So with that data point you’re saying China is the country to be born in 2024? Because while I’m not at all discrediting their incredible pace in improving the life of their citizens from an economic perspective.

But I’m personally far more concerned about questions about freedom of expression and of opportunities and as such would prefer to be born in any Nordic country as an example, or Switzerland as another. Sure you could argue the Nordic model doesn’t scale because a population of 10 mil is not the same as more than 1 billion. But that wasn’t really a part of the question here. To me economic growth is just one dimension, an important one but not the only one to judge a country against. So once again, from a political perspective, which is what we’re talking about here when we’re saying that the West is failing, how is China better? I mainly see the mainstream outlets and they show a bleak state of affairs from that perspective, can you counter that?

Rich coming from someone who made a name for himself as the president of the nickel and dime company…

The problem really is, like in most industries to be fair, that the actual creators get far too little of the figurative monetary cake.

And if we ever see tipping in games, god forbid, then that money will at best get shared by everyone so there would need to be millions in tipping before it is even noticeable for an individual developer in a normal AAA team.

While the West is certainly struggling I fail to see how China is the preferable alternative from a political perspective. Care to enlighten me as to why it is better for its citizens which must be the goal and purpose of government no?

Yes, it’s the next step and an evolution because it is far more of a trust less approach. With VPNs you need to trust your provider. If they “give you up” then you’re well and truly fucked. For I2P there is no way for a malicious node operators to parse out who is doing what. And the source code you can vet yourself so no need to trust it. Still if you have actors working together in the nodes, the torrent provider and at the ISP level then you can most certainly find a way to break the layer of secrecy. The barrier is however vast and so far police haven’t spent that much effort on piracy because it isn’t a serious crime in the eyes of the law. And I don’t foresee that they will for many years.

It’s also far more accessible than say Usenet and VPN+private trackers. Which is a very good thing for privacy in general.

Hmm, the 4:3 versions did make it to DVD but finding the old version for things is never easy. It’s a common wish however, in Anime circles in particular.

Looking at a predb over scene releases and going back as far as they go I see that the naming standard, as I suspected, didn’t hint at neither aspect ratio or resolution.

https://predb.net/search/south.park.s01?page=1

However if you look for DivX or Xvid releases I’d say it’s fairly likely they’ll be in 4:3 since Xvid by and large had gotten replaced by H.264 / X.264 by 2017 which is the earliest release I can confirm is going to be the remaster since it’s from the Bluray that released then:

https://www.dvdsreleasedates.com/movies/4399/South-Park-(TV-Series-1997-).html

The above is likely not fully complete so the remaster might’ve happened between 2004 and 2017, and this might be readily available information but I’m running out of time…

So basically my tip if you’re lazy is look for Xvid/DivX and cross your fingers. If you’re not then correlate the remaster date/release date to the predb and look for a scene release from before the remaster dropped.

That’s what I’m saying. It’s like everyone knows some college kids smoke pot from the smell in the dorms, but Police can’t legally search room by room to find out who it is, they need a search warrant which they need more than a general suspicion that someone in the dorms smoke to get.

Same with I2P, it’s done in a public setting so from traffic patterns we can be pretty sure someone is downloading a shit ton, and that it’s likely illegal content. Residential IPs have little reason to consistently download several GB files on a daily/weekly basis, streaming and download also look vastly different profile wise and at least no one I know of go to those lengths to try and mask their traffic patterns by trying to make streaming look like download or vice versa.

But as I said and you reiterated, you still need to crack the encryption to actually prove it in court. But given a specific target there are many ways to do that. A generic approach is likely not going to happen. Which means that I2P is secure much like having a secret chat in a crowded place like Grand Central Station in NY. You know that people are meeting there to chat about illegal stuff but you don’t know who. It becomes much easier if you know who to follow and eavesdrop on, but of course still not easy.

It is however nowhere near as safe as communication over channels that aren’t public to begin with. But such of course do not exist outside military and other special contexts.

But at the same time I2P is still built upon TCP/IP so it’s still like encrypted yodeling. Finding out who’s likely yodeling down movies is rather easy. The protection instead lies in the high barrier to prove exactly which movie and when so as to pass the barrier for court admissable evidence.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I2P is great stuff and I’ve used it on and off for years, but it shouldn’t be treated as the holy grail of safe and secure communication. Nothing can truly be that if it’s built on TCP/IP for fairly obvious reasons.

+1 for Genshin. While I think your gacha warning is excellent I do want to point out that the amount of resources you get for getting characters is more than enough to clear all story content. Hell if you’re a good player you could probably clear the whole game without using a single primogem, not even the countless thousands you get along the way.

And massive is also the understatement of the year. There is voiced content here that dwarfs even whole trilogies. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more recorded lines than all of Dragon Age and Mass Effect put together. And the story is likely not even at the halfway point yet, there’s still years to go. Closest analogy would probably be SWTOR, the MMO, but with much better combat.

You’d go insane from the isolation looooong before finishing a fat Steam library. But first you’d be completely bored of gaming. Even if you feel no fatigue, hunger, tiredness etc it would quite quickly lose meaning. There’s a reason most retired people don’t do that thing they love 24/7. We just can’t derive enjoyment from something we can and get to do all the time. Waiting, longing and planning to is vitally important to enjoyment.

If you’re deeply autistic but still functioning you might be able to survive the isolation. But you’d need an insanely rigorous schedule set up for yourself where you treat observing the universe form as a job and treat yourself to gaming or whatever activity. But even under those circumstances that individual would likely go completely insane and be a vegetable within a thousand years. After a billion, if you literally can’t die no matter what you do, then you wouldn’t even be able to form thoughts, your brain would be so fried you’d present as someone with lock-in syndrome and just lay there until you finally get to die. Torture is putting it so mildly it’s like calling Carolina Reaper Peppers about as spicy as vanilla ice cream.

Since I’m not American I keep forgetting about your for profit churches. The concept is just too foreign to me. When I think church I think of 300 year old cold stone building in the countryside.

Still there are homeless that would refuse, some from not believing or trusting you, some from not wanting to relocate even if it means that level of comfort, some from being deep into addiction thinking that they’ll be forced to get clean. And some will take you up on it and just absolutely trash the place trying to steal anything not bolted down.

That said the vast majority would for sure jump on it and thrive. So if it was at all possible to make happen it would be a good idea.

I feel Mass Effect did at least some of this in terms of allowing you to cut people off and quite a few “shortcuts” of just shooting someone that you can tell from a mile away will be trouble. That game of course has you play someone that obviously can’t have reached the position they have by being a selfish asshole so the premise limits what you can do.

Hmm:

“Does not support desktop and mobile application connections, only supports use on browsers”

Regarding Docker deployment. It’s unclear if the application package for Linux supports usage together with the apps because that is a needed feature for me, to have everything centrally stored but easily edited via phone, and from experience the browser experience tends to be rather miserable.

I’ll for sure test it out when I have the time though, looks pretty feature complete if a bit overboard for just note-taking. This is not OneNote, this is more like Confluence.

My dream is something that can handle both seamlessly, I want to both take quick notes and have them easily searchable and indexed automatically while also supporting structuring knowledge in pages and sub-pages with rich content support.

1337x is probably the biggest these days and it just needs a free quick and easy account to upload a torrent. If you’re concerned about privacy then use a mail relay like Firefox Relay which is free.

The best approach in my opinion was in Mass Effect.

Dragon Age a close second but there it’s much more subtle and good/evil not really a part of it, it’s more internal to you the why behind your characters actions. Stuff like using blood magic which is illegal but very powerful can be used from a perspective of “the greater good” or you could roleplay that decision as a lust for power. Which factions you side with for sure has morality attached but since all roads lead to saving the world its much more about your own reasons to judge if your character is evil or just focused on the grander scheme, utilitarian.

But back to Mass Effect. It’s the same thing with all roads leading to save the world but unlike Dragon Age there is a morality system in place that is not about just a dichotomy between self sacrifice and malicious indulgence. Instead it’s about what is OK to do to save the world? What sacrifices are reasonable? What risks should you take for others? What approach do you take to solve conflict? Renegade (as the ‘evil’ approach is called) options allow you to pistol whip people that want you to follow rules and decorum while the Galaxy hangs in the balance. It allows you to order people to die for the greater good. It’s about using the power you have to take the shortest and most direct route to ultimate salvation. To not pussy foot around trying to appease everyone.

And really that’s the only way to make morality work in a story driven game imo. If the same story is to be told with moral decisions left to the player than they need to be ultimately inconsequential to how the game and story plays out. At best they give slight variations to story beats but nothing really changes from a good playthrough to an evil one in the grand scheme. If it works and feels satisfying is largely down to the developers accepting this and instead focus on smaller nuances like Mass Effect or leaving it ambiguous and up to the player to craft their narrative for the why and motivations like Dragon Age.

What I’d instead would like to see is a game where you play out an evil narrative. And I do know of one such RPG, Tyranny, but I haven’t gotten around to play it yet.

The best example perhaps of melding good and evil in the same game is Star Wars: The Old Republic (the MMORPG). Because you can play it from the evil side as a good character and the good side as an evil character. If you play it through multiple time you can really craft a world and narrative of incredible depth. And I can really recommend playing it as you would any other western RPG and just ignore the MMO side of things. Bear in mind that each individual playthrough suffers from the exact problem you raise in your post, but on the total, the bigger picture, becomes something very interesting and worthwhile.

On that I agree 100%

That’s how you get a fancy new prion disease…

Most homeless are in the big cities, most churches are out in the boonies. The homeless are very unlikely to accept being bussed to a flyover state to sleep in a church in bumfuck nowhere. For a myriad of reasons.

Keep in mind also that a lot of them have a very hard time accepting any help due to past trauma as well.

It’s not a situation with a quick fix. Really the first step isn’t even ensuring housing for the homeless, it’s making sure we don’t get more homeless. We likely can’t save a subset of today’s homeless because they don’t want/or won’t accept any help that comes with any strings (like no drugs or just they can’t trash the place). But we can ensure no-one else ends up on the streets by beefing up mental healthcare and social services.

Yeah, for the most part. I’m working towards my dreams and they feel within reach even though I know the path there is both long and arduous. It will require a lot of me, but that is more due to what my dreams are than any circumstances around me.

How it happened is of course a hard question to answer. In some ways, perhaps many ways, dumb luck, I met my wife in an unlikely place and she has built me up brick by brick over many years by now. Without her it’s hard to imagine I’d, we’d, be in such a good place all around.

But that isn’t really helpful, focusing on the parts I had no and have no control over. If we instead look only on my actions I think there are a few but more importantly a few key insights that helped me:

Actions:

• Fake it till you make it. Confidence is all important in our society, if you don’t have it naturally then you need to fake it. Over time it becomes second nature.

• Take care of yourself, first. Like they say in the preflight security rundown, put on your own mask first before you attempt to help others.

• Take responsibility for your own well being. Related to the one above but this is more on the emotional level, while external factors will of course impact your well being you don’t have direct control over them. You can’t expect anyone else you make you feel good/well so you need to shoulder that burden.

Insights:

• You rely on society and it relies on you: while work sucks and is often times completely meaningless and seemingly detrimental to the world from a long term macro perspective it’s still the case that your dream life involves amenities and comforts that require people to work. And you can’t expect that of others unless you yourself put in the same effort.

• You aren’t in control and you never truly will be: while this might be a hard pill to swallow you need to make peace with the fact that you could get cancer the day you reach your ultimate goal and that’s just part of this reality. You can only impact your actions and improve your chances, you can’t guarantee shit. Celebrate your victories no matter the source of them and learn from your own mistakes but don’t let external circumstances crush you.

• Life just isn’t far: relates to the above. Some people smoke and drink and do copious amounts of drugs are still wildly successful and rich and live to 100. Some work their asses off, are the nicest people ever, live clean and healthy and then die in cancer in their 30s with two young children left behind. Dwelling on this solves nothing. It’s just a part of our reality and isn’t really meaningfully changed or impacted by politics.

Those are my two cents

EDIT:

Hmm, I skipped something that might be super obvious but I shouldn’t assume:

Action:

• Smile and the world smiles at you: not in the sense that you’re guaranteed or owed a smile but rather that being kind and putting out good vibes makes life smoother and happier for us all. This is not to say that we should accept bad things of course, but make sure to reduce the collateral damage of your negative emotions and feelings, think surgical strike on a specific, deserving, target and not carpet bombing everything and everyone.

• You need friends, or at the very least someone to talk to: Ties in to the above in that if you don’t dump your negative emotions on the world then we’re do you dump it? Because carrying that shit around or just eating the bad emotions yourself is not a viable approach. No, you need to have people to vent to/with. Be that your partner, friends, family or a professional. This goes for all bullshit like getting sick and missing an event you’ve looked forward to and had tickets to for months. Or being passed up for a promotion in favor of Kenny who by all metrics does a worse job than you. You need to vent that shit out because being in a shitty mood and making everyone else uncomfortable is not going to make your life any better or happier.

Dead accurate meme.

My protip if you really can’t bother with all that and just want to do expensive Legos is to go to an active forum for PCs where you can simply ask for a recommendation for a build.

What you need to supply is a budget example and what it needs to cover. I.e. if screen needs to be part of it or if you have one. If you do the resolution and refresh rate is good input (or just make and model which is printed on it). Finally you need an idea of what games you’ll play. With that a mini war will erupt between AMD and Intel and AMD and Nvidia around what would be the best build for the budget.

Keep in mind to pick a forum based in the same country as you, else the recommendations might not at all fit your budget due to local price variance.

Hell you could probably make do without a budget if you say you’re unsure how much is reasonable to spend to play the games you wish to play and you’ll get recommendations to that effect as well.

And dont forget the lifelong political philosophers that love spaces like Reddit and the Fediverse where they can debate and argue. It’s not that Communism is inherently bad from any theoretical or philosophical stand-point. And I’ll even agree that at least some part of the failure of pretty much all communist states was caused by external actors working hard to make them fail. But even if we could get everyone aboard on that thinking the step is still absolutely massive to go from any western nation today to full on communism. And this isn’t some new line of thinking either. It’s why SocDem even became a thing way back, which was very unpopular right from the start and opposed by Marx himself (the notion of gradual reform, one policy at a time and of compromising to make at least some progress).

In some ways I admire the 50+ year old die hard commies that have spent so much time and energy into this, that really know that it’ll work. But that can at best get 20 people to attend a meeting because most of us actually live OK lives, we want changes yes, we want progress and not conservative measures yes but full on revolution? Forgo private ownership completely and everyone gets a fair share? We can’t even trust our neighbors to not steal our packages from our porch, nor our representatives to not fuck us over for some low ball lobbyist money and we are to trust them with basically absolute power for however long it will take to set up a new nation, constitution and government post revolution. Just… No.