After doing my budgeting for the upcoming month I was pretty saddened by how little my income seems to cover these days. !internet-delenda-est .

I was curious and checked the existing inflation. It's not looking good. It's insane to me that over the last four years the cost of living has gone up approximately 22%. I think four years is a good period to examine, as whenever I hear "inflation is going down actually, it's gone down 2.9% since July! We are in a "cooling" period" !actually " those people are usually referring to like maybe six month period at best. Also shut your dork-ass up man.

I checked a couple of different sites, some newspaper, some official US Government sites, and an economics site I'm like 96% certain some evil GOP-backed SuperPAC probably funds and they all seemed to say the same thing.

! ! !

I'm not an economics guy, but one thing I have a vague understanding of is stuff like the Vampires and their ghouls thought COVID-19 conditions would extend forever. I'm not exactly sure of what they did or the mechanisms behind it, but it seems uniquely bad to have everyone's paying power reduced by ~22% (that's numbers probably higher for people who already in a bad spot). I'm sure it gets worse with interest rates and other fancy economic terms and devices I don't understand.

What is a person to do? I'm not even talking about hip and cool leftists of various stripes like us who at least have a framework for understanding why this everything sucks ass, but what about regular "normal™©®" people? I don't understand how people are making it these days. People with kids or dependents, people with medical needs for themselves or loved one, or people with any real complications in life? Just regular people trying to have a decent and upright life, how they supposed to make it man? I think about my younger cousins who are graduating high school or are in college right now and I think how are supposed to even get started?

How are people supposed to survive let alone thrive, when they have 1/4 less than they did four years ago? Also they didn't have enough four years ago to be frank. I'm also sure that this was like a zillion times worse for people nations under US sanctions, as I while I'm a US citizen I don't want to think we are the only people who exists, cause that's not a very cash-money thing to do.

Like what the fuck?

I'm not on some doomer-shit, more so on that "How do i find optimism in these dire times"-shit.

What's the mindset behind forcing a user to create an account to view the media on a page? For example an artist I like posts their art on Instagram and Twitter but I can't look at it unless I create an account. What's the dumb corporate rationale behind this? I have seen this on so many sites you can't even see what's there without an account? Doesn't it just scare users away? I know it certainly does for me. If I have to log in just to view a page I don't want to view the page.

I'd really recommend it to anyone interested in the super early days of PC gaming. John Romero has a rather interesting tale, there is a lot of pathos surprisingly. Romero is one of the few katz I think is humble enough to actually talk about his flaws and shortcomings rather openly. I learned a lot about the 90's, game development, and was kinda inspired in a weird way. I was pretty lucky my library had a copy.

Not even a "Start Here", "Locations", or something super basic like that. They really want you to deputize yourself and the local "Big Brother" super snitch. !lenin-rage It really got me heated !lenin-rage , slamming away on the keyboard helping a less then tech-savvy person input their information and upload their documents. At the very least I think I got them squared away, and helping others is cool.

The supposed vigilance against "Welfare queens" is so goddamn stupid. If we really actually wanted to protect local and state budgets, we would y'know at the very least do something about tax avoidance/evasion. Of course this isn't about budgets at all, just making public services as punitive as possible. The bandits of Neoliberalism attempting to coarse people into the workforce while simultaneously robbing the public wealth.

It just gets me so mad, katz are out here struggling and even trying to do the "right thing" and they are "supposed to do" and we go and it so fuckin' difficult to do so.

Be sure to check out the c/mutal_aid channel to help out some strangers, cause I'm pretty damn sure their local government isn't gonna do it.

This is a genuine question.

(Please pardon spelling or grammar mistakes I typed in a meeting at work. A meeting on a Sunday morning. Fuck work)

I know that college students can be “annoying” but I have noticed that everyone seems to hate college students. From conservative college educated business vampires and ghouls, to college educated liberal rainbow/pink/pro-black capitalism types. Even many online progressives (not sure what that term even means anymore) as well college dropout “dirtbag leftists” (I don’t know if that term is still in use, I’m not on Twitter and I don’t even listen to Chapo anymore) say that college is stupid. . Which just so odd because while I agree there is a ton to critique about higher education and academia as a whole it just seems to dismissive and weird to dunk on students for being students.

It seems to me that most people seem to Make a caricature of the college student. Everyone who was college educated (especially liberals) seem to make their college education to be some halcyon golden age but now it’s all fallen apart. Those people seem to believe college is just young adult daycare now but was some rigorous training facility for the leaders of the world in past.

It seems to me at least this is a weird expression of the US hated of youth and youth culture but also a weirdly kinda fetishists it simultaneously. My theory is we collectively dunk on college kids because we hate ourselves and who we have become and see them using their youth to do youth stuff. Exploring and expressing themselves in a way were unable or perhaps unwilling to do in somewhat similar conditions.

But that’s just a baseless theory, I got my degree in STEM not in humanities/social sciences. Real talk venerate the humble humanities and social sciences majors. while their degrees are also used for evil like everyone else’s they at least don’t have a “start-up” they are pitching.

When I got my undergrad in 2017 at state university most of the katz I knew were working +30 hours a week and/or living with mom and dad and still in crippling debt. Now that I’m returning to get my master’s degree (part-time to be fair but I do into a campus for the night classes) also at a state university I’m still seeing the same thing. A lot of these young people are working, doing education as well as trying to become adult. It’s a lot, and honestly i empathize them. They are playing a rigged game and it sucks so many of them take it so personally, it’s a lot pressure to put on a younger person.

I don’t know why the pop-culture narrative is that everyone who goes to school is a “fail child” or some trust fund kid. I met a few in my here and there while at school my first time but was mostly just regular people of all types trying to get a degree, though maybe I was in the minority as I was (and still am) a square.

All that to say why do we hate college kids? Why do we think they are all “blue hair baristas” or whatever other current derogatory pejorative is. It just seems really stupid to me that we dunk on young people for doing what we tell them to do. The whole cultural narrative is “go to college, have fun, make friends, get a good job” but they seem to only care about the last part. It’s not like their a lot of alternative pathways for them to try, it just seems so odd to me

I recently had the displeasure of going to the doctor's office. Totally routine check-up. No aches or pains, no fever, nothing particularly ailing me at the moment. I just try to go the doctor twice a year because I have "good insurance™©®" through my employer. The amount of legwork I had to do just see a doctor was awful.

I found doctors that were covered but their practice was not. I found a clinic in my area that the doctor's were covered but the labs they sent their results to were not. Having to navigate through websites and compare them against my insurance coverage felt like I was trying to min-max a character sheet in an RPG. I can only imagine this being 9999% worse if I needed some real deal medical care.

I eventually found a clinic, doctor, and lab trio that worked with my insurance through their website. I drove (thanks American Car Culture) to the doctor's office I kid you not, I spent MORE time in the lobby talking to the nice dude at the desk then I did with the doctor lady. Some clinic aids took my blood pressure and weight and stuff, but I spoke to the doctor-person about seven minutes before they bounced. Again, I know this is just a check-up but damn, seven minutes of face-to-face with a healthcare professional seems pretty bad. I spent maybe two hours doing all this legwork for seven minutes of actual care. I don't blame the doctor-lady either, I'm sure she was stacked to her eyeballs with papers and forms and other patients. This system is so fuckin' wack.

I want to live in a world, where I pay my taxes and I get healthcare (and I want to know my taxes go to covering other people, not the endless war machine). All the shit in life that doesn't actually matter is pretty frictionless and easy, but something as important getting medical care is a goddamn dungeon crawl. There is so much obfuscation between patients and doctors it's absurd.

Also reminder, private insurance is forever and always a business venture. Maximizing shareholder value is the ONLY goal of a business. Also the amount of bullshit jobs !graeber in MEGACORPS is absurd. They are tons and tons of layers of obstructions built into these companies by design. They even hire folks whose role is to find reason to deny claims. Just really rotten stuff.

I want single payer healthcare because it's a rational and simple system. I want to go a clinic and get care. That simple. I want medical professionals to make choices about what sort of care i need, not some ghoul an a phantom office in Delaware.

It's a real actually existing policy that would make people's lives better. I know we live belly of capitalism, and the DNC and RNC are lapdogs for these companies but fuck I will still want it.

TL;DR - Private Insurance does nothing but get in the way. Insurance companies hinders healthcare providers ability to provide their services, and hinders people from getting the care they need. For-profit private health insurances are fundamentally bad.

I hate the current YouTube thumbnail meta. I found this extension and it just takes a frame from the content of the video and displays that. I believe that is fair and more representative of the video. I have been using this extension for a while and I find myself paying more attention to the names of creator and then considering if I want to watch the video; rather than being enticed by some intentionally inflammatory image.

I find it just make YouTube more enjoy in combination with Ublock Origin and YouTube Search Fixer.

Just wanted to share this extension with any Hexbears who aren't liking YouTube's thumbnail arms race of increasingly distracting images. I didn't know if I should have put this in c/videos or c/technology. I rolled a D6 and odds was c/videos and evens c/technology. I rolled a two.

!

It sucks that most people can't afford an ticket travel to see their friends or family. I shouldn't have to drop $400 to hangout for the holidays. I should be able to get a train ticket go from state to state with ease.

America can't build houses. America can't fix roads, bridges, dams, pipes, or power grids. America can't provide high quality education for students of all ages and stages. America can't build libraries and parks. America can't provide medical care to all citizens. America can't provide childcare. America can't support public arts or media. America can't provide public transportation. American can't feed the hungry. America can't better the lives of its people.

America is powerless to do anything, other than expand the military industrial complex.

$14.5 billion is some COVID-19 level wealth extraction from working people. American oligarchs and plutocrats stole all our collective wealth yet again.

!guts-rage

If you're overwhelmed by the bundle try to use this site to help find games for you. Support a real and meaningful charity and play games.

I have been teaching myself more programming stuff for c/gamedev over the last several weeks as my ambition is to make a using Godot to share with people. Just making a game for the sake of trying my hand at a creative work, no real "profit motive" just wanna make a thing !programming-communism. However, but I was feeling like I wanted to get back into the old-school C++ programming rather than using a game engine and was looking for a primer as it's been a bit since I have done it. In my quest I discovered Academic Torrents, I found a ton of great computer science courses and the last weakened synapses of academic rigor in my internet poisoned brain to fire once again.

I have always been for open-information (most just downloading .pdf files of textbooks during college) and stuff but I didn't really know about the concept of a Shadow Library. I'm finding myself interested in just learning more computer nerd shit for the sake of learning. I like the idea I have access to pretty much every computer science department that has a webcam and torrent link, I think that's good.

This idea applies beyond not just for tech stuff of course, but just about anything. I think it's really weird that knowledge creation is soloed away behind nations, institutions, and IP laws. Everyone everywhere should have access to knowledge for the sake of knowledge. I don't know much about the actual process of knowledge creation but the created knowledge itself should be assessable to everyone in a library sense. Knowledge is one basic things that makes us human and should be free and open to everyone. Discovering a website reminded that learning is just cool and worth doing for the sake doing (if that's your thing of course, if you don't wanna learn that should be considered cool too).

The promise of the internet still exists outside the walled gardens and I think that's pretty dope. So long as people wanna learn I'm glad that these sorts of Shadow libraries are there to help people.

Also support your actual local library. Light and Shadow Libraries are cool and lefty and good.

Vent your rage and or employment woes. I am having a bad time looking for a job as an employed keyboard-jockie. Hate my current job can’t find another.

The employment process sucks, the ghosting sucks, the endless automations and inhuman interactions just to find a job. The quantification of every part of the job process is bonkers. Reading all of this fluffy nondescript job profiles is a job in and of itself

The meta-game of having to “optimize” your resume to be read by an A.I. or to having to use an A.I. for the application itself just sucks. All this work for an entry to middle level job that barely covers your bills is just soul draining.

All these employers want you to have 2-5 years experience and a masters degree for a starter position. It’s all just terrible.

It feels like “finding a job” is a skill in and of itself in a way it should not be. “Job hunting” is also a deeply solo thing, even using your professional and/or social network pits you against the “The Market”. It sucks so much.

“The Market” is so bad at everything. We could all more easily organize work and finding work if we all weren’t alienated independent nodes all forced into battle. Yet another reason planning and democratic processes are better than this weird tyranny of “the free market”.

Jump in this thread and be mad with me. Big mad.

I ordered the physical book and it’s just a keen source of knowledge.

The rail companies are were clearly the "bad guys" and it was plain cut story about labor. Striking workers said this was gonna happen, and then it happened and the media did everything it could to cover the Rail-baron's asses. It was failure of regulation, a product of American lobbying also known as corruption in the rest of the world. It was just everything wrong with American industry and the media just did everything it could to get everyone to shut the fuck up about it.

It's just one of those stories I don't think got enough conversation, coverage, and discourse. It was just plainly everything wrong with America resulting in literal death shroud over a working class community. Don't forget the lasting ecological impact of all the plants and animals that drink the water or share the life-force that was injected with death shroud chemicals. Also this was all totally avoidable if they stock buying back vampires just spent like .5% of their revenue to just update some of their hardware. Also the absolute pittance they offered the citizens of East Palestine should have have some [REDACTED] happen.

The whole thing just shows the necrotic rot of capital in the modern age. The zombie looking CEOs just did the bare minimum and gave the smallest concession they could have avoid this and keep their money train going. It wasn't quite panama papers level but goddamn why did we stop talking about this catastrophic failure? The media probably realized all of this is neoliberalism made manifest. From top to bottom. The US department of transportation should have had done a Perp walk on these CEOs. Fuck this whole thing just makes mad. We all deserve so much better.

(BTW I'm pro-train, pro-rail, pro-worker, pro-regulation, all that jazz. I'm just mad that some really real shit happened and America just shrugged and moved on)

The Wikipedia entry is surprisingly pretty decent.

Preface - It's never cool to be mean to developers or the rando who is running an official social media account online. Be cool.

One thing I will never understand about gaming and gamers™® is that they always seems to justify their own poor treatment. Worse yet they attack others for pointing out the way they are mistreated. Whenever I see good honest players point out that a system is predatory or designed in a plainly unfair way, other gamers™® will undoubtedly come in and defend that bad thing. It's so odd that gamers™® can min-max everything but can't seem to factor in the fact they are getting less than they used to. It's like digital inflation. Games are more costly in upfront costs, hardware cost, time costs, and yet are getting worse in general.

I'm very much anti-battle pass/anti-season pass/anti-microtransaction all that sort of stuff. I'm old-school, just want to buy a thing and have the thing and have the thing be whole and complete. That said there are semi-decent ways to implement a system that is profitable for the vampire executives and also don't siphon every single coin players have. It's so weird to me that gamers™® not only keep buying into these systems but seem to defend them so vigorously online.

From "Pay to Win" to weird obtuse purchasable currencies/resources to needlessly limited time rewards to create artificial scarcity (pre-order, in-game store "deals", general fear of missing out practices), all dark patterns make games worse. Gamers™® defend these things saying "I DoN'T HaVe tHiS PrObLeM. iT MuSt bE A SkIlL IsSuE!" or whatever dumb shit. Every dark pattern in modern gaming is making the games people play worse intentionally. People talk about the enshittification of internet all the time but gaming as a medium/hobby has been enshittifiying since the advent of Xbox LIVE. The worst part about it to me is seeing such vocal defense for it online (social media at large, game forums, comment sections of gaming news/articles). It's not just that sort of conceding "well what can't ya do?", it's more so this spirited "This is good actually, and you're not a REAL GAMER if you don't like this."

For example a decent battle-pass (regardless of the game/genre) usually rewards players with enough in-game premium currency to buy the next one and maybe have enough left over for an item or two. That way it keeps you locked for longer and feeds into the habit forming design dark pattern we all hate. You're constantly having just enough premium currency to buy something, and topping off your balance is just a few extra coins if need be. Yes, people talk about the "whales" and "minnows" but even just the regular players and worse yet the gamers™® get a bad deal. Setting the fact this is a dark pattern aside (however I can't stress enough how mobile gaming's/casino gaming inspired dark patterns have made gaming worse), it's bonkers to me that gamers™® just say "VoTe wItH YoUr wAlLeT BrO!". They will say that or these sorts of things support the development of the game, knowing full well that that money isn't recycled and invested into the betterment of the game.

It's just so strange to me that gaming of all things has grown worse in just about every way since 2000's and yet the online culture around it seems to take pride in it being so bad. It's so strange that gamers™® can datamine the most Ph.D level mathematical optimal way to play through a game before it's even released but can't seem to parse that games should respect them. Games should treat them better. Games should be better.

!only-good-gamer: "Wow this system sucks. We should either get more rewards faster or things shouldn't cost so much. I like this game but damn this system blows, and it probably doesn't have to. The developers should be better to us."

!very-intelligent: "If you don't like it don't play it. If it were bad it wouldn't be popular."

My larger point is gamers™® are bad, gaming should be better, player != gamers™®.

P.S. Check out this Dark Patterns Site. It explains all of the shit that makes games worse in a nice bullet point format

Hello c/games. I have some games I'd like to giveaway. They are of varying quality, and I would rather give them to people who will actually play them rather than letting them gather cyber dust in my digital library. Some of them are shovelware no doubt. Others, just not my type of game. Some are games pretty rad.

That said I would like to giveaway to others. I would encourage you to compile a list of games you may have massed through various bundles you don't think you'd play and share them with others. Just spread a little joy to other people by giving away something you don't want to some who may very much want it. It's a win-win and we can all become big communism builders through the act of sharing.

For simplicity's sake it'll be first come first serve. I simply ask you only ask for games that you want and will play. One per person to keep things fair. If the key doesn't work I apologize, I don't mean to swindle or mislead anyone. It may have expired or some other DRM related trickery.

To protect against bots and webscrappers I'll be DM'ing the keys to comrades rather than posting publicly.

• A Story About My Uncle
• Crossbow: Bloodnight
• Darksiders
• Medal of Honor
• Mirror's Edge
• Neon Drive
• Panzer Corps + DLC
• Windward
• Going Under
• Robothorium: Cyberpunk Dungeon Crawler
• Forward to the Sky
• Hive Jump
• ICY: Frostbite Edition
• Insurgency
• Technobabylon
• Hexcells Complete Pack
• Octodad: Dadliest Catch
• A Fistful of Gun
• NOT A HERO
• Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box Steam Key
• Offspring Fling
• Shank 2
• Snapshot
• Closure

I think personally the big thing leftist thought has done for me is gave me the mental toolkit to unlearn the idea of “ meritocratic/meritocracy”. We don’t live in a remotely fair world and the idea it is in any sense fair and justice is disproven in just about every leftist text, thinker, speech, figure throughout history. We get some hints about it in religion text (Speaking as a Christian) but we don’t really see how to break it down outside of personal virtue and kindness (which are cool and good but not a scaleable solution).

I really think it super dope that leftist thinking give you the tools to understand and see the Matrix we live. I also really like how it shows you ways of addressing it.

What are things you think leftist thought has improve your life? Big or small?