “self help guides” with many products to sell and advertisements to run that will be more than happy to give you advice. However, such a thing does not²²⁾ exist²³⁾.

Women in the Industry

Pornography has become a very large and competitive industry with a business model that essentially asks actors to sell away their identity and dignity for objectification and money. One often understated element of this is that the sex work inherently doesn't actually inherently involve the indignification of its workers. It is the way sex workers are treated that makes it indignifying - the most vulnerable group here are women, who almost always get mistreated and also can end up financially abused but also sexually assaulted. In many countries, while the end product (ie. the videos) is readily policed, the creation of the video is a topic the government prefers not to talk about, so enforcement of the law in this industry is particularly weak (if laws exist at all).
Because of this lack of governmental enthusiasm to govern the industry, pornography also has problems with some of the more severe human rights situations. Human trafficking, if not for slave labor, tends to attract slave sexual labor, with individuals (and by that I mean almost exclusively women) being stripped of their passports and sometimes even physically being held captive and forced to appear before a camera performing sexual acts, whether they want to or not.

However, to quickly dispell a myth here, sex trafficking virtually does not happen to women situated in richer countries such as the USA or Western Europe. Women in these countries are politically powerful and traffickers risk getting sought after by their victim's home nation. Traffickers generally choose targets that are politically weak, ie. who are poor, have little education and who won't be missed (by anyone with power) if they go missing. Think Middle East, Africa, South America.

Feminism

For women, pornography is a delicate topic. On one side, for a lot of people it is the only way to get by. Some might even genuinely just be happy in that line of work. On the other side….

“

[…] the sex-negative position, holding that sex in general (as currently conceptualized in society), and pornography in particular, objectifies women, turning their bodies into vessels for male domination, rape, and capitalist exploitation.

”

~Rationalwiki on Pornography, retrieved Aug 17, 2026

I find it very plausible that pornography and its widespread normalization certainly contributes to the objectification of women. If you've ever heard guys talk about women they pass by, you know what I mean²⁴⁾. The classic answer to this is “sexism, not sex, degrades women”.

Personally, I am in favor of sex work being legal and workers getting the same legal protections as everyone else. While I would personally find sex work to be too degrading and would rather go homeless, I can understand why someone else wouldn't do it as I. Is sex work inherently degrading? Eh. Is it used to degrade women? Definitely. Sure, the sex itself isn't the degrading part here, but if you are in the line of sex work and are getting degraded on the base of sexism then the two will be rather difficult to seperate, no? While, sure, sex on its own isn't what degrades, the lived reality for many women is that the sex in their work comes with sexism attached, whether they want it or not.

But - and I think that's the main point of sex-positivists - while sex and sexism might often come together, they are not literally inseperable. With reform and a shift in culture it is absolutely possible to give women every dignity to work in that field without constantly being stepped on. It is absolutely possible, and we should work in that direction as best as we can.

²⁰⁾

https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/Questions-Young-People-Ask-Answers-That-Work-Volume-2/Your-Feelings/How-Can-I-Avoid-Homosexuality/#:~:text=Shun%20pornography%20and%20gay%20propaganda., retrieved on 16.12.2023

²¹⁾

https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/Questions-Young-People-Ask-Answers-That-Work-Volume-2/Recreation/Why-Avoid-Pornography/, retrieved on 16.12.2023

²²⁾

The Emperor Has No Clothes: A Review of the ‘Pornography Addiction’ Model, retrieved on 15.12.2023

²³⁾

The Potential Associations of Pornography Use with Sexual Dysfunctions: An Integrative Literature Review of Observational Studies, retrieved on 15.12.2023

²⁴⁾

I know this is a difficult topic because I'm talking primarily about adolescents here, who are just nasty in general, plus women do that too. Still, isn't it interesting that from all the ways adolescent men can be nasty to women, they choose to sexualize them into objects?

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-21T09:22:56+00:00

Somewhat informative grunting
Words

Some important words

ULTRACOMFY Style Guide
Aggression
Sleeping
What a moment
Drama

Dictionary

Declarate
Blame
to figure that out
Classic
Pointer
discriminate

warning-small.gif - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-21T09:16:30+00:00

Why don't I just say that I'm German?

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-21T08:57:46+00:00

Blog/
Why don't I just say that I'm German?

It is hardly a secret that I am German. Still, when introducing myself I prefer to declare myself as European. What gives?

Well, the truth is that I have grown up in a way that quickly dissociated me from Germans and German culture. An interesting coincidence of beginning to learn proper English in school just at the time in my life in which I became rather disconnected from society lead me to largely tap out of the German reality around me.

The result of that is a person with no unique culture - at least socially. I grew up being used to existing in a world full of all varieties of cultures and influences and had no reason to discriminate between them. Spanish, Canadians, Indians, they're all the same people to me. Still, “somewhere in Europe” was perhaps the closest thing I was able to call home. That's the demographic I spent most of my time with and with whomst I have the largest overlap. I think I feel for Europe what others feel for their own neighborhood, or maybe even their country.

For me, to say Europe is my home is to say that “just” Germany isn't my home. If I restricted myself to just the German parts in me, a lot - if not most - of me would be lost. I have more overlap with Europe as a whole than I have overlap with any one specific European country, including Germany.

Revamping First Strike - Why Stellar Commanders is the better First Strike

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-21T08:53:41+00:00

Blog/
Revamping First Strike - Why Stellar Commanders is the better First Strike

I'm part of a community of the video game First Strike. First Strike is a nuclear war sandbox real time strategy game that lets you take command of a nuclear superpower and duke it out with other nations using nuclear rockets until your nation is destroyed or the last man standing³⁶⁾. I discovered this game back in 2017/2018 and fell deeply in love with it. The game satisfies a specific fantasy I didn't know I wanted to experience in a game setting.

First Strike was made by Blindflug Studios, a swiss indie studio which really tried their hardest to make the best of it. Unfortunately, even though the game was extremely popular during its peak, it never really had any proper traction behind it. Over the years they tried and tried again to push the game forward, they remastered it, added multiplayer etc. etc., but it always seemed like they came too late. They had a window of opportunity during which they could have kept the game “alive”, but the gears over at Blindflug grind slowly, so when a big update finally dropped, everyone had already moved on. They even went out of their way to develop the long-awaited multiplayer game mode which literally 95% of the community had been asking for for the last few years. Granted, it did bring some new life into the game, but that too quickly faded. Now, it has been another few years and Blindflug has finally moved on to their new flagship game, Ground of Aces.

However, there is also the often forgotten game Stellar Commanders. As a game designer, I find Stellar Commanders interesting. Stellar Commanders is a real time strategy deck building game in a First Strike theme, and I am convinced that the design of Stellar Commanders lets us see deep into the thought process Blindflug must have had when designing that game. I will say that the following little rambling is aimed at players who are familiar with First Strike and that I won't make too much effort explaining some of the gameplay details to those who don't know or understand it. Play it on Steam, on Android or Apple (Classic version preferred, only on Steam or Android it seems?).

So, what's this about? Well, I think that First Strike is a great game, but that it has a few problems. I've thought about these for a long time and I think the best way to talk about these problems is by talking about some potential solutions. Basically, what would I do with the game if I was in charge?

Problem: Gameplay is strenuous and primarily dictated by the player ability to perform actions per minute (ie. based on how fast the player can click to give orders)
Intended design goal: First Strike should be focused on strategy and decision-making
Solution target: Change the mechanics of the game to not be limited by actions per minute (click speed), by identifying the mechanics that are limited by it. Do not remove the ability to do a lot of things at once and instead make actions per minute limited naturally by strategy. In other words, it should be better/more strategical to do things slowly rather than all at once in rare but spiked bursts.

What do I mean? In First Strike, players can use their owned territories to take actions: Build rocket, destroy rocket, acquire a neighboring territory, research, shoot rocket, defend against incoming rocket, build superweapon, deploy superweapon. The problem here is that there is nothing stopping you from doing all of these all at once. This, in my mind, disrupts the strategy aspect of the game because your primary ability in the game is to do all of these things at once. No amount of strategy will beat a player who is capable to click through all the menus so quickly and do everything at once. There is no cost involved with most of these actions so the only cost is your willingess to sacrifice your hand and finger muscles to play “faster”.

Identified problem cause: Almost all actions in the game are only limited by ApM. Especially building, expanding and shooting rockets have no inherent restriction and are only slightly discouraged in that building and expanding can be intercepted by a wary player (well, at least expanding. If you cruise spam then there's nothing an enemy could reasonably intercept)
Proposed solution: Tie most actions in the game to a limited resource, ie. money. My solution is that players have a steady stream of financial income and can spend it for example to build a rocket. This would immediately solve the actions per minute problem but still allows one to accumulate money and spend it all at once if they want.

Money is accumulated over a period of time and based on held territories + held (intact) cities. Maybe we could even factor in total number of humans in general, so China would be extremely powerful as long as their cities stand.

For FS I'd be thinking of measuring money in Millions. An ICBM might cost 100M. IRBM's and Cruisers should cost the same. Expanding into a region might cost 500M. We can still launch all rockets all at once using the First Strike button, and maybe we can even add a button that switches between 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% of the arsenal. Or maybe a button that can switch to only launch ICBM, IRBM or Cruisers. Auto-Defense might be removed from the tech tree and be given to everyone by default.

I also think of using money to limit the total possible growth of a superpower. Stationed rockets of any kind might cost upkeep and eat into your budget. Holding territory could also cost upkeep. The increase of upkeep for each rocket should be linear, whereas the increase of upkeep for territory should be exponential. Or maybe instead of territory upkeep, the expanding action itself could just get more and more expensive. The goal here is to encourage keeping your territory small, which means less overall clicking and more meaningful investments. As it stands right now in First Strike, there is no disadvantage to holding lots of territories, besides increasing the player workload more as they have more territories to take actions with. The more territories you have, the more you need to click around, which incrementally increases the player workload and quickly gets out of hand but doesn't even yield any actual strategic benefit.

Additionally, slow down rocket construction by a factor of 8 and make their travel speed 8 times slower too, this way rockets can be sent quickly, but it will give the receiving player a lot more time to prepare and to click the buttons once they are in range of the receiving player's cruises. Maybe we can/should axe the territory cooldown system, but maybe we shouldn't.

I'd also propose rockets be built in bulk somewhere and then you can go into a menu where you can just click where to deliver the rockets to. That way you don't have to open the build menu for every individual nation, you just build rockets in bulk and click once on every nation to send one of your stock there. That way we might even get something like supply routes where the target territory needs to be connected to the capital for delivery to be possible. That way an enemy could cut off some of your nations by striking strategically.
Oh, research! Of course research should cost money. Superweapon research should cost money too and constructing the superweapon should cost as well. Right now, superweapon research and construction is a no-brainer, but by tying it into the money system there is a tradeoff when thinking about building a superweapon each time you want to build it.

If you haven't noticed yet, this kind of system I am proposing should remind you a lot of what Stellar Commanders tried to do. I assume that's because Blindflug actually had very similar thoughts when they thought about how to evolve the First Strike game. My idea is essentially like the Iridium bar from SC: You get more money constantly and you can invest it to build various forms of infrastructure. You can build a superweapon in SC but it requires you to sacrifice Iridium every time you do. Expansion in SC requires Iridium and is a lot more strategic because of the different ways the game lets you expand, each with their advantages and disadvantages. Defending in SC is done automatically but it too requires you to invest into defenses.

I really think that my design pitch for what the problems are and which focus to have when solving them is going to be really similar to BF's pitch when they thought about Stellar Commanders. It really is a straight evolution from First Strike and, in terms of design, Stellar Commanders is the better game.

Unfortunately, Stellar Commanders wasn't very successful. I think there is a variety of reasons for why Stellar Commanders didn't land, and I think one of them is that Stellar Commanders is a deck/card builder - not First Strike. This may sound dumb, but by making it a deck builder you are removing it from the freeform nature that First Strike gave you. Stellar Commanders is very different because it basically has “counters” and “win conditions” and preset strategies and dynamics with how each card interacts with the enemies' cards and synergizes with your own other cards. First Strike had none of these kinds of interactions, and so the similarities between Stellar Commanders and First Strike are now mostly incidental.

First Strike is good because it lets you have access to this big sandbox where you can do all kinds of things, it's basically a grand strategy sandbox game in that sense. In comparison, Stellar Commanders is essentially just the weak points (and only the weak points) of First Strike, made them better, and then added a deck builder.

Obviously that's not all the reasons for why SC didn't land and, also obviously, all of this is easy for me to say after the fact. I don't mean to be shitting on SC with what I'm saying here. In fact I really hold it in high regards for how it approached the attempt to take First Strike, take it away from sandbox and move it towards a proper, strategical game that you could genuinely play in multiplayer and have some genuine strategical gameplay in.

³⁶⁾

Or maybe there is another way?

Blog

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-21T08:39:36+00:00

ULTRABLOG
Tidbits here and there from my life that don't fit on any other particular page.

Russian Reversal and I want Monopoly

Something makes me laugh. And I want Monopoly. But I'm me, so it's never that easy..
04.08.2026, >> Read >>

Why don't I just say that I'm German?

When I introduce myself, I prefer to say that I'm “from Europe” instead of “from Germany”. This blog post goes into why I prefer to do it that way.
29.05.2026, >> Read >>

Grocery store discount strategies and why we really just get mad at ourselves

An incident at the grocery store made me think about why we get frustrated, and I realized that we, in most cases, really just get frustrated at ourselves. Since the incident involved another customer getting frustrated at ~~themselves~~ “App Discounts” I also used the opportunity to go into detail about why they are used.
28.04.2026, >> Read >>

Revamping First Strike - Why Stellar Commanders is the better First Strike

My ideas for a rework of Blindflug's game First Strike had a surprising amount of overlap with many of the design ideas Blindflug implemented into their First Strike sequel Stellar Commanders. It turns out they identified the same design problems in First Strike that I identified, and they had similar ideas on how to fix them.
07.04.2026, >> Read >>

Jehovah's Witnesses

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-17T09:18:17+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Cults/
Jehovah's Witnesses

“

Avoid independent thinking […] questioning the counsel that is provided by God's visible organization.

”

~Watchtower, WTBTS. January 15, 1983. p. 22., recited from RationalWiki

The "rational" people over at RationalWiki have an article on Jehovah's Witnesses.

The content of this page may, by the strict meaning of its words, be inaccurate. I am writing this with the intent to inform, not to distract. Please read the full article on Accuracy.

Strategic Notice: Witness teachings differ, in details, from standard Christian doctrine. Also, JW tend to be painfully precise with their doctrines. Here are two examples:

(Remember that these are just two examples and more like this is hidden in the article.) I write that JW teach to reject secular authorities as much as they can (well, as far as they can before getting into too much trouble). Strictly speaking this is not correct. Witnesses are taught to “respect” the secular authorities. Here is what my former best friend would have considered to be accurate:

JWs are taught to listen to the secular authorities insofar as the Bible, and more relevantly, the Governing Body agrees with them. They are also taught to be no part of the world (John 15:19), and to reject worldly people and ideas. That is, unless they are preaching, where they have been commanded (Matthew 28:19) to convert people into their cult.
Now, while this is what one could perhaps consider as the “full truth”, the is not the “real truth”. The real truth about what JW teach, and even my friend agrees with this, is the following:

Fuck those demons, we’re gonna be as compliant as we have to be to maintain survival.

The basic premise of JW is that everyone who believes in Big J is good and anyone who refuses to is bad. Unfortunately for them, 99.9% of the world does not believe in YHWH, which means we're all bad. We are seen as a disgrace who reject the truth and we are all Satan's personal demons trying to steer good and faithful people off the path. Almost EVERY witness doctrine teaches to hate and loathe secular authorities, to defy them and their pesky ideas, keep away from it as far as possible. Only those “in the truth” are real and valuable human beings that deserve to be treated fairly (and even then they still just bully each other), everyone else is a tool of Satan himself. You and me too, and we didn't even know. Just because they have this one line in the bible to hide behind is not enough for me to say that they actually want anyone to respect the authorities - it's what they specifically built as something to hide behind, not a teaching they actually adhere to. And, and let me inject my own bias here, probably meant to protect JW from the total meltdown as complete defiance with secular authorities would probably thin their numbers rather quickly.

The second example is about the usage of the word “heaven”. Strictly speaking, witnesses do not believe in heaven or hell. Their own, specially handcrafted version, ehem “version”, of the Bible does conveniently not include/wrongly translate that part as to reflect what the founders of JW wanted to believe. You will get them kicking and screaming if you talk to them and act like they believe in this, because it's one of the few things they have going for them in terms of actually being different from mainstream Christianity.

The full truth here is that witnesses believe that demons will die in Armageddon and faithful believers get to live on in paradise or whatever. Something. It does not fucking matter. Just like in Christianity, good things if you are nice, bad things if you are not, exactly what is good and bad is up for debate, but witnesses believe that rejecting Jehovah is bad.

I will continue to claim that they reject secular authorities and I will continue to use the word heaven in spite of this. These argumentations are specifically designed by witnesses to run conversations into the mud by focusing on irrelevant details while, at the end of the day, it's still “heaven” all over again, just with a bit of special JW flavor attached to it.

Jehovah's Witnesses are a Christianity-based cult with headquarters in Warwick, New York state. At about 8.5 million members strong, it is one of the most influential cults of the modern day. Conceptually, JWs reject the secular authorities and advise their members to avoid them as much as possible (except when knocking on doors) to form a parallel society³⁷⁾. This cuts off members from being exposed to “worldly” people and their dangerous, dangerous thoughts³⁸⁾. The cult operates largely on indoctrination (as early as possible!), discouraging independent research³⁹⁾ and, most importantly, peer pressure. Ostracization, shunning and spreading rumors are the strongest weapons in one's arsenal, as all it takes is calling someone gay to get them to be considered for “disfellowshipping”. Or talking too much to worldly people. Or surfing on the wrong websites. Or watching porn. Disfellowshipment is the special weapon of Jehovah's Witnesses. Witnesses born into the cult are trained to not make friends outside of the ranks of witnesses, must not marry wordly people, are cut off from real-world education or any kind of academic degrees/diplomas etc., in short they are raised in such a way so that they depend, physically, psychologically and economically, on JW. Witnesses must not gain any sense of independence so that, once they are disfellowshipped, the victim cannot sustain themselves. Without school degrees or friends in the real world to speak of it becomes virtually impossible to leave. Trying to GET friends or GET a diploma will see you shunned and rejected even before the formal excommunication, as ~~gaining means to escape the cult~~ engaging with worldly people is BAD.

“

Always nice to be reminded of my place as a woman and a child and that mental illness isn’t real and that I’m a worthless fuck up and all. Medication is for heroine addicts and I deserve to be struck down by Jehovah for considering depression medication. I’m a coke head now. Maybe I wouldn’t be so fat if I had an ounce of discipline. Speaking of which we need to have more discipline around this household, my mom and I are slacking off. Perhaps he should get rid of both of our electronics and beat us for a couple days to remind us WOMEN how to behave.

”

~They are nice people, though, if you don't ask too many questions.

Inner Workings

Quick Profile

Head of Faith	Text	Meaning
Spiritual	The physical world and the spiritual world are not alike. We must ensure the spiritual world has it's own leader, to guide us and to protect our faith from being profaned by physical desires.	The head of faith is a medium to the spiritual. Their word is what god told them, so they have near-executive control over the religion. This is only constrained by how much the religion allows its believers to stray from official doctrine.

The Watchtower, some white guys in a building in Warwick, NY State

Category	Name	Text
Theism	Monotheist	Only one god is worshipped. Other so-called 'gods' are at best empty idols, and at worst attempts by some malign deceiver to tempt the faithful away from proper worship of [High God].
View on Gender	Male Dominated	Men are stronger and better equipped to lead us in this harsh and unforgiving world, so we shall entrust them with governing our society.
Religious Attitude	Fundamentalist	Our faith is the one true faith, our word the one true word. Any deviation from the [Religious Text] is inherently blasphemous.
Pilgrimage Attitude	Forbidden	The presence of [High God] can be felt everywhere and the notion that certain places are more divine than others is nothing short of heresy.
Marriage	Monogamous	Marriage is a sacred bond between two individuals. Attempting to form such a bond with multiple people at once is sacrilege.
Divorce	Must be Approved	While the bonds of marriage should not be taken lightly, extenuating circumstances can sometimes make divorce a necessity.⁴⁰⁾
Bastardry	No Legitimization	The bonds of marriage are sacrosanct, and children born outside of wedlock will always be illegitimate.
Funerary Tradition	Bewailing Funeral	The soul has begun its long journey to [afterlife name] and we will never see them again in the living world. It is imperative that all who knew the dead gather and offer their grief in a public show of bewailment. This both honors the dead and cleanses our souls of the grief felt by their departure.

Crime	Doctrine	Text
Same-Sex Relations	Crime	The sinful desires of sodomites are a danger to society itself, so they shall be punished and locked away for their transgressions.
Adultery⁴¹⁾	Crime	It is a crime for one to engage in intercourse outside of marriage, and they shall be punished accordingly.
Deviancy	Shunned	There are some sexual practices which are simply abnormal and strange. It stands to reason that people with those desires are equally abnormal and strange.
Witchcraft	Crime	Only the divine have the right to work miracles on this earth. Any who make profane attempts to do the same shall be punished for their hubris and arrogance.

Clerical Doctrine	Doctrine
Clerical Function	Control	The priest derives its authority from the divine, and that still applies here on Earth.
Clerical Gender	Only Men	Only men can shoulder the great responsibility of serving as priests of our faith.
Clerical Marriage	Disallowed	Becoming a priest means devoting one's life to the divine. It is inherently unfaithful to consider taking a mortal spouse in addition to that.

Tenet	Text
Communion	Our rituals are not merely symbolic — they invoke the very presence of the divine itself. Those who cannot or do not join us in their practice cannot be true believers.
Literalism	Our holy texts clearly state divine intent, and human interpretation is of limited value.
Sanctioned False Conversions⁴²⁾	If your life is threatened, it is acceptable to confess a false faith, as long as you keep the truth in your heart.
Sanctity of Nature	The natural world is the creation of the divine, and we are merely guests in it. We must respect and honor every tree, every animal, and even the ground itself.
Unrelenting Faith	Our convictions are strong, and we will gladly fight and die for our faith. No matter how badly the odds are stacked against us, we shall not surrender.
Dharmic Pacifism	We are all part of the cosmic order. Violence against anything is violence against everything, oneself included.

Witnesses will, as much as possible, withhold from each other whatever they could use to get out of there. One of the strongest weapons here is education, as school degrees are an extremely strong starting position to work with (financial independence!). Obviously this will vary on the individual, but in general JW are instructed to maximize their time spent focusing on “spiritual stuff”. Children are not sent to school, if possible, and in countries where there are compulsory school laws they will find whatever is the least degree of education that still, from a legal perspective, qualifies as “school”. In the US of A, for example, this could mean virtual school courses by JW for JW, teaching anything but definitely NOT propaganda and indoctrination. If you're lucky and don't get homeschooled then you may be sent to public schools (“the dark, pesky caves of Satan himself!”) but your education efforts will be pro-actively sabotaged by your parents - they may be intentionally lax about actually sending/getting their children to school, may force them to do spiritual stuff all day to stop them from doing homework or learning for tests, cut them off from the internet or learning resources for whatever excuse they can come up with and much, much more - all the way up to the point where, for the child, learning becomes utterly unsustainable. They may be “going to school”, but are intentionally set up for failure by sabotaging whatever their parents can to prevent actual results⁴³⁾. There again, making friends at a public school is strictly frowned upon and will get you shunned by fellow witnesses if discovered.

On that note, the second strongest mechanic that keeps witnesses IN is constant pressure. Witnesses are continuously judged, supervised, monitored and controlled by other witnesses. Not keeping up with latest events and not doing enough spiritual work (like knocking on doors) will see you shunned. Children are continuously kept busy with whatever the parents can come up with to prevent them from even getting a second for themselves to think. They are kept on a continuous cycle of work and exhaustion where they aren't even given the time to sort their thoughts and make conclusions. Children are to be present and in eyeshot of the parents at all times, must never rest, never do anything that isn't related to Big J and must always, always be kept busy.⁴⁴⁾

As I already touched upon earlier, “disfellowshipment” - excommunication - is the ultimate control mechanism of witnesses. Being strongly against violence (at least in official proceedings, it is tolerated and actively encouraged⁴⁵⁾ when done in private), withholding love, attention, support and care is how witnesses squash dissent. Families are instructed to throw their children out of their house and refuse talking to them if they come out as not believing in JW. Obviously this is beyond extremely manipulative, especially when done by parents against their own children, and puts their love and care and attention on a conditional basis: We love you if you love Jehovah - if you don't, we will show you how much we actually love you.
The congregation tries to claim that this is purely some kind of “tough love”, because obviously it is impossible to solve these differences in a healthier way or just to accept them as facts of their life. Not believing in JW deprives you of a spot in heaven⁴⁶⁾ once Armageddon finally happens (it will happen eventually, we're sure!⁴⁷⁾), but instead of letting that be a problem of the affected individual, witnesses will instead make sure that your life beyond this will be as insufferable as they can possibly make it for you (while remaining faithful to the bible, of course - murder isn't in).

Jehovah Hates... A Lot

Essentially being fundamental Christians, are primarily marked by their hatred for things, a list imported directly from the bible, always with a personal spin depending on the specific witness and their biases. In general, however, witnesses hate everything pagan (people, traditions (FUCK YOU CHRISTMAS), whatever), they hate gay people, people not yet part of their cult, people who are part of their cult, equality, women, doors (!!), blood, education, non-nuclear families, everything not yet mentioned on this list and especially everyone they want to hate, they usually will find some bible verse that they can spin around enough until it vaguely supports their hate, all in the name of Big J whom they do their utmost to make happy by hating things so much they get a boner from the excitement. It seems to be that the general concept of JW day to day life is a cycle of self-reinforcing hate cycles balanced with the occasional bit of being a nice person every once in a while to reach the quota. If only someone told them that YHWH hates hate (WTBTS would never tell them, that's one of the most important things to keep a witness busy and distracted).

Ideological Conflicts

1: We respect secular authorities

Witnesses claim that doctrine is to respect secular authorities - provided the ~~governing body~~ biblical teachings agrees with the authorities. It's a euphemism banking on the fact that most people recognize Christianity/The Bible as a message of good and peace and therefore don't think about this too much. The truth is, however, that a words-based, literal reading of the bible disagrees with effectively every single aspect of modern law and society and - unfortunately for the witnesses - since Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult with the Biblical Literalism doctrine, this means they follow they bible not as it means, but as it says and, oh boy, the bible says a lot of things.

There are a lot of specifics to unpack here, but the TL;DR is that witnesses “respect” secular authorities in nothing but conclusion. They will attack every aspect of a secular authority, will call them institutionalizations of Satan (!), they say we will all eventually rise up, turn against witnesses and attempt to eradicate them, they say that we will all die a horrendous death, that we are a disgrace and that our minds are poisoned and that we need them to be saved from eternal damnation (by converting us into their “flock”, they are so nice to us).
Obviously, a cult that respected secular authorities as much as the Bible told them to (by the strict meaning of its words) would be a militant terrorist organization with much fewer adherents than they currently have, so what they do is to cherry pick. Of course they are a biblical literalist cult, but because witnesses all agree that they are all unable to actually interpret the bible correctly, they have the governing body (the WTBTS) who tell them how to interpret what, which passages to ignore, and occasionally drop in with what they call “new light” - insight they take from outside the bible; because obviously nothing is better than a biblical literalist cult that then goes on to agree to disagree with the bible. Those new lights usually tend to be ideas some governing body member pulled out of his ass, presented as a message from god himself⁴⁸⁾, and then accepted as true and override any and all the bible says. They are usually introduced as damage limitation. For example, once defending flat earth made witlesses look too stupid and lost them too many members, the governing body eventually decided that god told them that what the bible says is actually too vague and that it leaves room for so much interpretation that the world could actually also be near-spherical.

2: We agree with science

Jehovah's Witnesses, like many other cults and religions, finds itself rubbing with scientific inquiry. However, unlike many other christian fundamentalist denominations, Witnesses are taught to play it smart and to be as compatible with science as a biblically literalist cult can be. Their main weapon here is the non-refusal of science. Witnesses are told that our earth is amazing and should indeed be studied, and they agree with all scientific observations (except when they don't), they only disagree with their conclusions.

They agree with science on how reproduction works, what DNA is and how mutation is a thing (they believe in micro-evolution), but will subtly disagree with the conclusion that evolution is a thing. Outwardly they will agree with all the premises leading up to evolution, but will block just when it comes to actually making the logical conclusion.

And even that is done in an intentionally ambiguous way. They may not explicitly reject scientific conclusions, at least outwardly, but on the inside you will find Watchtower sanctioned videos showing exciting, unlikely animal features (like the soundless owl feathers) and leadingly ask “This couldn't possibly have come about by random chance, right?”. Verbatim. And no, this didn't happen randomly, this happened because there were evolutionary pressures on the animal that made the animal's evolution drift into that direction⁴⁹⁾.

One favorite you're gonna make witnesses very uncomfortable with is the shape of the earth, because all of them would like to believe that it's a disk. The bible doesn't explicitly state it, but it very much implies it and that means it keeps them up at night, especially because many of them aren't scientifically illiterate enough to actually believe it. The same extends all the way to the Watchtower, which needs to decide on whether to double down and make disk earth official doctrine, to give it to a spherical earth or, and that's ultimately what they did, kind of avoid the topic and be very subtle about it. Outwardly, again, Watchtower panders towards the sane option and says on their website that “the Bible does not teach that the earth is flat”. All implications in the bible pointing towards a flat earth are excused as “figures of speech” (That's the no. #1 tactic of a biblically literalist cult to avoid dealing with problematic sentences in their own scripture.⁵⁰⁾). Internally, again, the shape of the earth is very much a matter for discussion. Who knows…. <shrug> what the shape of the earth really is, right? Oh, did I forget to mention that Jehovah's Witnesses used to fully believe flat earth, and that the tolerance towards a spherical earth is actually comparatively new? As I said, they really want to believe in flat earth, but as a modern cult you can't bring that if you also want a lot of adherents.

³⁷⁾

Trying to paint themselves as following the bible as closely as possible they will “respect” the secular authorities because of that one paragraph in Romans. In reality they will defy and exploit them as much as possible (flag saluting, for example, which got them into many, many legal problems and has cost lives) and will, at every opportunity, instruct witnesses NOT to reach out to secular authorities. Instead, witnesses are told to put faith into the bible and pray their problems away. Apologists as they are, they will defend an abusive husband, telling wives to do more bible study and to persevere through it. When he beats you so bad as to break your ribs, you are to NOT call the cops and you definitely are NOT to take him to court. Please don't, you WILL be excommunicated. Obviously JW just cherry pick the lines from the bible they want to follow, like every other scripture-based “religion”, and they choose this one because rejecting secular society completely would be extremely bad for their numbers.

³⁸⁾

Except, again, when knocking on doors, which is never done alone so that even the smallest display of dissent on behalf of a witness is caught by other witnesses to enable early and swift intervention.

³⁹⁾

They will tell you otherwise, but then always point you to learning resources specifically written by JW. Please do NOT talk to actual experts and if you do then never do it unsupervised, and if you do THAT and don't end up disagreeing with them then you will be shunned.

⁴⁰⁾

In religions with a gender preference, this is often used to make divorce harder or impossible for the party of the not-preferred gender.

⁴¹⁾

In religions with a gender preference, the preferred gender will typically be favored in this. They will often only get shunned instead of being considered a criminal.

⁴²⁾

“Spiritual Warfare”

⁴³⁾

Not that school itself, as is, is already often overwhelming enough for many people.

⁴⁴⁾

Again, the exact dimensions of this strategy and how its employed lies with the parents and therefore your mileage may vary, but the concept is there.

⁴⁵⁾

striking your children etc.

⁴⁶⁾

Witnesses will scream at this one and whine that their heaven equivalent DEFINITELY is not like heaven.

⁴⁷⁾

JW leaders eventually stopped making “predictions” after the twentieth failed as well and they realized that keeping on making predictions kind of hurts their member retention. Now it's just “Any day now!” and whatever bad thing happens in the world is seen as proof that It is coming.

⁴⁸⁾

Unfortunately, according to the governing body, god only talks to members of the governing body. If you're a normie witness and think he has been talking to you, you are the victim of moving the goalpost.

⁴⁹⁾

…randomly. It's not wrong, but come on.. it's not really random either.

⁵⁰⁾

Followed closely by no. #2: censoring the problematic sentence by just making your own scripture “based on” the original.

Chat Control (Level 2)

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-17T08:45:55+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Politics/European Union/Legislature/
Chat Control (Level 2)

Now, I'm not typically known for trusting parents with raising their children. I am the kind of person who thinks birth policies are a good thing and who likes to think about mandatory certification before getting a child. Not everyone should be allowed to just make children, much less so if you, as a parent, are unable to keep your child safe online (or, offline much rather, hah!). So, for anyone who knows me somewhat, it should come as a bit of a surprise that I put forth parents as the solution to a problem. And sure, while I would like to be able to trust parents - it would make this problem extremely easy to solve - good parenting is a problem that genuinely is more complex than just good parents. And I see child online safety as a parenting issue, no more.

So if I say that child online safety is exclusively a parenting problem, and I also say that parenting is more than just parents, then I do implicitly say that we need more than just parents - both in general, and in terms of child online safety. So if you really wanted to push it, it could technically be said that I would see chat control as a viable solution to child online safety. And while I agree that it would be a “solution”, I think it is a horrible and bad solution that should never be implemented.

So, what should we do? Well, it depends on our preconceptions. In Level 1 I like to point out “western society” and “individualization” so much, and directly ask you whether you agree with this kind of society, because I think that communization of a lot of day to day life could potentially be a better alternative to the hyper-individualization we see today. Communes are stronger, more reliable and more resilient to hostile influences, and decentralization of child rearing means that no one person ever gets too much power over a defenseless child.

When I say “parents are responsible for their children's online activity”, I say that exclusively from a norm-observing standpoint, regardless of whether I personally agree with it. I think that my statement “parents are responsible for their children's online activity” is correct, if you say this from the standpoint of someone who wants to work with what they have. Of course, deep down I think that this shouldn't actually be, and that I believe there to be better methods. But within our current system, parents are the solution.

But, even in our individualized society, delegation of responsibility is only partial. It is up to the society to give parents the knowledge they need, and it is up to the government to provide legal infrastructure that can properly investigate and prosecute offenders. That's why, in our individualized society, I think we should work at all three fronts: Parents - Commune - Government.

“

Parental and public child abuse awareness campaigns, better tools for parents to monitor and moderate their children's virtual life and more funding and staffing for federal child safety institutions to properly investigate and prosecute incidents of suspected child abuse. More solutions could be support networks for both victims and perpetrators, destigmatization and various other public relations efforts to make it easier for perpetrators to admit they have a problem, seek help and/or self-report.

”

All of this is the true solution. And more. A functioning society should be able to navigate issues like this without giving 100% executive control to the government. That would solve nothing. Therapy, rehabilitation, support, counseling, awareness, monitoring, there is so much complexity to child online safety that is being brushed away by just… abolishing privacy? Just like that? Wow. Well, that's a moment.

Chat Control

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-17T08:43:50+00:00

Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization

Issues of their times

Jehovah's Witnesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X

We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular

Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring

Politics/European Union/Legislature/
Chat Control

Chat Control is a proposed piece of legislation that would force messaging providers to install backdoors into their encryption methods, so that governments can access the contents of all and every correspondence. Ostensibly, the goal is to combat child sexual abuse, but it conveniently leaves out the implications of what it means to give a government full, unrestricted access to 100% of its citizen's conversation.

Therefore, the “Biggest Letdown of the Year 2025” award goes to the European Union, which has been swayed by companies - companies which successfully identified that laymen will forget all sense of rationality when they hear “child sexual abuse”. Knowing this, companies are now pushing for an end of secrecy of correspondece, a fundamental security given to us by wise men who learned from the Second World War and understand what government overreach is, and how it threatens democracy.

Introduction

The exact implications of Chat Control are that any online correspondence (ie. conversations on WhatsApp, E-Mail, Signal, Telegram, Discord, etc.) are sent to the government as copies before they are sent to the intended recipient. This means a message will be sent twice. In both cases, the messages are encrypted - a message will be sent to the government with encryption, and it will send the message to the intended recipient encrypted as well. Nobody outside of you, the intended recipient and, well, the government will be able to read the messages. But, crucially, it means that the government will be able to read the messages. This is a big problem, as it gives a government direct access to an immense amount of data of its citizens. If you remember East Berlin and how agents at the post office opened, read, and then resealed letters sent between people to keep detailed profiles on 100% of the population - the Chat Control legislation is everything you need to make that a reality. In fact, since this is digital, no opening/closing is required and everything can be condensed using advanced algorithms or even AI, it would be naive to think that the government wouldn't. And while you may have nothing to hide, this still gives the government a lot of leverage over you. If the government ends up not liking you - for any reason, ideologically or even just personally - this data can be weaponized against you.

After East Berlin, the makers of these laws were smart enough to realize that they shouldn't just ban mass surveillance, they should make it impossible for mass surveillance to happen in the first place. The goal of laws like “secrecy of the mail” is to make it impossible for such a thing to even be possible. They knew that if the government was given the option to open letters at all, that such would be too much of an invitation to just do it with every letter. Therefore: No opening of letters at all.

1. Proportionality

As a society, we generally want to let everyone live the way they want. Government surveillance has aspects that are inherently contradictory to this premise - however, there are areas in which governmental precautions are necessary to maintain law and order, and to protect individuals from abuse. This is typically seen as a tradeoff: Cameras in high-risk areas, such as train stations, are an acceptable restriction on privacy if it means reducing the risk of assaults. But, cameras with facial tracking and large databases to track citizen movement restrict privacy much more than necessary, and the additional reduction in assault risk are not worth the harm (or potential for harm) done by such automated systems.

This is called “proportionality”. Restrictions in freedom, safety or privacy are only acceptable insofar that the restrictions serve a higher imperative. The exact value of that imperative must be assessed, and the restrictions be finely tuned to be as unrestrictive as possible while still satisfying that imperative. In other words, some risk or harm is okay, but at some point it's not okay anymore. Any restriction of a citizen's privacy needs to be justified and weighed against what you are trying to achieve.

The difference in restrictiveness can be seen all the time in the public. Compare these: At a soccer stadium in Germany, pre-entrance pat-downs are the default, and security is on site. At a courthouse or the airport, proper inspections of human and carriage, complete with metal detection and X-Rays is normal, as these are more critical infrastructure. Grocery stores come with cameras only, maybe a store detective. Concerts get security at levels comparable to soccer games. Open air, public events, due to their open nature, do not typically have pat-downs at the entrance, but a considerable guard presence is good practice.

It should go without saying that abolishing secrecy of correspondence altogether is proportionate for pretty much nothing. The restriction of privacy being discussed is virtually limitless and comes with privacy and security concerns that are indefensible. Before all online correspondence is laid open to the government, the country should rather just shut down the internet. If the threat is as large as to make you consider abolishing privacy as we know it, shutting down the internet in your country is the better solution that does less damage.

Additionally, we are prepared for cases where people cannot be trusted with their communications. Laws give courts the power to issue wiretaps for individuals where it is believed that a wiretap is proportional. Either to prove that they have already done something bad, or in case they are about to do something bad. But, importantly, the natural restriction here is that wiretapping is always only for one individual, is not centralized and requires lengthy court proceedings. Wiretaps are expensive and done only when absolutely necessary. Its non-centralized structure makes the process intentionally slow. There are a lot of checks and balances in place before and after a wiretap is issued. All this means that a bad actor is not capable of weaponizing this system at scale. You can get one or two wiretaps in, but its non-centralized structure means you cannot ever get hundreds or even thousands of people at once. But, it works fast in reverse - if fraudulent wiretaps are found, they can be terminated extremely quickly and undo or stop a lot of damage overnight.

Chat Control circumvents all that. It means that, now, everyone is centrally wiretapped by default, and is at the mercy of their government to (1) not get databreached (2) not turn hostile against its citizens (3) not use the wiretaps to profile its citizens (4) use the data to engage in discrimination or (5) get any worse ideas. Governments are powerful and can do all kinds of things to citizens it doesn't like. The people who invented secrecy of correspondence laws did it intentionally to limit the government's ability to do harm in case the government ever turns hostile. And governments do turn hostile - for many people, the government already is: Whether you're gay, trans, of a certain religion, of a certain color or criticize the government, for a lot of people this is very relevant when talking about the government. In some countries, things like these are illegal and will get you jailed - or burned. In some countries, criticizing the current administration may result in you getting fired from your job.

Additionally, companies will probably get wedged into the data pool, regardless of how much we are promised that they will totally not. Companies should not get detailed lifestyle data of every citizen. In the worst case, your conversations might leak into private hands. A data breach, corruption, anything can happen and the public will see every chat of every person ever. A resentful ex, pissed off coworker, anyone who doesn't like you and has at least a little bit of motivation to actually do something about it could now get their hands on every secret you ever held. If you think your neighbor doesn't need to know every detail of your personal life, think again. This is so much worse.

In short: Child safety is a reasonable concern to be worried about, but casually flinging away all privacy is not a proportionate solution considering the inherent risks and problems that come with such a system. Proportionate solutions would be parental and public child abuse awareness campaigns, better tools for parents to monitor and moderate their children's virtual life and more funding and staffing for federal child safety institutions to properly investigate and prosecute incidents of suspected child abuse. More solutions could be support networks for both victims and perpetrators, destigmatization and various other public relations efforts to make it easier for perpetrators to admit they have a problem, seek help and/or self-report.

As a last word: There is a painful irony in this whole plot. Conversation of child abuse typically talks about a stranger on the internet seeking out vulnerable children online and trying to build rapport. If anything ever comes from Chat Control, it will be a widespread realization amongst the populace that the child abusers are not random strangers - abusers are all amongst us. They are people your child knows and is close to. Your husband. The child's uncle. Your mother. Odds are you are the abuser yourself. Anyone in your family or extended family. Or your local clergy, I guess. Child abuse will be found where people have access to children - so that's not a random stranger online whose chatlogs in case of an incident will be the first thing the police checks. It will happen primarily inside the family - especially parents - or any occupations close to children.

2. Responsibility

Western society values individualism. Communal institutions are mostly limited to what's efficient and convenient - ie. kindergarten and school - but even these are geared towards preparing a child for living individually. As such, our society does what I will call “delegation of responsibility”. The commune is not responsible for everything your child does. Your child is viewed as “yours” and, until it reaches maturity, the child is primarily your responsibility.

One really dumb example would be roads. Roads are dangerous, as they have cars on them. The reason we don't build walls around every piece of road, to protect children, is because the responsibility of protecting the child's safety is delegated to the parent. As the parent, it is your job to make sure that your kid won't run into traffic. I bet you can already see where I'm going to go with this.

If you agree with this individualized approach to parenting, then it is the parent's responsibility to guarantee the child's safety online. To do that, parents are given executive control over their child's belongings and activities, and all of the tools necessary for a parent to make absolutely sure that their child online is not at risk of abuse. “Parents” are the real and true proportionate solution to child safety online. If you agree with how children are raised in western society, then parents are all we need (in an ideal world).

If you want, continue reading on Chat Control (Level 2)

Doppler Effect

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-13T08:18:56+00:00

It's not religion if it's true
Science

Objective inquiry

History
Philosophy
Inclusion
Doppler Effect

Falsified Hypotheses

Science Says

Phyics/
Doppler Effect

The Doppler Effect is a phenomenon that appears when something that emits some kind of wave moves in relation to the observer. If the emitter and receiver move away from each other or get closer to each other, the frequency at which the receive receives the waves will be distorted. If the two move away from each other, more distance is created between each emitted wave, which will appear to the receiver as if the frequency has been reduced. If the two move towards each other, the waves will be compressed as there is less distance between each, appearing to the receiver as if the frequency is higher. This concept has important applications for long-distance communication, for example in spaceflight.

Explanation

Imagine a rectangular swimming pool. If hit the water close to your end of the pool, you create a water of water that will expand from your end of the swimming pool towards the other end of the swimming pool. Now imagine you follow that wave and hit the water again just behind the wave. You now have two waves following right behind each other moving towards the other end of the pool.

Now imagine you're a different person sitting on the other end of the pool. You don't see the person hitting the water, but you can see the waves reaching your end of the pool. What do you see? Well, you see a lot of waves arriving in quick succession - that's the doppler effect. Even though the water hitter might have created each wave with a generous time interval between each wave, they will still arrive “all at once” at the other person because they chased the location of the last wave.

If a water hitter creates a wave every one second and does not move, those waves will reach you in an interval of one wave every one second. However, if the water hitter does the same while moving towards you, the waves will be closer to each other than one second, even if they still only punch the water every second.

Sound Physics

What our ears pick up are vibrations of ~~ear~~ air molecules. Vibration of air molecules means that air molecules reverberate, physically, between two or more locations. The way our ears “hear” is by measuring how often that happens, ie. “reverberations per unit of time”. 7kHz for example is 7000 reverberations in a second. Like waves on water, air reverberations expand through the air - that's what the speed of sound is: Mach 1 - 1234.8km/h.

Now, the cool thing is that if a sound emitter, ie. a thing that makes air molecules vibrate, “chases it's own vibrations”, it too has a doppler effect. Even if your car generates 7000 reverberations per second, if your car drives towards someone then the total amount of reverberations arriving at the listener per second will be higher than 7000. Just like the water in the pool, the vibrations will begin to bunch up behind each other and then arrive all at once at the listener.

Now if you've ever played with a frequency tone generator, you know that higher tones correspond to higher frequency. Since your ear only measures the total number of vibrations, it does not matter if what you're hearing is 5000 stationary reverberations or 3500 reverberations that move towards you - it will sound the same to your ear - depending on the speed at which the moving sound emitter is moving of course! To make 3500 reverberations sound like 5000 you would have to figure out some fancy maths to determine an exact speed.
Either way, if a sound source is moving towards you, what happens in your brain is that your ear picks up a lot of reverberations coming it at once, and therefore you hear a higher pitch of the sound, in accordance with the frequency at which the reverberations arrive at you.

Relative Movement

The key term here is “frequency at which the reverberations arrive at you”. This is important because this isn't really about the speed of the sound emitter - it's only about how many revererations arrive at your ear. Say you are the car and drive towards and past a construction. The construction isn't moving, but if you are racing into the reverberations emitted by the construction then you will pick up much more than you would if you stood still. Then, when you go past it and drive away, you are basically racing away from the reverberations and will pick up less each second. Lower frequency means lower pitch.

The last example here is two moving things. Two cars next to each other will hear each other normally as they aren't moving towards or away from each other - they have no relative movement. If both the water puncher and the watcher moved in the same direction, the waves would arrive at the watcher at their original frequency.

Most things in our world have movement relative to us, even if only on a molecular level, so the doppler effect is around us all the time. It's just that in most cases the relative movement is so negigible that we don't consciously pick it up (or our ears aren't precise enough). But, doppler is good and useful! It is useful for spacefaring radio signals from spacecraft don't just transmit their radio signal but can also be analysed to give us useful information about their movement relative from us. NASA uses the doppler effect to cross-reference the speed data of their spacecraft.

And there is so much more! Have you heard of relativistic doppler? Grand worlds will be opened up to you with the amazing data gathering of other planets and stars you can do by applying physical principles that go beyond the elementary conceptual understanding I can provide here. Hell, I didn't even give you the math, that's how little I actually know. Time will tell if I am ever gonna learn more about this.

Russian Reversal and I want Monopoly

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-04T09:00:43+00:00

Blog/
Russian Reversal and I want Monopoly

Recently I have found a joke format that I've really grown fond of. Many will already know this and probably groaned at the title of this blog post, as this is a very classic and apparently overused joke format. As Wikipedia puts it:

“

Russian reversal is a joke template taking the general form “In America you do X; in Soviet Russia X does you”. Typically the American clause describes a harmless ordinary activity and the inverted Soviet form something menacing or dysfunctional, satirizing life under communist rule, or in the “old country”.

”

~Wikipedia: Russian Reversal

To pre-empt any science thumping, yesyes it's called an antimetabole and yes it's a joke format aimed at western audiences utilizing western stereotypes to satirize Russia. Do I even know what the fuck an antimetabole is? Fuck no, but on this website antimetabole researches ME. Also, nobody cares who the fuck came up with this kind of joke.

All I'm trying to say is that, despite my chronic onlineness, I am still incredibly insulated from the internet and needed multiple decades before finding this joke format. So let's just think of this as me catching up with things I should have done during my childhood:

“In America you abort fetus, in Soviet Russia fetus aborts you.”

“In America you drive car. In Soviet Russia, car drives you.”

or alternatively “In Soviet Russia you rob bank. In capitalist America bank robs you.”

I'm probably going to keep laughing at these for the next few weeks before I move on like the rest of the world, but until then I am going to enjoy it goddamnit!

This, and only exactly this will suffice.

In other news, I have been thinking about getting Monopoly. You know, the board game? It's one of my favorite IRL games and an essential part of my childhood. But, being part of my childhood, I am quite specific about the kind of experience I want. Specifically, I need the 2001 German Euro board version with the original tokens, street names and, as the name suggests, the Euro currency as the game money. Monopoly is a popular game and has always sold well, you'd think that it must be quite cheap to come by, right?

Well, not quite. Of course the 2001 version is no longer in production and, apparently, Monopoly isn't THAT popular that everyone just has that particular version lying around. It has acceptable availability and an acceptable price, too, but it's far from where I hoped it would be. Sad.

monopoly.png - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-04T08:59:25+00:00

- removed

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-04T08:25:58+00:00

Blog/
I want Monopoly

0x0100013 - Created from the form at people:create

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-03T11:18:27+00:00

User ID Lookup/

0x0100013

Status

Good

Trust

Default/Fallback

Traits
More info about traits can be found here.

0x0100012 - Created from the form at people:create

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-03T11:15:50+00:00

User ID Lookup/

0x0100012

Status

Trust

Default/Fallback

Traits
More info about traits can be found here.

Calm - This character radiates calmness and is hardly bothered by anything.

0x0000025

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-03T11:11:51+00:00

User ID Lookup/

0x0000025

Status

Good

Trust

Increased

Traits
More info about traits can be found here.

Historical - This character is no longer actively relevant in my life, and their profile is kept largely for historical purposes.
Calm - This character radiates calmness and is hardly bothered by anything.
Ambitious - This character is constantly looking for their next move and will strategize or take risks to get ahead.
Humble - Affirmation and recognition by others are not this character's source of self-worth.
Patient - This character can endure delays, setbacks and idiots with remarkable composure.
Intelligent Lvl 1 - This character excels with their quick wit and deep, logical comprehension. Even if the solution to a problem is out of their immediate reach, they still know the direction they need to go to. Never underestimate.
Smoker - Got a fire? This character likes to inhale dangerous fumes for fun.

- removed

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-03T08:38:26+00:00

This woman has the audacity to…
Whispers

Absolutely cunty

Start
A different Page

Encore!

Index

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-03T08:36:25+00:00

This page is part of a series on
Systems

Systems

Emotions Engine
Comms Engine
Direct Engine
Core
TRANSCOM
ULTRACOMFY Ethical Jurisdiction System

Mechanics

Interceptions and Encounters
Claim
Social Jurisdiction

Other

Statistical Inevitability
Malus Necessarium
Conversation Difficulty
50%
Probably Wrong
Traits
Apology

Traits

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-03T08:35:35+00:00

This page is part of a series on
Systems

Systems

Emotions Engine
Comms Engine
Direct Engine
Core
TRANSCOM
ULTRACOMFY Ethical Jurisdiction System

Mechanics

Interceptions and Encounters
Claim
Social Jurisdiction

Other

Statistical Inevitability
Malus Necessarium
Conversation Difficulty
50%
Probably Wrong
Traits
Apology

Systems/Systems
Traits

To briefly describe people in the personality profiles, I use a set of Traits. This is a list of all of them to explain them in a little bit more detail.

However, it needs to be clear that categorizing a person remotely like this is difficult. I'm not a psychologist, nor are “personality traits” like this a thing. I am not able, wanting or willing to make declarative statements about a person - not after knowing them briefly as an acquaintance, nor after knowing them intimately as a best friend for over three years. The things I say here, about people I've somehow come to know about, are entirely my personal impression, working with what little information I have about any particular person. Not only is my information about a person always severely limited, it is also filtered through both my conscious as well as my subconscious mind.

Of course, more time will improve accuracy in terms of total available knowledge as well as combatting the emotional and mental distortion inherent to any mind. Either way, my assessment of a person will probably never exceed an estimated accuracy of roughly ~<1%, and the traits I ascribe to them should be seen as more an indication of how I feel about a person - not what that person actually is like.

ABOUT MISSING PERSONALITY TRAITS
Personality traits on someone's profile are displayed on a on-confirm basis. If a personality trait is not shown on someone's profile, it could be because I disagree with it or because I'm not confident enough yet to agree with it. For levelled traits, only the lowest level I can confidently agree with is shown.

This list of traits is basically a copy from Crusader Kings 3's list of personality traits, as it gave me a useful framework through which to analyze personality traits. This is why that list contains a variety of traits that you wouldn't use anymore these days and which I too will probably never use.

Intimidating

Intimidating - This character's presence has a kind of vibe, intentional or not, that puts me on edge. Or maybe I'm just worrying too much.

This is purely for informational purposes and has nothing to do with the person's personality. Or, not inherently, anyway. While they may have a personality that naturally makes me uneasy, I use this flag to mark people who I'm generally uncomfortable around for any kind of reason. Typically it is because it is a person that I don't know and where I am worried that I could leave a negative impression of me. Most people I don't really care too much about whether their impression of me is positive or very positive, but with some people I feel like it matters, and - because my impression on others is largely out of my control (all I can do is being honest to god and not hurt people) - that makes me uncomfortable.

Brave

Craven

Brave - This character has learned that attacking problems head-on is often the fastest and easiest way to solve them.

Craven - This character runs faster backward than most can run forward.

Bravery denotes a person's willingness to accept risk.
It is primarily determined by an individual's perception of risk. Due to ignorance (or sometimes because of their protected status), children can tend to feel a bit too safe sometimes, whereas adults may tend to overestimate the stakes (especially of social situations) and become more defensive. Minor differences in braveness between people exist, major differences typically indicate a (perceived or actual) difference in wealth, safety, ability or another commodity that changes the stakes. Beware the crossover toward stupidity.

Being craven could be considered a social liability, but does tend to lead an individual towards very safe options, improving their longevity. Being very craven can become a major weakness, though being exceedingly brave does the same. People on opposite ends of this spectrum may tend to get into conflict.

Calm

Wrathful

Calm - This character radiates calmness and is hardly bothered by anything.

Wrathful - This character becomes irritated quickly, and their decisions are often largely influenced by their many frustrations.

The spectrum of calmness is tied to safety, maturity, bravery and intelligence, amongst others. Knowing more and understanding one's reality better leads to less frustration or worry. Wrath serves as a solution for those who cannot sufficiently rely on these resources.

Chaste

Lustful

Chaste - Be it old age, asexuality, trauma or one of many other reasons, this character does not experience regular sex drive.

Lustful - This character is a nymphomaniac.

Primarily an indication of sex drive. Not relevant and will rarely be used (it is also not upon me to judge such intimate details, with some very rare exceptions). Only part of this list as it is part of the traits from Crusader Kings 3, from which this list is heavily inspired.
Sex drive is largely environmental and depends on personal history. Age, career and illnesses play a major role as well.

Content

Ambitious

Content - This character is happy with where they are in life and is unlikely to risk what they have.

Ambitious - This character is constantly looking for their next move and will strategize or take risks to get ahead.

Content people tend to have a steady source of self-worth, whereas ambitious people seek out at least part of their self-worth through continuous (self-)improvement. This can be pathologic, but is probably because the person just find great fulfilment in climbing ever higher.

Diligent

Lazy

Diligent - This character expresses themselves through their work, which is always at the highest of their abilities, even if nobody will notice.

Lazy - This character does not see the value of effort and excellence, and instead prefers shortcuts and the path of least resistance.

Value seen in a particular piece of work. Since there are all different kinds of work we each value differently, it is very difficult to make a generalized statement about a person. Someone may be very lazy at school but extremely diligent in their basketball training, purely because of how much value a person sees in school as opposed to the basketball training.

Socially, performance at the workplace is generally seen as the primary indication for diligence/laziness. Personally, I try to strike a balance and consider all kinds of effort invested (or not) by the person.

Forgiving

Vengeful

Forgiving - Forgiveness is the only way to move past each other's humanity. This character is hard to permanently upset, albeit sometimes to their own detriment.

Vengeful - This character keeps receipts of other people's deeds.

Indication of how willing and how good a person is at letting go. Very important trait, as it defines the probable longevity of people getting along. While being too forgiving is harmful to oneself, it is very important to be able to forgive people for the things they do because of their (totally humane) weaknesses. Everyone has them, so a person without forgiveness would never be able to hold onto a person for very long.

Generous

Greedy

Generous - This character readily gives away what they have to people they think are more deserving or in need.

Greedy - This character has already done everything to satisfy their own needs before they think about the needs of anyone else.

Greed and generosity are probably learned survival strategies from early childhood to childhood. Greedy characters probably lived in an environment that forced them to be proactive, perhaps aggressive to fulfil their needs, whereas charitable characters were able to rely more on their environment to keep their needs decked and learned that being generous is socially advantageous.

Typically, greed ends up becoming less relevant as one ages, and there can be other factors at play that lead a character to “greedy” behavior, even if their environment doesn't force them to be greedy (anymore).

Gregarious

Shy

Gregarious - This character is home where their friends and family are. Or anyone, really.

Shy - This character is perfectly capable of attending social events, just not at the same time as anyone else.

The scale of gregariousness describes the overall amount of social inhibition afflicting a character. Social inhibition varies naturally and everyone is inhibited to some degree. The resulting plot is one of the easiest bell curves imaginable.

Social inhibition can be learned or come about as part of other factors and/or individual temperament. Often largely environmental. Strong outliers tend to have psychological reasons for why that behavior is advantageous (ie. it is not natural).

Honest

Deceitful

Honest - This character values truth above all, speaking plainly even when the words are uncomfortable or unwelcome.

Deceitful - This character is limited solely by what they think you will believe, not by what is true.

Honesty and Deceit are learned survival strategies and depend strongly on the environment in which a character was raised. Deceitful characters can have learned it as a necessity to prevent them from showing vulnerability or manipulating the social environment to fulfil their needs. Honest characters probably grew up in an environment that rewarded such honesty.

Humble

Arrogant

Humble - Affirmation and recognition by others are not this character's source of self-worth.

Arrogant - With an inflated ego like that, it's not surprising this character hardly sees anyone but themselves.

Typically a measure of knowledge and experience, but extremely subjective trait strongly influenced by one's own knowledge and experience. Generally we are probably wrong, which arrogant people like to think they're not.

Hard to call someone arrogant without making yourself vulnerable. See Arrogance.

Just

Arbitrary

Just - A stalwart of fairness, this character applies rules evenly and acts as a moderating force in conflicts.

Arbitrary - This character makes their judgements on the spot and applies them as they see fit in the moment.

Justness is a measure of a person's integrity and accuracy in terms of interpreting people's needs and actions (utility).
Moral preconceptions differ widely between individual, which is why a largely utilitarian model must be used to make that the assessment as to whether a person is just or not.

Patient

Impatient

Patient - This character can endure delays, setbacks and idiots with remarkable composure.

Impatient - This character regards waiting as a personal affront to both themselves and the universe.

Patience is a useful ability needed for interaction with other humans and perseverance through tasks. Keyword would be delayed gratification. A group of people should be a healthy mix of patient and impatient people, as impatient people can help patient ones to force a conclusion where patient people might otherwise never reach one.

Trusting

Paranoid

Trusting - This character assumes the world is mostly reasonable, until proven hilariously wrong.

Paranoid - If a betrayal didn't actually happen, this character will force or stage one just to make sure that their fears are confirmed.

Trust is primarily environmental and depends almost exclusively on upbringing. Childhood environment determines whether trusting or paranoid strategies are more advantageous, which are then brought into adulthood.

Loyal

Disloyal

Loyal - This character stands by friends, allies and causes, even when it would be simpler to walk away.

Disloyal - This character’s allegiances are flexible, particularly when convenience or opportunity appears.

Loyalty is an extension of trust which helps individuals in cases of breaches of trust. Depending on environment, loyalty or disloyalty may be more advantageous. Also serves as a protection against short term gains by abandoning individuals, groups or causes.

Zealous

Cynical

Zealous - This character is very enthusiastic about the causes they believe in.

Cynical - This character generally expects the worst and they're rarely disappointed.

Temperament-based personality trait. Believing or disbelieving in a cause can both be reasonable under the right circumstances, zealousness and cynicality describe the overall trend and tendencies for a person. However, this is always compared to some objective measure of how likely something is to happen.
In other words, always and constantly disbelieving in winning the lottery is not cynical, as they are just right and probably themselves underestimate just how unlikely the odds really are.

Compassionate

Sadistic

Callous

Compassionate - This character truly cares. When they say that they care, they genuinely do it. Very valuable.

Sadistic - This character enjoys seeing rules and expectations applied with a creative cruelty for those who they think deserve it.

Callous - It stands to be argued whether this character even recognizes the pain of others, or if others are just a black box to them.

Compassionate characters are rare individuals which truly, truly care about the people around them and are able to value them as humans.
Callousness is the opposite of this, whereas sadism is callousness but with the difference that sadism is motivated by getting one's needs met. Everyone knows the feeling of “revenge” or gratification when someone “gets what they deserve”, and sadists engage in that more than others, for all kinds of reasons.

Fickle

Stubborn

Fickle - This character has a hard time to commit and will change their mind constantly, often leaving others guessing.

Stubborn - This character refuses to bend, mostly out of principle, occasionally out of habit.

Overall measure of confidence in choices or, if a choice was not made based on confidence, temperament. Can be learned in an environment, but often the overall trend of a person to be stubborn or fickle is best explained by temperament.

Eccentric

Eccentric - This character approaches life from an unusual angle, often to the mild confusion of those around them.

This person is not like everyone else. Obviously no two people are identical, but this person is more unidentical from others than most. This trait describes people who view life from a very unorthodox angle.

Transsexual

Transsexual - This character's gender is not what their doctor assigned them at birth.

See Transsexuality.

Sleeping Dog

Sleeping Dog - This character bites. For your own good, leave them be. They do not need to be greeted.

A Sleeping Dog character is a character who will bite if disturbed. Generally, this character is very defensive of their territory and is best left asleep. Approach only if you really have to or if you are given an invitation. Failure to do this (bothering them) can result in broken hearts (they will be mean and you won't understand what you did wrong). Unless you have a good reason to hit them up, try not to say hello, try not to say goodbye, don't just waltz in for some cuddles.

A good reason would be something like a good, serious conversation - but don't do that if all you want is just to interact with the person. Exception of course is if you were given an invitation and the sleeping dog is actually interested in what you have to say (you'll know if that's the case).

Cat

Cat - This character expresses affection on their own accord and will spend time with you when they feel like it. Treat them like a cat: Enjoy it when they're there, give them space when they're not.

This character's bonding behavior is like a cat. This character does not like appointments or commitments, and they will not bond with you purely out of politeness or necessity. A cat will observe you and decide over time whether they like you or not. If they do, they might just one day show up and make demands (pets). Or maybe they won't. What will not work is trying to force them to spend time with you, or trying to force a cuddling session. Leave them be.

The general cat assumption is that you are living an independent life with no major committments on either side. And, the cat wants it to stay that way. Y'all can spend time if both sides want it, but the cat doesn't want to be bothered into spending time (The cat still loves you. Maybe.).

Dutch

Dutch - This character has the directness of the only country in the world that shoots fireworks from their ass cheeks.

This character is very Dutch. Not in terms of nationality, but in terms of personality. I associate Dutchness with directness, honesty and the absence of not strictly needed decorum. Obviously not enough for my taste, but much much better than 95% of people.

German

German - This character is unironically German. That's English and means “weltfremd”.

This character is very German. Being very German means not just being of German nationality, but it means being isolated from the world. Germans, especially middle-aged Germans, seem to think of Germany as the only place in the world that actually matters, and will translate and adapt every foreigness away out of anything coming in to the German culture - so much so that they run risk of ending up thinking that they are the ones who actually came up with it.

“Very Germans” stick to Germans and Germany even when abroad, speak only one language (which they expect everyone else to cater to) and are weirdly proud about it and point to the French, even though the French at least recognize that they're not the center of the world (although, admittedly, they aspire to be).

American Brain Lvl 1

American Brain Lvl 2

American Brain Lvl 1 - This character will occasionally tell you about things that make no logical sense - until you realize that they're American.

American Brain Lvl 2 - As a neutral, outside observer you would think that the stereotype of the dumb American is probably just an exaggeration. Ohh, you would be sorely mistaken.

The United States of America are a develeoped nation and life in it is not fundamentally different from other developed nations on earth. However, it does differ in a few more or less minute details about which Americans can sometimes get a little stuck. Americans have a tendency to… get bogged into believing things about their life and lifestyle that don't make a lot of sense. Most Americans are average-ly intelligent so they see through it and function just fine. But, occasionally, things will slip through the cracks and Americans will then defend the truth of these things vigorously, mostly because to them it's always been that way. These are typically minute, unneeded details that don't really matter that would be common sense and common knowledge elsewhere, but simply aren't in the USA.

However, there are some individuals who go beyond this, where it's not just “things slipping through the cracks”, but people who are wholly into into it. So much so, indeed, that they think that they are very special and that life in the USA is absolutely incomparable to the rest of the world. That's what they must be thinking, because their ideas of life, work, guns, women, poverty and other things is fundamentally incompatible with what the rest of the world has already figured out. What makes these types special is that instead of admitting that these parts of the puzzle don't fit, they mash everything together wrongly and crudely and call the result the correct solution; even though it works for nobody and is a source of endless suffering for everyone involved. Throw in corporate interests and suddenly you understand why the USA is such a hellhole.

Depressed

Depressed - This character's battle is in their brain, and their brain won't let them rest.

Depressed characters don't necessarily have the medical condition “Major Depression”, but show a generally somber attitude towards their life. They are fundamentally interested in experiencing a worthwhile life, but don't really seem to have gotten there.

Lunatic

Lunatic - Plagued by hallucinations, delusions and disorganized thoughts, this character struggles to distinguish between what is real and what is not.

A person who engages, always or in bursts, in uncontrolled, wholly irrational behaviors not motivated by any personal interests, often even against them.

Fecund

Fecund - This character tends toward producing children, whether they plan to or not.

A character who can't seem to control their child-getting. May be strategic as part of a larger motivation, lack of self-control, or an illness. Not my position to judge and will be seldomly used. Part of Crusader Kings 3's list of traits and, in there, described solely the physical fertility of a character in the game. For me, that would be impossible to judge in the real world, so it had to be adapted.

Wheezing

Wheezing - This character struggles to breathe comfortably.

This character has difficulties with breathing comfortably, often creating noise.

Thin Blood

Thin Blood - Any kind of wound might prove fatal to this character since their sanguine humors are in a hurry to escape their body.

Allergies

Allergies - This character's antibodies are engaged in a war with their host.

Painless

Painless - Because this character feels no cognitive or emotional pain, this character does not recognize their mistakes. Unfortunately, this means that they're also not learning from them.

Painless is a special stupidity condition in which an individual is so devoid of agency and basic, human functioning as to make it impossible for them to engage in (self-)analysis. The most fundamental human guidance system is our pain, which alerts us to something being wrong. If one is painless, they do not ever get this feedback, fail to see that something is wrong and have no impetus to make lasting changes to their behavior. Actual, physical pain might be the only last thing still reaching their brain.

Until then, this character is unbothered by the negative consequences of their actions, both for others as well as themselves. They will continue to engage in behaviors that would lead to pain; not because it's useful to do, but because it was the first thing some unreflected part of their brain came up with and - without pain - there was never any incentive to change it.

Stupid Lvl 1

Stupid Lvl 2

Stupid Lvl 3

Stupid Lvl 1 - If the escape pod has space for a group of three people, but you're four - leave this one behind.

Stupid Lvl 2 - In case of an apocalypse, this broken record player would be lucky to be mistaken for a zombie.

Stupid Lvl 3 - It is questionable whether modern imaging technology is sensitive enough to register this character's minimal brain activity.

DISCLAIMER: I am not capable of assessing intelligence levels. Do not listen to what I have to say. If anything, see Intelligence.

A stupid person is someone who does not think about things very thoroughly, effectively outsourcing their problems and decision-making to others. By not thinking about things, stupid people create problems that will affect both themselves and the people around them. Without limited sophisticated thought, this person will not be able to experience the full richness of human existence.

At higher levels of stupidity, the ability to recognize their own failures diminishes. While they still feel pain, they are not capable of self-reflecting, identifying causes or changing behavior to fix problems. Being stupid holds up people who aren't and can force them to do extra work. A stupid person may be unreliable and force people around them to constantly double-check the stupid person's work.

Conscious, independent and especially critical tought are now almost entirely vestigial. While this person still experiences pain, their behaviors are nearly all pre-planned, pre-learned, “tincan” behaviors, roughly thrown together to make the lowest amount of sense one can get away with (and only if they have a pre-canned behavior for any one stimulus). With no sophisticated thought at all, this person is just barely still experiencing “human-ness” (ie. they're human as an idea, not as actually living and experiencing like a human).

Intelligent Lvl 1

Intelligent Lvl 2

Intelligent Lvl 3

Intelligent Lvl 1 - This character excels with their quick wit and deep, logical comprehension. Even if the solution to a problem is out of their immediate reach, they still know the direction they need to go to. Never underestimate.

Intelligent Lvl 2 - This character's speed and sharpness is unparallelled. With their deep insights, they understand the world at a level only few can reach. Given enough time, there is virtually no problem this character couldn't solve.

Intelligent Lvl 3 - This character's mind is a singularity of knowledge, an infinite depth of understanding, commanding awe and respect by even the brightest. Their mind is one with reality itself and acts as a beacon on a plane of insight I can only wish to get a glimpse of.

DISCLAIMER: I am not capable of assessing intelligence levels. Do not listen to what I have to say. If anything, see Intelligence.

The sad thing about intelligence is that it's impossible to see. It means understanding things - and how could you see if someone understands something without understanding it yourself? And if you understand something yourself, how arrogant would it be of you to call someone intelligent just for knowing things you know?

So, what I do is looking at it from what I can observe. How much does the normal person understand, and how much does this person understand in comparison to that? Of course I can't know just how much a person actually understands, so I have to extrapolate a lot. More data is better, which is why I'm always very careful with calling someone intelligent.

Adulterer

Adultery - This character was unfaithful.

Fornicator

Incestuous

Incestuous - This character had sexual relations with close family.

Cannibal

Cannibal - Meals with friends and family are still the best.

Excommunicated

Excommunicated - God sent this character a formal letter, declaring that they don't want this character in their garden any longer.

Murderer

Murderer - Another person died by this character's own hands.

Drinker

Drinker - This character looks all the way to the end of their bottle.

Flagellant

Flagellant - Pain! There's nothing like pain to help feel something in a world otherwise so unbearably dull.

Comfort Eater

Comfort Eater - Indulging in food, too much, unhealthy, seems to help this character manage some stress. At least temporarily.

Contrite

Contrite - This character is genuinely remorseful for their mistakes.

Improvident

Improvident - Maybe when they're dead this character will break even with their monthly expenses.

Inappetetic

Inappetetic - This character is a top contender in the Hunger Games.

Reclusive

Reclusive - Barely ever seen, this character is stressed in social situations and prefers to be where they will be left alone. The safe, cold hands of solitude.

Irritable

Irritable - You're on thin ice? No, this character has pre-broken any ice you could be on.

Smoker

Smoker - Got a fire? This character likes to inhale dangerous fumes for fun.

Drug Addict

Drug Addict - God, I could really do with some 4-phosphoryloxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine right now.

Profilgate

Confider

Confider - This character has found that talking with others about their burdens helps them.

Journaller

Journaller - This character pours their heart into writing to cope with their problems.

cozymascot.png - created

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-03T08:24:47+00:00

Utilitarianism

ultracomfy (ultracomfy@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-03T08:05:33+00:00

Major trains of thought
Philosophy

Trainwrecks

Value Judgement
Personal Preference
Nature of Things
Fact of the Universe
Toleration
Ship of Theseus
I'm 14 and this is deep
Words
Claim
Court
Redemption

Philosophy/Ethics/
Utilitarianism

“

The ends justify the least harmful means, assuming the least harmful means cause less damage than the utility of the ends.

”

The path to finding a consistent moral model for the world is my largest and perhaps most “epic” undertaking yet. I am somewhat proud of it because I spent the bigger part of my life working on this with no outside help or even guidance at all. If I died today, the thing I could be most proud of would be independently rediscovering utilitarianism as a 15 or 18 year old fuck.

Unfortunately, I do not think I'll ever be able to do it justice. Not because of how immaticulate and complex the topic is, but because my standard here would be writing a piece that could convince absolutely anyone. The reality is that I will probably not convince anyone who doesn't already believe it, and that makes me sad. This is the foundation of my worldview, and being unable to make people at least agree with me that it makes sense shakes me to my core. What is wrong with it? Am I missing something? Or can I really just dismiss them as “they don't understand it”? Any move away from utilitarianism today would be a major paradigm shift because of how much it explains for me, and how much it gives me to live for (ie. gives me direction). My entire interpretation of law is based, essentially, on my understanding of utilitarianism and burden of proof¹⁾. This is my magnum opus, and I worry I will die without ever being heard.

THE REST OF THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION - MOST OF IT IS PROBABLY GOING TO GET DELETED, so DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT

The way some (!) artificial intelligence works is by reward functions. Essentially, the neural network gets a problem to solve, responds with an action and then we give a “score” back to it. Say, bowling. Each pin gives +10, missing the throw is -50, and by letting it repeat and repeat it will try out all kinds of angles and speeds and spins until it settles into solution that gives it maximum points.

I believe with humans it's the same. Humans constantly train their neural networks (learn) and pain and suffering are a conscious expression of reward mechanisms being triggered in your brain. All pain is aimed at discouraging you from doing what brought you here again, and all pleasure is meant to encourage you to repeat the thing that lead to you experiencing reward.

Inside the human brain, you could, in theory, boil everything down into the result of a reward function, and that reward function is comprised of the many little things that human brains consider to be conducive to their survival and the things they consider to be deducive to their survival. Snakes and getting bit are deducive and therefore humans, even babies, are naturally averse to snakes and feel pain (ie. the reduction of a number in the reward function) where it takes conscious effort and training to overcome that fear (though it's easier to do with babies who have only what little fear of snakes can be coded into dna as opposed to real life negative experiences).

In that vein, we need to talk about local optima. Back to bowling, bowling isn't as easy as selecting angle, speed and spin and then hitting a button, it's a complex set of over 600 muscles to coordinate all at once, and an artificial intelligence doesn't know what an arm is or how physics work, it just sees a list of 600 “motors” it can contract and relax and then after a while gets a number: “You did X good”. So, like with humans when trying to walk, you can't really tell it “just hit the pins” because then it will never be able to figure it out, you have to design your reward function in such a way as to reward behaviors that are likely to lead to the desired result, not the desired result directly. So, for example with bowling we could integrate a factor into our reward function that rewards *speed*, because in bowling you want to throw the ball hard. The problem with this is that depending on how your reward function is set up, it might actually be more lucrative to aim for just raw speed than to bother with any of the other factors in the reward function. So, your AI might end up throwing the ball hard and fast… in the opposite direction of the alleys because there is a long hallway where the ball can roll without collision for a long, long time without interruption. This is how drug addictions work. Living a life without drugs is generally healthier but getting an immediate reward is much easier and faster to do, and the brain doesn't even know how many “reward points” it is missing out on if it did life “correctly”.

The problem with this, and why it's called a local optimum, is because trying to nudge the AI to a better solution will always require the AI to try things it will, initially not be as good as as the thing it's already doing. For example, if you tried to very strongly “encourage” the AI to throw into a particular direction then with its skillset and strategies it will not be able to score as many points as it would be able to do with its current strategies and skillset. This is why “delayed gratification” is such a big buzzword, doing your homework or quitting drugs is extremely painful from a reward function perspective and since we naturally gravitate towards maximizing our reward function the easiest thing to do is to just not do homework or to keep doing your drugs.

This is the same reason why hitting your child or talking down to is does NOT work. It doesn't do anything. If a kid just keeps doing a thing you would rather it did not then it's because it found a local optimum with the strategies it has available to maximize its reward function ('gratification'). Unless you make that particular spot of the reward curve a massive pluging black hole that is so immediately punishing that even the territories around that behavior are less painful that what it's doing right now then you're not helping (and if you do that, you're just a traumatizing monster). The kid will just do what is literally the next closest thing to what it's currently doing - NOT what you want it to do. What you need to do instead is to find where on the reward curve the kid is, which strategies it uses to get there, then shape the world around you in a way such that an immediately neighboring strategy is more conducive to its reward function than the current one, because then it will automatically gravitate towards that. That way you can slowly guide it into new strategies. Basically, to reach an even higher peak you first have to descent from your current mountain, and you cannot slap a kid until it falls off the mountain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWjUY_3ubf4

“AI Invents New Bowling Techniques” by b2studios if you want to get a concrete example of reward functions and local optima.

Oh, right. So, whenever you do something that is conducive or deducive to your survival, the human activates the reward mechanism, which propagates throughout the brain and triggers neighboring nerve cells, making you perceive it consciously.

Anyway, the point is that this is ultimately related to utilitarianism. The goal of utilitarianism is to maximize our returns from the reward function, for all humans. A future machine might be able to inject gratification/utility/reward straight into a human brain, but right now we just have the limited world of our physical existence to work with and that's how we get back to utilitarianism. The ethical thing to do is the thing that maximizes the reward function as much as possible, for as many people as possible. Denying people the right to have gay sex reduces the reward function for millions without proper justification. Forcing people to take the vaccine increases it, though perhaps not for yourself. Simple stuff (you'd think).

Philosophy of Suicide

Philosophy of Suicide redirects here.

So, from a utilitarian perspective it is in your interest to give people the right to have full autonomy over ther bodies, including the autonomy to make it un-dynamic (dead). At the same time, from a utilitarian perspective it is in societies interest to stop people from committing suicide because, well, there always is the possibility for them to find back to a life they would genuinely enjoy, no matter how much pain that involves. And if you look out into the world, that's how most governments are structured: You are in your complete right to kill yourself if you so want, but society as a whole is legally required to stop you from doing it. In the same way that you can get charged for driving past the scene of an accident, not stopping someone from committing suicide is seen as a societal responsibility for purely utilitarian reasons. The difference between an accident and suicide is that suicide has at least some degree of consent in there and only directly (!) affects the victim, whereas an accident can directly (!) affect otherwise not directly involved people. In other words, in a suicide the damage is contained (disregarding the suicide victim's family), whereas in an accident more than the person at fault can/will be harmed. This difference is the reason why there are subtle differences in country legislations, where for example in the Netherlands assisted suicide through doctors is actually a thing while completely illegal in Germany.

So, what IS it about the families of suicide victims? Aren't the suicidees reducing their reward functions?

Well, yes, but that's not your fault. As the person committing suicide, you're not the reason they are feeling pain, they are feeling pain because they chose to get attached to you/give birth to you in spite of the fact that things like suicide *can* happen. They knew the risks and accepted it, so they are accepting your potential suicide as well. A world where you are completely beholden to the emotions of other people would be terribly immoral for one, but also completely dysfunctional because you have to consider everyone you could ever affect with your actions - and everyone has a different opinion on everything, so you would never be able to *do* anything. You would not be allowed to kill yourself (according to some), but you would also never be allowed to be alive (according to others). Don't quote me on this, but getting attached to someone is the fault of the person doing it, not the person they are getting attached to.

Unless, of course, you explicitly tell someone that you won't but then do it anyway, because by the time you said you won't there is a commitment on your side and people rely on that. Until then, however, nobody can prescribe life onto you, they can only justify physically coercing you into it.

Nihilism isn't the answer to anything. Nihilism is the philosophical bedrock of reality. You think, therefore you are, and for some reason you care about your existence but there is no foolproof way of actually justifying your value to anyone. Things exist and that is it, period. From this perspective, happiness and pain also do not mean anything but you will quickly find that if you ask around, most people would *not* want to live in a world where happiness and pain are meaningless because it would lead to a lot of pain. Which is, I know, kind of pointless, but it doesn't matter. Yes, beneath the utilitarian pragmatic shell there is a foundational layer in absurdism in me that believes that happiness and pain are absurd ideas without any actual merit -- because merit itself isn't a thing. Atoms exist, maybe, and they can change places, over time, maybe, but everything else are dumb concepts in brains. You are right about that.

But this thinking doesn't work on a human level. Your emotions, however absurd they are, are real. Your pain and your pleasures are real. Your perception of reality (though not necessarily the reality you perceive) is real. They are all you ever had and will have, so to you as an observer they are the only thing that, well, “matter”. If you want to improve lives for humans on earth rather than “conscious things as a philosophical concept” then you have to take into account human qualia, and this - at least for me - has lead me down the road of utilitarianism.

¹⁾

Shouldn't this be “burden of evidence”? Huh.

Personality Profiles - removed - external edit (Unknown date)

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-02T13:43:54+00:00

0x000001a - removed - external edit (Unknown date)

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-02T12:08:59+00:00

- removed - external edit (Unknown date)

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-02T08:44:17+00:00

0x0000000 - removed - external edit (Unknown date)

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-08-02T02:08:33+00:00