Agreed. Misallocation of resources by a bunch of astoundingly credulous capitalists is a far more likely apocalypse, even if it wouldn’t make for a good Roland Emmerich movie.

“Do you have nothing to protect?”

Yeah, but every game has an expiration date if you have to rely on a server still being live to download the full game, which is kinda my point.

If the disk cannot install and play the full game, then it holds little value as physical media for preservation. At that point the only value it has is for collectors.

You’re not as strange as you think, but I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re still quite young (20s?). Your 20s are largely about trying to fit in and following social conventions - you do all the things you think you’re “supposed to”. As you hit your 30s, you stop caring so much about what other people think and what other people have told you that you’re supposed to do and start figuring out what you want to do. A big part of growing up is learning that there are no “rules”; you can eat candy for breakfast if you want, sing in the shower, be an absolute cringe goblin - sky’s the limit so long as you’re not hurting anyone.

Finding a partner to avoid being alone is a terrible, terrible idea for all involved. Learn to enjoy your own company first and figure out what you actually want your life to look like, then you’ll be much more likely to find someone going the same direction. Figure out who you want to be and take the steps to becoming that person. Be unapologetically yourself, and you’ll find people who like you for you, which is absolutely preferable to trying to fit yourself into a tiny box of what you think you’re supposed to be and earning the admiration of people you despise.

As some other commenters have mentioned, investigate whether you may be neurodivergent, because you’ll be much more able to make sense of yourself and the world around you with that knowledge if you are.

I haven’t shopped at Amazon for a year or two now. It is not as cheap as people believe and anything worth buying can be found elsewhere, usually for the same price (sometimes less). Most places even have similarly fast shipping and some use Amazon as a shipping service, which I wish they would disclose up-front so I could choose to shop elsewhere.

Seconding Ace. They also tend not to have surveillance in their parking lots unlike Lowe’s and Home Depot, which are known to employ Flock cameras.

I’m not a fan of electoralism, but it’s worth pointing out that ICE does not have the manpower to patrol every polling place. I don’t think they could even cover every polling place in a large metropolitan area, let alone an entire state. They’ve only got like 10,000 guys. That’s not that many in a country with over 300 million people.

It’s probably going to come down to the lease terms. There’s likely a mechanism to file some kind of complaint about this that would make the 3-days stop ticking, but I’m not a lawyer. If you can find a legal aid clinic, that’s probably your best bet. Power-tripping landlords are the worst and I’m really sorry you’re dealing with this.

Stems from medical misogyny dating back to the Victorian era. Birthing on one’s back is easier for a doctor to observe, and obstetrics centers the doctor over the person actually giving birth. Everything to stick it to the midwives, who actually knew what they were doing.

Unless they’ve changed dramatically, they’re not new, just back in fashion. I remember those being around 20 years ago. Of course, they all had cables back then.

Last time I had the pads on mine disintegrate, I found some replacements that were made of real leather. I haven’t had to replace them since. Some brands also make fabric pads; I’m sure they probably last longer than polyurethane, but I would expect them to wear out eventually.

The most obnoxious Democrat supporters have their whole ego caught up in being a “good person” by having the correct ideological positions. Admitting that their “team” is full of war criminals would directly challenge their egos and is thus summarily dismissed. They are idealists, and thus disconnected from material reality. They tend to be quite caught up in the notion of “electability” - the idea that they shouldn’t back candidates or platforms they actually want, but those calculated to appeal to the largest number, which is always smack dab in the center of the Overton window, in their estimation. (Of course, ironically, a true socialist platform would have the greatest appeal were not USians so propagandized against it.) I have literally had liberals tell me that though they are not themselves racist, they need a candidate that would be accepted by racists. I think more often than not, they cry “electability” so they have an excuse for supporting a conservative candidate while simultaneously calling themselves “progressive”.

This is to say nothing of the fact that liberalism is a conservative ideology, and that it is more than happy to back imperialism if it means the spoils can subsidize their lifestyle. Or in other words, Democrats will cheer for any war if it keeps their Starbucks cheap and their gas tank filled. They are not anti-war at all. They oppose the appearance of warmongering, but not the actions themselves; they want plausible deniability so they can go back to brunch.

Tl;dr - Democrats are bad people who pretend to be good people and back war criminals because they like imperialism, no matter what excuses they make for it.

I was never banned; I deleted my account as I was frustrated with the increasing surveillance. Someone had mentioned Lemmy in one of the degoogling or privacy subs and I decided to check it out. It reminded me a lot of how the internet used to be before it was filled with bots, so I stuck around.

A lot of people spend a lot of time on an extrinsic search for intrinsic meaning. There isn’t one. The value and meaning of your life can only be self-determined. That feels impossibly heavy at first, but as you come to embrace it, there is an incredible freedom in it. If there is any determinant of adulthood, that’s it - to be self-defined. To that end, there are no “rules” about what your life must look like - marriage, kids, home ownership, whatever else are all options, but not compulsory. It’s up to you to determine what it is that you actually want.

The other marker of adulthood, I think, is to have come to terms with your childhood. It sounds like you think your father was given advantages that he hasn’t seen fit to pass on to you, and you understandably have some feelings about it. Family of origin issues can really cloud your mind until you sort through and come to terms with them. Talking to a therapist about it (or bar that, reading some books on the subject) could be of some value. A lot of people go through their lives reenacting patterns they observed in their parents or projecting their unmet needs from childhood onto others, to their own detriment. This is work that you have to do yourself; no one can “fix” you.

Comparison will not get you anywhere. Consider who you want to be, and then start taking steps in that direction. Once you have set out on that journey, you may encounter others on their own journeys or you may not, but you won’t have your self-worth riding on the outcome.

Averages are not very useful for making sweeping generalizations. An average of hours worked is going to include people working 80 hours per week to make ends meet as well as people working under 40 who are unable to get healthcare benefits. In the US, the number going down would reflect increasing underemployment, not prosperity, as we have no safety nets and virtually no one is working sub-40 hours and getting full-time pay.

As for time spent watching television, it’s a passive form of escapism that it more accessible to people under stress. The worst times in my life have been when I would do nothing but watch television to distract myself after work - because I had no social connections and no money to spend on hobbies or going out.

Those here not currently feeling financial pressure are not paying attention to the rise of fascism if they’re reporting being completely unstressed. I am lucky enough to be well-situated financially, but I can feel the walls closing in and I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do to prepare for what’s coming. (It’s easy to say “organize,” but I am not as able-bodied as I used to be and I don’t have the time or energy to commit to an org.) I try to agitate with the people around me, but it more often than not feels like I’m tilting at windmills.

Tl;dr - yeah, I’m pretty stressed.

Currently reading about all the horrors of the CIA - finished The Jakarta Method and Washington Bullets, currently reading through Killing Hope, and next on my list is Operation Gladio.

I wish they’d channel that energy into developing class consciousness instead, but then they’ve been heavily disincentivized to do so between propaganda and the desire for wealth of their own.

Opossums are essentially immune to rabies and eat ticks.

The other actually existing socialist states: Cuba, the DPRK, Vietnam, and Laos.