Next time I’m in an airport food court I’ll try to really take in the view of the cinnabon next to the starbucks.

The second Apple rolled out face ID, I knew this tech was ready and waiting for forced ads

But no one is investing billions into your dog’s shit, are they?

Idk… That might even out. During a 30 hr drive, I’d probably add on at least 8-9 hours for every 8-9 driven, because that’s as long as I can stand to drive at a stretch without needing to find a hotel to stop for the night. Driving for that long is goddamned miserable, and at least in a train you can book an overnight car to sleep in so that even when you sleep travel keeps happening.

Idk, maybe I’m totally off base and this is totally personal preference, but if I’m already driving that far, I’d rather just take the train to not have to worry about driving myself.

The Long Dark soundtrack is absolutely goated

As an example of this, if I got a C on any report card/progress report, my parents would take my phone away for the following 9 weeks until the next one came out with better grades. As a kid with undiagnosed ADHD, that meant I had my phone taken away…a lot. As a result, I had no real friendships by the end of high school, and ate my lunch alone every day. If you couldn’t text people/connect on socials, then you never got included in plans or developed those relationships with anyone.

It was lonely, painful, and it fucking sucked. My parents were too wanna-be Boomer to give a shit or even ask. I don’t speak to them any more for that and other reasons.

So yeah, social media may suck, but cutting your child off from modern social circles is a much worse parenting choice. Ideally you’d keep an eye on their use and help them form a healthier relationship with it. But I understand parenting is hard, especially when both parents work full time jobs.

The problem is that even the fan speed settings/airflow settings are touch now, which require divided attention while driving to adjust. That defrost button turns the setting on full fucking blast, when most of the time there’s no call for that, so I have to look and find the fan speed part of the touch screen. Adjusting the temp is only one small part of climate control in the cab. Plus, if you start out your drive with the seat warmers on, but now they’re sweating you out while driving, you have to navigate into a separate menu via touch to turn them off.

Not to mention the never ending battle of adjusting the brightness via touch if it’s blinding my eyes while driving at night VS barely being visible during the day.

It’s all just so frustrating, and I wish there were at least options to take the damn thing out.

Cherish that Subaru, because it’s not that way in them anymore. At least, not in ours, which was purchased in 2021. Now hvac is all touch screen; it’s awful.

My exact reaction to Starfield. Will almost certainly be the same for ES6

They…aren’t? They’re free demos, right there in the title.

I thought doomers were largely young millenials/Gen z?

This year actually had some decent stuff as far as indies and older games go. I was able to pick up several games I have been wanting for a while, all for about the price of one AAA game.

I got Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Islets, Supraland, both Dishonored 1 and 2, Do Not Feed the Monkeys, and Vessels for under $70. I look forward to never getting around to them :)

I know for sure Ratchet and Clank and the Dishonored games play on the deck, but I’m not sure about the others.

How far into Nier Automata did you get, may I ask? It could be worth sticking through past the credits. It’s one of those games where the side quests actually add to the experience, as well, so if you’re not doing those you’re missing some of the philosophy.

I know that’s a lot of work to enjoy something, though, and that’s not everyone’s cup of tea!

Haha, “why so defensive”?

Right, but if the person I was talking originally to had said “I’m not from the US so I know nothing about it” it woulda been fine and I would have immediately apologized and we’d go from there. Having a nice chat.

That’s not what happened. Someone new chimed in with a pretty rude non-sequitur in the vein of ‘stupid Americans’. I don’t think I was particularly defensive or angry, but maybe it came off that way.

I definitely don’t? I was just providing my experience for the place I live. Obviously not all places are the south…? And good for you on your ‘more civilized place’, but we’re not talking about those areas.

Seems to me that, to solve rent crisis, Americans should just move into Europeans’ heads, since we seem to live there rent free already.

I’m not sure where you live, but living/growing up in the south… I can tell you that those beliefs run deep. Deep deep deep. Deeper than you can fix by just being pleasant to your neighbor.

If you try to talk to them with kindness and openness, they dig in their heels and start spewing fox news talking points like it’s the most obvious thing in the world (I’m pretty sure they like it so much because it confirms every awful belief they already had). Try to present different sources, they’re rejected as fake news. I’ve tried everything with people around here since before 2016 and nothing seems to help. Mostly I just keep to myself.

Living in the south, if you’re not indoctrinated, is very isolating. Even living in the cities doesn’t really help. You still need to dig deep and look carefully for people who don’t think you deserve fewer rights.

Edit: thinking about it more, I think the isolation is the point, and it’s how so many people in my state believe some of the same basic things when it comes to religion and politics. You learn pretty young around here that if you don’t get with the program, you’re not going to have many friends. If you didn’t go to church, especially, you lost out on most of the community’s socializing for the week. It feels very cliquey in the smaller towns especially, almost by design.

Super not enthused with how centrist this is. Comes off as more of the “can’t we all just get along and live in unity??” stuff people say, when really they mean “the left needs to chill and stop making everything a big deal.”

Kinda hard to just ‘get along’ when the other side is trying to destroy democracy and strip large portions of the population of their basic human rights.

Yeah, a bit. I’m really bad at remembering Xbox-style controls since I only ever had Playstation as a kid/teen, so it’s nice to be able to look and see at a glance which one is x and which one is y. It’s mostly just a petty aesthetic thing, though. Not a deal-breaker, just a preference when looking at them side by side

Edit: looking at it again, I could see how it could potentially be an accessibility issue for people with poorer eyesight though?

Nice! Is it weird that I prefer the more white details on the buttons instead of the new gray?