CIWS-30

Wait until the population declines further and the CCP tightens its grip even more over Hong Kong. I doubt this’ll last. It’s just how authoritarian communist regimes work. Look at Putin and co. for examples.

Sad, because I was a fan of them and bought all their games from Saint’s Row 1 all the way to Gat out of Hell (although not in chronological order) and got Agents of Mayhem for free somewhere, but think they’ve made some bad moves lately.

I think it all started going downhill from Agents of Mayhem, and them screwing up with the reboot of Saint’s Row was probably the nail in the coffin. I wish they’d just made Saint’s Row 5 instead, with wacky time travel shenanigans and a more polished set of superpowers.

At the point where they decided to “reboot” to something old school and grittier (TOO old school, imo) they really didn’t get what their fanbase wanted, and what new players who’d only heard of and experienced Saint’s Row 4 would get excited about.

They could’ve probably taken Saint’s Row up to 6 entries if they’d just iterated on the formula from 4 and possibly Gat out of Hell (I wouldn’t know, I got distracted and didn’t play it after I bought it, ironically). Similar to how United Front Games (the developer of Sleeping Dogs) could’ve probably stayed in business if they’d just made Sleeping Dogs 2 instead of that horrible “free to play” multiplayer asset flip of some of the least interesting elements of Sleeping Dogs 1.

We basically are. The only good news is that young conservatives believe in and want to do something about climate change, so when the current crop of oil-funded deniers die off, we have some hope to limit the damage. That said, I’m seriously considering moving up north away north as far away from the equator as possible, and to an area with fresh water and farmland.

Then buying a gun. Never thought I’d need one after I left the Army, but as things get worse, I suspect that more violence will result due to scarcity and more likely: stress related to perceived scarcity that doesn’t exist. It’s always the fear that’s more dangerous than the reality. We can probably get by with easy to grow, nutrient-dense foods that are boring to eat, like beans. It’s the stress of not being able to eat “tasty” food that’ll probably get people to snap. Gunfights over steak, etc.

Honestly, while I don’t like what these guys do. I definitely think they have some mental illness issues that should be treated, and some of them may be neurodivergent or have some physical issues with their brains or bodies that might make them unhinged that could be possibly treated with medication.

Dead serious here. People this bad generally have been abused / brainwashed when they were young, and some of them seem to have certain disabilities. Not saying they don’t act like total trash, just that there’s probably reasons behind it for at least some of these people. Plus, nowadays there are online cults waiting to pick them up and brainwash them when they’re vulnerable. Used to be you had to go in person to a cult in the past.

Yes, you are the GOAT!

Same. I stay away from #Explore and just keep to my feed of people I actually follow. And I make sure to unfollow those who are too stressful to hear from constantly.

I agree with almost all the of all politics all the time people who constantly post negative things, but it’s too tiring to read them, especially since knowing about it does me no good and I can’t do anything about it anyway. I already vote and donate as much as I can, and I live in a Blue state so anything outside of my area’s just not possible for me to influence.

I’ve found it’s better just to ignore it and focus on positive things that make my life better.

This is also why I stopped going to Mastodon. In addition to negative ragebait politics being almost the only thing that’s trending (and I have too much of that in my life already) there’s no real nuance or tolerance for anything outside the echo chamber.

You DO get called a racist nazi transphobe for stepping outside the box or trying to support people, ideas or places that might not be 100% perfect or pass the strictest ideological purity test. I thought Liberal Twitter was pretty exclusionary and echo-chamber-y, but Mastodon’s a lot worse.

Kind of, but more “slightly amusing” than funny.

Always, but things like unfettered worldwide capitalism and the concentration of wealth and power just makes it easier to do and cover up.

Inequality and lack of competition (not just economic competition, but also things like political party alternatives) lead to concentration of power, which leads to corruption.

Diversifying power and providing people with alternatives, checks and balances, and separation of powers leads to reduced corruption that groups of average people can fight back against.

Hence things like the 2nd Amendment and the Founding Fathers believing that Citizens should be armed to resist even tyrannical overreach from corrupt elements of their own government for instance.

No I’m not a Republican by the way, I just find it ironic that the people that started the USA actually had some good ideas that their successors have unfortunately just thrown out the window.

Not so fast, Kaiba?

To be fair, it’s one of the old school Republicans that would cross the aisle and vote for something Democrats made that are now Extinct in modern Politics. They died with John McCain, honestly. Better Manchin than Sinema or an actual modern Republican.

If I had to vote in 5-10 more Joe Manchin style “Democrats” to kick the same number of Republicans out of office in Red States, I would. Especially if it gave us 60 Democrats and the ability to have a filibuster-proof majority. Even if they were like “Immigrants are bad” or “All guns are good” or “We have to stop being woke about gays and trans and pronouns.” or whatever, as long as they weren’t all of that at once (and preferably only ONE of those at once) I’d vote them in, so long as they voted to do something about climate change, and also hopefully to reform the economy so all the money and power’s not in the hands of the big megacorps and billionaires.

People won’t stop being stupid and bigoted, so we have to take the wins we can. Everyone complains that Republicans keep trotting out “God, Guns, and Gays” every time they campaign, but what they’re not addressing is that Republicans keep WINNING with the 3 G’s and also immigration. They hold the house and have enough of the senate to filibuster everything. They’ve also used their control of the house and senate (and Presidency, when they have it) to pack the Supreme Court too.

I honestly want Democrats and liberal ideological purists to start being realistic now that the world is burning down around us and see that we’ve run out of time and need to start winning now, or else we won’t have a future. The fact that young Republicans believe in and want to do something about climate change is also a good thing. Reality is about power and consensus, it’s not about ideals.

Not so sure about that, I feel like average people are waking up to technological bullshit like this more and more every year. Yeah there’ll still be an overly high amount of idiots, but I’ve learned that even older people can change and question things like this.

You can only get so many “We’re giving you 2 free years of identity theft protection because we got hacked and your personal information got stolen.” from big companies like your cell phone company, credit check company, etc. before you’re like “Hey, anything I put online can get stolen by criminals…”

Even if you’re a tech-unsavvy type. At some point the light bulbs turns on and you put 2 and 2 together.

Shit like this is why monopolies and oliglopolies don’t work. I hope people complain AND jump ship in big enough droves for this to change. Self-hosting and the old fashioned “buy your own music permanently” option are good too.

I don’t use streaming services, I just buy MP3’s (or AAC’s on iTunes or whatever they’re using nowadays, it’s been a while) and keep them locally and on the cloud. Never liked most Streaming Services’ recommendations anyway.

I don’t know about this case and this school, but in stricter Christian private schools, the men get kicked out too. One of my high school teachers was a principal at a Christian private school, and he got kicked out because his wife cheated on him.

He didn’t cheat on her or get anyone pregnant, she did while he was overworked at that school, but that was somehow a scandal / shame that reflected poorly on him and the school, so he was fired. Most “Christian” institutions are hypocritical pieces of shit that don’t follow their own rules or apply them selectively, but others follow their laws to the letter.

Not that those places are good either, they just enforce their standards. To be fair, those places tend to note be affiliated with Republicans, which kill everything they touch and is the major reason I left the church.

Given how modern AAA games are and Bethesda’s recent track history, it’s not negative to be skeptical, it’s smart.

Especially since despite Microsoft watching over them and helping them to have the most “bug free launch in history” it’s still probably going to be a hot mess for weeks to a month after launch. I want to be pleasantly surprised, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Plus, the recent release of Baldur’s Gate 3 with no microtransactions or season passes, etc. has gotten peoples’ standards up, and given that Microsoft paid a lot of money to buy Bethesda, we’re aware that they’re going to have to make that money back somehow, and will probably give into the temptation to do some really player unfriendly things to do it.

Bethesda’s been going all in on surprisingly expensive microtransactions for really tiny amounts of content, like in Fallout 4 and 76, and it wouldn’t be shocking for them to continue in that direction. People aren’t being mindlessly negative, they’re looking at current and past trends and making an educated guess about the future.

This is the reason why they’ve made sure only their brainwashed nutjob militias have all the guns. And also why the police are a bunch of classist racists too, along with much of the military (which primarily recruits from the south).

I don’t want to put my conspiracy hat on, but it also might be why “liberal” politicians try to get states with tons of activists to have the strictest gun laws. I’m not a second amendment wingnut, but if the corpos and their fascist storm troopers every decided to start a shooting war with the civilian population, I have no illusions about who’d probably win, given that the average civilian is just a coward who’ll back off and comply when even slightly threatened with violence.

From the place Deadpool and all those 90’s heroes do.

I expected animals, but human kids are cute too.

Good advice from 1901. Especially the bit about not marrying women older, taller, or wealthier than you. Especially all 3. Even if she’s like 1 day older, 1 inch taller, or $1 wealthier than you. You gotta man up and not tie that knot!

/S

I was like that when I was young. Now all my plans involve me forcing myself to do 1 or 2 productive things a day besides the stuff I have to do, and then just calling it a day and pushing aside the rest of the stuff I probably should do till tomorrow. Or more realistically, the next weekend or holiday.

I don’t lie to myself anymore, I just admit that if it’s not 100% vital, it won’t get done quick, if at all.