For me it feels important to maintain faith that, deep inside, people are good, or at least are born innocent, and that it’s mainly our institutions, philosophies, and cultural norms that turn us against each other and harm our souls with toxic stuff. And that through seeking local community and connection we can reconnect with the natural tendency towards compassion that exists within us all even as so many of our leaders fail to show those qualities.

There’s a big moment in SOMA that really stuck with me. Not gonna spoil it. Mostly it’s a horror game but it engages with some pretty intense ethical questions and does so in a way that feels very personal.

There’s also a sort of morbid fascination and curiosity that comes from a situation this unique. I definitely agree that of course the sinking refugee ship should have gotten far more help and attention, but I think the “morbid curiosity” element is certainly part of why this got so much attention. The whole situation of paying a fortune for visiting the Titanic in a janky unregulated submersible and then vanishing underwater is…bizarre, and surreal, in a way that captures attention

It does seem like Oceangate advertised in a misleading way, emphasizing claims of safety and compliance with safety standards. There’s also probably an unfortunate bias, of sorts, of “rich and powerful man saying something is safe in a confident and authoritative voice so it must be true”

Yeah i’m in my 30s and still enjoy playing games, nice way to relax at the end of the day.

Related question though: any good Minecraft channels on youtube that aren’t made for children? I’m just starting to get in to minecraft now and it’s been super fun, but the youtube playthroughs I’ve been looking at have all been…seeming to not be catering to an audience my age, to put it politely.

I end up gravitating towards favorite games that I play tons of, as well as additional games that I play through once for the experience.

The “core game” I keep coming back to these days has been XCOM 2, which I never really got tired of.

I loved Svalbard, such a strange and surreal place. How long were you there?

I’ve been hoping we’ll get a travel community added to Beehaw sooner or later. Great photos!

Visually it looks amazing. Love the addition of the “parallel roads” feature too, that’ll be a huge timesaver.

I loved Midnight Suns, but the replayability does suffer because of all the dialogue scenes without easy ways to skip past them. I’m playing a second game now on higher difficulty and still enjoying the combat but it’s a bit annoying to have to skip past all those conversations. If they patch in a New Game+ option that makes it easier to skip some of that stuff, it’ll really improve the replayability aspect IMO. Still I’ll probably do one more campaign with the DLC characters added, I hear some of them are a lot of fun.

After a few years of mostly playing strategy & tactical games, I fired up Minecraft this weekend. I’d never really given it a proper try before, but it’s been refreshing and relaxing. I started on survivor mode but found the enemies kind of annoying, so I switched to peaceful survivor mode and that’s been fun so far. Just enjoying the “wander around and build stuff” atmosphere. Honestly makes me want to play more sandbox-y games after a while of mostly playing more intense stuff.

Yeah it would have to be mass deletion by people who use the app regularly, which (should) lead to a measurable reduction in traffic and ad revenue, assuming that those people would spend less time on reddit if they didn’t have the app handy on their phones constantly anymore.

Amazing that he can’t think of a way to make money that doesn’t involve alienating the unpaid people who keep the place running.

I haven’t abandoned Reddit entirely, but I’ll never use the app…downloaded it once a year or two again and deleted it within an hour because it was ugly and confusing. I honestly think maybe the next phase of the protests, for those who still are active on Reddit, should be mass deletion of the app and using only the desktop site/mobile browser version. The API thing was meant to force people onto the app, so mass organizing to delete the app would hit them where it hurts.

That’s terrible. Texas can be sweltering in May, let alone June/July/August. Putting lives at stake for profit (again)

Seconding “travel”

Yeah I love the subreddit I moderate and haven’t felt ready to “pull the plug” and walk away completely, though I’m putting up more boundaries around the time I put in to moderating, and have created an account here to start exploring Reddit alternatives, especially if this API thing ends up being step one (or maybe more like step five lol) of a larger “enshittification” process. More broadly speaking I feel like I’ve seen stuff like this happen enough times online to realize that the profit incentive itself is just harmful, so I want to support and be a part of communities that aren’t ultimately going to ruin themselves for the sake of profit

Thank you for listening and your kind comments!

Sure yeah, happy to share, thanks! Here’s a link to a string quartet I uploaded last year (“performed” by digital instruments on my computer). If you make music too I’d be happy to take a listen as well! https://soundcloud.com/walkingears/sets/string-quartet-concordant

i like Soundcloud, have an account for my own music on there, but I also listen to music by others. Gotta appreciate how the internet can help DIY artists put some work out into the world. Listening to a composer on Soundcloud now named Andy Feldman. https://soundcloud.com/feldya/tracks