As far as virtual pinball goes, Visual Pinball X is a FOSS simulator and works great. Agreed that it can be an expensive hobby though. I’m pretty poor and even playing in arcades is too expensive for me to do regularly. I can’t imagine ever owning a table, or even one of those faux tables that looks like a real machine but is actually just a simulation.

Last time I did this it was Stardew Valley, and Terraria before that. Monster Hunter is good for this as well but only if you are gathering or farming something that isn't too difficult. Old School RuneScape if you are into that kind of thing. Haven't actually tried it with these ones but I bet OpenRCT2 and Monster Rancher would be great podcast games.

Here’s someone on reddit who says they have it, the post is a little old but it looks like the user is still active, so hopefully if you send them a message they still have it. I would myself but I deleted my reddit account a while ago

And what other people count as ‘not a spoiler’ is often very, very misjudged.

I feel this, my friend tends to tell me about stuff they like that I haven't seen/read/played/etc. and is very relaxed about what they consider spoilers. Thankfully our tastes don't overlap much so it's usually not a problem, but occasionally they'll start talking about something I'm interested in and I have to be like, wait please don't lol. I always feel a little bad for it because I'm glad they want to share their interests with me, but I'm so picky about spoilers and if I don't stop them then they will say something I don't want to hear...

Used a sick day to get out of work. I do not have the energy to put up with the holiday rush lol. I don't know what the plan is for the rest of the day now, maybe read some more? I started The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome on my way home last night, so maybe I'll get comfy and read the next chapter of that. I've been meaning to watch Nosferatu as well, so maybe it's time for that. I don't really know anything about the movie other than the fact that it's an old vampire movie, so hopefully it'll be interesting.

Do you all prefer to go into media blind, or do you prefer to know what you are getting into? Personally, I like going in knowing as little as possible, but for movies/shows I sometimes end up learning a lot before watching anyways, because I like to watch with my wife if she's interested, but she can't watch really violent stuff and unfortunately there is a lot of that out there.

epub version available here

there’s a really good port of dodonpachi daioujou on the iphone app store, idk about android. sorcery is another good one, based on an old steve jackson gamebook

whose only flaw right now is supporting one wrong nation

you can't seriously believe this is true right

hold him accountable how

Traveling across Cuba in 1959, immediately after the overthrow of the U.S.-supported right-wing Batista dictatorship, Mike Faulkner witnessed "a spectacle of almost unrelieved poverty." The rural pop­ulation lived in makeshift shacks without minimal sanitation. Malnourished children went barefoot in the dirt and suffered "the familiar plague of parasites common to the Third World." There were almost no doctors or schools. And through much of the year, families that depended solely on the seasonal sugar harvest lived close to starvation (Monthly Review, 3/96). How does that victimization­ in prerevolutionary Cuba measure against the much more widely publicized repression that came after the revolution, when Castro's communists executed a few hundred of the previous regime's police assassins and torturers, drove assorted upper-class moneybags into exile, and intimidated various other opponents of radical reforms into silence?

Today, Cuba is a different place. For all its mistakes and abuses, the Cuban Revolution brought sanitation, schools, health clinics, jobs, housing, and human services to a level not found throughout most of the Third World and in many parts of the First World. Infant mortality in Cuba has dropped from 60 per 1000 in 1960 to 9.7 per 1000 by 1991, while life expectancy rose from 55 to 75 in that same period. Smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid, polio, and numer­ous other diseases have been wiped out by improved living standards and public health programs. Cuba has enjoyed a level of literacy higher than in the United States and a life expectancy that compares well with advanced industrial nations (NACLA Report on the Americas, September/October 1995). Other peoples besides the Cubans have benefited. As Fidel Castro tells it:

The [Cuban] revolution has sent teachers, doctors, and workers to dozens of Third World countries without charging a penny. It shed its own blood fighting colonialism, fighting apartheid, and fascism. . . . At one point we had 25,000 Third World students studying on schol­arships. We still have many scholarship students from Africa and other countries. In addition, our country has treated more children [13,000] who were victims of the Chernobyl tragedy than all other countries put together. They don't talk about that, and that's why they blockade us-the country with the most teachers per capita of all countries in the world, including developed countries. The country with the most doctors per capita of all countries [one for every 214 inhabitants]. The country with the most art instructors per capita of all countries in the world. The country with the most sports instructors in the world. That gives you an idea of the effort involved. A country where life expectancy is more than 75 years. Why are they blockading Cuba? Because no other country has done more for its people. It's the hatred of the ideas that Cuba repre­sents. (Monthly Review, 6/95).

Cuba's sin in the eyes of global capitalists is not its "lack of democ­racy." Most Third World capitalist regimes are far more repressive. Cuba's real sin is that it has tried to develop an alternative to the global capitalist system, an egalitarian socio-economic order that placed corporate property under public ownership, abolished capi­talist investors as a class entity, and put people before profits and national independence before IMF servitude.

Excerpt from Blackshirts and Reds, since Parenti and Castro himself put it better than I could.

What actually makes Endeavor easier than Arch? I switched to Arch from Mint a few months ago, and so far I don’t think it’s that difficult.

trans genocide is here now, in biden’s america, and none of you give a fuck! 378 active anti-trans bills right now and none of the liberal “allies” around me EVER speak about it, much less do anything about it. we aren’t a tool for you to use as you please! stop speaking over us you fucking scum bag!

If you’re interested in learning about communism, then I think reading would be a better place to start than a debate. /r/communism has a Basic Marxism–Leninism Study Plan, personally I started with the Manifesto of the Communist Party since it was the most commonly talked about.

Their job is to enforce the whims of the ownership class under threat of violence. They protect the company at all costs in exchange for power over other working class people and a bigger paycheck. Fuck them, if they really are decent people then they should quit and get a job that actually benefits society.

What’s wrong with reading a book, writing poetry or a novel, exercising, playing with the smartphone… and going home to enjoy your hobbies fully rested?

I tried doing these sorts of things and was punished for it. If I can’t find work to do, then the only thing I’m allowed to do is stand (not sit) at my station until something happens.

I moved across the country to live with someone I was mutuals with on Mastodon, and then became her girlfriend a couple days later. It’s been almost 5 years now and we’re still very happy together! She’s my best friend and the only person that I feel understands me completely, and it still feels unreal that we even met at all.