Hey I comment from time to time, that’s contributing! Kind of!

Rumble isn’t any better. It’s where my dad gets his COVID conspiracy material after folks got kicked off other platforms.

These days at least we have streaming services. If you can get them hooked on the good stuff (eg Bluey) or the tolerable stuff (eg Octonauts) you can (mostly) get away from the worst stuff (Cocomelon and it’s million somehow even more cheaply made derivatives).

Long hard fight.

We take our Ws where we can get them.

Interesting. Can’t say that would ever work for my circumstances, but I at least get where you’re coming from a bit better. Thanks!

So like… do you play the game with no sound? Does your gaming partner hear everything coming through your speakers into your phone’s microphone?

I’m just struggling to understand how that could be a good experience for anyone, including you. Am I just missing something?

Edit: oh, I missed the wireless earphone on one side thing. Is that for your phone or for the game?

You want to… be on the phone for video game chat?

I cannot fathom this mindset.

You’re certainly not wrong about GIMP having horrible UI/UX. Big reason I don’t use it either.

DaVinci Resolve is not a replacement for Photoshop/Adobe as a whole, but it is a decent replacement for Adobe products AfterEffects and Premier.

For Photoshop alternatives, I’d start with GIMP for photo editing or Krita for illustration and digital painting.

I’m still on Windows because my drawing app of choice is Clip Studio Paint, which has no Linux version. I’ve read and watched several guides to getting CSP running on Linux, but it still scares me off.

But this Recall thing is so insidious to me… I might try to get it working on Linux anyway.

I’m unfamiliar with the exact situation here, but when it comes to generative AI as I understand it, CP image output also means CP images in the training data.

That may not strictly be true, but it is certainly worth investigating at minimum.

Bitwarden’s free version is enough for my purposes, but I didn’t realize they had a $10/yr plan. That seems worth paying for, I’ll have to look into it.

Clear temples?

Or giving yourself ulcers

I have no idea what genre of videogame, if any, could replicate the experience of One Piece multi-site battles on absolutely wild and varying scales of power, speed, and size.

But if any genius game dev out there wants to make it happen, I’ll take ten.

Jesus, technical people are some of the worst communicators I’ve ever worked with.

It’s not necessarily their fault though. Y’know who goes into technical jobs? People who often prefer to work with machines, physical stuff, laws of nature, that’s who. And often because it’s MUCH easier than working with people, at least for them.

On top of that, soft skills are HARD. Communication is HARD. It comes easier for some, but it’s a skill like any other. It’s the technical socialites, the diplomatic devs who become the best managers and leaders, due to the rarity of their hybrid skillsets.

I’m in the middle. Just technical enough to mostly understand the devs and understand the implications of plans, and just enough soft skills to turn that into decent documentation, emails, and working with clients.

SUCKS that I’ve gotten a taste of project management and hated the absolute fuck out of it. I probably would’ve been decent at it otherwise.

I was a child with an NES and virtually every Nintendo machine thereafter. Parents said my first language was Nintendo.

I still played outside all the time. I regularly rode my bike all over town. I didn’t have to be threatened to play outside. I dunno, people and situations are different, I guess.

That said, it’s certainly harder for kids now. I have a hard time imagining letting my kid ride a bike all over town, mostly because of traffic and stupid drivers. The free public places I used to hang out with my friends are largely gone now. Plus, like you say, the games are now designed to be addicting specifically in the ways that regularly extract more money from players. It’s just kinda bad if you’re not versed enough in the gaming ecosystem to know what’s a worthwhile experience and what’s a cash grab.

I’m one of the “company-provided-phone-only” folks. Thankfully, I work for a pretty decent employer who has never abused that in the nearly 10 years I’ve worked there. But I realize that’s a pretty rare privilege.

That’s true, it could be racism, it could be both.

God, if Taylor Swift runs for president I’d be stunned. I mean, given the circumstances I’d vote for her, but geez Louise.

The only outcome that might suck even more is if Biden did step down, Kamala steps up, and she still loses. Cuz then it’s like… oh so we’re just gonna be misogynistic as a voter base now, great, thanks fellow Americans. Like, we were ready to vote for a shambling shell of an old man but not a lady with Hillary Clinton energy, okay. 🤦

Well, in the current economy, the statistical indicators that economists rely on are booming. GDP, etc. What folks on the left like us are saying is that those indicators are easily measurable but do not paint an accurate picture of what most Americans are experiencing. It doesn’t feel like a boom out here because, well, it ain’t.

It’s not like we’re sipping champagne, kicking it at the beach, and complaining that the guy next door has a nicer beach. We work just as hard as other generations and get a lot less to show for it.

Acknowledging that is important, but corporate politicians in either party seem like they just don’t want to anything about it.

Still voting for Biden, but yeah, not enthusiastically.