This is art. Thank you for taking the time to make this. You’re reviving the spirit of the best parts of the Old 'Net. :D

I agree that this is a ridiculous overreach, of course.

But I’m also so weary of this “Obsession with what’s in your pants” argument everyone keeps memeing, as if, somehow sexual dimorphism is not a thing in our species and it’s 100% about genitalia.

It’s generally a valid descriptive trait that is often useful for identifying humans you otherwise know nothing much about.

I think there’s room for understanding a rationale of such things while still condemning how petty, hateful, and stupid 100% of this administration’s ideas are.

But it says “VIRGIN” right there on the plane! :(

They just expected us to know how to use them.

And they still do. The “kids these days and their compyooturs” fallacy. Irks me to my core.

I was fortunate to have a middle school typing and graphic design class, and in highschool I learned hardware troubleshooting and stuff (A+ equivalent IT work)…but that “career path” of flipping computers that people downloaded the wrong screensaver on kinda died out.

Still learned a lot though! If the I.T field was still hanging out with buddies in some dungeon nobody visited, I might be in that field today lol.

Maybe I just don’t know where to look or what.

I always hear these stories but companies in my city tend to donate old machines to charities (cool if it works that way) or trade them in to their vendor or something.

I’m actually kinda afraid with all the tarrifs and crap that we’re gonna see secondhand hardware turn into speculative inflated eBay fodder because average folks can’t afford new anymore.

Still looking for this supposed mountain of <TPM 2.0 machines that are supposed to surface for next to nothing any minute now. 😅

Fighting definitely proves the almost paradoxical notion that humans are both exceptionally resilient and pathetically fragile at the exact same time.

I practice martial arts. I don’t wanna fight anybody ever. Too many variables could spell disaster.

I wish there was a better way to sabotage that signal. At this point, those rage-pundits thrive on embarrassing themselves and can say the most heinous and vile things without their audience turning on them. Heck, the worse it gets, the more their audience shifts into insanity!

Even the fact that they’re filthy rich while screaming at and demeaning their audience with “self reliance” and “rugged individualism” messages hasn’t phased them.

The fact they claim to be Christian but are the most useful tools of hell is simply shrugged off because the Bible is too “hard to comprehend” but this media is always right there, screaming at them to hate and be afraid. It’s “simple.”

But just hypothetically silencing them somehow will lend more credibility to the narrative that they’re the ones with the truth and everybody’s out to get them.

This is literal destabilization PsyOP strategy.

How do we stop a constant bombardment that wires people to indulge in the worst parts of their nature?

I’m not being a doomer here. I lost my dad to FOX’s bullshit and at a point in my life it threatened to take me too. I really want to know how we can counter this at scale…

Oh that’s a lovely game! We really enjoyed that one too! The voice acting was sublime and the characters were so loveable. It was so endearingly quirky without going way over the top.

Exciting to hear that there’s a sequel coming!!

X-COM 2: War of the Chosen:

I’ve played this game off and on for years. Fondly wishing I could get back to it and just not having the time. Then I caught strep throat and literally couldn’t do anything but just play games.

Honestly? Finally. I felt like crap, but I was so happy to have an excuse to just enjoy myself instead of being obsessed with what I “had” to do.

The game changed a lot since I last played so I had to start a new save, and I’m having a blast. I love this game so much even with some of its flaws. Do your squaddies miss a 90% shot sometimes? Yes. Infuriating.

But when they make that hail-Mary hit that saves a teammate, or you sneak through a compound to break out an imprisoned comrade and exfil, it’s ADDICTING.

Also, not gonna lie…the game hits a little different in 2025, seeing as it’s about being resistance fighters waging insurgency and a propaganda war against an alien occupying authoritarian regime that is kidnapping people and hauling them to blacksites. Man, that uh, is a little uncomfortably close. (But it’s only a game…The aliens are actually competent.)

The custom voice packs are incredible too. (My sniper with a Bob Ross voice calmly saying “Let’s do a little painting today.” Or “Let’s get a little crazy.” When setting up a shot from across the map never gets old.

This game’s complete version I’ve seen on Steam for like $5 before. This is one of the best tactical experiences there is, and at first I hated the “pressure” this game puts on you, but I’ve come to enjoy the urgency and being forced to weigh difficult decisions rather than just sending my “A-Team” of snowflake OCs to clear every single mission at a leisurely pace haha.

And the soundtrack. Oh man. Once that “Ready for Battle” track hits where you select everybody’s loadout, you really feel the weight of assembling the right squad when you never know 100% what you’re about to send them into.

From the trailers it honestly looked really cool, but then I saw and heard about the all draconian user-disrespecting stuff like the online-even-for-campaign requirement and highly invasive kernel level anticheat that requires TPM 2.0?! That part felt bonkers to me.

Like is that gonna be a thing now? “This game demands to register a cryptographic key with your bootloader to make sure you’re not up to funnybusiness.” (I’m not 100% sure how it works, so my ignorance is filled in with LOTS of suspicion…)

Also EA just got bought by like…Saudi private equity? That’s pretty spook to me, too.

I dunno. I just wanna play Titans on Battlefield 2142 again. And BF 3 and 4 were nice too…

Also a Linux gamer. (Shrug)

Don’t wanna be a downer or scare you off too much! Just things to consider, because £60 certainly ain’t chump change! :)

Oo I hope it can be paused for when a customer shows up. Looks fantastic for a slow day!

(I considered MUDs but lots of people talk about how obvious the traffic is, it’d freak out I.T, blah blah blah…)

Alongside that, this ““backdoor”” (diagnostic/troubleshooting tool) requires physical access

Can’t have an “evil maid” if I do my own cleaning around here.

😏 <br> 👉 👉

the likes of system76 have already made their allegiances clear.

Aw crap. What did they do? :(

Been somewhat out of the loop lately.

Localization. It’s not as easy as simply translating from one language to another!

Done right, you get something of foreign origin that feels like it was done in your backyard.

Done…less than stellar, you get “All your base are belong to us, someone set us up the bomb.”

Pic related

Going by history he’s emulating, the last moments of his term will be spent in a bunker with the Allies rapidly closing in.

Oh man that’s horrifying. The diagram pictures eeesh! Not to mention how shady it is to just hit up some foreign account over Instagram for something so potentially dangerous to your health.

Something tells me this guy could talk about dicks all night slong.

All night schlong XD

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“Research really hard and you’ll get an arbitrary higher number on a paper so your parents don’t yell at you.”

“Research really hard and you’ll get to bring history to life for your friends, and even throw in some werewolves for good fun.”

Gee I sure know which one would motivate me too! LOL

Also, yeehaw, Deadlands!