20 years ago the helplessness was quaint, almost cute. Going to visit my grandparents when I was in middle school was almost like traveling back in time. No Internet, no videogame consoles. It was perfectly fine because they were in their 70’s and the Internet was still either a novelty or a convenience. They never bothered to learn because they thought they would be dead before they would need to.

Well, now they’re in their early 90’s. All their friends have been dead for at least a decade and my grandpa is almost completely blind. I would love to set him up with some lovely accessible devices to let him listen to music and audiobooks, maybe get him into podcasts. But it would be an incredible hurdle just to get him to agree to it. Not to mention all of their medical appointments where my mom has to help them with their online profiles. So many things you used to buy at the store you now have to go online for.

They managed to adapt just fine to telephones and television working out. At a certain point they just said “eh whatever, I’ll be dead before I need to learn this” and then went ahead and lived too long. I hope I never get like that, but at the same time I actively refuse to use new technologies that I’m opposed to. I don’t use AI, I don’t keep my credit cards on my phone, I don’t have a smart lock or thermostat in my home.

I would disagree with this quite strongly. Most brands have several different tiers of products. Often, especially for the budget-level options like Squiers, the manufacturing is outsourced. For example, my first electric guitar was from Cort, a South Korean company whose main business at the time was doing contract manufacturing for Ibanez, Squier, PRS, and G&L, Kramer, Honer, and more. Literally the same wood and parts, just with slightly different shapes and branding.

The highest-end, elitist guitars would be small shops that focus on handmade custom work. Stuff like Dunable or what PRS used to be. Jackson is now owned by Fender, but it used to be a more premium brand. Custom shop stuff is always going to be premium regardless of brand- Schecter, Ibanez, Dean, Gibson, Fender, doesn’t matter.

To compare this to OP’s prompt, it would be like if Hershey did custom high-quality chocolate options, also sold good quality chocolate, and also sold a decent value option in grocery stores, and also sold the plastic brown goop they sell today as a budget option.

The message should have been “take accusations seriously” rather than “believe women”.

Justice can be messy and unsatisfying. The “me too” movement highlighted a lot of patriarchal flaws in the current justice system, but it also sought to create its own separate “cultural justice” system even more flawed in the other direction. Believing every accusation is how we ended up with so many innocent black teenaged boys getting lynched in the south.

We will probably never know the real numbers- how many sexual assault are unreported, or how many sexual assault accusations are false (or perhaps target the wrong person). But there is a very good reason that the justice system applies “innocent until proven guilty”.

For breakfast I like egg cups. Take a muffin tin, spritz with cooking spray, and line each depression with a slice of ham, basically acting like a cupcake wrapper would. Crack an egg in each one. Add some salt, other seasonings, cheese, veggies, whatever else. Bake at 350F, usually for 20-30 minutes but I would recommend checking every 10 to start. Put them in a container and refrigerated for a week or two. Every morning I take 1 or 2 out, microwave them for 30-40 seconds, and put some hot sauce or ranch on them.

For lunch: protein smoothie. Orange juice, vanilla protein powder, peanut butter, ice. Optionally, a banana. I typically make one batch real quick and split it between my wife and I for lunch. Basically add them in and blend until smooth, and I would recommend starting with 1 serving of each basically (8oz OJ, 1 scoop protein, 2tbsp peanut butter, and as much ice as you need for texture). It’s like an orange creamsicle- the peanut butter adds a lot of texture but not a ton of peanut flavor that might be weird with orange.

My wife and I are on a low-carb diet, so we use low-sugar OJ and only 4oz. 2 scoops of low-cabe whey protein. Considering switching from peanut to almond butter, or just a bit of peanut oil instead.

For dinner is the real serious meal prep: chicken breast/tenders and vegetables. Put 5lbs of chicken in a casserole dish. Add whatever seasonings you like: pickled jalapeno, soy sauce, rosemary + thyme, Dijon mustard, ranch seasoning, etc. Chicken is an incredible canvas for pretty much any seasoning across the world. Bake at 350F for… At least an hour, probably more like 90 minutes. Get some decent re-usable sectioned containers (microwave + freezer safe required, dishwasher safe is required for me personally too). If you have whole breasts you might want to cut them into portions before cooking (halves or thirds usually. You could cut it into bite-sized pieces if you’re ambitious). Or you could cut after cooking, just let it cool off a bit first.

For sides, I like frozen bags of broccoli and cauliflower. Carrots, squash, and peas are good when I’m less concerned about carbs. Some things are better fresh, like mushrooms (with soy sauce), cucumbers (with soy sauce), or other local seasonal stuff. Brussel sprouts are good frozen, better fresh. Artichoke hearts are great. Stuff like onions and bell peppers can be good additions, but j typically need them to be mixed either with each other or something else to work.

The idea is you can put all those containers in a freezer and then microwave them for roughly 3-5 minutes depending on how much is in them. We have a dedicated freezer in our basement for this. It’s nice that my wife and I can independently choose whatever flavor we are in the mood for that night.

When the price of chicken has been really high, it’s easy enough to switch to another meat. Sausages are good. Pork loin cut into medallions.

All our friends have so many conflicting diets and dietary restrictions that are a certain point we are better off having sinners that are Being Your Own Meal, so those frozen dinners are really nice.

To make these vegetarian… If eggs are alright then you could probably remove the ham from the egg cups, but the egg might stick to the muffin pan. Maybe you could find some other sort of liner. My mom uses canned crescent roll dough in a similar way to make miniature quiches, so maybe something like that would work?

Protein smoothie does not require any animal products. Could be vegan pretty easily as long as you check the ingredients. The big issue is cost, especially for protein powder.

Frozen dinners might be trickier to make vegetarian just because I’m not sure what protein sources would do well frozen and microwaved. Maybe tofu? Or noodles?

Here are some things that I’m not eating on my current diet, but are great for saving money.

Oatmeal for breakfast (make steel-cut oats in a slow cooker,you can add milk, egg, peanut butter, maple syrup, brown sugar, butter, salt, spices, frozen or fresh fruit, protein powder, whatever).

Chilli. If you want ground meat, brown it and season it first (if you aren’t familiar with seasonings, start by grabbing a chilli powder mix from the store, look at the ingredients, then buy those things and experiment with proportions). Then add it to a slow cooker. Add at least 1 can of tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, and beans (I like black beans, but kidney is good too). Add more tomatoes and/or beans, or if you really want to save money add rice (might need a bit of water too). Cook on low- it’ll probably be ready after 4 hours but will be fine for 8 hours. From there you can dip tortilla chips in it, make some cornbread, pour over rice, make sandwiches like Sloppy Joes, etc.

Rice, bread, noodles, and potatoes are all great cheap fillers.

Honestly I think the bigger reason is that most games are more suited to a miniseries or full TV show.

Also Use Boll “retired” in 2016, and while he has still done some film work since, he has stopped cranking out bad videogame movies.

Recent stuff like Minecraft, Uncharted, Gran Turismo were “meh” instead of “terrible”. TV shows like Arcane, Cyberpunk Edge Runners, Castlevania, Fallout, and The Last of Us have been pretty well received. Heck, the first season of the Witcher was really good. The Mario movie did well enough that they made a sequel, and are making a Zelda movie.

Not to mention other cross-media franchises. Marvel has been gigantic. D&D has had several videogames and movies over the years of varying quality. Warhammer is getting a TV show. Pokemon has been a gigantic mess of good, bad, and mediocre media of all kinds. Star Wars too.

Also weird that this isn’t an article. It’s not news or an academic study. Only a link to a web page from the Australian government saying “smoking is bad”. It doesn’t even clarify that they are talking about tobacco, unless you look at the directory and see this is under “tobaccofacts”.

Also to be clear I agree with the message, but I also agree with you that this is an odd post.

Find positive things instead. Focus on special interests.

I used to follow a sports team, so I would go visit that subreddit and a handful of dedicated fan sites. I would spend hours researching stats and getting into arguments with people. Looking at the college scene and mock drafts, looking at what contracts are expiring over the next couple seasons, making predictions. The tram got a bit problematic to root for though. I tried to get into other sports but just couldn’t find the juice.

Even off of devices, if I ever found myself getting into a downward thought spiral one of the ways I would stop is just naming all of the players on the roster, by position. Or naming all of their draft picks by round each year for the past few years.

Also videogames. Pkmnquiz.com is a tab that simply always stays open on my phone. I’m slowly getting to the point where I can list all of Gen 1 in dex order, and I can usually get most of gen’s 2 and 5 (out of order) without any help. One day I hope to be able to get all generations in order.

It could be considering possibilities for Zelda timelines or naming all of the Civ 6 leaders. Ranking all the Ratchet and Clank games by how much I enjoyed them. Thinking of new builds in an RPG. Listing all the characters in a book.

Now, if we are talking about how to use a smartphone productively, I’ve found Nebula really helped me. A lot of creators I already enjoyed were on there, and I was able to find more that I hadn’t heard about that are pretty cool too. The hard part is still managing how much doom-related content I watch, but I find it’s easier to choose not to watch a 30 minute video essay on things that are dark and terrible than it is to scroll past dozens of articles or short-form videos.

Also at points in the shows production he was 39 years old and dating a 17 year old.

You forgot divide 4-panel comics. Bonus points if Loss is hidden inside somewhere!

I swear every time I start looking into a romhack that claims to just be a mostly vanilla QoL update they always add in a bunch of random stuff to “fix” the difficulty.

Like, yes I am aware the games are incredibly easy. They’re for children. I originally played most of them as children. Just let me get high and stomp all through FRLG with a perfect-IV Feraligatr and the Gen 4 physical-special split. If I wanted to do Nuzzlockes I would… Do Nuzzlockes. If I wanted a game with difficult gym leaders and level caps, I would go play one of the thousands of romhacks that have that.

While I know the big takeaway in the comments here is “it’s easy to do when you don’t have a job”, it’s also worth highlighting the various options to spend time in general and how being in prison changes that decision making process.

I know a lot of people who complain. About not having money, not being in shape, not having the time to do what they want, always feeling anxious and depressed. And I don’t mean to undermine that- material conditions can be very real, you cannot simply budget your way out of poverty, and mental health is a real issue to be treated professionally.

But I do think there is also room to reflect on our habits, decisions, and environment. Right now I could be working out or reading a book, and instead I’m on Lemmy looking at memes and commenting. How many hours have I wasted in the past on social media? How many hours have I wasted watching video essays on things I can’t remember? How many hours did I waste watching all of the Marvel movies and TV shows through Endgame because my wife’s friend was insistent we HAVE to watch them all and they’re great (spoiler: they were all pretty much soulless forulaic corporate cash grabs).

How much time and money do we spend going to bars and restaurants? How much time spent sitting in cars or buses or trains or planes? How much time with my face in some mobile game to kill time?

I don’t bring these up to say none of us should ever do those things, but I think a lot of people need to look at their priorities. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed the people around me who seem the most dissatisfied with their personal lives are also the ones who never make time to get to “lower” priorities. Sometimes it’s the sheer financial truth that people need to work several jobs and basically dedicate their entire lives to chasing income. But other times people are trying to maintain too many relationships. Too many friends and friend groups, not enough time spent on maintaining or improving their self. It’s a balance everyone needs to find, but I feel like social media (especially for-profit platforms) has driven a lot of people to be dependent on the constant stimulation and validation that comes from constant connection to several other people.

It’s really gross to me how people misrepresent taxes so often.

And especially people who I KNOW aren’t complaining about OASDI and Medicare, other than perhaps they need MORE funding. Yet they include those when they toss out random numbers like “25%”.

The tax rates are defined and published. These aren’t fuzzy numbers we can play with, like survey results or experimental measurements or estimates. It’s literally just math and yet people refuse to do it.

I’m really trying to avoid using for-profit 3rd parties. CURRENTLY I could sign up as a free user and probably be fine. But Tailscale could wake up any day and decide to start charging, or put restrictions on the free tier that would force me to a paid tier.

Part of the reason I bought a Blu-Ray drive, some big HDD’s, and started collecting discs in the first place was to take back control from tech companies. It’s why I chose Jellyfin over Plex. Going with Tailscale would defeat the principal.

I would probably be this guy if I ever got around to doing the research into how to make my Jellyfin available over the internet safely.

The article was updated in 2023 with the most recent data.

Almost all of the sales of videogames are front-loaded. Most at launch (or at the launch of a re-release), and then it falls off hard over a couple of years. Morrowind came out in 2002. It’s incredible that Bethesda even released any sales data still by 2010. The units sold since then would be immaterial to the conversation.

I don’t think Brady was as heavily involved in the cheating. I weigh Spygate much more heavily than deflate gate, and that seemed much more like something driven by a front office than players. The players may have known, may have even been shown the tapes, but I highly doubt Brady was actually in the stands with a camera at any point, and I also doubt he had the authority to command people to do it on his behalf (maybe later in his career, but not then).

Deflategate was cheating, but it seems such a smaller and more minor violation that just got blown up because it happened to be Brady and Belichik. If any other QB did that they might get a 1-gane suspension, max.

If Brady was someone a mythical cheating mastermind, it would have been way harder to translate that to a new team. Different coaches, trainers, equipment personnel, security guards, janitors, etc.

Belichik needed both Brady and cheating to win. Or at least someone better than Mac Jones. Bill Belichik as the GM was pretty terrible.

Morrowind only sold ~4 million units. I think you’re overestimating how big the fan base is. The fan base is loyal, opinionated, and vocal, but small.

Oh yeah I never accused it of being a good deal. But I also try to avoid microtransactions as much as possible in general. I would say to justify $30 you need to add significant new maps, enemies, maybe even some new systems to justify something that costs almost half the price of a new AAA game. Or if it is just cosmetics, charge in the $1-$5 range for those.

You can run LineageOS with a specific AndroidTV version on a Raspberry Pi.

It largely depends on how you want to control it. If you’re fine with using a mouse and keyboard, even some sort of tiny little Bluetooth combo that uses a track pad or gyro mouse, then that opens up tons of Linux distros.

There are also Linux distros like Ubuntu for TV that can work with a remote.

Currently I have a Shield, but when the day comes to replace it I’ll probably use a mini-PC and I expect to be using SteamOS at that point, mostly using a controller, as long as I can find a good way to add streaming apps to my steam library on it.

It’s almost as if the economies and balance of single-player games are different from MMO’s.