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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: July 12th, 2024

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  • I think this shift will be the end of me buying newer games, period.

    I am that person who doesn’t ever buy digital. I have not bought a single digital game thus far (I haven’t pirated a game since like 2006, either). I have certainly played some, like with the PS+ subscription I got for a year when it was pretty cheap, but I wouldn’t buy them because I can’t be sure I own them, and there’s really no way to transfer the license to resell them.

    If I can’t buy physical media, I simply won’t buy the games. Maybe I’ll use subscription services now and then, but more likely I’ll either find a way to play free or won’t play them at all and find other stuff. I want the physical media because I’m poor, and having the option to sell them in a pinch is important to me if I’m going to shell out a significant amount for something I’ll probably only play once, particularly since there won’t be a used game market to reduce my spend. I haven’t had to sell my games in a very long time, so I have some 400 discs, but it’s something of a savings option that inflates alongside currency, and sometimes much more.


  • I’m a pro-immigration canvasser in a rural-ish area of a swing state, and I’ve seen a lot of dem canvassers from other orgs on my turfs.

    I’ve seen a car of people putting out door hangers for trump, but they weren’t canvassing at all, just leave the thing and take off. Meanwhile there are a dozen dem flyers there already. That’s it. That’s the extent of what I’ve seen out there.

    In 2020 I’d run into lots of canvassers for trump… buuuuuuuuuut those groups didn’t get paid like they were supposed to, and those canvassers got super salty. Rightly so. It’s no wonder nobody wants to do it this time around.


  • Yep, I literally get paid (almost as well as my last job requiring a degree did, this just isn’t permanent) to canvas for progressive politics in a swing state.

    Honestly, I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t getting paid, even though I firmly believe getting out the vote for progressives (or as close as we can manage at any rate) is important. There’s so much money being pumped into it, that I’m not willing to give my time for free. I’m not in the top 10%, so my time is actually valuable.

    But getting paid means I’ve had conversations with ~200 voters in the last week, the majority of whom are voting dem up and down the ticket, even if they used to be strong republicans. Maybe it won’t help overall, but we have a GOP-sponsored referendum almost nobody has heard of, for which our org is encouraging a no vote, so if nothing else this effort may help defeat that.

    (Hopefully this plug is ok, it’s not my organization, I just work with them. If not I’ll edit it out.) If anyone reading this is in the US, and interested in getting paid (well paid, and with insurance available from day 1) for canvassing work for a couple months, check out the outreach team’s website. They have open positions for various sponsored regional campaigns in lots of important areas across the US, and they hire quickly with minimal hoops to jump through. I worked with them for the 2020 election as well, and in both cases it was 2 days from interview to start date. https://www.theoutreachteam.net/



  • That’s totally fair; I’m also not really capable of doing something like that consistently (even tho I would absolutely love talking to smart people - my degree is science communication, so talking to smart people to learn about things and pass them along is easily my favorite thing), so I get it.

    That kinda makes me wonder if interviewing comedians would be funny… I’ve never really talked to any in person for the full impact, but some of them have that timing and wit that means any conversation can be funny. I certainly thought morning radio shows where they have guest comedians on sucked big time, but those are meant more for mass appeal, and they probably work for a lot of people or they wouldn’t have them on.


  • Have you ever listened to the podcast “ologies”? It’s a woman who interviews people who are -ologists (proctologist, ornithologist, geologist, etc., as well as some non-ologist specialties that nonetheless fit the theme)

    Maybe something like that would work for you :) then you aren’t stuck with a single topic, you don’t have to do it alone, and you don’t have to find one person to commit to it, it could be several. Just come up with good questions and have a semi-formal chat. It’s a very enjoyable model for learning new things you didn’t know you wanted to know about.

    https://www.alieward.com/ologies



  • I used to have an Xperia pro, the one with the physical keyboard. It was my last keyboard phone. I absolutely loved it.

    Flashed a different OS, cyanogenmod I believe, which broke the governor chip (irreparable; known issue but super buried, would have done the same with any OS of that version number, including stock) so it would read as a dead battery if not on the charger.

    Never touched Sony phones again. Don’t trust them at all.




  • I just say the following every time:

    “Your mother would be so disappointed in you if she really understood what you were doing, wouldn’t she?

    Ruining the lives of little old ladies, just like mama. She’s probably not well off either, right Mr scammer? I feel for you. Really I do. I’ve lived in poverty my whole life too, and it’s been a huge struggle just to get by. But me? I wouldn’t shame my family by scamming people just like us out of what little they have. My mamma raised me better than that. I’m sure yours did, too.”

    I always get a reply meaning it definitely strikes a nerve, usually get some sort of bravado about how mama is proud because they bring home the money, and I just respond “if you tell yourself that enough maybe you’ll believe it someday, too!”.

    But I don’t want to be totally heartless because a lot of them don’t have meaningful options, and I get that, and I’m not the ragey sort generally. Or at least I try not to be.







  • There’s also a matter of size. Babies come in pretty standard sizes overall (ranging from tiny preemie to tiny newborn to toddler, and then a bit of extra market for in-between ages), but adults…

    What works for one country does not work for another. I, for example, cannot buy underpants made for the Chinese market (I’ve tried) because the dimensions are just wrong. Even when scaled, they don’t fit right. The body proportions are just different for adults from different places, and that’s ok, but it does make the adult diaper scene similarly localized.

    After all, you can make a one-size adult diaper, hospitals use them, but they have strong limitations for how hideable they are (most adult diaper products are marketed to women who suffer far greater rates of incontinence due to childbirth, so hideability is important).