Maybe it’s just me, but I’m failing to see how accusing Biden of supporting things that he has explicitly condemns is going to help stop genocide here?

Is that a sourced quote from Biden or the administration, or are you just making up a quote to get mad at?

There’s plenty of room to criticize Biden for his actual actions in the Israel-Palestine conflict. No need to make shit up.

In fact, the only reason I could think to do so would be if you were his political opponent. Like, hypothetically speaking, if I were a conservative on the Internet trying to undermine Biden’s support and also draw attention away from the fact that it’s Republicans in the House doing this, I might (hypothetically) post this article with a purposefully vague headline and a picture of Biden on the Internet. Seems doing something like that would serve GOP goals rather nicely, wouldn’t it?

If you scroll up a bit, someone else was kind enough to post Biden’s quote opposing this piece of legislation.

Why is this story suddenly getting posted to dozens of communities that in seeing in my feed?

It’s one 73 year old tribal elder who complained that today’s youth don’t respect tradition. This same story has been pre-printed for thousands of years.

You can also do the opposite though. The Switch had 0 backwards compatibility. The GameCube, N64, and SNES had 0 backwards compatibility. Hopefully this article is legit.

Earlier I just heard it was a 2nd plus some other minor picks and I thought “oh that seems reasonable. This is a good WR draft class, so if you’re trying to save cap space at WR now is the time”.

But it’s NEXT YEAR’S second? Seems to me like the Texans got a steal. Also gotta love the irony that the pick came from Minnesota.

Lemmy simply hasn’t been enough content. I still use Lemmy (obviously, I’m here) but I also supplement with other places.

For example, I used to enjoy the sub for one of my favorite sports teams. A lot of posts tended to be articles from the same handful of news outlets. Now instead of reading through Reddit I just have that website up and routinely check for new articles.

I use the Google News app occasionally. It usually sucks.

I also use Instagram a lot more. I only reluctantly downloaded it and created an account because my wife and a few friends wanted to send me things. Then I used it more when my band released an EP as a way to promote that. For pure entertainment rather than informational purposes, I usually go to Lemmy first and exhaust what is good quickly, then go to Instagram after.

I know it sucks. I don’t like having an app from Meta on my phone. I know it can become an unhealthy habit. But I also drink and eat junk food, so there you go.

Pokemon Sword and Shield.

Rose is trying to move the country off of fossil fuels and onto sustainable green energy. Somehow Gamefreak manages to portray this as being a terrorist and extremist. How dare he try to move Galar away from coal?

I’ve been meaning to re-watch Korra, but I remember even the first time I watched it being a bit disappointed in the “enlightened centrism” where they are trying to paint every conflict as pacifists vs extremists.

I think it’s similar to looking at BioShock 1 and BioShock Infinite. There’s a lot of writers out there who just use politics and ideology as a setting for the conflict rather than actually being central to their message. It’s simply a solid formula to make a villain: take any sort of stance and push it to violent extremes. Comstock is a religious zealot, Andrew Ryan I don’t think ever even mentions spirituality if I remember. Ken Levine’s message in the two games is not about religion, but extremes.

There are benefits. It makes the villains more nuanced and relatable. It gives the protagonist room for doubt and allows for some of the “good” guys to take on antagonistic roles. But Korra also ends up supporting an oppressive regime, and Booker DeWitt gets shoehorned into fights against the people rebelling against his enemy because… Reasons?

I do both. Jellyfin is way better if you put in the work of having a good folder structure and file names for metadata to scrape.

VLC is good for weird file types or non-video media. If you want to have a stash of reaction gifs in a playlist, I don’t know if JellyFin has any way to do that. Or if you want the tablet to display a random slideshow of pictures, like a diy digital picture frame. Also it’s easier to use if you don’t have good file names and metadata scraping.

Steven Universe

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Control what you can control.

I’m a risk-averse person, so I’ve always favored reducing expenses. Definitely no debt of any kind at that point. Assets in good condition: hopefully 2 relatively new cars (unless my city gets better urbanism over the next few decades), a house, relatively new roof, appliances, etc. No major repairs or renovations expected, just basic maintenance for a solid 20-30 years.

Between my mortgage, student loans, and car payment today that’s about 60% of today’s budget that I won’t have to worry about in retirement. That just leaves food, utilities, clothes, maintenance costs, etc. If things go well I will be able to live in relative luxury (eating fine food at restaurants, traveling, etc).

From there, the performance of my investments and state of my savings (along with my health) will determine my lifestyle. Maybe I end up spending my twilight years in my house catching up on the backlog of books, videogames, and movies I never got around to. I can live with that.

Are the Ravens becoming the next “the refs always favor them” team? Joining the Chiefs to usurp the Pats and Packers?

Also good stuff!

For #2, one piece I forgot to bring up is the urgency. One of the reasons I advocate for having a small collection of basic, cheap tools is that there’s some cases where you don’t have time to get to the hardware store or wait for a delivery. Sometimes you need a wrench NOW to fix a leak. Or there’s a foot of snow on the ground, the roads aren’t allowed, and something goes wrong with your heat or the pipes are in danger of freezing. Or there was the time I had scheduled my new over to be installed and the old one disposed of: I was responsible for disconnecting the gas from the old oven, but didn’t realize until about an hour before that I would need not one but two adjustable wrenches to disconnect it and had to make a mad dash to get another one. I’ve also had enough issues with toilets that I keep at least one flush/fill valve set and a sealing ring on hand (maybe I need to get a water filtering/conditioning system to go easier on my hardware?). Having a way to move water (either a cheap hand pump or the ability to use a shop vac) can also be critical.

A couple other things I keep in mind with tools are:

How often am I going to use it? A lot of experts giving advice, advocating for expensive tools, are craftspeople who use those tools every day. If I only need that adjustable wrench once a year, the $2 one from Harbor Freight is fine.

And specialized tools are different. It’s hard to even try to buy them in advance because you don’t know they exist until something comes up. When I looked into converting my home’s landline phone network into Internet, I had to get a crimping tool. I noticed the old window AC units has a bunch of bent fins, and research led me to special combs for straightening them.

1. This is one of the few things YouTube is still good for. The channel This Old House is usually a good resource for a lot of projects, but you can find tons of other channels that have good info. Some creators are contractors, so their focus will be on doing things efficiently at scale and might not be as relevant to you, but there’s still good information to be found.

2. One of the lessons I learned getting an Accounting degree is that everything around you is constantly degrading. Every object has a limited number of uses, and we can only take guesses at what that number will be. Every time you open or close a door, you are putting wear on the wood of the door and frame, the hinges, and the latching mechanism. Every time you open or close a tap you are putting wear on a valve. Every rain drop that hits the roof is trying to erode your shingles, work it’s way into the sealant around fasteners, damage your gutters and downspouts, and erode your land and foundation. So try to be gentle on what you can and keep up on preventative maintenance when you can.

To start off with, you take care of emergencies. Things that will cascade into more damage to your property or health if not addressed. Sewer line backing up and flooding your basement? Emergency. Water leaks in the roof? Emergency. Hot Water tank leaking? Well, the leak is an emergency, but a lack of hot water probably isn’t. If you’re strapped for cash, you should be able to turn some valves to disconnect it and live with cold water until you can afford to fix it properly. But if you’re somewhere cold in winter, that could put those pipes in danger of freezing. (In case you couldn’t tell, water causes trouble everywhere it goes)

Without knowing the details of your financial situation, I’m going to assume you’re like most new homeowners. Young, probably just starting to get financially established enough to break the rent cycle. Maybe some other car or student loan debt you’re trying to pay off. Expecting to advance your career and make more money in the coming years. Assuming your income keeps up with inflation and your interest rate on your mortgage is fixed, from now on your housing costs as a percentage of your income will most likely go down.

So you’ll probably have to put things off for the first few years. You’ll need a couple of years with mild and extreme summers and winters to get a feel for how much your utilities cost. Try to keep an emergency fund (credit cards can work in a pinch, but they cost you long-term). Some problems might need temporary, cheap solutions. The general financial wisdom most old people gave me was “buy cheap, but twice”, but sometimes you just need to “waste” $50 on something janky to last a couple years until you can afford the $5,000 proper renovation. You’ll slowly transition from being reactive to proactive over time. First set aside money for an emergency fund. Once you have a couple grand, start setting aside some for cosmetic stuff like flooring and paint (it’s less important objectively, but living in a house with peeling paint and stained carpet can be bad for your mental health). You probably want ~$10k in an emergency fund eventually (in today’s dollars), but don’t feel too much pressure to get there immediately. And don’t be afraid to use that money for emergencies either: that’s what it’s for.

Identify any big, expensive, non-urgent projects: how much will the cost and when will they become urgent? You’ll need a roof every 25-50 years depending on the kind of roof and where you live. In today’s dollars in the US you’re looking at the ballpark of $10-$20k. You will probably be able to finance part of it if you need to.

3. You can’t control what the previous owner did or did not do, the corners that a builder cut, or the flaws in the architect’s designs. If there’s something serious that was legally required to be disclosed to you and was not, you could consult a lawyer to see if you have any recourse against the seller.

You are going to be making a lot of your own repairs and decisions restricted by your budget, equipment, and skills. 10 years from now you might find you’re cursing your past self just as much as you’re cursing the previous owner now. Either way, there isn’t much to be gained from getting upset over what ‘the last guy’ did. All you can do is try to be nicer to ‘the next guy’, who may or may not be you.

4. Just some general advice. You’ll probably hear other advice recommending that you do not buy cheap tools, but to wait and buy nice, expensive tools as you find you need them. I strongly disagree. If you don’t already have screwdrivers, wrenches, sockets, a measuring tape, hammer, etc those cheap kits can be great. Sometimes it’s nice to have tools you don’t care about for dirty jobs or loaning to a neighbor. I don’t want to use the same screwdriver I would use on my guitar or computer on a sewage pipe or my car, for example.

Also keep records. Put together a binder with receipts, warranty cards, etc. If something has a 30 year warranty you need a good resource for how to claim that 25 years from now. And it’s a great thing to hand off to the next owner. What year was this roof installed? What was the hex code and brand of paint on the trim in the living room? Is there lead paint that is currently sealed behind newer paint? Did you upgrade the Ethernet to cat6? Does the basement flood once every 200 years, once every 20 years, or once every 2 years? Think of all the stuff you wish the previous owner would have told you and start writing it down for the next person. A house shoukd last a few hundred years, and I would argue that the quality of records should be a factor in buying/selling.

Ah damn, thanks for the correction. It seems like every few years the industry changes.

Heck even Patreon was a good way to support artists for a while, but it seems like they might be starting to succumb to the enshittification of venture capital. Bandcamp has been sold twice in the last 2 years.

If you want artists to get paid, you need to pay them more directly.

The highest margin for most is probably merch purchased at venues, including physical media. After that it’s probably the merch store on the artist’s website. They make money off of ticket sales for shows too, but there’s a lot of middle-men and actual costs to shows so there’s a wide variance in profit margin. Even local acts at bars: sometimes it’s a pay-to-play scheme where the band could be losing money, sometimes they’re making a few hundred bucks for a night.

Streaming on Spotify or an ad-sponsored platform like YouTube is going to give small fractions of a penny per-stream to the artist. There’s plenty of artists out there who have opened their books and shown they make more from releasing music as pay-what-you-want than from Spotify.

Can confirm: I’ve been loving my Xperia since I got it a few months ago.

The other con you didn’t mention is availability. I’m in the Eastern US, drove around to several different stores and couldn’t find anywhere that carried it. Eventually had to order online and have it shipped, which I normally don’t like to do for something this expensive.

Someone knows how to use translation software. impressive.

I still don’t believe you’re from Germany because:

1. Most roads are not autobahns. Implying you aren’t familiar with speed limits as a German is akin to implying an Italian wouldn’t be familiar with level floors.

2. The autobahns themselves are only limitless in rural areas, and even then a lot of vehicle types are still subject to limits.

The only thing I see indicating you’re actually German is your sense of humor.