I’ve been buying music on Bandcamp. It’ll probably enshittify soon because they sold out (first to epic, and then to some unknown entity), but until then you get DRM free music you can also stream, and you can listen to most stuff a bunch for free.

That’s all I really want. Let me listen to it to see if I like it, and if I do I’ll throw in a few bucks. The whole endless subscription, ai algorithm, own-nothing shitscape of modern capitalism is not good.

We could do a lot for climate change, world hunger, homelessness, disease prevention and eradication, and so on with that much money.

All of these people are doing mass murder via opportunity cost, and I hope they pay for it.

I’ve been buying stuff from Bandcamp. They sold recently so their future is uncertain, but as it stands right now it seems like a pretty good deal. Artists get a good cut, and you get streaming + drm free copies of the music to download.

I don’t really like subscriptions for music. It’s like renting. I’d rather pay $10/mo buying an album and have a big library after ten years than have nothing.

teenager who acts like a dick all the time would be equally annoying.

Was Morrigan popular when da:o was new? She’s an extremely edgy teenager.

This topic would be great for a dontnod game that could appropriatly handle that topic - not an RPG.

I really don’t think queer stuff needs to be banished from the realm of RPGs.

Most people I talked to have refunded the game on steam. Nobody really had fun with it, except for one person that was completely new to dragon age. However, I don’t think she finished it either.

Meanwhile, the 3 people I know who played it all enjoyed it. Anecdotes!

I don’t think so. The writing of Taash was so bad and uncomfortable for the most part that I genuinely didn’t know if they were trying to mock trans-people with this representation. It felt like they were just looking at a terminally online twitter user and modeled the character after that. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that taash is the worst character I’ve ever experienced in a triple A production.

Taash’s scenes seemed okay to me. The storyline with their mother is pretty close to what a friend of mine is going through now.

I don’t know how to solve this problem, but I kind of don’t believe what people say. I mean, I think sometimes they dislike a thing for reason A, but the words that come out are reason B. They say a character is badly written (B), but really they find the queer subject matter uncomfortable (A). This may or may not be the case, but fundamentally I do not believe the average internet video game fan has the introspection and honesty to say “A” here. There’s no way to know.

Veilguard, on the other hand, doesn’t get better. It just stays bad and even confusing at times.

My problem with Veilguard is the difficulty fell off a cliff and never climbed back up. Other than that it was fine.

My old computer took to Mint without much of a problem. My newer one… many things didn’t work. The mint discord was very helpful though!

It’s a shame more manufacturers don’t sell machines that are already set up with Linux, so you don’t have to worry about like “oh WiFi doesn’t work for some esoteric reason?” as much

I’m reminded of an old job’s database where every key was named “id_foo” instead of “foo_id”

You didn’t have user_id. You had id_user. You didn’t have project_id, you had id_project. Most of the time, anyway. It was weird and no one could remember why it was like that. (Also changes to the DB were kind of just yolo, there wasn’t like a list of migrations or anything)

“I don’t like making music so no one else does” I guess is his train of thought

Huh. That’s neat I guess.

My initial guess was it would somehow capture the energy from hitting keys. I guess that’s implausible? Too little energy without making the key press resistance too high?

Just sitting here with my hands on my face crying and muttering “just delete your facebook/instagram/whatever. just delete it. please. please just stop using the torment nexus”

American conservatives are trash and shouldn’t be allowed to make political decisions.

Flawlessly clearing Genichiro in Sekiro was deeply satisfying. Parry parry parry, dodge, mikiri counter. Don’t think I got hit once.

Most people I’ve known who smoke are addicted. They get moody and other withdrawal symptoms. No one I know has a similar relationship with alcohol. This is not a scientific study, but that’s been my experience. I know there are alcoholics in the world.

Also nicotine and cigarettes are known to be addictive https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-nicotine-e-cigarettes/nicotine-addictive

I’m pretty sure “stopping drinking cold turkey will kill you” is kind of hyperbolic. Most people aren’t drinking that heavily. This thread started on the point of moderate drinking.

I acknowledge that even light drinking is unsafe. I wasn’t aware it that plausibly that hazardous. Unfortunately, many things are unsafe and I don’t think alcohol is going away any time soon. Going out for a drink with friends, there’s probably a bunch of hazards there. Unhealthy foods, car exhaust, staying up late.

Does “hard drug” have an agreed upon definition?

I’m pretty sure cigarettes are worse. Much more addictive, harmful to the user and nearby people, and the cigarette butts I think are an environmental hazard.

Alcohol use is as old as human civilization. I don’t think light usage is that hazardous.

You can go out to party without doing heroin.

On the one hand, cigarettes are bad and everyone should quit. And alcohol should be used in moderation. And many drugs are very dangerous and addictive and should be avoided. So this is probably good.

On the other hand, if this means are just sitting home alone, maybe having parasocial relationships with influencers, that’s sad.

Yeah like at some point it’s justified to respond to danger with violence. The supreme court is dangerous for most people.

It would never even occur to me to eat at fast food (unless you count like the pizza by the slice place on the corner).

I just feel so alienated from everyone else sometimes. Just… The food isn’t good, isn’t good for you, isn’t cheap, isn’t fast. The org isn’t environmentally or politically friendly. Just stop eating there. Be mildly inconvenienced if you have to.

But I guess that will slam right into the constant problem of “someone feels bad and now they’re not going to listen”

I don’t disagree with anything here, really. As we both said, some responsibility remains on the user.

I do think Match is aggravating the situation. Men aren’t getting traction so they search for why. They find right wing MRA stuff saying that it’s women’s fault blah blah blah, but really part of why they’re not getting hits is because Match is hiding them unless you pay (and even then maybe).

Part of why may also be they’re creeps or bad at dating. It is not wholly the apps’ fault. But I do think they’re making it harder for people to connect, and that can be the top of the funnel for far right ideas.

And I do think a lot of people are on the apps when they aren’t really ready. People of all genders. But that’s a separate topic, probably.

Anyway. Good talk. Amusingly , I’m heading out to meet someone from a dating app. Here’s hoping they don’t think I’m a creep!

I think most people have no understanding of taxes.

I remember a coworker some years ago fully believed we had a flat tax rate. That they just take 20% of your money. I had to explain progressive taxation to him.

We should be investing a lot more in public education.

We could lower taxes on the lower brackets, maybe, but we should be raising taxes that target the wealthy. Fix the “buy borrow die” strategy, too.