This was going to be my answer. Except we didn’t even read it as a class. We were doing some other boring stuff and I was flipping randomly through our textbook, where I found it and read it. I still think about it, and sometimes use it in RPGs.
It would’ve also been super appropriate if I could never find it again in the textbook, but I can’t remember if that’s true.
Well “love that dog” made me cry a little just now, so thanks for that.
They sold Bandcamp to some company I’ve never heard of. SongTradr https://www.songtradr.com/blog/posts/songtradr-bandcamp-acquisition
I buy music from Bandcamp. Drm free. Musicians get a bigger cut. You can write a note to the band when you buy and sometimes they write back. Their recommendations and write-ups feel more human than algorithm. Feels pretty good. Renting music on Spotify sounds like a bad deal for me and my personal habits.
Of course, they sold themselves and probably will enshittify in a couple years.
For older stuff that’s not on Bandcamp… Honestly I don’t feel bad about pirating music that’s 15 years old. Copyright is too long, anyway.
And for new mega pop stuff? Not my jam, but I’d probably still buy it drm free somewhere.
New Jersey is fine. A lot of north jersey is overshadowed by NYC being right there. One of my friends moved here from florida, and one of her friends was like “Why don’t you move to jersey city? it’s cheaper” and she went “I didn’t move to new york to live in new jersey”. But even if you do live just outside the city and none of your friends want to visit, you’re still a short train ride away from it.
I don’t know as much about south jersey, but, like, it’s fine. And unlike, I don’t know, Iowa, you can usually get on a train to a world class city.
That’s true for this specific thing, but won’t solve the underlying problem of “things I’m comfortable with are good, and abstract things like facts and fairness don’t matter”
Unfortunately, most people are emotional creatures first. Sometimes only. So facts don’t really matter because they’re engaging on the emotional level of “christian stuff feels good and safe, but other stuff feels dangerous and foreign”. We all do this to some extent. There’s no solution.
People mostly change their mind because stuff coming from their in-group, or horrible trauma.
I also cannot recommend her novels The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed.
I hope you meant you can recommend them. They’re both very good.
I liked the dispossessed a lot
I don’t think you can eat deep dish pizza with one hand while riding the subway quite so easily.
I imagine it’s because the Republican party is “absolutely evil turds” and the Democratic party is “everyone else”. Unfortunately, “everyone else” includes some farts and sharts, too.
Sounds a lot like aspects from Fate.
Fate still has numbers, but you could probably hack them off without too much trouble. I don’t know if “the troll is fantastic brawler and you’re a good swordsman” is especially better, but it’s an option
I mean, yes, you’re right that it’s a simplistic take. However, falling for that kind of nonsense is not a sign of intelligence. Being able to assess “Is this a good source?” and “Are other people in fact people?” are signs of intelligence.
Low density places are always going to kind of suck on a lot of metrics. You just don’t have the people to support a lot of stuff. I’m sorry that small towns are dying but like there’s not really a reason they’d thrive.
Cities have been important since like the dawn of history. At least farms grow food. Suburban sprawl is the worst.
Cost of living needs to go down and wages up, but no one should be vying for low density.
Your brother is an fool and shouldn’t be allowed outside without supervision, nevermind voting and operating heavy machinery.
If libraries didn’t exist, and someone tried to invent them, I am confident that conservatives would fight them tooth and nail with a thousand bad reasons.
You might enjoy this 1964 essay “the paranoid style in American politics” : https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/
American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.
Guy I know worked for a pretty big video game studio or two. (You’ve definitely heard of some games he worked on). Then he realized it sucked. Took a job in FinTech, made like double the money for half the work.
I like to sometimes remind people that being numb doesn’t mean you aren’t being hurt. If your arm is numb and someone is stabbing it with a knife, that’s probably still a problem.
Many people are bad at delayed gratification and long term thinking.
Unknown Armies is a tabletop RPG that has a school of magic predicated on a. Being drunk all the time and b. Drinking out of really cool cups.
Post reminded me of that. Good game (though I only know 2nd edition)