Gadg8eer

Because nobody made a Steam Deck until 2020. Everyone plays video games now and have for years, and unless you have a console, the only way to play 99% of video games is using Steam's windows version or a specially adapted Linux .

Don't get me wrong, the moment that Windows 11/12/etc. outright requires logging into a Microsoft account (Protip: As of this writing, using the email "no@thankyou.com" and submitting a blank password forces Windows 11 to let you make/log into a local user account) to use it, I'll be installing Steam OS on my OneXFly, and it's why I don't use my "free" upgrade to 11 on my Windows 10 gaming desktop. I just don't think you realize how big a deal compatibility really is for gaming.

Honestly this is yet another reason to distinguish between photographic images/live video of a minor, and the disgusting but necessary evil of fictional material. With scams like this and new AI generation capability, I'm scared that even kids younger than 13 who haven't even been forced to be involved in that photographic/video crap will be blackmailed using only their face and black market image AIs that draw on dark net CSAM.

By making fictional content legal while conversely increasing penalties for adults who exploit or attack REAL children in ANY way, not just sexually (because let's be honest, this scam, kiddy porn and a lot of physical non-sexual violence towards children by strangers is about exploiting kids for the money and nothing else) you deprive the black market of material for an AI-based extortion plan.

The only other option is to make it illegal for anyone under 18 to post content on the internet at all, which would kill Lemmy and the fediverse, big tech, VR, online gaming and modern education.

Yes, but that's because it motivated them to strike. That's basically the less violent version of a riot.

I live in Central Alberta, if I didn't wear shoes my feet would be frostbitten after one trip to a store in winter. Snow in Canada may be a false stereotype in the summer, but you bet your ass it's completely true at the expected time of year.

Okay, admittedly this is the best-looking real life half-track I've ever seen, and I really like the idea of them in general, but I'm kind of annoyed that half-tracks were mostly used by the Nazis. Didn't ANYONE else take the concept seriously?

I build rail networks and cities in most of the games I play. There's something cathartic about building that's different from the catharsis of destroying or stealing.

As for CP2077, I actually like that they included cars because it's a dystopia. If cars, stroads and limited access motorways are the worst transport system ever, which they very much are, use them exclusively in dystopian future worlds and you've basically driven home the point easily. Of course, the fact that there's a metro system in Night City would cut into that, but clearly the people there have bought into carbrain like nothing we see in real life, judging by the disdain going on a date by train gets and the description of how the saying in Cyberpunk's world is de facto "Bread, Circuses and Automobiles" since the 1950s.

If anything, their over reliance on cars is a very anti-car artistic statement.

Notepad++, because I mostly program OpenTTD mods.

It's only recently been proven untrue... IIRC... because it apparently turns out crude oil is actually the poop of a particular ancient microbe that is still around and that's partially (along with Oil Fracking) why we still have fossil fuels and why a far future non-human civilization will have plenty of fossil fuels to work with.

You're right, though, we have 5x more fossil fuels than have been burnt since the beginning of the industrial revolution. If we DO use the rest, the climate would be so unrecoverable that 99% of multicellular life will die, but even the most corrupt oil executive would be dead years before the last animal because most - especially the wealthiest - humans need agriculture to eat, and if shit hits the fan the poor outnumber the rich and the crop-killing pests outnumber the poor.

I wish I was making this up or delusional or cynical. I want more than anything for souls to be immortal. I would have no problem living in my dreams forever, but I'm not the one who said it (or if my unconscious counts as being me, I'm not able to type a fediverse post using the part of my mind which is more aware of why there's no afterlife).

If anyone can post scientific evidence disproving how I've come to interpret what I experienced, I'm content to let that have the final say rather than make any attempt to dispute it. For now, I know it sounds insane but this is literally a Cassandra Truth, so at least recognise that I don't expect you to believe it's the truth, only to recognize that if ascending to the astral plane could be done, I would be persuing doing so at this very moment.

I'm sorry, but I know what happened between me and my unconscious mind, and I'm not just relying on my memories but also my now-decade old dream logs. I asked it for the honest truth. It said the truth is what I feared, death is not (yet?) followed by anything but oblivion.

To be fair, if you're not happy about that concept, neither am I because fuck the Atheists and screw the guy who wrote His Dark Materials. I'm just one poorly-recieved sci-fi writer, though, I never even got to go to university. I am not qualified or capable of building an afterlife, or determining whether souls are singular entities unto themselves or merely a process that our minds use as "the third rail of the subconscious train of thought", or testing if continuity of self across time is real or illusionary.

Aside from that, I will say one thing; I have never ingested hallucinogens, at least not to my knowledge, and I don't go to parties or have any IRL friends. So no, you don't get to say I'm high when the only way I got OUT of the maddening despair I experienced in 2017 was because my dreams helped pull me out of a complete mental breakdown. Fight me, I don't care if you think I'm telling the truth and I don't need you to believe your unconscious mind is somehow independently acting on your behalf, but don't fucking tell me I'm not sober when I've been completely sober of everything including tobacco and alcohol my entire life.

Fair enough. I meant that there's two "realistic"s out there. There's what's scientifically proven, and there's what pop-culture has led us to believe; they overlap but the latter is significantly less required to tell the truth.

How childlike are teenagers? More than you think thanks to Dawson Casting. Why do Aluminum Christmas Trees exist in the Peanuts universe? Because that was an actual ugly fad back in the 1960s. Why do cars always explode when they crash in movies? Because it looks cool and reminds people that the Ford Pinto was a death trap and so could their Tesla be.

Pop-Culture is art, not science, but most of us (myself included) take it for granted that what is and isn't fictional is easy to spot because real people sit on chairs but only action movie heroes can survive jumping out a plate glass window to escape an explosion. Sadly, fake news exists because fiction has never been 100% clear on what is fake in movies and books, and since 2016 neither is reality for some odd reason (Life imitates art, go figure).

If every Aluminum Christmas Tree was just a wry commentary on the commercialization of a Christian holiday, World War One would never have happened. If the poles for traffic lights weren't designed to shear off and fall to the ground if a car drives into them, there would be a lot more road fatalities, yet people deride Grand Theft Auto, American Truck Simulator, Crossout and other games with drivable vehicles and destructible environments for unrealistic traffic lights that you can push over by driving into.

Science, as accurate as it is due to only trusting the verified and being willing to de-verify whatever turns out to be misinformed, is not the default coding language of our brain; We are usually very emotionally-motivated, so people believe in everything from a flat earth conspiracy to "science is my one true god because my parents abused me and were constantly going on about Jesus and sinners to cover up that they were bad people, therefore all religions must be evil" to "capitalism is inherently good because I saw my neighbours dragged into the night to never be heard from again by the Soviet secret police" (for the record, I hate both systems but monarchy and anarchy don't appeal to me one bit either so... eh).

So yeah, tl;dr, take it from a fiction writer that people will often believe anything that speaks to them, and therefore our definitions of "realistic" were quite different.

I really did mean "realistic-looking, but not reality" as much as you meant "scientific consensus", and I get why that's easy to confuse... sometimes I just forget when posting on social media that most people don't have a good memory or the desire to memorize things from fiction as disparate as Aboriginee mythology, Hypnopspace Outlaw, the Backrooms, Paprika and Inception, all well enough to remember every single one of them (and many others) involves dream magic/super-tech of some sort. My apologies for forgetting you probably don't write fiction for a living.

5 years later, sure enough, everything I value became critic-repellant in the writing industry; "you have to grow up", "dark and edgy is realistic and realistic is mandatory", "escapism is evil", "children are spoiled little shits", etc.

I now am extremely certain the dream characters who talk to me are avatars of my unconscious. I know that sounds really weird and I have no proof, so believing me on that detail can be taken with a grain of salt. As for my sanity, if I was crazy, I'd be seeing or hearing my unconscious while awake, I swear this is just in dreams that this being talks to me and it gives advice like "don't worry about the average fictional character, they're just inanimate puppets, it's the ones who are people's favorite hats to wear that - like you - are important because some hats are helmets that keep the wearer alive" rather than "KiLl EvErYoNe It WiLl Be FuN!!!11!1!" so my best guess is my unconscious mind is trying to communicate with me on a level my conscious and subconscious mindstates can understand.

I damn well know there's more to dreams than they appear, that's WHY I call BS, because a year ago, a dream character that was the first character to appear in two different dreams of mine since ever, and I asked it "Is there really a dream afterlife?" and it said "No."

I also asked it in another dream to be sure, even broadening from "dream afterlife" to "any afterlife at all", this time using an old red landline telephone and voice contact. In a snooty french accent, it confirmed and warned me very strongly and angrily not to ask again. The only upside is it said it didn't know for sure whether it is possible to create an afterlife using technology and/or biology.

I'm sorry but unless someone builds one, there is no afterlife or ascension to another plane. I literally have the info directly from the source.