LGOrcStreetSamurai

Not even a "Start Here", "Locations", or something super basic like that. They really want you to deputize yourself and the local "Big Brother" super snitch. It really got me heated , slamming away on the keyboard helping a less then tech-savvy person input their information and upload their documents. At the very least I think I got them squared away, and helping others is cool.

The supposed vigilance against "Welfare queens" is so goddamn stupid. If we really actually wanted to protect local and state budgets, we would y'know at the very least do something about tax avoidance/evasion. Of course this isn't about budgets at all, just making public services as punitive as possible. The bandits of Neoliberalism attempting to coarse people into the workforce while simultaneously robbing the public wealth.

It just gets me so mad, katz are out here struggling and even trying to do the "right thing" and they are "supposed to do" and we go and it so fuckin' difficult to do so.

Be sure to check out the c/mutal_aid channel to help out some strangers, cause I'm pretty damn sure their local government isn't gonna do it.

I love the games (the Telltale games were peak), and I actually like like most of the individual members of the cast (aside from Kevin Hart, dude just is plainly unfunny to me), and I think Eli Roth can do a decent job behind the camera. However I know most certainly this will be a product/marketing platform in the shape of a movie.

Is the cinema landscape this bleak these days? Movie magic is being wasted on this slop. Goddamn.

I recently had the displeasure of going to the doctor's office. Totally routine check-up. No aches or pains, no fever, nothing particularly ailing me at the moment. I just try to go the doctor twice a year because I have "good insurance™©®" through my employer. The amount of legwork I had to do just see a doctor was awful.

I found doctors that were covered but their practice was not. I found a clinic in my area that the doctor's were covered but the labs they sent their results to were not. Having to navigate through websites and compare them against my insurance coverage felt like I was trying to min-max a character sheet in an RPG. I can only imagine this being 9999% worse if I needed some real deal medical care.

I eventually found a clinic, doctor, and lab trio that worked with my insurance through their website. I drove (thanks American Car Culture) to the doctor's office I kid you not, I spent MORE time in the lobby talking to the nice dude at the desk then I did with the doctor lady. Some clinic aids took my blood pressure and weight and stuff, but I spoke to the doctor-person about seven minutes before they bounced. Again, I know this is just a check-up but damn, seven minutes of face-to-face with a healthcare professional seems pretty bad. I spent maybe two hours doing all this legwork for seven minutes of actual care. I don't blame the doctor-lady either, I'm sure she was stacked to her eyeballs with papers and forms and other patients. This system is so fuckin' wack.

I want to live in a world, where I pay my taxes and I get healthcare (and I want to know my taxes go to covering other people, not the endless war machine). All the shit in life that doesn't actually matter is pretty frictionless and easy, but something as important getting medical care is a goddamn dungeon crawl. There is so much obfuscation between patients and doctors it's absurd.

Also reminder, private insurance is forever and always a business venture. Maximizing shareholder value is the ONLY goal of a business. Also the amount of bullshit jobs in MEGACORPS is absurd. They are tons and tons of layers of obstructions built into these companies by design. They even hire folks whose role is to find reason to deny claims. Just really rotten stuff.

I want single payer healthcare because it's a rational and simple system. I want to go a clinic and get care. That simple. I want medical professionals to make choices about what sort of care i need, not some ghoul an a phantom office in Delaware.

It's a real actually existing policy that would make people's lives better. I know we live belly of capitalism, and the DNC and RNC are lapdogs for these companies but fuck I will still want it.

TL;DR - Private Insurance does nothing but get in the way. Insurance companies hinders healthcare providers ability to provide their services, and hinders people from getting the care they need. For-profit private health insurances are fundamentally bad.

Jennell Jaquays is a unsung game developer. She has a really rich history in games and design. Itchio had a game jam in her honor.

Salute to a real one 🏳️‍⚧️

Check out her website. It's old-school and good.

It sucks that most people can't afford an ticket travel to see their friends or family. I shouldn't have to drop $400 to hangout for the holidays. I should be able to get a train ticket go from state to state with ease.

Remember you deserve to be idle. You should be able to do things for their own sake.

I have been teaching myself more programming stuff for c/gamedev over the last several weeks as my ambition is to make a using Godot to share with people. Just making a game for the sake of trying my hand at a creative work, no real "profit motive" just wanna make a thing . However, but I was feeling like I wanted to get back into the old-school C++ programming rather than using a game engine and was looking for a primer as it's been a bit since I have done it. In my quest I discovered Academic Torrents, I found a ton of great computer science courses and the last weakened synapses of academic rigor in my internet poisoned brain to fire once again.

I have always been for open-information (most just downloading .pdf files of textbooks during college) and stuff but I didn't really know about the concept of a Shadow Library. I'm finding myself interested in just learning more computer nerd shit for the sake of learning. I like the idea I have access to pretty much every computer science department that has a webcam and torrent link, I think that's good.

This idea applies beyond not just for tech stuff of course, but just about anything. I think it's really weird that knowledge creation is soloed away behind nations, institutions, and IP laws. Everyone everywhere should have access to knowledge for the sake of knowledge. I don't know much about the actual process of knowledge creation but the created knowledge itself should be assessable to everyone in a library sense. Knowledge is one basic things that makes us human and should be free and open to everyone. Discovering a website reminded that learning is just cool and worth doing for the sake doing (if that's your thing of course, if you don't wanna learn that should be considered cool too).

The promise of the internet still exists outside the walled gardens and I think that's pretty dope. So long as people wanna learn I'm glad that these sorts of Shadow libraries are there to help people.

Also support your actual local library. Light and Shadow Libraries are cool and lefty and good.

Vent your rage and or employment woes. I am having a bad time looking for a job as an employed keyboard-jockie. Hate my current job can’t find another.

The employment process sucks, the ghosting sucks, the endless automations and inhuman interactions just to find a job. The quantification of every part of the job process is bonkers. Reading all of this fluffy nondescript job profiles is a job in and of itself

The meta-game of having to “optimize” your resume to be read by an A.I. or to having to use an A.I. for the application itself just sucks. All this work for an entry to middle level job that barely covers your bills is just soul draining.

All these employers want you to have 2-5 years experience and a masters degree for a starter position. It’s all just terrible.

It feels like “finding a job” is a skill in and of itself in a way it should not be. “Job hunting” is also a deeply solo thing, even using your professional and/or social network pits you against the “The Market”. It sucks so much.

“The Market” is so bad at everything. We could all more easily organize work and finding work if we all weren’t alienated independent nodes all forced into battle. Yet another reason planning and democratic processes are better than this weird tyranny of “the free market”.

Jump in this thread and be mad with me. Big mad.

I ordered the physical book and it’s just a keen source of knowledge.

The rail companies are were clearly the "bad guys" and it was plain cut story about labor. Striking workers said this was gonna happen, and then it happened and the media did everything it could to cover the Rail-baron's asses. It was failure of regulation, a product of American lobbying also known as corruption in the rest of the world. It was just everything wrong with American industry and the media just did everything it could to get everyone to shut the fuck up about it.

It's just one of those stories I don't think got enough conversation, coverage, and discourse. It was just plainly everything wrong with America resulting in literal death shroud over a working class community. Don't forget the lasting ecological impact of all the plants and animals that drink the water or share the life-force that was injected with death shroud chemicals. Also this was all totally avoidable if they stock buying back vampires just spent like .5% of their revenue to just update some of their hardware. Also the absolute pittance they offered the citizens of East Palestine should have have some [REDACTED] happen.

The whole thing just shows the necrotic rot of capital in the modern age. The zombie looking CEOs just did the bare minimum and gave the smallest concession they could have avoid this and keep their money train going. It wasn't quite panama papers level but goddamn why did we stop talking about this catastrophic failure? The media probably realized all of this is neoliberalism made manifest. From top to bottom. The US department of transportation should have had done a Perp walk on these CEOs. Fuck this whole thing just makes mad. We all deserve so much better.

(BTW I'm pro-train, pro-rail, pro-worker, pro-regulation, all that jazz. I'm just mad that some really real shit happened and America just shrugged and moved on)

The Wikipedia entry is surprisingly pretty decent.

I am running this “season” (in the TV sense not the video game sense) of my friend groups lasting TTRPG session. It’s sort of anthology in that we are wanna be creative types and we use the games to explore our storytelling abilities. None of them are particularly connected but there are some common themes throughout. We have been playing on and off since high-school.

We have done one session of just about everything from classic D&D to modern stuff like Lancer and Mothership. However, Many of our adventure turn into a DBZ were we all get stronger items and Level up and fight a guy. I want to mix things up.

I am Gamemaster this time around and I am running a campaign of vanilla “Spycraft” the D20 secret agent style game. I recently replayed “No One Lives for Ever” and I thought it did a great job satirizing but also indulging in the genre. I want to do something similar, I want to keep it tightly focused and without giving way to action movie just giving them bigger guns and stuff

I was thinking of doing the same thing but taking back to a faux Civil War era with super spies and mildly future tech or maybe a reverse Saturday morning cartoon G.I. Joe where they play agents of a Cobra-like organization.

Does anyone have any tips in general about how to think about breaking genre trends and making a more unique play experience for your friends?

I think personally the big thing leftist thought has done for me is gave me the mental toolkit to unlearn the idea of “ meritocratic/meritocracy”. We don’t live in a remotely fair world and the idea it is in any sense fair and justice is disproven in just about every leftist text, thinker, speech, figure throughout history. We get some hints about it in religion text (Speaking as a Christian) but we don’t really see how to break it down outside of personal virtue and kindness (which are cool and good but not a scaleable solution).

I really think it super dope that leftist thinking give you the tools to understand and see the Matrix we live. I also really like how it shows you ways of addressing it.

What are things you think leftist thought has improve your life? Big or small?