vonbaronhans
@vonbaronhans@midwest.social
- Comment on Work from home 1 day ago:
I’m one of the “company-provided-phone-only” folks. Thankfully, I work for a pretty decent employer who has never abused that in the nearly 10 years I’ve worked there. But I realize that’s a pretty rare privilege.
- Comment on Stay Mad 1 day ago:
That’s true, it could be racism, it could be both.
God, if Taylor Swift runs for president I’d be stunned. I mean, given the circumstances I’d vote for her, but geez Louise.
- Comment on Stay Mad 1 day ago:
The only outcome that might suck even more is if Biden did step down, Kamala steps up, and she still loses. Cuz then it’s like… oh so we’re just gonna be misogynistic as a voter base now, great, thanks fellow Americans. Like, we were ready to vote for a shambling shell of an old man but not a lady with Hillary Clinton energy, okay. 🤦
- Comment on Stay Mad 2 days ago:
Well, in the current economy, the statistical indicators that economists rely on are booming. GDP, etc. What folks on the left like us are saying is that those indicators are easily measurable but do not paint an accurate picture of what most Americans are experiencing. It doesn’t feel like a boom out here because, well, it ain’t.
It’s not like we’re sipping champagne, kicking it at the beach, and complaining that the guy next door has a nicer beach. We work just as hard as other generations and get a lot less to show for it.
Acknowledging that is important, but corporate politicians in either party seem like they just don’t want to anything about it.
Still voting for Biden, but yeah, not enthusiastically.
- Comment on Stay Mad 2 days ago:
Yeah it’s not great, but like… coming across as coherent is important no matter the position. Biden kinda failed that basic competency test, probably just due to his age and not like, stupidity or a personal failing of any kind. I’m still voting for Biden, but yeah it’s not exactly an enthusiastic vote.
- Comment on Indie games using retro graphics 1 week ago:
Pseudoregalia is a PS1-eta low-poly aesthetic 3D metroidvania with really, really slick movement mechanics. It’s the kind of game that really could’ve existed back then, had developers just known all the little quality of life design choices we have these days.
- Comment on USA | Alito Says SCOTUS Should Push Nation Toward “Godliness” in Secret Recording 3 weeks ago:
Boy howdy
- Comment on USA | Alito Says SCOTUS Should Push Nation Toward “Godliness” in Secret Recording 3 weeks ago:
Except the US constitution does not include that language. The “a wall of separation between church and state” phrase most notably comes from an 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association. Not a legally binding document by any means.
I imagine you’re thinking of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution which forbids the US government restricting the free exercise of religion.
I believe, iirc, the Supreme Court over several decades has affirmed and reaffirmed the overall position that the US government must remain secular and not favor a particular religion. Which is effectively what you’re getting at.
- Comment on Mona: Australia women's-only museum files appeal to keep men out 1 month ago:
Huh. Let women into the Freemasons, I guess?
- Comment on Short games with lots of replay value? 3 months ago:
If you don’t mind an older recommendation, StarFox 64. You could beat the story in about 30 minutes, but there’s lots of secrets and challenges that unlock new completion paths, harder boss variants, etc.
- Comment on What is an average person living in the US supposed to do about corporations raising prices? 5 months ago:
I don’t live in that particular rural area anymore, so it could just be my ignorance, who knows.
- Comment on What is an average person living in the US supposed to do about corporations raising prices? 5 months ago:
Guess it depends on where you live.
In my hometown (rural Midwest), there’s a Walmart, a Schnucks (Midwest chain), maybe an IGA if it’s still around, and about five Dollar Generals (more convenience store than grocery). I don’t think I’ve seen a farmers market there my whole life, despite being literally in the middle of a million farms. Super odd now that I think about it.
- Comment on What is an average person living in the US supposed to do about corporations raising prices? 5 months ago:
On the housing thing - there’s been a major intrusion of private equity firms into the regular house market. A report came out recently claiming as much as 40% of all single family homes sold in 2023 went to private equity firms to turn into rental properties (iirc). On mobile, otherwise would try to actually give you the source.
I can’t speak to the food price increases. My only thought is that most people are creatures of habit and always have been, so I doubt that individual shoppers ‘not putting pressure on the stores’ would explain a historic rise in costs. That said, if we did find evidence that shoppers are less savvy or willing to change habits, my first guess as to why would be people overall being more overworked and stressed. But until the data comes in, who knows.
- Comment on Smartphone manufacturers still want to make foldables a thing 5 months ago:
I feel like I’d feel similarly if I had a foldable, but the one guy I know who has one swears he’ll never buy one again. Granted, he got a gen 1 Galaxy Fold, so it’s got some major growing pains.
- Comment on Xbox Slammed For AI-Generated Art Promoting Indie Games 5 months ago:
It does make it different by virtue of sheer scale and efficiency.
A single human artist, no matter how good and fast they are, could ever singlehandedly damage the livelihoods of millions of other human artists. But a machine can. That’s a meaningful distinction.
Granted, your point is valid in its purest sense. If we lived in a world where everyone could benefit from AI art without the real-world downsides, I’d agree with you, full stop. But we do, and those ramifications matter.
- Comment on Has google stopped working for finding anything? 5 months ago:
That explains why my DDG searches have been less than helpful… it’s just as unhelpful as Bing. I usually find myself trying other search engines, but run back to Google when I can’t find anything relevant to the problem I’m trying to solve (most of my googling is tech help stuff).
- Comment on Has google stopped working for finding anything? 5 months ago:
Would that work in the case of photographers? I would only think to use Maps for business that are likely to have or must have by necessity some building or office.
- Comment on Scientists show how ‘doing your own research’ leads to believing conspiracies — This effect arises because of the quality of information churned out by Google’s search engine 6 months ago:
Curious, but was there ever a time when critical thinking was taught in US public schools above and beyond what is being taught in public schools now?
US public schools are getting underfunded, of course, but curricula themselves have probably improved over time?
I honestly don’t really even know how to begin researching this particular line of inquiry, and I have a background in social science research.
- Comment on The Weekly 'What are you playing?' Discussion 6 months ago:
Vermintide 2 didn’t hook me. But I’ve already got over a hundred hours in Darktide.
Good stuff.
- Comment on Google admits it's making YouTube worse for ad block users 6 months ago:
I’ve also felt like YouTube Premium was a pretty good deal, given the sheer amount of YouTube content I consume and how much I detest ads.
That said, I also feel like most of what I really value from YouTube is on Nebula, to which I am also subscribed. I constantly wonder if it would be worth it to drop YouTube altogether, to save some money but also a huge amount of time.
The only other thing really keeping me on YouTube Premium is the included YouTube music. Not like Spotify is much cheaper, and I’m not much into manually managing libraries of my own music files like I did in the days of my 2nd Gen iPod (it had a touch wheel!).
- Comment on YouTube is deliberately crippling Firefox on ARM systems 6 months ago:
It doesn’t, but that isn’t their point. They’re simply pointing out that existing net neutrality laws in the US usually only apply to ISPs and telcos, not internet businesses.
- Comment on Very few people realise how environmentally devastating this game is. 7 months ago:
So… I actually really like golf. I think it’s fun. Haven’t played in over a decade, but I look back on my memories playing pretty fondly.
That said, I have zero issue recovering a lot of that lost land and water usage to put them to better use.
I’d be very interested to see a version of golf that is less ecologically destructive and less water intensive.
- Comment on Nearly 500 smartphone brands have left the market since 2017 9 months ago:
There have been plenty of phones and tablets with 3D camera systems. It’s just not something that most consumers really want or need, so it tends not to become mainstream.
It still comes up every now and then. The iPhone 15 has a computational 3D camera thing it can do, but I’ve seen virtually no buzz about the feature.
- Comment on [deleted] 9 months ago:
Isn’t that what communities and subreddits are for?
- Comment on [deleted] 9 months ago:
On the first point, I can’t speak to the overall volume, but I can definitely say that people willfully misinterpreting me was a pretty common occurrence over on Reddit and definitely pushed me to comment less over time, just for the sake of my mental health. I don’t think I’ve been on Lemmy long enough to make a meaningful comparison though.
To add to your second point, Lemmy definitely feels very stale very quickly. Reddit, for all its faults, has a much larger user base with thousands of active communities. On Lemmy, even browsing the everything feed, I only see maybe a couple dozen new and interesting posts a day, and it only takes about 10 minutes of scrolling before I’m looking at stuff from days or weeks ago. Most communities I’ve tried to explore have one, maybe two posters. Subbing to a community often feels like subbing to one person and hoping it becomes a real community in the future.
I dunno if any of that will push me back to Reddit. If Lemmy doesn’t really fit me… I’ll probably just give up this last little bit of social media and just browse Imgur for memes when I want.
- Comment on Mastodon is Rewinding the Clock on Social Media — in a Good Way 9 months ago:
I just paid the one time fee for no ads. Works for me.
- Comment on [deleted] 10 months ago:
While this is true, I’ll add that a huge swathe of the same people are huge hypocrites. All it takes is one of their own children to be inconveniently pregnant, and then it’s all “rules for thee but not for me”.
I don’t think it’s possible to know the proportion of evangelicals who are hypocrites in this way with confidence, but if you look for examples you’ll find plenty. The most recent one I saw was a BYU student who was paid 500 bucks to prank called his mother and say he got a prostitute pregnant (for the filmer’s tiktok or whatever), and after a couple exasperated questions, the mother told him to make the fictional prostitute get an abortion.