Agreed. And it wasn’t just blind trust in his promises despite a lack of deeds, unlike Trump’s wild promises. Like I said, Long actually managed to achieve many positive things for the working-class Louisianian. I also didn’t mention it, but he was remarkably hostile to racism for a 1930s Louisiana politician; one of his issues with the Social Security system implemented by Roosevelt was that individual states might deny its benefits to African Americans.

I do wonder if he would have remained so benevolent indefinitely - there is the aforementioned secret control of an oil company profiting from State-owned lands, whose profits Long used for political purposes - but at the same time I can’t deny he did a lot of objectively good things which helped the people who needed it the most, was rightly beloved for it, and didn’t seem to be stepping away from it in his future plans.

If nothing else, he’s a fascinating study on how the political positions associated with populism have shifted over time in the US.

It may not be an exact comparison, given changes in both popular media and US culture, but Huey Long (1893-1935) is possibly one of the closer comparisons.

A wildly popular populist demagogue, Long similarly set about expelling political opponents from the government system following his election and engaging in political maneuvering and strongarming which ultimately got him impeached (though, like Trump, the effort collapsed before before long). His efforts included setting up Louisiana state boards which directed the distribution of state money to political allies, a move to deny hostile newspapers “official printer” status, worked with a businessman to create an oil company which profited from public lands allotted to it, produced his own newspaper which published positive stories, and other similarly totalitarian moves.

However, it must also be noted that unlike Trump, Long actually achieved many populist goals, such as dramatically expanding the road system and increasing school enrollment. He was hostile to Roosevelt’s New Deal, claiming it was actually insufficiently populist and overly friendly to businesses, but also was highly isolationist and opposed to US involvement leading up to World War II.

Long was assassinated in 1935 by the son of a political opponent. Most believe he was shot by the assassin, though some believe his bodyguards accidentally shot him in confusion after the assassin missed.

I’m afraid you’re not likely to get many actual answers on Lemmy. The politics here can be wildly, wildly skewed, and it doesn’t generally create a conducive environment to calm, rational discussions. (In fairness, I’m not sure if any other site really does support truly balanced political discussion either.) I admire your attempt, however.

Another issue (which some others have already commented on) is what constitutes a “compromise”. For instance, if I have four issues which left and right-wing movements are at odds over, is it “compromise” if for each of the two I decide to go with a strongly left- or right-wing position? Or is it only compromise if for all positions we take a moderate position which cleaves to neither bloc’s position?

Anyhow, let me at least try to answer. Though I lean more left, I still find myself out of line with both major parties on some issues. For example: In the interests of addressing climate change and achieving stronger energy reliability and independence, I favor a drive to increase, not remove, hydroelectric dams and nuclear power facilities in the country.

It’s not Earth-focused, but Eve Online had a minor subplot about how the coordination of time between multiple competing human civilizations became a major political problem because no one wanted to accept the system promoted by a rival empire.

Some years ago, I lost a drawing notebook full of sketches I’d done over a few years. Dunno if that counts as ‘valuables’?

I’m 99% sure it’s somewhere at home, but either way I’d really like that back.

I did not know that is where it came from, but that’s neat (if a touch depressing). Thank you for that info. Fascinating how languages shift.

Part of it is that the question is phrased to make you react that way. By using “pundits” as opposed to “commentators” or “analysts”, it primes you to think about someone at Fox (or, these days, Youtube) pounding on a table while screaming about immigrants, as opposed to a respected individual evenhandedly explaining the complexities of a nuanced issue.

Agree with the others - in a world where every person can freely share their direct opinion, it is more critical than ever to have individuals whose role it is to research, contextualize, and present the issue in a constructive and clear fashion.

The problem of media capture by various groups is an issue, certainly, but that means it’s something we have to be wary of and build boundaries against - because the key role they serve is still in place. Throwing out the entire system because of that issue is like deciding that we no longer need doctors because the for-profit medical system is broken.

We should be careful to avoid creating communities that are echo chambers.

I’m afraid that ship is already sailed, foundered, and is well on the way to the bottom in a lot of communities.

When it comes to spicy topics, many communities on Lemmy feel incredibly close-minded and hostile to opposing views.

Yep. The doublespeak here is wild. “Controversial topics can and should be discussed, as long as they are not causing risk of imminent physical harm. Therefore, we are leaving up comments that cause imminent risk of physical harm.”

Forget the particular details of this issue. It feels way, way more strongly like they’re trying to duck out of having to take action.

I remember plenty of pre-Reddit forums also being exactly the same way.

If anything, the big difference was that whoever was in charge tended to end up just banning whoever disagreed with them. So most people either learned not to contradict “what was known”, or got kicked out. (In fairness, Reddit also had that problem, but subjectively not as often.)

That’s not exactly how it is right now, but it’s not far. Hell, the last time a F9 booster went splat, they grounded them for only a couple weeks before it was shown it wasn’t a safety-critical issue.

It just stands out because there’s only two flying reusable boosters right now (and only one that can go to orbit). Meanwhile, grounding one model of aircraft doesn’t usually have that much of an impact because they are so many active. What’ll be really cool is when there are so many reusable boosters out there that one can be grounded and spaceflights will just continue on another.

I hear you on that. On the reverse, trying to make “smoothly flowing” curved shapes in Solidworks is a headache (similarly, I’ve suffered trying). They do offer a slicing tool so you can import your monkey head from Blender and convert it into parametric object(s).

Playing Eve Online as I post this.

If I’m a baseline human, I am screwed. If I am a capsuleer - well, I’m actually going to have to learn how to fly a spaceship “for real”, but hey, at least I’m immortal.

Easily fixable. What you do is go to the Titans of CNC Academy and sign up. Congratulations; you are now technically a student! When purchasing the Student Edition from Dassault, you’ll be asked what your educational institution is; “Titans of CNC Academy” is an accepted answer.

Then you can head over to Titans’ sales page and pick up an annual student license. (Make sure you’re getting the Student version and not the cruddy “3DExperience for Makers”. That’s Solidworks’ cloud-based software, and is a hot mess.)

The major downside to this is that files created in the student edition are watermarked as such, and will open with a warning if you try on a professional-licensed version of SW. You should be able to still 3D print for personal hobby purposes, but it is against the license to make money off of it.

Man, I tried to get into this. Spent months running through the tutorials. I just couldn’t grasp how they design flow of creating a complex shape from scratch. It just didn’t “make sense”.

I’ve found parametric modeling programs like Solidworks far, far more intuitive to use - it’s easier for me to grasp “okay, this thing is a combination of added shapes, extrusions, negative spaces, revolved outlines, etc” than what Blender wants you to do. Unfortunately, most parametric programs really don’t offer good skinning/texturing and only mediocre rendering options.

Not sure exactly what you consider ‘expensive’, but there are ways to get a student edition Solidworks account for $100/year. I consider that a pretty reasonable price.

Personally, I find it infinitely more usable than Blender, but that may just be my personal biases in play. Your mileage may vary.

Objectively the best answer. Plus, as long as you hide your phylactery well, there’s not much the necromancer can do to keep you in line.

Here’s my thoughts from when I ran GoSM:

Ghosts isn’t really a campaign. It’s a really un-connected series of individual mini-dungeon crawls. In particular, if you were hoping for a focus to be on the three factions within Saltmarsh itself, I will warn you that almost none of the modules have anything to do with that. The leadership divisions in Saltmarsh are just kind of there to help DMs build on their own homebrew stuff. Despite much being made of the Sea Princes, they’re more or less unmentioned in the rest of the campaign, as are the other two factions.

Notably, the modules’ antagonists break down into two major categories:

• Underwater creatures (Sahuagin in ‘The Final Enemy’, S’gothgah the Aboleth in ‘The Styes’, and a giant octopus that’s more of an environmental hazard in ‘Salvage Operation’).
• Undead (Isle of the Abbey, Tammeraut’s Fate).
• There’s also some unconnected pirates in Danger at Dunwater and a random priest of Lolth in Salvage Operation. The mini-encounters (Cove Reef, Wreck of the Marshal, Warthalkeel) are kind of just there. You might notice there’s no real theme here. Like I said, this is very open to homebrewing.

In my case, I decided I liked undead as a final antagonist better than an Aboleth. The entire thing became a plot by Orcus - my ultimate BBEG - to drown and slaughter everything in the Saltmarsh region. Everyone else - Syrgaul Tammeraut, the Aboleth S’gothgah, the Sahuagin - were either intentionally or unintentionally working towards Orcus’ goals, some being duped into doing so. This required some reskinning - the generic evil cult in ‘Isle of the Abbey’ and the Lolth priest in ‘Salvage Operation’ became Orcus worshippers.

In your case, if you want to focus on the three factions of Saltmarsh, I think you could go two ways:

• Have reach of the modules be a task or threat created by each faction. For instance, maybe the Loyalists send you on the Salvage Operation, hoping to get some dirt on Anders Solmor’s mysterious missing parents. Maybe the Sea Princes are stirring up the Sahuagin to attack Saltmarsh to break the King’s control, etc.
• Have one BBEG running all three factions. In this case, again, I would encourage you to look to either S’gothgah the Aboleth, or whoever Syrgaul Tammeraut’s magical patron is. Perhaps they are simply playing all three groups against each other to leave Saltmarsh depleted and ruined, at which point they will move in.

In either case, the political side of Saltmarsh is relatively undeveloped, giving you lots of room to work in, but also lots of work to do if that’s what you want.

My wishlist is basically:

• Tackle corporate overreach and monopolization both via urging strong legislation in Congress and utilizing existing Federal agencies regulatory power. Break monopolies, ensure fair practices, place regulations on data harvesting/usage, and protect consumers wherever possible.

• Support labor groups and rights. Crack down on union busting, non-competitive contracts, and companies dodging treating employees as actual employees.

• Continue developing a strong infrastructural base. Expand development of developing fields such as dynamic power grids, support growth of more efficient transportation mechanisms such as railroads, and push states to catch up on or begin much needed infrastructural overhauls.

• Reinforce US support for overseas allies against the major threats they are facing, including both military and economic collaboration. Support strong region collaborative alliances. The US should be a leader in protecting the free and democratic nations against the very real threats they now face.

Sorry if that’s a little too vague. Or too specific. It could probably be rendered down to something like “tackle corporate power, support labor, build infrastructure, support allies”.