Photo: Fizkes (Shutterstock)

At one time or another, we all say things that we regret. Perhaps you have a tendency to make bad jokes (and cannot read the room). Perhaps you love airing your latest footage on the latest social media controversy (and are a bit confused if the outrage holds you back). Maybe you’re just a little loudmouth.

If you find yourself in any of these situations more often than you want, consider an acronym that will help you measure what you say, how you say it, and when. Appropriately, it’s THINK.

THINK

If you’re ready to tell me that you don’t need a stupid acronym to keep your loose tongue at bay, the lesson THINK is giving should definitely give you a break as it prompts the impulsive speaker to take a step back.

Here’s how to shake it off, with each letter outlining the intentions essential to having a good faith conversation:

T – TRUE

H – HELPFUL

I – INSPIRATIONAL

N – NECESSARY

K – Art

Basically, the acronym is meant to act as a kind of stop sign that will cause you to slow down before getting into any topic that you may want to elaborate on. Weighing whether your opinion or story contains falsehoods is a good start (True), but each letter that follows is worth a look.

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It’s always worth asking yourself if what you’re trying to say is helpful and if it leads to more conversation (inspirational). It is also a useful exercise to assess whether your comments are really necessary. (How important is it that you include your negative opinion on something that your co-workers are enthusiastic about discussing?) Is what you say nice, especially if you are criticizing or even joking?

But THINK before you speak

I’m not suggesting that you go through a five-point acronym before entering into any mundane conversation. in this way lies social paralysis. But when it comes to discussions that get into the debate area, or when you’re interacting with people who generally rub you the wrong way, it’s worth asking yourself a few questions quickly and quietly before speaking. Likewise with social media, which may require you to turn on your phone’s lock screen and think about whether what you want to say is helpful, true, kind. or necessary.

Additionally, it helps you limit your impulsiveness in order to become a better listener. As a public speaking app Weather Notes“It is almost impossible to add something of value to a discussion or move a conversation forward without actively listening” because “you may end up saying something that you don’t mean.”

Whether you want to avoid inadvertently sparking the wrath of someone close to you or paying homage to the wrath of people online, it is useful to THINK before you speak.

Screenshot: Claire Lower

Last night when I was trying to relax I saw a tweet that said, “What a normal and ultimate spaghetti hack!A video has been attached. In this video – this is a rip off from an older TikTok video– A white woman in a “Plant Lady” shirt pours two cold Costco-sized prego glasses on a slab of granite (or maybe a marble slab) while another white woman coos in the background. Then she adds in unspecified temperature meatballs, way too much parmesan powder, and loads of steaming, lumpy spaghetti before mixing it all together. Everyone who sees it hates it, and that’s the point (I think).

It’s damn wrong too. The food is real – the white Plant Lady is really wasting all that noodles – but the video is not real. How Eater only reported today (As I wrote this, practical enough!) All of these videos of bland attractive, skinny, white women can be traced back to a wizard who has the boldness to be named.Rick Lax. Describing the production of the videos as “both friendship and business,” Lax told Eater that he would “object” to anyone who called the recipes “gross.”

Him? Photo: Claire Lower

But they’re gross. And – worse – they’re not even funny. The women in the spaghetti video can’t even commit themselves completely to the piece by using their actual countertop. (If you look closely you will see that this coward is actually assembling her pile of trash on a platter on her actual counter.) There is a vague attempt at humor in the end where both women instruct you to “fold” it a very big one slight Moira Rose impairment – a reference loved by white women everywhere– but the video is not entertaining. There is no joke. There is no payout. There is no resting place. (Blackhead extraction videos are more satisfying – and less grotesque!)

After falling in love exactly two these types of videos (one of them came from Rick Lax Productions) I’m over it and I invite you to be over it with me. There are so many real things to be angry about; There’s no reason to let a woman in a Plant Lady shirt take up valuable space in the angry part of your brain. The passed out rage you feel when you watch someone smear food on a countertop (or a plate on a countertop) in an otherwise pristine and reasonably spacious and probably expensive kitchen gives Rick Lax power, and he and his army are whiter Women will don’t go away until we stop looking at them.

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How do we do that? There are two steps here: identify and ignore. If you know you are dealing with this particular type of troll, just pretend you don’t see them. Don’t comment. Do not share. Don’t send it to anyone. (Then refresh your brain by gargling your mind with a good food video – like Sohla is on Food52, Lucas Sin’s or George Lees Instagram content or Kevin Ashton’s TikTokto name a few.)

Identifying can be the (sort of) tricky part, but once you know what to look for, this type of troll is easy to spot. Here are some questions to ask yourself if you think you’ve come across such a video in the wild, whether or not it was produced by a wizard.

The passed out anger you feel gives Rick Lax power, and he and his army of white women won’t go away until we stop looking at them.

Does the food look good?

Look at the food on the screen with your eyes and wonder if you want to eat it. If the presentation is sluggish, caricaturally unattractive, or if it would offend a real human guest, the food is likely not intended for actual human consumption.

Is someone eating it in front of the camera?

If you don’t eat it, neither should you.

Does the reasoning make sense?

A “hack” is only a hack if it solves a problem or makes a recipe easier, faster or better. Let’s take one of my absurd blogs as an example. Smartfood popcorn grits could easily be interpreted as a straightforward troll, but if you read the article you’ll find that popcorn kernels have been around for thousands of years and all I’ve done was cheese-flavored popcorn, pre-popped popcorn instead of popping it myself. It’s a silly little “hack”, but it takes less time to cook the recipe and it tastes damn good (if you like the taste of white cheddar popcorn).

Is there a sense of self-awareness?

Popcorn salad is another example of recent food content that made people very angry. But when you see that Original videoYou see a happy but confident Molly Yeh who explains that she knows the concept seems flawed but promises you that “you will try it and it will be really good”. (Molly turned out to be right about it.) Lax’s are completely devoid of hubris or real human emotions. With the exception of the “prescription”, these clips are cold and sterile. would be derisive if they were just a little smarter. Be aware of the tone, I say.

Was it produced by Rick Lax?

As Eater points out in her utterly compelling and very well reported piece, you can: “[s]Find the sentence ‘Rick Lax Productions, ” And, ‘be welcomed with the source code for pure Facebook virality.’ You can then browse Rick’s videos on the subject of the video you interviewed. That’s how I found out that, unsurprisingly, the Flaming Hot Cheeto mud recipe was one of his gross babies.

We must not let this wizard continue to dominate the conversation with boring, ugly food videos to collect glimpses of anger. It may seem impossible – Lax has pretty much dominated the Facebook watch algorithm – but wizards are like Tinkerbell. Stop clapping and they’ll go away.

Valheim players who are concerned about the time they spend outside of World of Warcraft can now kill two birds with one stone. Thanks to a new – free – mod you can explore the popular areas of Azeroth in each of the most popular Viking survival games.

The free mod called Valheim of Warcraft doesn’t change Valheim’s core game, but adds most of the World of Warcraft zones to Valheim as playable land masses. These include Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms, Quel’Thalas, Northrend, Pandaria, and more.

Note that this import is not a one-to-one rebuild. The mod’s creator, who speaks of “Kromek” on the Nexus Mod website, says that each landmass was shrunk by about 20% to make the map fit in Valheim and the cosmic areas like Argus, Draenor, Outlands and the Shadowlands not yet included. The Maelstrom is technically there too, but without its iconic vortex.

The custom map launches players in a newly created version of the Timeless Isle that includes active portals to the various starting zones of World of Warcraft. From there, each zone has its own progression path and boss fights with additional portals that take you across the country instead of the World of Warcraft ship and zeppelin routes.

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That said, you won’t find any major cities, dungeons, or other structures to explore, although Kromek plans to add optional pre-built structures and add “burial chambers, sunken crypts, and goblin villages” to the map in which they would appear believable. But since Valheim allows players to build their own cities, you and your friends could challenge yourself to recreate Orgrimmar, Stormwind, and the rest right now.

To add a Valheim of Warcraft map to your game:

1. Go to User /[Your User Name]/ AppData / LocalLow / IronGate / Valheim on your pc.
2. Back up the Worlds and Characters folders in a safe, easily accessible location so that you can restore your game data if something goes wrong.
3. Install that Better continents mod from Nexus Mods (requires a free Nexus Mods account).
4. Download the zip folder for the Valheim of Warcraft map from Nexus mods.
5. Unzip the map of Valheim of Warcraft User /[Your User Name]/ AppData / LocalLow / IronGate / Valheim / Worlds
6. Open Valheim and select “Valheim of Warcraft” from the listed worlds to play.

For instructions on how to play the map online, visit Valheim of Warcrafts Nexus Mod page.

If you’ve ever run a large Facebook group, you know how much spam, trolls, off-topic posts, or other issues that end the conversation can keep the community feeling alive. Now Facebook is trying to simplify the monumental task of keeping the peace in these online areas by introducing new automatic moderation features that let you automatically deal with problematic commenters and messages before your group gets into chaos.

Screenshot: David Murphy

Facebook’s automatic moderation features, known as the “Admin Assistant,” are located at the top of the left sidebar of your Facebook group – assuming you currently have access. Facebook is slowly rolling out the feature on groups and group admins so you may not see them just yet. However, read on so you know what to do with these settings once they are available.

Click the link in the sidebar to start setting up the Admin Assistant for your group. You will be taken to a page that looks like this:

Screenshot: David Murphy

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These tools allow you to set certain criteria for the children of posts that are considered violating your group’s posting logs and decide what to do next. You can choose from three outcomes: reject a post, remove a published post, or turn off commenting on a post – and set separate rules for triggering each effect. For example, for the “Reject Incoming Posts” option, you can choose:

Screenshot: David Murphy

And if those aren’t enough, you can choose your own mix of criteria (at least from the options Facebook offers you) by clicking See more options Shortcut:

Screenshot: David Murphy

Within each criterion you can choose even more options for what you want to do if a user breaks a “rule”. For example, if someone in your group continues to link to an external site you’ve blocked, you can set up a rule that automatically rejects the post and mutes whoever keeps posting the link:

Screenshot: David Murphy

My most used feature is the simple “keyword” rule that allows you to automatically decline posts that contain certain words or topics that should not be covered in the group. I’m also a fan of the automated tools that allow you to turn off comments for posts that are controversial (judged by the number of comments they have earned, the number of reports other users have made about the post, or the number of reports that other users have made about the post, or the number of reviews) Language found in comments). This could be a very helpful tool to help people relax if they get upset about something quickly, or at least to give you the option to turn comments back on after a warning just to keep everyone civic.

Up to this point, any action your auto-moderator rules take on your behalf can be undone in the Activity Log. This should be checked from time to time to make sure your filters haven’t accidentally caught someone who tried to create a post in accordance with your group’s rules. It’s a shame that you can’t automatically send them a quick apology message as well.