You don’t need to “purge” 37% of the population under anarchy. If one trade union or labor syndicate goes fash, the others will just stop providing resources to them until they either realize being fascist isn’t sustainable or become powerless after being cut off. There’s a much more ethical way of dealing with authoritarians already accounted for in the theory, no violence required.

Counterpoint

Folks on r/goodyearwelt and r/nps_solovair have been saying for the past couple years that Solovair’s quality has gone downhill. It could just be a vocal minority who have had bad experiences, but that might be the explanation. Because that’s a really short amount of time for the soles to wear out on a pair of Solovairs.

I observe Yule, but overall I have good associations with Christmas since most of the people I’m close to celebrate it. I know it justifiably gets a bad rap as a consumer and religious holiday; the “war on Christmas” stuff in America is just exhausting. For me it’s just a way to spend time with the people I love and enjoy delicious baked goods. I enjoy the sentimentality of the gift-exchange aspect of the holiday when it’s not overdone, there’s a few Christmas songs that are really catchy, and I read Gift of the Magi every year because it’s adorable.

But that’s about as far as I take it. I was never brought up believing in Santa Claus, and I hated the long sermons I was dragged to as a kid. I think if no one in my life observed Christmas, it would just be another day for me, honestly.

Thanks ☺️

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Ultima, if it counts, are some of my favorite games of all time. In particular, I love Ultima 1’s bite-sized first-person dungeons that you do in between overworld exploration – the rewards you get versus the time spent make them a retro dopamine hit. Ultima 4 has you going through first-person tailor-made around eight thematic moral vices. Since the stat-boosting orbs of virtue you’d find at the end of the dungeon respawned, I had fun going back in and further boosting my stats.

Daggerfall is my favorite Elder Scrolls game. People complain that the dungeons are labyrinthine and take hours to finish, but I absolutely love that (with QoL mods). I tend to roll up non-magic characters who are good at climbing, and I feel like a proper Tomb Raider-esque explorer.

I’ve been gradually working through the old Might and Magic games. I really enjoy the “scavenger hunt” gameplay loop of that series with how you’re given riddles in the environment to figure out where to go next. I just wish they were a little shorter, so I get the feeling that The Bard’s Tale trilogy will be even more up my alley when I get to them.

I did try Wizardry 1-5, minus 4, and found them all really repetitive, even for the time they came out. You just kill a wizard and draw maps and there’s not much else going on with it. I’d love to try the later games someday, though.

For modern games, I haven’t played Etrian Odyssey yet, but I did play The Dark Spire on DS, from the same developers, and loved the dark tone and horror-esque art direction.

Maybe I’ve just had bad experiences. After my Blackberry finally gave out, my next phone didn’t have a headphone jack, and I couldn’t find an adapter that was reliable.

If it helps, I think the people telling you to “Go on TikTok or Google it” are giving you bad advice anyway. I tried that for years and never got anywhere. Social media can be a really toxic place where there’s always someone prettier to make us feel insecure. I’d go on Pinterest and find really cute outfits the influencers were wearing, spend hours upon hours trying to track down their outfits at clothes stores, and inevitably get sad when I couldn’t find anything that was close enough to the reference, or even that actually fit. It didn’t help that I’m tall. And then when I could finally recreate an outfit, it would be Shien fast-fashion garbage that fit poorly, felt bad on my skin, and just didn’t look the same on me as it did for the Pinterest models. I wasted so much time and money on clothes back then, and social media had me chasing a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow only to find cornflakes. I think this is something all women, cis or trans, have to deal with to some extent in the modern era.

I’ve learned the hard way not to rely on other people to create my aesthetic. I’ve figured out which brands fit my body well and are high-quality, and I’ve built a wardrobe I’m proud of around those constraints. Sure, that means I’m not the perfect image of a goth girl or #darkacademia or whatever subculture is trending on Instagram these days, but goth is just whatever black clothes you have, makeup, and the right state of mind. I don’t have to be perfect or compete with actual models to be pretty or feel comfortable in my outfits and skin.

It’s so bizarre that all the user-repairable phone startups are refusing to put in a headphone jack. Like, the entire point is to limit e-waste, so why are they expecting me to throw out my wired headphones to buy Bluetooth ones or get an adapter that will stop working in a year?

I hope they also make a larger screened device, I am tired of the smaller 6.3 inch screens. I’d love for them to make a 6.7 inch screen phone (also make it international version with a lot of carrier compatibility for maximum adoption potential).

That’s really interesting. I’m kind of over here hoping for a good Linux phone that’s like 4 inches, like the iPod Touch used to be. I hope we get more large and small phones though, as long as they’re not stock Android.

In America in 2025, I’d say they’re right*. Flock has cameras all over cities, Palantir has scary face recognition data that iirc uses social media info up to a decade old, DOGE made a database of everyone’s social security information that other bureaus probably have access to, ICE uses Israeli spyware that bypasses end-to-end-encryption, and state governments are trying to push VPN bans and ID checks to use web services. On the federal level, both MAGA and Democrats are pro-surveillance, so you can’t just vote this out, not completely. You also can’t vote with your wallet since the most dangerous surveillance tools exist at the infrastructure level. We’re one step away from turning into China.

*By and large, there’s nothing Americans can do about those things other than protest, normalize pro-privacy rhetoric, try not to support privacy-invading consumer services, and call local- and state-level elected leaders when new anti-privacy legislation is introduced.

In most cases, privacy efforts can help for some use cases, but there is no perfect threat model anymore, and it’s mostly a symbolic act of protest these days, which is useful. Lemmy is the only social media I use these days, Linux is my daily and only driver, I’m boycotting tech oligarchs like Google, and I gravitate toward privacy-focused products and services. We need an active privacy advocacy bloc that will support causes and alternative technologies if we ever want things to get better, if not today than in the future.

One big thing people can still do is evade targeted ads. I probably have an ad profile stored somewhere, but I use adblock and enough FOSS apps that I haven’t gotten targeted ad in years.

My Thinkpad T480s was $200 and is very repairable.

I know? They were speaking metaphorically and so was I?

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America ended up in a fascist regime because liberals wanted cheaper eggs and became convinced only Donald Trump could make it happen.

Just get a Thinkpad or build a desktop lol. Who said anything about cutting off our noses?

Who cares? I left the big tent a while ago.

I think there’s nothing to worry about, then! It’s cool that you asked here.

It depends.

Taking an honest look at your interactions, do you actually call cis women dudes? If so, I think that’s fine. But I’ve encountered more than one person who says they use those terms gender-neutrally, but never or rarely just genuinely them toward cis women, as opposed to men and trans women.