I think straightening the photo actually makes it look better. The tilted people and fence were bad visual cues.

Username checks out

My opinion is don’t do it. Just be yourself. For many situations, you’re only going to see the person for a couple of minutes, at most, so who cares what they think? If the conversation goes beyond that, you might find you want to make a connection, and now you’ve started the whole thing with a lie. Not a good look, and also you won’t feel good about it.

My perspective is as a white guy who travels extensively (almost 40 countries now, 6 continents).

As others have mentioned, people don’t judge you immediately based on where you come from. In my experience, they will most likely already have judged you based on your looks. The reaction will entirely depend on where you go, and to a smaller extent how you act.

For example, in (East) Africa, you probably won’t get treated as nicely as white people do, from what I’ve heard. And white people get stared and pointed at a lot (unless you’re in the full immigrant/expat part of a big city), harassed for money, and called mzuungu constantly. Generally this is all “in a nice way” for white people (but I got tired of it and didn’t like it), but talking to other travellers, if you’re “Asian”, it isn’t so “nice.”

In southeast Asia it will be a mixed bag depending on what you look like. You’ll probably fly under the radar, and have to deal more with people being shocked at your lack of speaking the local language. I saw this happen to Asian-American people a few times.

In Central and South America, excluding Peru and Brazil, be prepared for outright racism. Peru and Brazil have relatively large Chinese and Japanese descendant populations, but in the rest, I believe there is a lot of anti-Asian prejudice. They’ll call you “chino”, make eye/hand gestures, etc. Not all of this is in a hostile way, but I imagine it can get tiring or worse. Some will outright ignore you in stores and restaurants or even give you scowls. I saw all of this happen to other travellers, and heard even more stories.

I don’t know if I can talk about Europe or Australia. I don’t stand out there and I haven’t really talked to anyone who does. I imagine it really varies by country and maybe even neighbourhood.

One thing to remember is that in places where English is a second language, they can’t tell where you’re from based on accent as much. You could say you’re from Australia with your American accent and they’ll full on believe you.

Oh and another one, since you were talking about using Mandarin or Cantonese with an accent… There are very few places outside of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan where people will speak any Chinese, let alone recognize the accent. Maybe Malaysia and Singapore? English is the de facto language of travel pretty much everywhere. Acting like you don’t know it won’t get you anywhere. You’d have to do a fake Chinese accent while talking English. Practice your best Uncle Roger I guess.

Final Bonus Pro Tip: the best thing you can do for yourself when travelling to countries that aren’t primarily English, is learn how to say hello and thank you in the local language. If you initiate a conversation (e.g. respond to a stare) with a local language “hello”, you will get a smile and hello back and tension will ease. The rarer the language, the bigger the smile.

Too bad no one gave him the idea to rename it last year.

Hahah! Fun fact, I once registered a domain for a prominent company from the other universe to make a fan site.

Butterscotch pudding!

Your immune system is not a perfect machine, but it’s evolved for thousands [sic] of years to be able to defend us against the bad germs we are exposed to.

Millions of years. Not thousands.

People also used to get sick a lot more and die a lot younger before we understood germs. The immune system isn’t magic, it helps protect us but if you get the wrong bug or too much of a bad bug, it can fail. Also, it evolved when we were living in caves and trees, not in cities and houses.

The ramifications of getting sick can go well beyond the acute symptoms you see (cold, cough, headache, vomiting, diarrhea, etc.) There can be long term, chronic, hidden affects you don’t realize, like heart or other organ problems.

Also, our immune system is not particularly good at fighting off parasites, and they can do real damage.

You shouldn’t walk around in a hazmat suit, but practicing basic hygiene and avoiding extreme exposure are important to short term and long term health.

And, washing your hands after you use the bathroom isn’t just for your own health, it’s also for the health of others. Not washing your hands is disrespectful to everyone else.

Thousands [sic] of years of evolution may not be perfect, but I trust it more than I trust these fucking corporate fucks, that’s for sure.

Right, it’s just corporate fucks and lobbying. Best to trust a comedian over the last 150+ years of fucking science. George Carlin was great, but come on. Spouting off his anecdotal feelings about health theory as fact? Yeesh.

Wtf is with this editorialized title and these comments? This isn’t generative AI using an LLM. Games that have been “upscaled” and “enhanced” in the past 10 years have likely gone through a similar process, just not in real time.

And instead of charging you another $90 to get it for an individual game you already own, you get it with a driver update for a bunch of games, on an opt-in basis.

Edit: latest info shows I’m most definitely wrong. They are running gen AI on 2d frame data with “motion vectors” to maintain consistency frame to frame. Disappointing to say the least.

Super trippy, must be the sun angle.

My first thought was, “what year is this?”

Mandela effect?

I think Facebook groups are the main competitor from Big Tech. I know people who use FB Groups for similar things that I used to use Reddit for.

I think they mean something like Facebook groups. I.e. a big tech company that has forums similar to Reddit’s, at the scale Reddit has.

Watch your cornhole, bud.

I haven’t seen it listed here in a quick scan, so:

Office Space

I get an error when I go to that link.

Not getting the error anymore. I didn’t change anything on my end except I’m on a different wifi network

I get an SSL error going to the site.

Thomas Hayden Church?

Username checks out 😅

60000 KES (Kenyan Shillings) is about US$465