Yes! I hated that on reddit. I would sometimes have a cool thing to add, but because the thread was 8 hours old and had a thousand comments already, virtually no one would see it. There were some exceptions: on TV episode discussions sometimes they’d use new/contest mode default sorting for the thread and you didn’t feel like you were shouting into a void.
2020 was… truly unique. It was so hard to stay away from doom scrolling, and I (and many others) were pretty disillusioned by the sad fact that so much of our country legitimately supported the Orange Man. I didn’t get a wink of sleep the night of the election because I genuinely considered it to be a make or break decision...
Honestly there’s not that much one can do, but I will:
Hope Trump is thrown in prison
Vote straight ticket Democrat
Hope another Jan. 6 doesn’t occur
Try not to lose my shit when idiots say stuff like “both parties are equally bad”
I live in a solid blue state, so my national-level votes don’t do much (though I’ll cast them anyway).
In past years I’ve thrown a few hundred dollars at close senate and house races. In 2020 I volunteered for a phone/text bank sort of deal to make sure people were registered to vote.
Dyson Sphere Program. Factorio and Satisfactory tend to get all the press, but DSP is AMAZING.
They learned a lot of quality of life lessons from older factory games and built them in, e.g. you get bots right away.
The visuals can be breathtaking: not because it’s raytracing/whatever fancy tech, but simply the scale of the game: giant gas planet rises at the horizon, etc. – and you can fly to just about everything you see. Star 5 light years away? You can fly to it and visits its planets and moons, and then ship stuff between your home system and the new system
It does power exceptionally well: there are a ton of power sources (dsp-wiki.com/Energy_Sources#List_of_Fuels), and a lot of depth in figuring out how to power your mega factories. You can even charge up a battery and ship it by spaceship to another moon/planet. Going back to Factorio’s simplistic steam/solar/nuclear power feels like a let down (of course, Factorio has its strengths, like trains and extreme polish).
It’s in early access, but it’s one of the most polished early-access games you’ll find. They’re currently working on a large combat update that should drop in December. Price-to-value ratio is ridiculous. It’s $20 and I have 155 hours in the game.
If all you consume is news and social media – which have incentives to show the most extreme views, events, and content – you’re going to have a distorted picture of the world as a 100% awful, dangerous place.
But most of the time, in most parts of the world, most people are just living their lives. I live in the Portland, OR area and you would have thought by the news coverage of the 2020 George Floyd riots that the city was burning to the ground; in reality, the disruptions were limited to a few square blocks downtown. The majority of the city went on like usual.
There’s a lot more nuance to things about the US, too, than those outside realize.
People do fight back, every day. Our courts are prosecuting Trump. The House Speaker loony you mention in the thread came about only after a long, drawn out debate; the Republican Party is incredibly divided and ineffectual right now. Roe vs. Wade fell, but many blue states strengthened protections. Mass shootings get a lot of press, but they affect a vanishingly small part of the population.
Obviously there are problems and not everything is fine. And we have to be vigilant. But this sentiment among people – especially certain Europeans I’ve noticed – that the US is just a pure dumpster fire is a wild exaggeration by people addicted to screen time.
The housing market isn’t going to crash. We’re at the highest mortgage rates in 23 years and it’s STILL a sellers’ market. The fact is, inventory being incredibly low + home buying being desirable for many == no reason for a crash. Even the Great Recession only resulted in a temporary price dip.
I know a lot of millennials and zoomers would LIKE for there to be a crash because they think it would let them afford a home. This is a false belief, though: if there were a major crash, it would likely be accompanied by a recession in the labor market too, so there goes your ability to pay for the house.
Also, it’s not black and white. If house prices and interest rates cooled off, it would let me (a homeowner) refinance my mortgage.
Morever, there are benefits to home ownership outside of equity / profiting off a sale:
Tax benefits (I can deduct my mortgage interest and property taxes; can’t do that with a rental)
Do what I want with my house – customize, upgrade, etc.
No landlord to tell me what I can or can’t do, or kick me out
For complicated reasons, there aren’t many detached house rentals in my area, so owning a house means no loud, obnoxious apartment living – this is the BIG one for me
We are getting closer to the next major release. This version will have many breaking changes, so we are listing them here for app and client developers to adjust their projects....
[Community Challenge # 15] High Tech, Low Life
It’s my turn to set the Community Challenge for this week…...
AI art challenge: show me your best 'a cozy version of ____'
That feeling of playing a new video game late into the night
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d4a59acd-8114-463b-9c4e-5e732414c723.png
D&D in a basement -- 80s nostalgia and I can practically feel/smell that furniture
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/47ac78b0-9eba-4b8c-99b8-a31e7e84d0b2.png
US kids want games subscriptions and virtual currency more than games this Christmas (www.gamesindustry.biz)
Which video game did you bounce off of at first, but then tried again later for it to become one of your favorites of all time?
What’s the most positive experience you’ve had on Lemmy / Kbin / Fediverse so far?
What do you not understand about humanity?
Americans of Lemmy, what is your approach to next year's election?
2020 was… truly unique. It was so hard to stay away from doom scrolling, and I (and many others) were pretty disillusioned by the sad fact that so much of our country legitimately supported the Orange Man. I didn’t get a wink of sleep the night of the election because I genuinely considered it to be a make or break decision...
You all have got me obsessed with making cute little papercraft / toy model scenes - like this forest hermit and her cat
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/07281bde-3841-4e46-aa8a-bccdecfbc945.png
AI art challenge: show me your best 'a hearse if it were a ____'
deleted_by_author
AI art challenge: show me your best "______ if it/he/she were in the ___th century"
The Steam Deck's budget price tag is the reason I still rate it nearly two years on (www.pcgamer.com)
deleted_by_author
Have you ever had an illness that most people don't understand?
Anon is disillusioned about Starfield (sh.itjust.works)
Starfield Is Bethesda's Lowest-Rated Game On Steam (www.gamespot.com)
Fellow home owners, are you ready for the housing market to crash?
I know I’m supposed to want it to keep going up as a wealth generator or whatever....
Lemmy 0.19 Breaking Changes
We are getting closer to the next major release. This version will have many breaking changes, so we are listing them here for app and client developers to adjust their projects....
Martin Scorsese urges filmmakers to fight comic book movie culture: ‘We’ve got to save cinema’ (www.latimes.com)
Martin Scorsese is urging filmmakers to save cinema, by doubling down on his call to fight comic book movie culture....
Microsoft - keep your filthy hands off Valve, leak shows MSFT would buy Valve (www.gamingonlinux.com)