Sadly this isn’t new, and hospitals are an example that comes to mind for me. At least one in particular. In 2007 there was a huge scandal about the treatment of US soldiers at Walter Reed, which was thought of as one of the top military hospitals. The initial reporting was from the Washington Post and largely focused on how the privatization of care and the contracting process itself had failed the patients so horribly.

I vaguely recall that building upkeep was delayed years because of contracting issues, and that the staff was slashed from hundreds (plural) to less than a hundred, claiming they couldn’t find qualified candidates. There were complaints about rats, roaches, and black mold. I’m also fairly certain there was a story of one guy saying he was handed a shitty photocopy of the grounds and it took him hours walking around in a hospital gown to find his room. Two weeks later he found the person who was supposed to be running his case, and the case manager said they had no idea where the patient had been those two weeks.

Looking now, Wikipedia doesn’t even mention privatization or contracting issues. The one (2010) complaint of this on the Talk page gets a reply saying “well the military was ultimately responsible for holding those contractors accountable,” and it ends there. Not wrong, but still feels like it’s not giving a full account of the story.

Obviously this is just conjecture now, but honestly the staffing part reminds me just like how, as I’m job hunting now, I notice companies keep posting the same ads, saying they can’t find anyone who wants to work, while offering peanuts for very high requirements, and getting hundreds of applications. I’m sure lots of them aren’t qualified, but I’m confident some of them are. I’ve even been offered significantly less than my last job paid, for a position (at a different employer) that would’ve been a manager for my previous level. I can only imagine how crazy it gets in the medical field.

Like a lot of others, my biggest gripe is the accepted copyright violation for the wealthy. They should have to license data (text, images, video, audio,) for their models, or use material in the public domain. With that in mind, in return I’d love to see pushes to drastically reduce the duration of copyright. My goal is less about destroying generative AI, as annoying as it is, and more about leveraging the money being it to change copyright law.

I don’t love the environmental effects but I think the carbon output of OpenAI is probably less than TikTok, and no one cares about that because they enjoy TikTok more. The energy issue is honestly a bigger problem than AI. And while I understand and appreciate people worried about throwing more weight on the scales, I’m not sure it’s enough to really matter. I think we need bigger “what if” scenarios to handle that.

OP asked what people wanted to happen, and even later “destroy gen AI” as an option. I get it is not realistically feasible, but it’s certainly within the realm of options provided for the discussion. No need to police their pie in the sky dream. I’m sure they realize it’s not realistic.

!gamedev@lemmy.world - I took it over several months ago and have tried to regularly share news that is relevant to developers and hobbyists. I think I’ve done an okay job, but it’s still pretty low in search results when you search “gamedev Lemmy”. While posts get a few upvotes, and some comments, almost no one else posts there.

The thing is, I like the Reddit r/gamedev community just fine and still visit it. I just don’t trust Reddit as a company. So this is my way of trying to facilitate a healthy option, and follow the adage of “the grass is greener where you water it”.

So if you’re into video game development and the industry around it, feel free to join!

Everyone’s talking about money, but I’d try to eliminate costs. First day I make some food and a couple of (full) power banks. Next few days I make some food and solar panels.

I know you say no cars, but I have family I’d trust to put one together. (I’d trust them to take mine apart to work on it.) The only odd part would be body panels? Similarly I’d try to figure out some small housing a cubic meter at a time, but that’s probably also a work in progress.

I’d mix in a few personal items over the coming days of course. A new PC, new clothes, and food variety. I don’t know how to get rid of Internet and land costs. I wonder if the resulting economic crash might lead to that being figured out for everyone, but I somehow doubt that.

I don’t know about “out of left field”, but I’ve seen many people use it to justify being retaliatory. “They treated me this way and did a horrible thing, so this is the way they want to be treated! I’m going to do it right back to them!” That’s literally against what the rule says. That’s just you giving them permission to continue.

In fact, I think that’s depressingly common.

Boost isn’t marking spoilers correctly and I’m confused… So be warned to anyone curious about watching it. (I recommend it )

I watched it back then, and enjoyed it, but I get why some people were disappointed. We were told it would be explained, and the explanations got kinda hand-wavey. We were told they weren’t dead, and they weren’t in purgatory… And while that was true, they did all die and end up in “purgatory” for the resolution to happen. (And if the flash-sideways weren’t exactly “purgatory” five, but it was equally as unfulfilling and unexplained.) And all this happened when we weren’t investing days and weeks into it, but years.

That said, it was still one of the best “first seasons” of TV ever. And back then the prevailing logic was that flashbacks were tantamount to narration; just not to be done in GOOD media. But Lost did it great. It often showed us motivations (and even the reason decisions were made) in the modern day, without informing other characters the reasoning behind those choices. Sure, sometimes they just felt like plot, but not usually.

Also, if you enjoyed Lost, go watch From. It’s been renewed for a 4th season. Oddly, also featuring Harold Perrineau.

It feels like Taco Bell has a long history of this. My first thought was how as a kid my local one also sold Choco Tacos, and it felt right.

But then I realized the true answer for me was I hate their change in sauce for the Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Instead of the Baja sauce they used to have, a while back they switched over to using a ranch sauce. (Gotta fulfill that stereotype of Taco Bell just being a dozen ingredients in different shapes/amounts.) That sucks.

Obviously it’s person-dependent. I find what helps me most is turning on audio to something I actually want to listen to. That gets my mind off going to sleep. And I fall asleep instead of listening to the things I want to hear. So I’ve got a bunch of audiobooks from Audible. I’ve recently cancelled that, however. I’ve got so many, and plan to use the phone app Libby in conjunction with my local library. Also, I subscribe to a bunch of podcasts.

When I lie down I just set the timer to 30m or “end of chapter”, and I rarely have to extend that.

I have a Pixel 4a and it heats up a little playing Balatro, but all of the below it has no issues with:

Flipflop - a fun take on solitaire

Downwell - a vertical platformer

Holedown - an inverse breakout, minus the paddle

Desert Golf - a true indie classic!

Radiant - a Galaga/Space Invaders-ish shmup that’s old enough to probably be lightweight these days.

anything by Kairosoft - a developer of sim management games I’ve been playing games from since I had a flip phone. Just find a theme you like and go crazy.

NYT games - They have more than Wordle! Connections, a word grouping game, in particular is fun, and so is Strands a themed word search. They’re all updated daily for free on one app. They just lock off previous days’ puzzles and the crossword. (Though they have a small quick crossword that’s also fun.) It’s actually discounted right now for an actual subscription

Reigns - I found this very fun. It’s not for everyone. It uses Tinder’s swiping to let you make decisions and try to run your kingdom. Good luck.

Prune - a puzzle that that relies on pruning your growing plant to reach the goal

80 Days - a narrative game with a decent amount of reading, as you attempt to buy, sell, and barter your way through your adventure.

Crossy Road - Frogger-inspired game with more maps and more fun.

Plague Inc - also a classic. Control a disease as you attempt to infect and destroy humanity. (This was popular before COVID.)

Burrito Bison - time your taps to launch your lucha libre across the map.

Super Mario Run - just simple enough to make you mess up sometimes. But it’s not bad. I liked it.

While I’m reluctant to call anything a magnum opus… You’re bang on about the difference between those two and SWFG.

That’s what led me to this. I quit Audible a few months back, planning to just buy more media outright. But they offered me a “come back and pay $0.99 for the first three months!” and I’m not really saying “no” to basically giving them Amazon’s money. (Though for the holidays they’ve apparently upped the offer to that plus a $20 credit.) So I thought this would be a good general question as I look for more ways to support creators directly, after taking their money runs out.

Good mention of Libby, too. A coworker recommended that to me, so I’ve got it now as well. Sadly my local selection isn’t great for audiobooks. But it does make me want to get an ereader more.

Bandcamp looks to be a good way to buy music though, as someone mentioned. But I can’t find any good way to buy digital copies of movies/TV. It’s all pretty platform locked, it seems.

I love the question! I rarely listen to songs or playlists, and almost never algorithm based streams. Instead I put on albums I like. Even in my 10m-15m drive to work, and do that until I’m tired on an album. So, love the question.

Aesop Rock’s Integrated Tech Solutions. Being a long time fan I thought The Impossible Kid was fantastic. TIK was as creative and ponderous as anything he’d done, but often felt more accessible and personally inviting. While accessibility is not something you generally look for with Aesop, that feeling of being personal really made it pay off. Spirit World Field Guide was good and was interesting, but didn’t work for me as much. Maybe it was a case of enjoying TIK so much, and comparison being the thief of joy? But ITS absolutely feels top notch again. Love it.

Also worth mentioning is Powerman 5000. A year or so ago (while on a kick to my youth) I found out they were still making music and had released an album (The Noble Rot) in 2020. Shortly after I discovered that, they released one in 2024 (Abandon Ship.) They’re not great songs, but they’re all great vibes. The songs feel like they 3/4s to being great to me. Like they kept the dial at a 7 or 8 instead of turning it up to 11. And even when they did turn it up, it was only at the very end. Maybe he’s going for something different, or maybe I’ve changed, but the strength feels off. But damn the vibes are still there.

People are complaining about Motti not knowing Jedi were real. But how many times did we see things written down, much less recorded video/holograms?

In this essay on how recorded media was made illegal by the Empire to clamp down on shared knowledge and control the public, I will prove without a doubt…

I was much more critical of the games I played when I was 30 compared to when I was 20. So perhaps that’s a bit of the explanation?

I’m sure you’re right that age, the circles we ran in, and platforms all played a significant role in our experiences around the game. That’s why I wanted to underscore that it was reviewed phenomenally. But so was Oblivion. Oblivion ranked much closer to Skyrim than Morrowind did, and I’m pretty sure it sold better than Morrowind too.

But like you suggested, a lot of the magic games have is found within us, especially when we’re younger, and more open to it. Though yeah, Skyrim was still pretty fucking good. But what do I know? I liked the persuasion mini game in Oblivion that everyone else seemed to hate.

Yeah, I was there. I’m 44. I loved all three games and played them on release (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim.) I don’t want to oversell it. It was game of the year almost everywhere. Famitsu even gave it a 40/40. Maybe their first Western game reviewed as such? I remember that being a big deal. It was very well loved and very popular. A co-worker I knew who mostly only played Madden was sheepishly admitting he not only was paying it, but really loving going around picking plants for recipes.

But the skill system caught a lot of guff, which I recall being an issue some people had. I definitely remember the skill system being a thing that made a lot of people angry.

A lot of the other things were complaints you’ll find in other TES games, but people think a new game should’ve changed these things. For instance, there was the normal physics issues we get in a 3D TES game, which being the third game in a row, was adding up for some people. Then cities (and some buildings in cities) require loading was hated by some people who considered it old fashioned. Especially once a mod came out that got rid of that for cities. Also, the popularity of mods was instant. Not just people trying to add content, but initially a lot of that was people replacing models, and really talking shit on their modeling and textures.

Yeah, it got a lot of shit. But those people were playing it too. These are fellow gamers we’re talking about. People absolutely complain.

It was definitely a thing some people felt. There are several reasons some people like one TES game over another, and while visual styles and the world in general are large parts of it, the streamlined feel is a component for many that’s divisive. Not just changed made to systems, but how arcane a previous version felt is absolutely a positive to some people. They felt the games hit a sweet spot and later game(s) went too far.

A string is just a collection of characters, in programmer speak. When you use quotation marks in your search to find exactly what you want. If your search was:

dog “fast drive”

Google used to show results that only had both the word “dog” and the joined phrase “fast drive” in the same result. Or tell you there were no results.

Now it feels like Google uses that as a suggestion, giving you “dog” and any combination of “fast drive”, “fast driver”, “fast driving”, or whatever else Google thinks you want, instead of what you asked for. Or if they don’t find it, they serve you up whatever they want, with a small message about there being no matching results.

This was going to be my recommendation, so I’m happy to see it.

Around the same time I also watched The Besieged Fortress. It’s about an ant colony attacking a termite mound. It’s staged, but handled as it might happen in real life, and narrated as if it’s some massive siege in medieval times. It’s fantastic.

Good luck getting to some place you’re happy being.