I fully believe there’s a huge amount of money and effort in making a studio – but it seems like killing off a known brand wholesale like this just should result in a new brand that is the successor.

‘Friendship ended with Bioware, Now OrganicWare is my best friend’ kind of energy. We were never there for EA’s involvement. We wanted These People*.

*First link I found, you get the point, but it might not be accurate for the whole team.

Gaming is getting harder with economy and silicon prices – but that means we can just take the stories we want to tell and do so without 4A graphics.

And bigots.

You needed three more syllables.

I fear for my kiddos because of this.

It’s now feeling offensive to approach people in public for any reason. As a full grown adult who is married, I feel awkward approaching someone at like a library reading a book I’ve read - they don’t want the interruption, they aren’t here to meet people; I get that. I’m just wanting to share my experiences and maybe make a friend.

Trying to find a partner is way harder.

I go out of my way to be gregarious in public spaces because I don’t want the normal to be people trapped in their bubbles and never interacting with the rest of the world. I’ve found that people sometimes light up when they are talked to, and that keeps me doing it.

I’m an introvert and it’s hard. You can do it too! Make small talk.

I’d encourage that the voting is the first step for some people.

Voting in the midterms is a fairly minor portion of the population; which is frightening. Get more people voting here means more people involved.

The vast, vast majority of people are just normal folks who want to be able to live. The more people voting on either “side” of the spectrum, the better the choices will become.

Do more than vote: Go join your local precinct - red or blue or green - and ensure the people who go to district and then to state and national have your values. There are dozens of votes a year, not just in November on even years.

While I want to be clear that I agree with you, this is where the more… aggressive… left is already at.

They think the Democrats will never be willing/able to do anything about it. I disagree, but think we have an engagement problem.

My personal goal is to encourage people to get involved more locally. If you only care about President races, or Senator races, you are ceding the choice to other people. Go get involved with your city council, be in your precinct. Help make the choice more in line with normal people and not just the people who are wealthy and have time to spare to attend a meeting. It’s worth the effort.

a federal crime

I think most of us here know this, but the dmca broke the free market. Anyone who isn’t or has folks that aren’t (read time, 3 hours, including rabbit holes):

https://www.eff.org/pages/unintended-consequences-fifteen-years-under-dmca

This impacts the ability to fix or modify your own stuff, see Fulu, extend or enhance tools you already own, and repurpose items for things they can do but are not in the best interest of the company that sold them. Making it illegal to use a computer is akin to making it illegal to use a screwdriver.

This is why every car has a screen now. They were able to lock out any unauthorized customization, repair, replacement, etc because there was a “digital lock” somewhere in the process and use that to force first-party parts, service and software and get a reliable post-market revenue stream. Don’t want your car advertising to you on startup? Too bad - disabling that is a crime.

Especially as we head into an election moment in the US - reach out to candidates and ensure they are aware and know we are aware.

Right? Don’t like the rules?

It’s not impossible that enough people in the neighborhood like Bruce either. It’ll be some effort to oust him, and you might end up with the duties – but then you can make the rules minimal interference.

Cuts both ways, though. Not enough people involved could allow Bruce to take over.

My dad’s HOA had a Bruce.

Adding to this. Step back a moment and notice that this is, in part, the same playbook being used everywhere else: California vs Florida, Red vs Blue; US vs Ukraine vs Russia.

These are distractions. We need to eat the rich. They are the problem and we outnumber them.

I HATE this part. I have no power to just not invest, because Vanguard or whoever owns the portfolio and they think this stuff is just going up-up-up, but they are playing with my money since I only have 4 flavors of their choosing for my 401k.

They might be right in the short term, and this used to be a thing (I think, in my parent’s age) where you could assume that number-goes-up over time and you could ignore minor dips, and maybe it’s still true for a long enough duration… but:

In this thread, I think we all see that this isn’t sustainable, but we, normal people just hoping to retire someday, don’t have the ability to disconnect from the bubble even if we want to. There are too many public companies involved and they’re all interconnected.

I despise that I’m probably invested in spacex, nvidia, oracle, etc. I’d sacrifice short term gains to let other people take this risk if I could.

My front-load washer had a panel on the bottom that exposed the filter. It got clogged with a hair tie and pet hair - the washer wouldn’t drain and I had to do it manually. Was quite a pain.

I found this article showing common places, but also TIL that maybe not all washing machines will have one.

As someone who never reads manuals. This.

That dishwasher isn’t designed to be self-cleaning – it needs help. Clean the filter regularly. Maybe every other load depending on how you pre-wash.

Same vibe for a lint filter in your washing machine. I think many people check the dryer lint trap, but the washer also has one. And the dryer vent hose will collect lint.

There are air filters in your furnace, probably, that need to be checked too, not just the intakes in a few rooms; and the AC drain line needs to be cleaned occasionally or it will back up and make a water mess.

There are just a thousand maintenance tasks that we are presumably supposed to just know, but no one told us, and can become serious problems when they are ignored. As the world becomes more complicated, there are only more of these.

I read this comment and it took me several minutes for it to process.

11/10 amazing pun

And you can’t disable your TV’s “smarts” without a felony.

And there’s my wife with the #1, but also a sweater. I don’t know how she can feel that cold when she’s that warm(I call her the furnace) and I can’t even sleep under a blanket. Her body just wildly flings heat energy into the universe.

I apologize. I’m no expert on the topic, but an ally. I’ll read the link and improve my understanding.

There’s a ton of bad shit going on in the world, and I can’t affect 99.999% of it directly. My empathy battery is fucking dry at this point and while I do know about this situation, I know there are hundreds if not thousands of others I don’t know about.

For my mental health, I could imagine limiting my exposure to additional horrific things if I could.

Every time something like this hits national news, I use it to send my state leadership another request asking them to make a new category in the statute renaming ‘sexual battery’ (paraphrased, sexual contact without consent) to ‘rape’ if there is intoxication involved.

Right now my state is [misdemenor]no consent => [felony]underage; active-no; active-no with violence.

I want a felony non-consent with intox, and I want the law to have very limited requirements for the victim to prove intoxication, since it might be days or even months later that the victim is able to speak up.

Just so you know where the downvotes and hate are coming from; and for anyone else who doesn’t understand either: “consenting while drunk” is not consent. There’s no ‘regret it later’, since there wasn’t consent - it’s more like ‘feel regret after becoming aware of it’, but even regret is the wrong word. disgusted, violated, furious.

I don’t have immediate access to the evidence, but my understanding is that these men and/or their accomplices intentionally got this woman too drunk to resist. She was unable to competently say yes, but she was also unable to competently say no.

If you think of this and other rape cases stemming from ‘they were drunk and regretted it later’ situations as the fault of the drunk person, please go educate yourself about consent and why being intoxicated precludes it.

Also, don’t stop at the primary. You can be part of your local organization and help choose the people in the primaries. As well as improve the local government.

deleted by creator

A slight difference from my perspective. I value my autonomy. Especially in this era of enshittification.

Windows, Mac, various *nix flavors; they all offer mostly the same features. But the first two claim ownership of the layer between you as a user and the hardware you own.

With Linux, I have to own that layer too, which is sometimes complicated, but /I/ own it.

No company tells me my computer is too old because it can’t verify the boot device. Maybe it’s a personal desktop and I don’t care, and it’ll still run fast if it doesn’t send screenshots to telemetry servers all the time.