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

Slap them even without the million Euros! Slap them with luke-warm fish! Just slap them! Repeatedly!

Honestly, considering how much of a clown Alex Jones was, they have their work cut out for them if they want to compete at comedic levels!

Either way, this may be the best news I’ve heard all year, thank you!

I very much recommend it if you manage to find some!

I remember it being entirely unique as far as ice cream goes. I even remember it having a bit of that characteristic spicy kick to it.

Edit: tried looking around the internet for any clues as to kiwi ice cream producers, but I mostly found recipes for home-made (which is not a bad idea, ngl!). All I can remember about it is that it wasn’t pre-packaged - always got it served in scoops, on the spot. So, yeah… may actually be “extinct” :(

Kiwi. Don’t even know if they make kiwi flavoured ice cream anymore, as I haven’t had any in decades.

Yes, that’s my favourite aspect about it, the interactivity between the various instances and how distinctly unique each instance seems to have become in terms of ethos. It’s wonderful to see so many different ‘tribes’ and be able to interact with all of them!

Had a Facebook account I completely ignored (set it up for my first girlfriend and we exclusively used Yahoo Messenger) then turned into a music dump, then deleted. I honestly never saw the point of Facebook, not with apps like WhatsApp or even standard SMS evolving as they have, even back then (talking about the 2010s).

Had an Instagram account for about 3 months - surprisingly decent source of grotesque/morbid art! Again, saw no point in this, and Reddit felt superior in all ways.

Mainlined Reddit for a good couple of years, mostly during the Pandemic. By the time I got into it, one could feel its bulk, so to speak. Sure 99.7% of Reddit were the users, but even so, it felt as though subreddit quirks and in-jokes had ossiffied into tennets by that point. Loved it, but it felt constraining here and there.

Switched to Lemmy a couple of months after deleting my Reddit account when shit went down, and it’s all I’ve been using and plan on using. Unless one counts news aggregators as social platforms.

I love this scroungy, spit-and-duct tape feel of the fediverse, to be very honest. Feels like the days when we used to group chat on local network sharing apps, like it’s just the neighbourhood kids around. And it seems to not be dissipating even with the huge increase in users, which is a good sign. Plus the obvious lack of curation other than baseline moderation and/or personal grudges is always nice!

I look more like Johnny Depp if he were born in Eastern Europe and didn’t wear long hair=)))

Can confirm this, the amount of genuine attention I received while losing my mind talking about Warhammer 40k with dates is unbelievable!

Of course, you should probe a bit beforehand. I got lucky and my dates were pretty much all into fantasy stuff, so 40k wasn’t a huge leap, but there was no interest expressed in 40k other than specifically to hear me talk about it.

Edit: I know this is a meme subject, but I’m dead serious about it.

Thank you, always good to have more lists! Been reading up on things like this for a while, among other things, and I’ve already noticed some unfamiliar names in your post!

May whatever deity who may or may not be active hear you and decide that it’d be fun to watch!

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is having a massive attention crave panic because everyone switched to Signal.

We have the potential for far better, yes.

The real question is, will enough people want for us to get better…

Hello and welcome to the community!:D

To put it hyperbolically, Anarchist Utopia!=)) At least that’s my rose tinted vision for it, anyway:))

I essentially want everyone to have the same level of control over it, the same level of ownership, and contribute as much or as little as they would like, as long as mutual respect and consideration are maintained throughout one’s stay. LGBTQIA+ friendly, safe space, freedom of speech and expression are paramount as long as said expression isn’t destructive and/or harmful in any way, no barrier of entry in terms of levels of game experience, no leader, per-se, with everything being determined via communication and consensus, etc. Talk sh*t, get kick’d, but no witch hunts, no mob justice - discussion and consensus throughout. And if some “roles” arise organically from the whole thing, then so be it!

Social participation is up to each and every member - you’re more than welcome if you just want that feeling of belonging without necessarily participating all the time (and need a place to store your Railjack), or if you’re looking to organise grind parties, to help out the newbies, or prep for Sorties and such.

In terms of material participation, as I’ve said, I have unlocked the most relevant bits of Research, like the 100-packs of Restore Kits (all 4 of them, what is a social life, haha), all Labs are built, Dojo is structured in such a way as to allow for logical expansion and already has a lotta room for going nuts with a paint brush, so there’s… really not all that much of a pressure to contribute anything in terms of progression… Mostly all that’s left to unlock is weaponry and Dojo paints, but there’s already so much stuff available, that I can’t see there being any rush for more…

If this sounds good to you, drop me a private message and I’ll add you in-game!

Hey, good to know there are other such initiatives out there, gives me hope! ❤️

And thank you for your insights, I’m really not all that familiar with how “things are done” around here in terms of Clan dynamics and such. Only ever had two, both made by myself, one with a couple of close friends, and this latest endeavor which was mostly a work of boredom, to be honest.

I’ve really been mulling this aspect of limitations around since yesterday and somehow I can’t gel role limits with the vision I had for this idea. I’d very much like to try going for a communal structure, let everyone be 100% equal (minus the odd man out who’ll guard the nuke, so to speak), and try to function based on consensus and empathy. I’m aware this opens it up to the potential of it all blowing up in my face, which is why I (and, hopefully, eventually we) will have to be a bit selective and mindful of newcomers, but I really don’t want it to feel oppressive, just cautious.

In the end, everything which is there will remain there, including any Platinum, research, or anything else. If someone deletes a room, the only thing lost would be the time needed to grind for resources. To be perfectly honest, I think I have enough stuff to rebuild half of the Dojo at this point, so I’m not too worried about that.

This is why I’d very much want to at least gather a core of like-minded people, as you’ve said, and handle the rest together. I don’t even think game experience would be a factor in this case.

I want people to have that feeling of walking into a busy Relay and seeing that crowd going about their day, with the added benefit of said space being theirs. I want people to have creative freedom to restructure the place, to decorate it, to make it theirs. I want this to be as participative as desired, but every major change would be discussed in public and approved via popular vote and based on needs (i.e. no deleting the Dry Dock if other people are grinding the content, but the request to do so will still be discussed and considered for a later date, etc.).

And, most importantly, I want people to feel safe there, to know that at least nobody’ll bother them. Introverts 100% welcome! Don’t know if this makes sense, maybe I need to refine the vision a bit first:))

Either way, thank you so much for your message, it really did put a lot of things into perspective!

Just hit me, maybe a trial period in one of the more restricted authority levels, just to make sure initial impressions are at least maintained. Or maybe that’s too restrictive, I dunno… Would really like to believe this will become a friendly space without the need for safeguards or restrictions, but… people…

And to add, I’m going for this communal consensus type of structure because I’m really not that big on leadership stuff, nor am I big on too much socialising. If this thing were to go down, I’d want to be just one of the faces in the crowd, part of the consensus mechanism. Will help when and where, but other than keeping the Founding Warlord title to make sure nothing catastrophic can ever happen to the Clan, like… I just grind here:))

Oooh, the hot room could explain it, yes! Maybe even the first tinged with a bit of the second, blood was boiling after all.

And, yes, the poses are very… specific, dunno how else to put it, they’re the kind of almost fetishistic fixations with small and specific details, like seeing someone’s skin in intermittent shadow, feeling a certain type of fabric on one’s cheek, gives the impression that we’re also getting something intimate from the artist! These poses caught the eye in a very personal way, I feel! Or maybe I’m just projecting:))

Thank you so much for replying, you’ve just expanded the painting’s context immensely! Love it even more now!

I swear I can’t tell if this is fatigue or ecstasy. I’m not trying to start anything here or to be snarky, I genuinely see both.