Signtist

That’s the heart of the issue, though, isn’t it? Most people do care about the state of their washing machines even as countless children have nothing to eat. People chastise their kids for not eating their vegetables by saying “kids are starving in Africa,” without doing anything to help any kids in Africa. People want more for themselves even while acknowledging that others have so much less. Studies like this assume that human selfishness is negligible, while it’s actually one of the largest variables that needs to be factored in. Most people don’t actually care about human suffering unless it’s happening to someone they personally know - they care much more about their washing machine.

Forbidden PEZ

Fuddruckers still exists, but they’ve downsized significantly since the mid 2000’s when my friends and I used to go there a lot in high school. There aren’t any locations left in my state anymore.

…those are all corporations. Nationalization would make it a public service, rather than a corporate profit-driven service like how it is now.

You can bet that if libraries, for example, became privatized, we’d quickly see several different library companies pop up, each with their own paid book subscription service with exclusive partnerships with various popular authors, much like we have today with streaming platforms. Conversely, if we were to nationalize those streaming platforms, we’d likely see the service transformed to be more akin to our current library service.

It’s why the rightmost parties generally want to defund many public services and move them to the private sector - it transforms services that we spend money on to benefit the people into services that the people spend money on to benefit corporations.

Except in the US the moderate left generally chooses to cater to the right when they need to bolster their numbers, rather than the far left. It makes sense given that our current Democratic party is far closer to the moderate right than the far left. We’d need to elect new incoming lefter-leaning democratic leaders across all levels of government over the course of decades to get the party as a whole to tilt leftward rather than rightward when a clean majority is needed. It’s still the most viable option, but it’ll be a lot of work to achieve.

I wish the US had a system like that. It’s unfortunate that even a more inclusive voting system suffers from a surplus of voters fueled by hate and selfishness, but here in the US even protest votes for the far left play into the far right’s hands since all 3rd party votes together wouldn’t even come close to rivaling the 2 established parties.

Runescape made a lot of changes that people didn’t really like, but they mostly just kept pushing forward with everything, and it eventually became modern Runescape 3, which is the non-old-school Runescape. Then, because a lot of people were lamenting how different the game had become compared to the classic experience of the mid-2000’s, the developers opened up old school runescape, based on an old copy of the game from 2007 they happened to find.

Over the years new content was added to the old-school version that separates it from Runescape 3, making it a completely different experience, and that new content can only be added if enough of the playerbase agrees to it, making the changes generally positive in the eyes of the players. Old school really feels like a game from the mid 2000’s, where pay-to-win mechanics and the like are few and far between, while modern Runescape 3 feels like any other modern game where you either pay your way through or slog through content that seems tailor-made to make you just want to open your wallet to avoid it.

Technically those trees generally became coal, while oil is generally from marine life.

Yeah, I’ve never liked them in a carrot cake. Most older recipes will call for both raisins and some kind of nut, but I’ve never had a problem leaving the raisins out.

To what extent do they have to talk about it, though? Can they address it, come to the conclusion that it’s infeasible (while subtly tucking millions of dollars from game companies into their pockets), and consider the matter settled? I understand that governments are meant to keep corporations in check to benefit the people, but functionally they keep the people in check to benefit corporations and their “lobbyists” (bribes).

It really is good advice, and you do get more and more energy to do it after you get started. The thing I did was DnD, and I just found people in the area advertising in-person campaigns and went to some. I only wanted to do a social day once every week or two, so I started with that. That didn’t last long, though, since after finding the one campaign to be really fun, I ended up joining 2 more and having multiple sessions every week! I wouldn’t have had the energy to start with that, but now I’ve got plenty. It’s a bit of a balancing act to both acknowledge the height of the mountain you’re about to climb, but also keep in mind that all you need to do right now is take a single step.

I loved the original Rayman game so much as a kid that I’d specifically look for that old rainbow logo on other games to figure out which ones I might like.

Yeah, she had just broken up with her boyfriend and found a bunch of “self-help” youtube videos that basically just said everyone who disagrees with you is a narcissist, then the algorithm started recommending her videos that said everyone who disagrees with you is actually an “energy vampire” literally and maliciously draining you of your life force. From there she got into all the crazy health conspiracies - which of course happened right as she was diagnosed with DCIS, which is easily treatable, but if left untreated becomes breast cancer. She dove head-first into all of the conspiracies after that, throwing money at anyone claiming to cure cancer so long as the method wasn’t backed by “big science,” and died of breast cancer a few years later.

It took my mom less than 4 years to go from crying in horror when Trump was elected in 2016, to crying in horror when he wasn’t elected in 2020, and lamenting her inability to join Jan 6 due to her cancer that was mysteriously worsening in spite of all the 5g blockers and expensive heal-all herbal teas she bought.

I dunno, I grew up with the “there are kids starving in Africa” spiel and other such lectures. For my family, it was more like the idea that “lesser” parts of the world had problems because they were “lesser,” and if anyone is suffering in America it’s because they brought that “lesser” mindset with them from elsewhere.

You’re right that the vast majority of media will shift to being AI, to the point where you’re really going to have to dig to find real art, but art will never cease to exist. So long as people have a way to make things, they will. It might be surrounded by a sea of soulless generated content, but it will exist. It will likely never be a viable career, even for the most talented, however. It will only ever be something people do for their own self-expression.

Yeah, I’ll often spread spilled water across the table just so that it evaporates within a couple minutes.

From this Tumblr blog. Unfortunately the Creator stopped posting a while ago.

People always assume I want to turn my hobby into a job. I love to bake - it helps me de-stress from my job. If I made it my job, I wouldn’t have something to help me de-stress anymore. I make enough money; I don’t need to extract the joy from everything in my life for the sake of making more money.

My conspiracy theorist mom shared stuff like this all the time. This will absolutely be shared among climate change deniers as they roll coal on their way to the funeral for their daughters who died in the Texas floods.