For me it feels important to maintain faith that, deep inside, people are good, or at least are born innocent, and that it’s mainly our institutions, philosophies, and cultural norms that turn us against each other and harm our souls with toxic stuff. And that through seeking local community and connection we can reconnect with the natural tendency towards compassion that exists within us all even as so many of our leaders fail to show those qualities.

There’s a big moment in SOMA that really stuck with me. Not gonna spoil it. Mostly it’s a horror game but it engages with some pretty intense ethical questions and does so in a way that feels very personal.

There’s also a sort of morbid fascination and curiosity that comes from a situation this unique. I definitely agree that of course the sinking refugee ship should have gotten far more help and attention, but I think the “morbid curiosity” element is certainly part of why this got so much attention. The whole situation of paying a fortune for visiting the Titanic in a janky unregulated submersible and then vanishing underwater is…bizarre, and surreal, in a way that captures attention

It does seem like Oceangate advertised in a misleading way, emphasizing claims of safety and compliance with safety standards. There’s also probably an unfortunate bias, of sorts, of “rich and powerful man saying something is safe in a confident and authoritative voice so it must be true”

Yeah i’m in my 30s and still enjoy playing games, nice way to relax at the end of the day.

Related question though: any good Minecraft channels on youtube that aren’t made for children? I’m just starting to get in to minecraft now and it’s been super fun, but the youtube playthroughs I’ve been looking at have all been…seeming to not be catering to an audience my age, to put it politely.

Yep, no point in racing towards life “milestones” that are no longer affordable or attainable for most people. Besides, the idea that these “milestones” are required for happiness is just an arbitrary societal pressure, and I think we all probably know someone who’s raced to check off all the boxes of these “milestones” but is unhappy, maybe because they rushed to marry someone they can’t even really comfortably talk to about serious things in a healthy constructive way, or maybe because they rushed to have kids without seriously thinking about what that commitment meant, or maybe because being a homeowner sucks up every ounce of savings they have so they have no flexibility to save, to travel, to do anything else

I agree with the folks talking about instrumental music, since music with vocals can be more distracting. Classical music and jazz can both be great - pick a composer and chances are there are huge playlists of all their symphonies or piano sonatas or whatever on Youtube. Or a Youtube search for “(jazz artist name here) full album” can get you a full album to listen to. I also like Soundcloud for listening to more “homemade” music by new artists. I ditched Spotify over the Rogan stuff so youtube and soundcloud are my main sources for streaming music these days

I end up gravitating towards favorite games that I play tons of, as well as additional games that I play through once for the experience.

The “core game” I keep coming back to these days has been XCOM 2, which I never really got tired of.

Visually it looks amazing. Love the addition of the “parallel roads” feature too, that’ll be a huge timesaver.

I loved Midnight Suns, but the replayability does suffer because of all the dialogue scenes without easy ways to skip past them. I’m playing a second game now on higher difficulty and still enjoying the combat but it’s a bit annoying to have to skip past all those conversations. If they patch in a New Game+ option that makes it easier to skip some of that stuff, it’ll really improve the replayability aspect IMO. Still I’ll probably do one more campaign with the DLC characters added, I hear some of them are a lot of fun.

After a few years of mostly playing strategy & tactical games, I fired up Minecraft this weekend. I’d never really given it a proper try before, but it’s been refreshing and relaxing. I started on survivor mode but found the enemies kind of annoying, so I switched to peaceful survivor mode and that’s been fun so far. Just enjoying the “wander around and build stuff” atmosphere. Honestly makes me want to play more sandbox-y games after a while of mostly playing more intense stuff.

Is it sad that I wouldn’t be surprised if Spez suddenly rolls back reddit’s restrictions on hate speech, taking after Musk to pander to the alt right? Given that spez has already expressed admiraton for Musk, and seems to have alt right leanings, I wouldn’t be surprised.

yes, social media keeps proving why a profit-driven society really doesn’t have the interests of individuals in mind, companies will just do whatever they can get away with to extract as much money as possible from ordinary people.

Yeah it would have to be mass deletion by people who use the app regularly, which (should) lead to a measurable reduction in traffic and ad revenue, assuming that those people would spend less time on reddit if they didn’t have the app handy on their phones constantly anymore.

I wouldn’t mind as much if half the websites out there didn’t have the trashiest ads I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve got an ad blocker on my desktop but not on my phone. Amazing that supposedly “professional” businesses are filling their sites with sleazy ads that look like they’ll lead you directly to installing a bunch of viruses.

Amazing that he can’t think of a way to make money that doesn’t involve alienating the unpaid people who keep the place running.

I haven’t abandoned Reddit entirely, but I’ll never use the app…downloaded it once a year or two again and deleted it within an hour because it was ugly and confusing. I honestly think maybe the next phase of the protests, for those who still are active on Reddit, should be mass deletion of the app and using only the desktop site/mobile browser version. The API thing was meant to force people onto the app, so mass organizing to delete the app would hit them where it hurts.

yeah, anyone trying any kind of “both sides make good points” argument these days is probably someone whose personal rights are not at stake.

One quote that jumps out: “It’s difficult to say with certainty what the causes are, but Facebook has made no secret about its intention to deprioritize news on its platform and give greater precedence to video content, which by nature results in less clickthrough traffic."

It does feel like my Facebook “algorithm” is constantly trying to push “shorts” on me…annoying little videos clearly meant to imitate, I assume, Youtube Shorts, Tiktok, Instagram short videos, etc…

Broadly speaking, with all that’s happening in the social media world, it feels like some sort of reckoning or change is coming, but where exactly things are heading is hard to say…

I read “Solitary” by Albert Woodfox - it’s his account of spending decades in solitary confinement on shaky charges, partly as retaliation for his getting involved in the Black Panther Party while incarcerated. Definitely an eye-opening read about the US prison system and an inspirational read in some ways, given that he didn’t let his decades in solitary confinement stop him from doing what he could to fight for better conditions in the prison

That’s terrible. Texas can be sweltering in May, let alone June/July/August. Putting lives at stake for profit (again)