v4ld1z

I've had a little of a debate with a commenter recently where they've argued that "donating" (selling, in their words, because you can get money for it) your blood plasma is a scam because it's for-profit and you're being exploited.

Now, I only have my German lense to look at this, but I've been under the impression that donating blood, plasma, thrombocytes, bone marrow, whatever, is a good thing because you can help an individual in need. I get that, in the case of blood plasma, the companies paying people for their donations must make some kind of profit off that, else they wouldn't be able to afford paying around 25€ per donation. But I'm not sure if I'd call that a scam. People are all-around, usually, too selfish and self-centered to do things out of the goodness of their hearts, so offering some form of compensation seems like a good idea to me.

In the past, I've had my local hospital call me asking for a blood donation, for example, because of an upcoming surgery of a hospitalised kid that shares my blood group. I got money for that too.

What are your guys' thoughts on the matter? Should it be on donation-basis only and cut out all incentives - monetary or otherwise? Is it fine to get some form of compensation for the donation?

Very curious to see what you think

Sorry if this is a repost

Like, I get it - there are people in both communities that might be pushy in one way or another. But, like, come on. One of them is a way of life that strives towards excluding as much pain and suffering in the world of innocent beings as possible and the other is a fucking OS. Grinds my gears.

Any thoughts?

Edit: What I meant specifically is the "pushiness" and "preachiness" that's attributed to both. Not sure if this is just my bias from observing comments about the recent discourse around the whole vegan cat food debacle, but yea

First off, sorry if this is the wrong to community to post to - I'll move it somewhere else should it not fit the community.

My best friend quite often is a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian, I feel like. Discussing politics, veganism, the problems with using Amazon, what have you, with him is nigh impossible because he insists on his opinion and won't budge. I feel like he just feels superior to other people, or at least to me, in a way that he just won't change his mind, doesn't hear other sides, and argues for the sake of arguing.

Now, in a recent discussion, I asked him if he knew why images aren't displayed properly in my Firefox-fork browser (Mull). He gave an answer and asked why I would use a custom browser instead of Firefox itself to which I responded that it's more privacy-focused and that I didn't like Mozilla's implementation of AI in their browser.

Long story short, it devolved into a lengthy discussion about AI, how the fear of AI is based on ignorance and a lack of knowledge, that it's fine that AI is used for creative projects because in most cases it's an assisting tool that aids creativity, doesn't steal jobs etc. essentially that it's just a tool to be used like a hammer would be.

What pisses me off the most about all this is that he subtly implies that I don't know enough about the subject to have an opinion on it and that I don't have any sources to prove my points so they're essentially void.

How do I deal with this? Whatever facts I name he just shrugs off with "counter"-arguments. I've sent him articles that he doesn't accept as sources. This has been going on for a couple hours now and I don't know what to tell him. Do you guys have sources I could shove in his face? Any other facts I should throw his way?

Thank you in advance

Edit: A thing to add: I wasn't trying to convince him that AI itself is bad - there are useful usages of AI that I won't ignore. What I was concerned about is the way AI is used in any and all products nowadays that don't need AI to function at all, like some AI-powered light bulbs or whatever; that creative jobs and arts are actively harmed by people scraping data and art from artists to create derivative "art"; that it's used to influence politics (Trump, Gaza). These things. The way AI is used in its unmonitored way is just dangerous, I feel like

As a few might have seen, a couple months back I had posted to c/[email protected] about my thoughts on using summons in Soulslikes in general and using Specters in Lies of P (https://lemmy.zip/post/18734971).

I'm on my NG+ rerun and am about to finish the game. Throughout this playthrough, I have been more liberate with using the Specter for "annoying" boss fights or bosses where it would have taken me too long to beat them whilst actively hindering my enjoyment - it was awesome!

Some select boss fights feel a lot better with a summon, the Rabbit Gang fights especially since they feel like a true backalley brawl, and it just takes the edge off some really difficult fights for me.

Now, I arrived at (spoiler for the second to last boss in the game) Laxasia on this rerun. I kept trying the fight probably a dozen times yesterday evening and couldn't get her at all: the damage scaling is absurd, the weapons I was using didn't click with me too much, and even with the help of a Specter, I got my teeth kicked in. Fast forward to today, I gave it a couple more shots - without using a single Specter summon - and got it on my 7th or 8th attempt! Since Laxasia is weak to acid damage, I used the Acid Spear head and the Live Puppet handle for good motivity scaling in phase 1 and switched to Bonesaw-Cleaver blade + Dancer's handle or what it's called (ol' reliable) with the acid grindstone for higher DPS and acid damage. It was very clutch in the end, but I got it.

Just felt like sharing with you guys. How have your experiences with Specters been? Do you use them often? Which fights do you use them often with?