So much of our modern political system is poised around vibes, because that’s all the older voters (seem to) really care about. If I had a dollar for every time I heard some variation of having a beer with George W, I’d have more dollars than I do now.

I think in contrast younger voters care about a vast array of issues very deeply, making engaging in politics a much more complex task that they probably don’t have time for. Given that so much of the coverage consists of no-meaning political lines with no coherent policy right now, engaging in traditional ways is pointless until they stop having vapid “debates” and “interviews” with no content, and start forcing real policy discussion.

I think Bernie was popular with younger voters because he brought so few vibes and so much policy. I went to a Hillary rally and a Bernie rally during the primary in 2015 and the difference was night and day. Hillary talked about the positive feeling of continuing the Democratic legacy, while Bernie talked about sustainable agriculture and straw polled the attendees about wind power.

To be clear I bet this held true 50 years ago when our old voters were young too, no hate on the olds here, priorities change, though I hope mine don’t. Also I wonder if this is all still true for the new young voters, most of my interactions are with millennials and gen z. My few interactions with the folks graduating now have been tainted by my old and out of touch self and by their (in my opinion) under-practiced interpersonal skills from covid years at home. Again, no hate intended.

I use MXLinux, picked it somewhat at random when I was frustrated with windows 10 privacy settings and haven’t looked back since. I tried mint, mint cinnamon, Ubuntu, and Fedora before MX, and Fedora is the only other one I have stuck with, to use on a Surface Pro (I needed Wayland for the touchscreen).

MX has been really stable, light on resources, and has worked really well through two complete hardware upgrades. I play games on steam, some brand new some old, and I haven’t found one that I can’t play yet. That is due to steam/proton/proton GE more than the OS I expect but I’m happy nonetheless. I also run my home entertainment box on MX on an old PC (I know there are better choices for os for this, I was just comfortable with it).

I like it because I haven’t felt any reason to try anything else, perhaps someday I will and I’ll just find a new OS then, but until then it’s my favorite I think.

I never played BioShock 2 or Infinite, but I watched full playthroughs of each, and I thought infinite was great! Different to be sure in most ways, but it was a neat expansion of the world and themes hinted at in the first two games.

I seem to remember a lot of sideline criticism when it came out that boiled down to “NPC sidekick not love interest but hot so I don’t like game”. I thought, and think that is ridiculous, and fortunately I think that criticism has faded with time because Elizabeth is such a positive part of the game, from my view.

I should play through the BioShock games…

Unfortunately people don’t take care of themselves because it’s expensive too. Most people who don’t have a lot of money also don’t have a lot of time to prepare food from whole food sources, so they go for inexpensive pre prepared foods, which are awful for you.

Exercise is possible but again requires a lot of time (and energy) that you likely don’t have if you’re working two 35 hour a week food service jobs (or one, honestly). On top of that the built environment is so hostile to being outside of a car, that the easy free exercise choice of walking places is entirely or effectively impossible in most places.

All that is to say I don’t think the blame is on individuals (not that you really said that) for not choosing the healthy options, it’s on our society for focusing on work, convenience, and efficiency at the expense of health. Just like everything else here, it’s going to be a real challenge to fix because it’s to tied into everything else, but I hope we can tackle it.

I don’t follow this, how has this person voting 3rd party in 2016 led to facism starting in the 80s? For that matter, how has 3rd party voting led to facism at all? I’m very much struggling to make sense of this.

By definition, an agenda is “a program of things to be done or considered” which does not equate to wanting to do something. It more closely resembles a daily planner or task list.

So in as much as you and I have an “agenda” when we get out of bed, you are right, the person submitting the PR did likely have an agenda of waking up and going about their day. There isn’t a ‘woke agenda’ at play here, however, as the person I replied to seemed to imply.

Along with potential reasons mentioned in this post, right wing folks also have fewer obvious places to go troll now that twitter is just filled with them and Hershey’s or whatever. Perhaps they are coming here looking for trouble specifically.

It’s also possible they’ve always been here and have just found more reasons to engage recently. Either way, the amount of bad faith discussion and derisive language is frustrating and upsetting.

I have just been blocking individuals if I find myself getting frustrated, but I also took a long break from social media because I felt like the discussions about Gaza were bordering toxic, so I’m not sure my approach is sustainable.

Imagine you have been purposefully targeted for harassment or excluded from activities in the past due to your preferred pronouns or perceived gender. Seeing “he” with that context would likely feel excluding, which is a reason someone without an ‘agenda’ would want to see it changed.

I made the leap a few years ago now, and since getting a (slightly) newer AMD GPU I haven’t had a single problem that I didn’t create by messing around with things without knowing what I was doing. I use steam and the Glorious Egroll version of proton and every game I have wanted to play has worked, even ones that are brand new. No tinkering past the initial steam setup. I don’t really play competitive online games with anti cheat so you may encounter problems that I haven’t if you do.

I use the advanced hardware support version of MX Linux, if that really matters. I had bad experiences with Ubuntu, but haven’t tried it with this machine so I don’t know if it was the OS or the hardware.

I’d say give it another shot on its own drive when Microsoft frustrates you again, you can always swap windows back in if you don’t like it.

If I’m reading that right, that could also say that Instagram is suppressing anti-israel content? It’s just saying that in comparison to Instagram tiktok is showing more x, y, z. But Instagram is absolutely not a neutral point to measure from.

For starters there’s different demographics on each one, but I’m sure you could adjust for that, maybe the study did. But I don’t think you can adjust for the impact the US government has on Meta. I don’t believe for an instant that some US agency isn’t manipulating algorithms or requiring certain tweaks to steer discourse just like they did with US news outlets.

Agree 100%

I think Cuba is a great example, since it’s less emotional right now for most people. We’ve been starving those people since 1960 for what? For cooperating and allying with a country that we didn’t like? For nationalizing the oil we were harvesting on their island and selling for our profit? (After we started santioning them too) 64 years of collective punishment for being too commie near our precious stolen land.

Our government does deserve blowback for what we’ve done in our relatively short time around. I hope it isn’t taken out on the people, but if it is I guess it makes sense for how we treated everyone else.

I’d diagnose the problem similarly to the person you replied to and I don’t think I’d feel compelled to offer a specific remedy either.

People have been experimenting with economies and societies for thousands of years and we are in a relatively new money/power/control stuck spot right now. I’m sure there’s been a system in history that would work much better than what we’ve got, but I just read recreationally so I dunno what it is and just because something worked 1000 years ago in North America doesn’t mean it’ll work here today. I wouldn’t mind giving something new a shot though, what we have is not working for most people.

I had a very similar experience but just kinda glumly stuck with the broken experience in that in between, and just played what I could get to work. But now with proton, specifically the ge version, there’s isn’t a game that I can’t play (that I have wanted to play). It’s pretty amazing how quickly the changes and improvements to gaming on Linux have come.

I also have an AMD system now, which might be a big part of why it’s so painless now.

I largely agree, a mix of discussions and text discussions would feel nice. I’ve noticed some communities seem to have a lot more of one over the other, and I wonder if that has to do with where people came here from. Reddit is certainly link heavy, but I know other platforms are less so. Or maybe it’s just self selection, people feel more confident posting links in places with links and text in places with text.

If it’s that second one, a remedy might be to post what you want to see! Maybe that would encourage others to do the same.

Second for guild wars 2, the world is huge when you first start playing, and though the initial levelling experience can feel like it takes a while, once you have hit the cap you can go pretty much anywhere. The story is pretty linear, though, so if you want a deep and complex story it might be better to look for a single player game.

I’d also say the combat system in Guild wars is fantastic, it’s simple enough to pick up and not have to stress about playing the game, but if you want to engage and get better there is so much to learn about and improve.

Yeah, more like I worry that was your implication, it was hard to read it any other way.

I’m sure the younger crowd are just as interested in a play from 1597 as you were in the 1900s, and doubly so in Tom Holland. Seems like the tickets would sell themselves

I don’t understand how this play could possibly be hard to market, it’s possibly the most famous English stage play with very famous people. What am I missing here?

It’s odd to me that the reasoning given here and in the article for this problem for the Democrats is that they aren’t acting Republican enough and they are too leftist. It is so clear that the Democrats have managed to do very few of the things they say, and what they do accomplish is either just what Republicans would do, or hamstrung by the Republicans and media blitzed. That’s why they lose ground. Becoming Republican will also lose them different ground. It doesn’t feel like the data should need an explanation in the first paragraph like that, it skews the interpretation of what is pitched as objective.

I think all these economic and business interests are just desperate for the old Republican party back and are trying to sculpt the Democrats into it because they were close enough already. Probably successfully. It’s pretty bleak all around.

Also I’m sorry I can’t leave it, but are you saying that the BLM “cohort” prefer trump in there? I’m not going to say that anyone is enthusiastic about Biden, but Trump encouraged beat downs across the country and threatened to march the military on these folks. (Would have done it too if it weren’t for the woke liberal adjenda of General Mark Milley).

I don’t think that the last part is true. Community justice (even) in our broken society doesn’t really favor the powerful. The gut reaction I see is to help the underdog in a situation, not the oppressor. Sometimes an individual read of a situation can be complicated, leading to mistaken outcomes, but the intent is to end the negative situation.

Tangentially that makes me think about the difference in intent. A group of people expelling a bigot from a train is that group trying to fix a bad situation, let the oppressed person know they are not alone, and to let the oppressor know that are not welcome there with that behavior. The police may also kick someone off the train but their actions are punative, they exist to enforce a heiarchy and punish, they aren’t there to help the oppressed feel like they aren’t alone, and they are only letting the oppressor know that they aren’t welcome there, but as long as the cops aren’t nearby it’s ok.

As for structuring a more just society, we could imagine one without the implicit power imbalances, one without an arbitrary heiarchy of authority figures dictating right vs wrong. I know it sounds like I’m describing anarchy (I am) but also kinda a democracy? Like everyone gets a say to make decisions, and a group of equals decide together how to live their lives. Breaking down our current heiarchies to get there is the hard part, obviously, and I think it’s a generations long societal struggle. Hopefully we all live more justly than our parents until we arrive somewhere better than where we left.

Sorry this was very stream of conciousness, I hope my thoughts came across somewhat effectively.

That’s kinda dope, but also how about surge pay for the workers?