Are you seriously asking me how not voting for someone to be elected hurts their chances of getting elected?

You also completely misunderstood my second point as well. Third parties are appealing to the leaders of the conservative party because they divert votes away from the progressive party. They give anyone who finds the conservative party discomforting an opportunity to throw away their vote instead of helping the only other real contender thus increasing their chance of success.

I will have to assume you are a bot if you can’t engage in well meaning discussion.

Okay, so you’re a part of the problem. Voting third party is misunderstanding the trolley problem. There’s only two options, not pulling the lever to reduce suffering is still making a choice that increases the total amount of suffering.

Get this conservative pro-trump bullshit out of here. Third party candidates are funded as spoilers and the only message voting third party sends is that it was money well spent by the conservative party and foreign nations.

Do you think it’s better to block someone or add a note to them so you can still engage with their content? I’ve gotten into the habit of blocking people and I’m not sold on it being the best approach.

I appreciate these comments saying the tech hasn’t degraded and it’s been standstill, or that it was never great in the first place, all of which is true but I would like to interject my own Model 3 experience. When we first bought the Tesla in 2019 the self driving functionality on the highway felt safe and functional in nominal conditions. When we sold the Tesla 2 years ago (2022) the self driving felt noticably more finicky. It struggled to switch lanes, recognize when lanes started and ended, and had noticably more issues with maintaining proper speed and distance with other cars.

It probably wasn’t significantly more dangerous, but it felt like it was. What was a feature we used for the first year or two without much complaint turned into something we never used and our driving time when down in that third year not up so it wasn’t exposure time I don’t think.

It’s worth it. I’m almost two years in Germany. Wouldn’t move back for a million dollars (although at 3 I could be bought). Work on the local language, volunteer or other community involvement activities, treat it like the new home it is. We’re fortunate to be able to move to a new country, try to be a part of improving it and earning your spot there. I’m even more fortunate to be white, male, straight etc - assuming you’re at least some of those things, do your best to counter the anti-immigration fear mongering that comes out of the political right. It effects you now, but more importantly it’s ramping up and it’ll effect people less fortunate far worse.

Hope you love it and welcome to Europe.

I never finished it because the alien would teleport too much. I need to install the larger leash mod and give it another go. It’s also sooo long for such a tense game. I loved everything about it and I’m upset I haven’t finished it lol.

I think the problem was their balancing strategy was largely nerf based and their design vision was primary weapons should suck against most things. That’s how it felt anyway. Like most guns weren’t viable and they kept nerfing the viable ones until they felt noticably worse but still noticably better than other options.

I really don’t understand their vision for the weapon landscape - most assault rifles felt bad compared to the laser rifle variant, most shotguns felt bad besides one pump and one auto and then they nerfed both of those so I haven’t taken a shotgun in some time, and a sniper or semiautomatic has never felt good as a primary despite being what I’d normally gravitate to.

Half of my play time is taking something like the auto cannon or the Quasar (before they were nerfed) and using them more like my primary weapon.

The slots don’t have identity because of this imbalance and the weapons within those slots don’t have meaningful decisions because they fit either check some boxes - A) can harm most things B) is efficient at harming most of those things - or they don’t.

In a game where part of their business model is releasing a couple of new guns every month I’ve used 90% of those weapons less than 3 times because they immediately feel bad at the highest difficulties.

So this new patch is, to me anyway, a blunt way to improve all guns and all viability - seemingly because they dont know how to do it any other way.

Ergodox EZ has my whole hearted recommendation. Their keyboards are amazing and the only thing better for ergonomics would be a more custom curved piece.

They’re a good company, I would recommend anyone checking them out.

I’ve read it, I read the discussion around it, idk man. One guy’s thoughts on a company and it’s founder isn’t enough to move me off of something without better proof, better alternatives, and worse crimes than maybe having a bad long term vision.

Hopefully every company outgrows it’s founder and becomes a system. We’ll have to see, right now I’m satisfied and that gets me off Google and signals to others I’m willing to pay.

Ya, for an alpha game with unfinished assets and lacking polish - it’s stupid good. I’ve been out of the mobs scene for like a year or two and haven’t had a shooter register for a while, so maybe I’m starved, but this thing keeps me coming back every night.

I recommend Kagi, I’ve been using it for about six months now and results - especially small web results like blogs - are so much better. I also have a pretty good time image searching compared to when I was on Google.

Yes it’s paid, but that to me is the price of resisting enshittification. Find a company that isn’t a publicly traded for-profit world-burner and pay them for their service. Is the idea of paying for email and search an alien concept to me? Yes. But I’m either paying Google whatever €120 a year in eyeballs on ads and an increasingly worse experience, or I’m paying €80 a year and getting a markedly better experience.

Now it’s up to Kagi and Proton to not turn into shitty companies while other competitors catch up and we have a thriving ecosystem again.

It’s amazing what insulation and proper sound proofing can do. Never lived in thicker walls than here in Germany. Other than the blasted church bells, it’d be hard to convince me I was living next to people if the windows were opaque.

Honestly DS1 and DS2 are very unfriendly entry points into the subgenre and can be quite punishing. I played the entire first DS following a guide step by step because I didn’t see the appeal. DS2 I read a guide instead and did it all myself and was starting to get it but not really. DS3 is the first one that feels like a modern game, where fun is the priority and it doesn’t expect you to have 20 hours to beat your head against an area or boss. DS3 you can complete entirely alone (although looking up stat soft caps is always a must for me).

He’s saying what you’re attributing to “a specific lack of willpower” now has scientific backing that disagrees. Your take is old school and misinformed if the current science is correct. I personally haven’t done research on the subject or read many studies but Adam Ragusea, a YouTube food science journalist covers this concept in one of his vids and several podcasts surrounding food science and (in my case) the drugs coming down the pipeline to regulate body weight touch on the research as well.

Until I trust my government to not go hard right, until I can own my housing wherever I want to live in a given decade, until work goes/stays full remote and/or reduces total working hours, until I feel like I have too much money that I could lose the cost of a child and not risk being in the danger zone - until then kids aren’t something I can guarantee a good life and that’s not an acceptable starting place for me.

If housing is an investment vehicle for growing your money, then the people who can participate in that system will work to produce outcomes that fundamentally go against affordable housing. A society that believes in affordable housing as a right or a goal can’t allow housing to be used as a place to park wealth so that it grows akin to a stock.

Whatever prices are, they are higher when a landlord is involved. We must get progressively outlaw multiple pieces of land. Owning more than two homes/flats should cost the owner something every year, not generate wealth - and that second one should be nearly neutral.

If housing is an investment (“a nest egg”) then the people and policies that support it as an investment will stand directly opposed to people and policies that want housing to be affordable and a right.

Housing cannot be an investment vehicle akin to stocks in a society that meaningfully values housing for everyone as an objective to strive for.

Yes, of course. I wish you and everyone stuck there luck.

I am paying taxes and am able to vote, but because I make less than the required amount my taxes are essentially zero to the US because we have joint tax agreements between the two countries.

I don’t know if I’ll renounce after earning German citizenship or not but the exit tax is something I have to consider.

Ya, that’s rough. That feels like a very immature take. The two parties are not the same, voting does matter, and I’d even argue that there are people so awful that assassination does make sense but I’m happy Trump survived because I think the Republican party would have been stronger without him.

I left the US, I’m between a millennial and gen z, and I left explicitly because I was worried about the future of the US and because moving abroad is akin to time traveling 20 years into the future. I have healthcare now, I live in a walkable city with great public transit, the crime rates are lower (although most places in the US aren’t super violent, the probability of getting murdered goes way down when you leave), I have 6 weeks vacation, essentially unlimited sick time, and I’m not allowed to work overtime.

Both parties are not the same but if Democrats won in a landslide in every single election both state and federal in every chamber and every seat, how many years would it take to achieve all of those same things. I have no doubt these policies would happen with the right people in office, with radical change to the party they could even happen quickly and I believe it’s what half the people want. But the two other outcomes are 50/50 with the parties and little gets done in a timely manner and worse the corrupt judges continue to error the system, or the Republicans win one big election just one more time and project 2025 starts getting a percent complete tracker and we slide back into the dark ages.

So I left. I believe if things go bad in the US historians will look at Trump’s first victory as a period of brain drain from the country. But that’s my two cents to go with this article.