You did just fine by my measure, it was folks reading what you wrote who screwed up 🤷‍♂️

I’ve personally never met a carpenter, union or otherwise. I’ve known a handful of framers - these are the folks assembling (way faster than is reasonable to expect) the somewhat pre-built wooden structures that eventually comprise a new house. The demands placed on those folks are extreme, they seem to be among the worst treated among the trades.

Spending your career in a trade isn’t a bad idea, probably a good one - it’s way better for a lotta folks than a thoroughly dissatisfying stretch of time in largely meaningless, forever anxious, corporate jobs.

Exercise some care though - don’t just assume something like “working with my hands will pay off”, do the research to find out what you specifically can be happy with, and the pros and cons involved.

And by and large, if you’re going the trades route, prefer one with a heavy union presence.

The Democrats’ stated strategy, after putting their heads together and trying to figure out how they got trounced on the last election - is to go more hardcore “center” than they previously have.

It’s basically impossible to tell at this point if they’re the most clownishly out of touch group of people imaginable, or actively complicit and just waiting for the pendulum to swing slightly back so they can be “successful” again, for a bit. Certainly a mix, but -

The only reason I lend credence to the former at all, is just how cartoonishly bad Dems are at almost everything lately. I say lately because throughout my life there have been at least sincere-seeming efforts from (some) Dems to help (some) regular people. Some might argue (with ample justification) that it’s always been this way, but the situation does feel distinctly bleak to me today.

Meaning that they claim and promise to care about (some) marginalized groups of humans but actually don’t give a single fuck and serve the capital-owning class with roughly the same slavering, dogged devotion as the goddamn Republicans?

If you’re in the US, we have a pretty robust “agricultural university extension” program, in a whole lot of places, that both will have more information than you’re ready to digest about your local ecosystem, and will also generally be thrilled to hear from you and answer your questions. Some even have entire projects devoted to “rewilding” (my word, not theirs), so to speak. Offering things like free “seed bombs” of local plants!

See if you’ve got one nearby and drop em a line about the questions you have! In my experience the folks that staff these are the best kind of nerd, the old-school variant that pre-dates even the word. Think about it - these folks are all over the place, and most of us never hear about it, even on one of the nerdiest places on the Internet. The ag extensions and the folks that staff them are a real American treasure.

People watch porn on their work computers, after being told not to. And not just a few. The Venn diagram of folks who do that and who wouldn’t give a single shit about handing over their ID has gotta be roughly a circle. A whole lotta folks are seriously ill-equipped for the burgeoning surveillance nightmare, in fact their complacency (and frankly just being thoroughly outmatched in sophistication) will march us all towards it.

Would you be willing to talk about what you’re intending to do with this at all? No hard feelings if you’d rather not for any reason.

For context on my request - I’ve been following this comm for a bit and there seems like a real committed, knowledgeable base of folks here - the dialog just in this post almost brings a tear to my eye, lol.

I work fairly adjacent to this stuff, and have a slowly growing home lab. Time is limited of course and gotta prioritize what to learn and play with - LLMs are obviously both and useful, but I haven’t yet encountered a compelling use case for myself (or maybe just enough curiosity about one) to actually dive in.

Selfishly I just wish every post here would give some info about what they’re up to so I can start to fill in whatever is apparently missing in my sort of “drum up fun ideas” brain subroutine, regarding this topic. Lol.

Just being charitable here (to be clear I agree with you) - but I think a big contributor to a lot of folks taking these old media organizations more seriously than they should, is how batshit insane the rest of the media ecosystem has gotten.

That combined with the kind of…legacy of trust, for these old “household name” ones? It’s hard for us olds to update our mental models in a deep way. I was raised thinking it was a respectable outfit - I know, for sure, that I don’t trust them or like them at all today. And yet every time I see “New York Times” my subconscious goes “ah, yep, one of the good ones”. Brains are dumb and annoying.

In truth, my drift from gaming stemmed from very similar self knowledge, I have such a wealth of ways I can spend my time (including with my kids when I can convince the older one, lol) with stuff that has small but accumulative impacts.

No shade on gaming, engaging with art and storytelling and just straight up play all have deep value and I’d argue all people need those things, but yeah. For me a few games in particular that end up feeling like “Chores Simulator XYZ” and which I almost consider a genre of its own (Stardew Valley, Valheim, TerraFirmaCraft MC were my few) helped me better understand my changing preferences. I’m like “why am I building this fake house and collecting the materials and etc. when my office, garage, and outside areas all look kinda shitty?” I have pets who like activity, I have projects and chores and people to see.

Now, I also do feel overburdened pretty often and my job is challenging and tiring, but yeah. By and large I just enjoy more IRL time spent these days, while also missing the former thrill of gaming with this kind of deep ache.

Edit to add: I should probably also say, I had lots to “escape from”, into fictions of various kinds, and I have over time built a life where that is no longer true, and so my time spent has also internally shifted toward more of a sense of gratitude in general, instead of thinking of things as obligations (though of course they 100% are, of the most critical kind) considering where I came from, and I also get how for many folks games can be some of the only pleasant experiences available.

I know that feeling so well, sadly.

Pretty much same for me! Not sure if I played the actual first or just one of the real early ones, but that def drew me to this one. You should play it! I paid full price and would have paid double, knowing now how thoughtfully made it was.

“Middle-school sass with a poetic twist” is certainly what I aim for when crafting my roasts and witty jabs

Wouldn’t surprise me a bit, that show was crazy influential, at least initially. Punchlines came way faster than we were used to, sometimes deliberately abruptly (iconic example of that for me is Peter’s instantaneous face-plants, which I still find funny TBH). And people liked the endless gags that were just random non sequiturs of dumb stuff happening that had nothing to do with anything. Fun at first, not enough to scaffold a whole show around IMO, but most folks couldn’t get enough.

That kinda stuff really cheapened humor (“mainstream humor”? is that even a thing?) over the long run, according to me. I started to say I’m just crotchety and old, but actually I wasn’t then and I thought it was lame pretty quickly after the initial “fun new show everyone’s into” vibe wore off.

Then again if it wasn’t them it would’ve just been another, audiences were just kinda “ready” for that sort of humor I suppose, obviously wouldn’t have been the runaway success it was otherwise. I’d be shocked if The Simpsons weren’t influenced, seems almost impossible with the cultural swell around Family Guy at the time.

This is exactly why they tried not to bring him back, and I really thought he might end up dead rather than coming home. People who come back talk about the crimes going on down there.

Sad thing is from what I understand, Spanish language news commonly available in the US (Unavision I believe?) basically fed Latinos a straight up false version of the guy, the description I read sounded even less accurate than Fox.

The overwhelming effectiveness of widespread media manipulation is the real story (and human tragedy…) here.

There’s always money in the banana stand.

I like your taste. These are some bangers lol.

If you haven’t, you should play Armored Core 6. It’s a FROM game, and it feels like one, in all the best ways.

But it’s also a mech game, and it feels like one, in all the best ways! Every button assaults your enemy, every motion feels fluid, fast, effortless - or huge, heavy, clunky - your mech is your mech, and many thoughtful builds can become OP. The customization is bananas. And yet - some fights will remain challenging.

With all sincerity, easy 10/10 game for me, I proceeded from NG -> NG+ -> NG++ directly, which is a first for me and I’m an oldish dude. AND I felt thoroughly rewarded by the end of NG++. It’s a literal perfect game, just unreasonably fun and well-crafted.

Dope, detailed writeup, thank you!

Oh, also - largely with you on Robux. I mean I don’t have a problem with it in principle, ideally it lets kids (through their parents) effectively choose which games and creators to support, and there have lately been some big games with big frequent updates that kids have found to be super enjoyable. Like, content updates at rates traditional games would be embarrassed by.

But like all things involving $, I’m sure there’s lots of eventual exploitation. And manipulation of kids to want to buy is definitely bad. But then again, by my measure, kids need to be instructed on recognizing and resisting precisely that from a young age. That manipulation is everywhere and getting worse all the time.

You’re probably right, I’ve once or twice (from an older account) asked a user to elaborate or give specifics, after they’d made some wild claims about safety, never gotten anything.

I do know of at least one truly hideous group of people using the platform as communication and recruitment to some really horrendous (life ruining) stuff, maybe this article references that too. But again, that’s a problem of sufficiently large user bases (especially of kids). Among millions of users it’s mathematically not realistic to prevent every possible group in the size of dozens from congregating to attempt their awful shit. Motivated humans are good at overcoming even well-designed systems.

We’re certainly right to care about safety though, and I do want to know if Roblox is less safe than I imagine.