Hope is the delusion that things will get better without our input.

Hope is the drug which numbs us in the face of unflinching reality.

Hope is that which wonders why the planet is burning after they put so much energy into believing it’ll be ok.

Hope is the reason we’re always late.

Philosophy aside, there has been no greater producer of disappointment in my life than hope. It has always left me complacent when I should’ve acted, it has always left me blind when I should have been looking for solutions.

We don’t need hope, we need courage! We need courage to face reality as it is! We need courage to accept reality as it is. And we need courage to change reality into what it could be!

Oh, no! The Big Corporation’s proprietary LLMs are plugging the Big Corporation’s other products as official sources?! Who could have possibly seen this coming!

“… well, I guess they must’ve been Heretics!”

Pff, typical Mon-keigh behaviour… You wouldn’t see the noble Children of Asuryan behaving so barbarously!

… I mean, sure, one of our Farseers went a bit off after too many Soul Communions and drove an entire flotilla straight into a Warp Storm yelling that it was the everflowing love of Mother Isha that one time, but never this!

At this point, with the sheer amount of data, I’ve structured things based on individual drives. All of my devices have the onboard SSD - I go for 1TB minimum. Call me old fashioned, but I still partition that one in two, one containing the Windows stuff and the essential 3rd party software, and a second partition which contains games, downloaded media, miscellaneous software, generally the stuff I use more frequently, but isn’t vital. It’s also where I store all downloads to keep the Windows partition clean and separate.

As for my external drives, I have one which I keep stuffed with game installs (2TB), and a second one which serves as my media library drive - music, movies, etc (1TB).

In terms of folder structures, I either use the default ones which come with Steam, for instance, or I keep it as simple as humanly possible (eg. Music > Artist > Album). Downloads are lumped in a single folder, wherein I may make subfolders for mass downloads of mods and such. Otherwise, Search & pray! With indexing turned off, because I like to hurt myself!

Edited to add sizes and: bought a second 2TB external which I plan on using as a back-up for my music library, some DRM-free games, and whatever movies may strike me as worth preserving.

Oh, damn! Sorry, everyone, forgot to double-check:(

And thanks so much for the alt source!

Actually serves pretty well if one’s goal were to further destabilise things. People have already been convinced that illegal immigrants are to blame for all economic problems (even though it is easier to prove the extreme opposite through a cursory search on the internet), maybe if the downward slope is gentle enough, people won’t start doubting the efficacy of the initially applied solution. Maybe the point was to get them to the next level, get them angry at something else after everything is done with the false problem.

I just don’t see Trump actually wanting what’s his version of “best” for the country. I think he’s on a power play, and the country’s just the kindling.

Maybe I’m talking complete nonsense, but this feels like a… logical escalation. To what, I cannot fathom, although we’ve seen similar movements preclude Totalitarian/Authoritarian regime solidification periods before, where the desperate masses clung to the wrong solution.

I just love how this has become the most controversial thing I’ve ever posted on the internet =))

Oh, always full shower and a change of clothes which have not had direct contact with the designated smoking area, yes. I also lean toward muskier/spicier scents, so that’s an extra layer of coverage.

My main worry, honestly, is with the neighbors. I’m not going full bordello, no noise past 10PM, no IMAX at home, etc. Don’t even much like having people over. But as sp3ctr4l pointed out a few comments down, self-righteousness is unfortunately prevalent…

Nope, ‘that Trump.’ That Trump still exists, that he is president again, that he’s doing what he’s doing, or everything at once, so I just remember that Trump. To me, that’s enough.

Musk being best buds with the President of the USA is legit friggin’ scary, speaking as a foreigner.

Then you remember that Trump, and it becomes terrifying.

I know it’s wrong and primarily unjustified to think this, but sometimes I feel that we’ve evolved not at all as a species. We’ve developed fancier stuff, but barbarism is alive and well. It’s just wearing an expensive suit now.

Hey, nobody says ushankas should carry the sins of humans! We can reclaim ushankas as a symbol of empathy and… uuh… general goodness, I guess!

I second this, coming from a person living in one of the former Soviet Bloc countries, we do NOT want that kind of comradeship again. Nonono. Textbook Socialism (a k.a. not Stalinism) with a basis in secular humanism and friggin’ empathy, yesyesyes!

“Luckily,” I cut it with very bad tobacco, so it probably stinks more like stale cigarettes…

OH, GOD, I KNEW IT!!! Everyone can smell it! EVERYONE! My anxiety was right!

Thing is, I genuinely like this album! Not for the music itself, but for what it is, a work born of spite and utter disdain*. I just think more people from the Upper Crust™ could do with listening to this.

In terms of who hurt me, at this point it’s completely irrelevant. There’s only so much mincing you can do to meat before it becomes indifferent to it.

It never has been and never will be about protecting the children, not with the full roster of diddlers they keep in positions of authority…

It’s the ‘boiling over’ part. Seems to be ramping up, and we’re sure to see a lot more of this coming.

There are, indeed, a lot of foreign Trumpites, this is not just on America.

It’s just like any other hobby, you have to see and decide for yourself! All I can say as a person who’s been playing video games for 27 years and loves them for both their mechanics and their artistic potential is that so far it has been time well spent!

To start, i’d first think about what kind of games tempt you most. You have a wide array of genres from which to choose, like cerebral real-time strategy or 4x games (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate), narrative and player expression centric role-playing games, action-packed shooters, or agile and clever platformers.

Then, you can use storefronts like Steam or Epic and run general searches based on genres - I’d recommend sorting according to top sellers/most purchased, as score-based sorting isn’t always reliable.

At the end of it all, however, the most important factor is whatever tempts you in any way. Steam (this is what I use most of the time) offers Demos for a lot of games nowadays, so you should be able to try pretty much whatever tempts you! Be it flashy graphics, an interesting story hook, or just sheer bloodlust, everything is valid!

I’ll leave a list of games I think would serve as a gentle introduction to this hobby below - they’re also not resource intensive, so you should be able to play them on any consumer laptop (or smartphone, some of them!):

• Stardew Valley - management-like game, you have to administrate a farm. But there’s a lot of extra complexity I won’t spoil

• Cloudpunk - combination of cyberpunk delivery person simulator and role-playing game, I’ve found it both relaxing and gripping!

• Cultist Simulator - it’s technically a card game, but what you actually do is balance having a socially acceptable life with investigating incomprehensible forces and leading a cult

• Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic I and II - these two are meat-and-potatoes role-playing games with really solid stories, well-written and presented characters, a neat progression system which sees you unlocking awesome Force powers and/or other valuable perks, and the combat, I find, is the perfect mix of engaging and lenient

• Rocket League - this is as a taste of faster-paced action, basic multiplayer interactions, and relatively high-end graphis - it’s football with cars, but awesome!

As an extra note, you may notice I’ve left links from everywhere. That’s because you’ll have to select a game storefront (it’s a whole thing nowadays, but you really don’t need to interact with that side of the hobby if you don’t want to…). The storefronts share most of their libraries of games, but there are a few exceptions, so it’s best to check them all out before sticking with one. Some examples of such:

• Steam is the most popular and is good, but you can’t run games without running Steam, plus it periodically needs to connect to the internet. Things are fairly priced, the community features are nice, the community is ok, frequent sales. They also offer a no-questions full refund if you choose to do so within two hours of play time, so that’s a way to try out games without Demos.

• GOG (Good Old Games) is basically Steam, less meaty. However, the main strongpoint is that, beyond installing the game through their platform, that game then exists as its own independent entity, not requiring any periodic validation through an internet connection (unless the game itself is online), no shady 3rd party software installed alongside the game to “protect it from piracy,” etc. The games are as yours as they could possibly be in a digital-only environment.

• Epic wants to be Steam’s direct rival, so their storefront has many of the same features, but it’s not as popular within the community. I honestly have no opinion about them.

Other than that, all I can say is try to explore the hobby, check out gaming outlets, watch Lets-Plays on YouTube, and you can always lean on the online community for suggestions and tips! Also applicable to myself!

*snips triumphantly