If you want to pay for audiobooks, Libro.FM is a DRM free alternative that allows you to easily download your books without any issues that Libation solves for. It also supports local bookstores in your community while not giving more to Amazon. Only a handful of books aren’t available on Libro but it’s been a seamless transition for us. It’s only going to be difficult if you’re one of those folks who returns/refunds audible credits regularly as it’s not easy to do with Libro.

I might have just turned to dust and blown away in the wind reading this!

Seriously though, it's nice how just simple they are. Even times I've fired up my PS3 it's got just a little bit of friction in ways you don't expect there to be. The trade off for all that simplicity though is you get what's on the disc/cartridge and that is it. No patches, no DLC or expansions, and you lose/break/give away that disc you're out of luck. It's weird even now feeling like those games could be "lesser versions" because they can't be updated in any way, but as a kid at the time that wasn't even an expectation.

Probably the hardest thing at this point is remembering you need that ADC to connect it to a modern TV!

That's the most infuriating part. You pay for it no matter what. You're gambling that you won't get sick and you can keep yourself healthy. But the thing this always ignores is the human body ALWAYS breaks down over time. We all need healthcare at some point, whether it's for a surprise tumor, a pregnancy, or just getting old. You can do everything right and at some point you will still need to engage the system, either for yourself or for a loved one. You're still going to pay for it.

But heaven forbid you pay for it out of your (shudder) taxes.

Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line.

It's reductive, but look at the Christian Right and Trump. Trump is nowhere close to the picture of a Christian. It's astounding he can safely cross the threshold of a church. But he promises to make sure abortion is illegal and men can't pretend to be women to steal kids, so they vote for him. Replace the abortion issue with guns and you get another set of voters who will vote Republican regardless of what they might personally feel.

Meanwhile and to your point on the left, each candidate's worst flaws are held as some kind of uncrossable line by people who are terminally online (which isn't helpful) and the Democratic Party does what they can to feed this and make sure they don't have to enact meaningful change. They just want to maintain the status quo but they get to do it with a pride flag waving behind them. If the Party establishment would just stop putting a thumb on the scale (not just against Bernie but ANYONE remotely progressive/left of the neoliberal center) and let the primary process shake out the most popular candidate, they might actually find themselves winning elections.

This is upsetting since Tesla was going to adopt the CCS standard at their charging stations, since as far as I understand it, they were the only manufacturer with an unusual charging plug. Most everyone else was using CCS.

This announcement now means we're farther away from a standard charging port, with Tesla, Ford, GM, and now Rivian adopting one set and others adopting another at the moment. I don't care which one "wins" in the end or which is better, just pick one and be done with it.

Hmm...440 hours on Steam...probably another 125 on the Switch...

I love this game. It's so cozy and comfortable. I found SDV after my divorce just when it had originally released and I was drawn into the cute world and how much character oozes from every corner. Every person you meet has something going on or you can just be a weird hermit building out your farm in peace. There's enough of a story to propel you forward but never overbearing and it gets out of the way when it's "done".

As time has gone on from my first playthrough, I'll typically dive back in when the itch strikes or a new content update comes along. The last few playthroughs I've done a lot to mod the game and introduce new things into the world to discover, some of which just feels indistinguishable from the official content and others that just help reduce barriers that I want to skip over (like fishing).

Stardew Valley is a game I will likely always go back to. I'm sure it will eventually eclipse my current most played game (Team Fortress 2 @ ~800 hours). I've tried other games like it and while they're fun, none seem to have the staying power that Stardew has over me. While I will absolutely check out his next game, I'm hoping Stardew Valley never really stops being updated over the years.

Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod - https://techpod.content.town/

Brad Shoemaker of Gamespot/GiantBomb/Nextlander and Will Smith of Tested.com and several other things (but not THAT Will Smith) both dive into tech issues and are more to the left. They also have a separate FOSS Pod.

I mean, words could be said about Kyrsten Sinema but I think this is far more appropriate of a summary of her time as a politician...

Link because the embed didn't work

I think term limits really depends. I get why it makes sense in the abstract and I would love to see it implemented but I've stopped really advocating for it as a long term fix. It just moves the "institutional knowledge" about how Congress works into the hands of lobbyists instead of Congress. The revolving door just gets worse. It would have to be something like term limits + campaign finance reform to make a meaningful impact. That's a noble goal but we've needed campaign finance reform for a while and no one seems to want to address it.

Age limits seems to be a good balance of making an individual Congress critter's term long enough to still have some sway/power/authority (instead of lobbyists) while making sure they don't blue screen on us during a press conference. Given such high profile issues with McConnell and Feinstein I'll be a little optimistic in hoping for some change.

100%. And going down that path you can start to enter into the whole "OK, so all companies are bad or do bad things, but I also need to be a functioning member of society."

I can hate what Shell/Marathon/BP are doing to the environment but I also need to make sure my car gets me to work. Google or Apple can enact terrible policies I disagree with but generally speaking I have to deal with them to have a cell phone. Easier when we're discussing a piece of artwork (not a core need in life) but it's where my comment about a system that incentivizes "bad people" really came from.

So I think my moral philosophy is actually closest to show The Good Place now that I see it written out!

I think original Sims made the biggest impact on me since I probably played that one the most. Our PC couldn't handle The Sims 2 when it came out, and I only tangentially tried 3 and 4. Mostly enough to build a cool house and spend a few days with the Sims I created. Sims 1 I probably poured a ton of hours into it.

One thing I did discover and never fully completed in the later games was trying to do some sort of haunted house family. As in, have someone move in and intentionally die in a way that created a new color of ghost. Get all of the different ghost colors in one house/lot then move a normal family in. I don't think it really mattered in any way, I just loved the idea of a regular family cohabitating with a rainbow of ghosts.

There's something both so unique and also so simple to the Sims that I'm surprised it's taken this long for folks to try and "go for it" the way Cities:Skylines went for Sim City. Like, you have to craft interesting stories within the game but you don't need to wholecloth invent a galactic empire/fantasy world/etc...you can broadly look at our world and copy/paste for inspiration. With Paralives and Life By You "coming soon" in some fashion, there's going to be some interesting competition here.

The best part of it too was for Wi-Fi calling, if it was off, couldn't be turned on since it relied on AT&T's website/capabilities to approve and authenticate. That was at least my experience as well as my family's.

So if you hadn't already enabled it before the outage, you literally couldn't turn it on.

Skimming through my Steam library, here are the games that I'd call memorable/left an imprint for me in the last year.

• Neon White - Score attack/leaderboard chasing is NOT my genre at all, but the game felt so good to get into a flow state and solve the puzzle, chasing that last Ace medal timing. There are more things I could have gone and chased, but getting all Ace medals, gifts and finishing the story was sufficient for me. I'd be curious to figure out if playing again, almost a year later, if I could do any of the later levels!

• Security Booth: Director's Cut - A very short experience but such a fascinating and creepy one. You're asked to man a security booth and let in or reject cars based on a list of license plates. Things get weird and that's all I really want to say. This is also a game that feels like it was originally released on a PS1.

• The Case of the Golden Idol - Both Outer Wilds and Return of the Obra Dinn are some of my favorites of all time , so when I heard that Golden Idol was like both of them together I was extremely curious. It's more Obra Dinn than Outer Wilds, but the core mystery in each level is so interesting to uncover. Nothing ever really comes out and says "So this is what happened" in a cutscene, but you read a letter in one room, maybe a letter in another, then you're checking between them for the dates and trying to figure out what happened when. I felt so smart when a puzzle came together and when I saw/solved one of the big mysteries before they basically tell you the answer. So so so much fun and I need to get into the DLC.

• Marvel's Spider Man and Miles Morales - I played the first Spider Man on Sony's streaming service a couple years ago, so I knew all the story beats already. That didn't stop the emotional impact from STILL hitting me from some of the final villain's speech to Peter. I had also never played Miles Morales, so it was great to put them both back to back. The story can feel very routine/by the numbers but I almost didn't care because I was having so much fun swinging through New York. Cannot wait for Spider Man 2.

It was nice to get an over-the-air update to the microchips they put in my Covid vaccine at least!

Man, there really was rampant voter and electoral fraud!

It's astounding how much the Right projects onto their political enemies the stuff they're already attempting. They can't not tell on themselves.

Interestingly, I feel like I've found more "new" music using Spotify's Release Radar playlist instead of their Discover Weekly playlist. I'll typically (and aggressively) mark things as like/don't like in those playlists and add what I like to my own "Testing" playlist to see what sticks to me. Release Radar tends to have more likes than Discover Weekly does, despite what the two are named, and it's providing new artists on top of existing ones I'm already a fan of.

That's usually good enough for me, though the occasional time I'm listening to the radio or a song comes on over the speakers when I'm out and about gets a quick Shazam from me to know what it was.

Sexting only in that case!

First off, the kagi news is a bummer. I've really liked it and picked up a subscription mostly because of some buzz I saw around here, but seeing this news is a shame and setting up some red flags in my mind.

But to answer your question, I think I personally have a couple ways I approach this...

1. If the evidence someone is transphobic, racist, etc...is from a long time ago (eg someone is digging up ancient tweets to prove someone is some sort of "-ist" today), I tend to give them more grace because people should be allowed to change. I know I didn't have great views on some of this stuff when I was younger and it's easy to forget these celebrities/people in power are fallible human beings. I'll take their response to unearthing these views as a sign of whether or not they're worth supporting going forward. If they're regretful and seem like they're trying to do better, I'm good. The kagi creator seems to not pass this standard for me.

2. If it's something I want to use/consume and it could impact more than just the individual. JK Rowling is a good example of this. I'd struggle to want to buy any of her books again because I see a clearer line of sight from my purchase to her pocket. But something like Hogwarts Legacy, which I knew I would enjoy and my wife would love, and is made by many people with a passion for her world, I'm OK with it. The line to Rowling is a lot blurrier and impacts people who don't have a say in what project(s) they work on.

It's also easier to ignore or skip smaller scale things like an indie game from a deplorable developer vs. the next Marvel/HP/insert your beloved franchise game from someone equally deplorable. None of this is ever perfect and time and attention are finite resources for all of us. If Harry Potter is how you need to unwind because it's your favorite thing, more power to you. It's not my job nor anyone else's to police the things you like or make you feel bad for liking them.

We should all do our best to try and support good people in a system that incentivizes bad people and give ourselves some grace when we (seemingly inevitably these days) find out those people were actually scum.

And if you listen at 1.5x speed, does that just burn your 15h faster or can you fit in more time?

It's an interesting idea, but I think the only way I'd use it is a "try before you buy" and go out to Libro to make the purchase. At least that's the only way I could realistically see using 15h/month.

I don't think I played any truly bad games, but I do have a list of games that I bounced off of for one reason or another. Maybe I ran out of steam to play them, maybe life got in the way and I couldn't come back to it, or I just didn't want to "git gud" with the limited time I have. I basically deemed them not worth my time when I did manage to sink a ton of hours into Spider-Man, Cyberpunk, and Talos Principle.

So that abandoned graveyard consists of...

• Tunic - I hit a wall at one of the bosses and just couldn't progress. Ran out of juice unfortunately.
• Mr. Sun's Hatbox - Such a weird quirky game. Didn't get close to beating it but I got enough out of it and called it quits.
• Hunt: Showdown - This one was a bummer. It's been on my "need to try" list. I tried it, solo, and died right away. I could tell it was one of those games that needed a time investment to make it work and I just don't have it in me.
• Cult of the Lamb - Something about the roguelike aspect of it didn't mesh with me, which is weird because I feel like that's really become a genre I like.
• Overwatch 2 - I played poorly as Lifeweaver, was griefed in chat, and quit :)

Anyone have good advice for making friends in one’s thirties? Online or IRL?

Assuming you're cool with meeting up with strangers in person, meetup.com was a good way to find people of like minded hobbies (like board games). You'll get a wide range of folks depending on the group itself but it can be helpful if you're trying to "refill" your own social needs at least in the beginning and hopefully make some friends as a result. Helped me out of a rut when I found myself alone with no friends far from home!

I thought this article from Vox did a good job laying out how it could fall in Trump's favor.

Taking Trump out of the equation for a moment, I do find resonance with the argument that a state shouldn't be able to disqualify someone from a national election and that a decision like that should sit at the federal level. I'll also echo circularfish in that I don't trust Republican states to fairly apply this standard. It seems like something Democrat-controlled states might do because they believe in rules/institutions so they'll only do it when pressured, if even then. Republican-controlled states will do to score points on Fox/OAN against anyone from Joe Manchin and leftwards on the political spectrum.

Honestly, my biggest use case is listening on the phone and listening on my PC while at work. The two sync together extremely well and it's pretty seamless. No idea if Apple Podcasts can do that (or plays that nicely on a Mac) but that's my biggest use case for their sync capabilities.

But for a beautiful moment...

I read this article earlier in the week about how Biden's policy on the Israel-Gaza war may hand the election to Trump, and the last sentence has really stuck with me.

The president’s aides have reportedly been “keeping him in a bubble” regarding voters’ unhappiness with his Israel-Gaza policy. If this Michigan result isn’t what bursts it, then they need to step in and do it themselves.

While phrased in the context of this specific policy, it's this political bubble in Washington DC that needs to pop. I'm astonished at how close this election is. We all know what Trump's about. We've seen this before. Joe Biden cannot seem to get out of the way by either stepping down or pretending to be the communist antifa leader the right will paint him as anyway to securing a victory for anyone NOT Trump. Instead he's content to let us slide into a second Trump Presidency.

I have believed since 2015/2016 that literally anyone else against Hillary or anyone else against Trump would have won in a landslide. No one really liked the candidates. Trump appealed to voters because he promised to go to Washington and stick a thumb in the eye of the establishment. It wasn't Russian interference. The populist message has always done so well regardless of political party because we all see how broken the system is and candidates like Obama, Sanders, and even Trump capitalize on that message to win hearts and minds. Whether or not they actually follow through is secondary (sadly). At this point no one buys that Joe Biden is a "man of the people" regardless of how many Amtrak trains he rides.

But then we're left with even comments here arguing "Trump would be worse" with the implication being "Biden is bad, Trump would be worse". And I get it. This well and truly sucks that it looks like we're going to have two of the oldest Presidential candidates fighting it out yet again from the major parties. I'm fortunate enough to live somewhere that won't ever go for Trump, so I can vote my conscience instead of having to pick the least bad option. Others can't make that call though.

All that to say it's all frankly exhausting and terrible. I think everyone has to decide for themselves how existential of a threat Trump is and vote accordingly. I'm open to the argument that Democrats at least have some amount of shame and can bow to pressure. The conflict in Israel-Gaza is going to be a real test of how they pivot and actually meet the voters where they are.

I thought this was a really interesting dive into some of the problems plaguing Marvel, how Covid derailed things, and the pursuit of money overall. Like, the idea that a film makes less than half a billion dollars is a failure? Yowza.

The sprawl is also real and I think it crystalized some of my own feelings about watching Marvel content more on the spectrum of being closer but not entirely on the side of obligation vs. excitement. It all feels aimless right now. Individual arcs are interesting, but Avengers: Endgame was four years ago.

For some context with the Infinity Saga...

• Phase One: 2008 to 2012 (four years), culminating in an Avengers movie across six movies total.
• Phase Two, 2013 to 2015 (three years), with an Avengers movie basically at the end (and Ant-Man two months later) across six movies.
• Phase Three, 2016 to 2019 (three years), across 11 movies and ended with two Avengers movies and a post-script with Spider-Man. So our average is about six movies to one Avengers.

And with the Multiverse Saga...

• Phase Four: 2021 to 2022 (two years). across seven movies and eight seasons of television, ended by Black Panther 2.
• Phase Five: 2023, with currently two movies and two seasons of television (one of which is a Season 2), with one more movie and a second season of What If coming before the end of the year.

Just the movies alone make that ten movies in 2-3 years with no Avengers team-up to tie everyone together.

The shocking thing to me as I confirmed dates/counts on Wikipedia is that I forgot we're in "Phase Five". I have all these individually good stories but there's no buzz about a "big" team-up movie anymore. Heroes are just doing their thing and stopping world-ending events on their own or with minimal assistance.

Maybe they'll prove everyone wrong about this strategy when they do another Avengers movie in two years after another pile of movies but it feels more like they're trying to force another Endgame "Assemble" with characters we're not as connected to when the time comes.

There’s also a plug-in for Decky that will display protondb’s compatibility/rating on a games page. Very helpful for a quick glance!

Piggybacking on the awesome response you have above here...

I'm classic ol' middle management for someone just like yourself. My team is comprised of individuals where they're in their first IT job and/or first professional job. A lot of my job when they come onto my team is to make sure they have the support they need via coaching from my end or connecting them to the right people to help them answer when I can't. I try to keep the communication line open and stress that they can ask ANY question/there's no such thing as a stupid question/etc...because everyone has to learn somewhere sometime regardless of seniority.

You need help defining scope and objectives basically to try and right the ship for the customer. If your firm can't provide you the right support, specifically your direct manager talking to the customer to pull this info out of them, you can try to broach this with the customer's Project Manager. Let me tell you though that bringing this to the PM is probably going to be an uncomfortable conversation. They're likely to then going to question what you've been doing this entire time and you'll lose some trust with them in the short term. Based on what you wrote here about breaking down as a result of this pressure, a hail mary pass might be the right answer and just get the lack of progress out there. Then you can hopefully get some structure/plan/goals to build up going forward.

Your manager really SHOULD be the one handling this on your behalf and a good manager can probably pull the requirements out of them w/o making it super obvious that you've basically been spinning your wheels. If you feel like your manager can't/won't provide that support, bringing it to the PM might force their hand to get involved.

Echoing a lot of other comments here, find something new. Job hunt on the side. It sounds like you're not going to get the support you actually need so start working on an exit strategy. Having been in your shoes at one point, this reads very much to me like one of those things you'll learn from and know what questions to ask next time because of how strongly this has impacted you. We all have these kinds of stories or situations and they help shape our gut feeling of what to say and when to say something if it's off. Happy to help out if there's a way I can as well!

We're deep into second kiddo territory (6 weeks) and I think I'm just feeling a bit burned out. The jump from zero to one child is HUGE and there was a lot of mourning the loss of our freedom/life for both my wife and I. We're feeling the same dip now that we're back into dealing with a newborn ~2 years later and while not as severe, I can tell for myself it's there and bothering me. I've also been back to work the last three weeks so my schedule is basically go to work (from home) all day, take the baby most of the evening while we chase a 2 year old around, get the 2 year old to bed, then hand off the new kiddo around 8:30 - 9 so I can go to bed and I get them back somewhere around 10-11 depending on the last bottle for the rest of the night. Both kids have been good sleepers (thank god) but I'm still getting woken up somewhere around 3am for that middle of the night bottle.

No time for really much else. I know intuitively it will get better because I saw it happen before, it's just rough right now. No time for the mrs, hobbies, friends, etc...and I think we were figuring it out with number one really well. Just all hitting me the last few days.

Luckily both kids are freaking adorable and the older one is overflowing with personality as they're learning, saying, repeating more and more from daycare. It's been awesome to see them just explode in their development. I also understand now why some parents would have leashes for their toddlers.

It's a pretty apt word to describe a lot more than just technology/platforms right now unfortunately. It fits into too many things.

Also...

In a companion vote, sibling organization the American Name Society selected “Gaza” and “Barbie” as Names of the Year for 2023 in its 20th annual name-of-the-year contest.

WOW. That just feels...blech...

"Build Back Fucking Better Bitches"

Now if only we'd had the BBFBB bill

Shitty, because we're potty training.

Luckily the kiddo is doing better more than not, but we're having issues with daycare. They said they would "follow our lead" on what we're doing, how we want to approach this, etc...but the reality is not that. And I get it, they have 15 kids to manage and you can't have someone pooping their pants and not telling them about it, it's more just our own frustration that the teachers/admin said one thing and we're seeing another (and never sat down to map some of this out). A lot of our frustration would have been solved if they said how they do things and we could adjust to their style. This is really the first time we've been disappointed in our daycare, it's been fantastic otherwise ever since we started with them.

Plus the poor kid fell in the toilet at school last week because they were playing too much/not paying attention (not at all shocking to me TBH) and has been terrified of the school toilet ever since. The upside is at home over the last weekend, we're calling it one and a half accidents in 2 days, with several longer outings/trips in there.

In non-bathroom news, work slogs on, child #2 is shockingly imminent for us, and I'm mad at my wife for introducing me to The Traitors because I've had a blast watching it and I'm not usually a reality tv person.

Seconding the Secretlab chair. For someone who works from home and would play PC games at the exact same desk when work ended, it made sense to invest in a chair beyond my $30 IKEA one and has held up pretty well over the last several years.

To add on to starting and stopping games at will, take some time to just organize your library of games too! I have mine sorted into several categories...

• Forever games that I'll come back to over time
• Loved games that I may come back to should the mood strike
• "Next Up" games that I want to play soon
• Games I want to play eventually
• Games I'm done with, either I played it for 10m and I wasn't interested or I finished it and got a resounding "meh"
• Zero interest games or duplicated games (ex: the original version of a game when the remastered version was given for free and is in one of those other categories, free VR versions, etc...).

It takes a lot of focus and work at first, and a LOT of flipping between the page in your library and the store page to see if you want to play a certain game. I axed stuff pretty liberally and at different points in my life, I've gone back and pruned that list of what I want to play and see if I realllllllly still wanted to play it. I also found organizing my library a bit of that kind of "mindless enjoyable" that you can just get into a flow state to go through.

Once it's done though, when a new game gets added to my Steam Library, I can immediately "triage" it into one of those categories because it's the only thing not categorized. It's taken my library of what is now almost 1300 games acquired over 15 years and given it some more structure. Of that list, today I have ~250 in some version of "want to play", ~400 in some version of played, and ALL the rest in that zero interest/duplicate category.

I put about 20+ hours into Monster Train on the PC/Steam Deck late last year and ended up picking it up again on iOS. It has me hooked all over again.

If you've enjoyed games like Slay the Spire in the past for deckbuilding rougelikes, it's perfect to hammer out a battle pretty quickly. The main difference is each level is like playing three battles of Slay The Spire since there are three "lanes" that the enemies move through. It has enough depth and replayability that you can go for quite some time before burning out.

Plus, you can add googly eyes to every character/minion in the game and I can't not play with that option turned on.

It's also not necessarily easier, but more understandable, for roles such as HR, marketing, etc...yes, it's still someone's job but one company probably doesn't need two HR teams worth of people and cuts accordingly.

Message being that everyone should have their head on a swivel during a merger and that goes double for those jobs that provide day-to-day business support to keep things running.

We just had our second kid so any games have to basically be on the phone right now. Luckily, someone mentioned Wildfrost in the same breath as Slay the Spire and it has been awesome to play while holding the little one.

It’s a card/deck builder rogue like, but you’re deploying units into one of two lanes and positioning them for maximum effect. Each unit counts down until it attacks, but you have a handful of cards to directly attack as well. You run until you fight the final boss, unlock more stuff along the way, etc…it’s been a blast. The art style is cute (how big can Yuki’s snowball get? Try and find out!) and I love the soundtrack.

On iOS at least, the game is free to download and try out before purchasing (think it was $7). If you like Slay the Spire and similar games, well worth looking into!

Sorry, but this feels unnecessarily hostile towards religion. If you hadn't read his full remarks, I would encourage you to do so (and if you did, apologies but this is the internet and we all usually read just the headlines/blurbs!)

He outlines really well why they're striking and what they need to fight for. He's clear to draw from the Bible for his own personal inspiration to why he does what he's doing and leaning on two passages out of the Bible about having faith and the old "camel through the eye of a needle" quote. The faith he talks about though is a faith in their fellow workers and doing what is right, driving towards the overall mission towards a better life for the members. I thought he was very clear in that regard and not excluding/being insensitive towards non-Christians.

It was supplemental to the message he wanted to tell about this being the time to stand up and to have faith in their mission. It didn't come off as instructive in what to do as your comment lead me to assume.

I totally agree, and aside from my personal stance of not owning a Tesla, I can't deny they've managed to nail it on the Supercharger front. I think my frustration is more that the one major holdout on a non-CCS standard was already planning to build CCS support into their network. If they're going to keep on that path, great, but I also won't trust Musk's promises on something like this until it's completed (especially if more manufacturers jump onboard to NACS).

Just seems like it would have been easier to drag one company one way vs. keeping it the wild west.