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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: July 12th, 2024

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  • I think this shift will be the end of me buying newer games, period.

    I am that person who doesn’t ever buy digital. I have not bought a single digital game thus far (I haven’t pirated a game since like 2006, either). I have certainly played some, like with the PS+ subscription I got for a year when it was pretty cheap, but I wouldn’t buy them because I can’t be sure I own them, and there’s really no way to transfer the license to resell them.

    If I can’t buy physical media, I simply won’t buy the games. Maybe I’ll use subscription services now and then, but more likely I’ll either find a way to play free or won’t play them at all and find other stuff. I want the physical media because I’m poor, and having the option to sell them in a pinch is important to me if I’m going to shell out a significant amount for something I’ll probably only play once, particularly since there won’t be a used game market to reduce my spend. I haven’t had to sell my games in a very long time, so I have some 400 discs, but it’s something of a savings option that inflates alongside currency, and sometimes much more.


  • Sure, they might know my identity. But very importantly, they aren’t every single random company out there whose website I happen to briefly access for whatever reason. They don’t need to know anything about me, and they shouldn’t.

    I can’t do anything about big tech companies knowing things about me, tho I do try to limit it when I can, but not literally everyone needs to know who I am just because I want to access their content. That’s absolutely absurd.

    It definitely isn’t impacting me in the slightest. Idk what you do with your time, but I don’t really want my platforms to be unmoderated cesspools, and the places I do choose to exist or use are in line with what I want, so… meh. It’s literally not an issue I have.

    Breweries and bars in my area are often kid-friendly with toys and everything, and I just don’t go to those places. I do the same with online spaces. They aren’t meant for me if they aren’t what I’m looking for, so I don’t go. There’s plenty of places that are for me, though, and I go to those places on and offline.


  • Nope.

    I don’t want anyone verifying my identity for any reason other than government or financial business, where there is a legitimate reason to do so. There is absolutely no reason some random-ass company needs access of any sort to my demographic information, when I am a legal adult doing things well within my rights to do. Especially if this thing was automated to feed that data without my consent or knowledge, as you are suggesting. Absolutely fuck all of that. Plus that would mean there’s a central query database of all the sites you’ve ever accessed for any reason, and that’s fucking scary, even if you aren’t doing anything wrong.

    This wouldn’t work any better than any other privacy-leaky method anyway. People hand down phones to their kids a lot without factory resetting them. And stolen IDs/identity theft are a thing. And you don’t think that central identity bank would be prime target #1 for hackers? If the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that companies WILL NOT protect your data properly, and they WILL NOT suffer consequences of any sort when (not if, when) there is a breach.

    At the end of the day, ensuring someone else’s kids don’t have access to something said parent doesn’t want them to access…? Not my problem, and absolutely not a good enough reason to violate my privacy that thoroughly.


  • That’s totally fair; I’m also not really capable of doing something like that consistently (even tho I would absolutely love talking to smart people - my degree is science communication, so talking to smart people to learn about things and pass them along is easily my favorite thing), so I get it.

    That kinda makes me wonder if interviewing comedians would be funny… I’ve never really talked to any in person for the full impact, but some of them have that timing and wit that means any conversation can be funny. I certainly thought morning radio shows where they have guest comedians on sucked big time, but those are meant more for mass appeal, and they probably work for a lot of people or they wouldn’t have them on.


  • Have you ever listened to the podcast “ologies”? It’s a woman who interviews people who are -ologists (proctologist, ornithologist, geologist, etc., as well as some non-ologist specialties that nonetheless fit the theme)

    Maybe something like that would work for you :) then you aren’t stuck with a single topic, you don’t have to do it alone, and you don’t have to find one person to commit to it, it could be several. Just come up with good questions and have a semi-formal chat. It’s a very enjoyable model for learning new things you didn’t know you wanted to know about.

    https://www.alieward.com/ologies






  • Y’all would be fucking horrified by the state of food manufacturing if you knew.

    I used to work at a food processing and distribution company, in the document processing department… we weren’t strictly supposed to read the audits, especially the internal ones, but we did, to make sure they were complete and compliant, which was our job. Also our job was intensely boring and we needed something to gossip about.

    The number of our distributors (first level manufacturing) who got C or D grades on their inspections… fucking gross. I reported a few of them, but the company did not care.

    Before that I worked at a chicken hatchery. The cultures I cultured -doing an audit just like those I read later in life- were sooooo gross and problematic. But I was instructed to cover it up because, and this is important context, it was all self report after the initial inspection. I was doing this at 16, and was likely significantly more thorough than any veteran employee would have been. (Absolutely not why I was chosen; they chose me due to incredibly mild nepotism, as my manager was my step-dad, and he knew science stuff was up my alley… plus I was a filler worker, being under 18.)

    I really hope things have improved, but somehow I doubt that the past 20 years has made a positive impact from my audit experience. (The document processing was less than 10 years ago, supporting my belief nothing has changed for the better.)


  • I used to have an Xperia pro, the one with the physical keyboard. It was my last keyboard phone. I absolutely loved it.

    Flashed a different OS, cyanogenmod I believe, which broke the governor chip (irreparable; known issue but super buried, would have done the same with any OS of that version number, including stock) so it would read as a dead battery if not on the charger.

    Never touched Sony phones again. Don’t trust them at all.


  • There’s a lan/vr arcade near me, has like 40 super high end gaming rigs… they only get busy when there’s a big event like a non-local tournament or something. We also have multiple pinball/arcade bars, and most of them also have some retro consoles set up. One of the 4-man arcade machines at one of the places even has something like a retropi installed in it and you can pick between hundreds of games up to GameCube era, but nobody really ever plays those either. (The pinball is the draw).

    Can’t see this doing a lot better, at least not in places with options.


  • As someone who has always been on a low-sodium diet, but who nonetheless has a hankering for processed food, thank fuck.

    Everything has become so ridiculously salty, if you aren’t already used to the salt, that it’s largely inedible. It would otherwise be really good, but holy shit.

    If we can get people consuming less salt in some places, they will want less in other places as well, maybe food as a whole will be less salty… that would be a win in every single way for everyone. Everyone who regularly eats with me tends to want less salt in their food overall as a result, so I know it works, and it doesn’t even take that long.


  • I just say the following every time:

    “Your mother would be so disappointed in you if she really understood what you were doing, wouldn’t she?

    Ruining the lives of little old ladies, just like mama. She’s probably not well off either, right Mr scammer? I feel for you. Really I do. I’ve lived in poverty my whole life too, and it’s been a huge struggle just to get by. But me? I wouldn’t shame my family by scamming people just like us out of what little they have. My mamma raised me better than that. I’m sure yours did, too.”

    I always get a reply meaning it definitely strikes a nerve, usually get some sort of bravado about how mama is proud because they bring home the money, and I just respond “if you tell yourself that enough maybe you’ll believe it someday, too!”.

    But I don’t want to be totally heartless because a lot of them don’t have meaningful options, and I get that, and I’m not the ragey sort generally. Or at least I try not to be.