They (the investment/owner class) make their money work for them by investing and by playing the banks. Generally, they want to invest the vast majority of their money, and never cash out of their portfolio. When they need “cash” to buy something, they do it with loans and there’s lots of tricks (that I’m not super familiar with) to make loans as cheap as possible, and potentially even profitable if their investments are doing better than the cost of the loan.

Now, why would they spend money pushing propaganda when instead they could be investing that money? Well, when you are that rich, you don’t actually have to spend that much to push propaganda. People are already clamoring for your opinion, because they see you as successful and think, if I copy you then I too can be successful. And when you do need to buy an article, it’s pocket change compared to your vast wealth. And if instead you need to buy a TV news network, a newspaper, or a website, that itself can be an investment. As long as you don’t run it into the ground, it may make you money at the same time as allowing you to push propaganda.

And why do they want to push propaganda in the first place? Because if the working class (those that live off paychecks instead of investments) has the time, energy, and knowledge to do something about wealth inequality, then the investment class will start to have to pay their fair share and lose a bit of their wealth. The investment class doesn’t want that to happen so they need to rob the working class of those 3 things. Manufacturing a culture war is one way to steal time and energy from the working class, because they now have to spend that time and energy on defending personal rights. Busting unions is another way to rob time and energy, as the fewer rights workers have, and the less they are paid, the more time and energy they have to spend to stay out of poverty.

It’s all a ploy to get people to pay less attention to how the investment class gets their money so that they can keep racking up the score without interference.

That said, some of the investment class actually truly holds hateful views, as does some of the working class, but the working class has nothing to gain by acting on that hatred except a sense of personal fulfillment. The investment class benefits financially, so they may act out the hatred even if they don’t feel it.

I’m from the US and “better than a kick in the teeth” and “better than a poke in the eye” are both common around my area. Never heard the tree ones though.

Yeah, that’s fair. I think the main reasoning is that shooting something out of the air can cause it to crash on people or light stuff on fire. I also don’t like the “stand your ground” and “castle doctrine” laws, so I think both shooting people and shooting drones should be illegal.

New drones being sold in the USA are equipped with something called remote ID. In theory, it enables law enforcement to wirelessly identity the drone, who it’s registered with, and where the pilot is standing. This is very new though, and very few, if any, police departments have the tools needed to make use of it. It’s also possible to read remote ID from phones, but without the database, it only gives you so much info. Owners of older drones are supposed to attach a remote ID module to them in order to maintain legal flying, but someone being voyeuristic with their older drone probably isn’t following the rules.

Not in the US. You can report it to the police and the FAA, but it’s a federal felony offense to shoot down any aircraft, regardless of whether it’s a $100 drone or multi-million dollar full on airplane. But like the other poster said, voyeurism and harassment laws still apply. And also, if the pilot is out of sight of the drone, that’s a hefty FAA violation (assuming they don’t have a specific FAA waiver that’s hard to get) and something you can report.

FAA Certified drone pilot in the USA here. That’s wild. In the US it’s illegal to shoot down an aircraft of any sort no matter the type or who is flying it. And also, the Federal Aviation Administration is the only authority in the US when it comes to airspace, and as long as you have authorization from the FAA or are in uncontrolled space, you can fly over anyone’s property. However, that doesn’t give you the right to voyeurism or harassment. If you are intentionally spying on things that are normally considered private (peeking in a window, for instance) or repeatedly or specifically bugging a specific individual or family, then you can still be charged with those crimes. Also, unless you have a specific waiver that’s rather hard to get, you have to be within line of sight of your drone. If the drone pilot is not following the rules, they can be hit with hefty fines. Even though drones can be bought easily, there’s still strict rules that the FAA has for both recreational and professional flying, and anyone operating a drone outside those can and should be reported.

If somebody is thanking you, you likely exerted effort on their behalf. So they say “thank you” for exerting effort, and then you respond with exerting effort was “no problem” you don’t need to thank me. You’re welcome would be a response more along the lines of “you are welcome” to make me exert effort.

They’re both fine, and it’s both a generational and locational thing. I personally prefer “no problem” because honestly I don’t mind helping, but I’m also not giving you permission to use my effort at any time. You can have my efforts when it doesn’t cause a problem.

Right. Like, my use case for SD cards is for my cameras. I want to take pictures and bring them home across international borders. And a 4TB card would be amazing, though probably not fast enough. I simply don’t put files that I don’t want people to find onto my SD cards in the first place.

960mbps up/down for $75usd/m

When I worked at Toys R Us, we had a kids clothes section and it was basically on a 3 week rotation. One week, brands 1 and 2 were on sale, next week brands 3 and 4, then finally brands 5 and 6 before starting over the next week. It wasn’t 100% predictable, but generally everything would go on sale at least once a month. Sales on toys were less predictable just because there’s so many more of them to cycle through.

One of my favorite stories was from a D20 modern campaign we were playing. This is a setting where it’s modern time, but some supernatural stuff still exists. There was a cave system under the city that we were exploring and we found a mummy and a bunch of skeletons. I rolled a 1 on an attack roll and my DM said I dropped my sword, so for my 2nd attack I said I was going to headbutt the skeleton and I rolled a 20 so my DM ruled that I headbutted this skeleton so hard my head just went down his spine as all the bones just exploded apart. Next turn I was like, that went pretty well, who needs a sword. I tried to headbutt the next one, and rolled another 1. He then ruled that this time I killed the skeleton but it’s spine impaled my head and I died. It was the most swingly battle ever, and kinda outside the actual rules, but it’s something I’ll never forget (this was 10 years ago) and all because we made an effort to ham up critical successes and failures.

I second the world of darkness suggestion, though learning a whole new game can be intimidating. But I like the relative simplicity of the dice pool concept. Everything is a 10 sided die. 7 or higher is a success. So for example, you have 6 strength die. If you want to break down a door that takes 7 successes, well good luck. Pretty hard to roll 7 successes on 6 die (though not impossible because 10s get a bonus roll). And then overall I feel like the lore is easier to roleplay because I feel like it’s easier to picture yourself as a pack of werewolves or a coven of vampires or whatever version you’re playing.

Body language. It’s way easier to “read the room” and figure out what the players enjoy and what they don’t when you are physically sitting around a table and can monitor players reactions both actively and in your peripheral vision.

Sorry in advance for random stream of consciousness.

There’s definitely a learning curve to being a DM. And some people, like myself, just aren’t cut out for it. If you want to keep playing with these people, I would suggest being honest with your feedback. Talk to the group about how you’d like to incorporate more roleplaying and cut back on combat. It might be a good idea to try running a pre-built campaign if you aren’t already. But even those can be kinda dry without the right DM.

I haven’t really played in years, but my DM got to the point where basically, the rules were just guidelines. If a player wanted to try something, the DM would just roll with it. They’d try to come up with a reasonable check for you to roll and then just see what happens. Most of the “funny” moments come from massive failures or critical successes. Ham those up. Instead of saying, “nope, you fail”, make up a consequence. “You tried to mount the giant moth, but you couldn’t get a grip and it flung you up to an outcropping” or “you missed so bad you hit the column and it comes crumbling down, you and the enemy both take 2 points of bludgeoning.”

The rules are great for combat simulation, but if combat was all you wanted, you’d be better off playing Warhammer. The best advice I can give is just loosen up. And again, like Jack Sparrow says, it’s more like guidelines. We eventually got to the point where we said, no opening the books during the session. If you don’t know a rule, make it up. The goal is to have fun, not to follow the book.

So yeah, it’s about mindset and teamwork and cooperation and communication. Being honest in what you want out of a session is the most important thing, because nobody knows what you want unless you say so. They may be able to tell when you aren’t having fun, but they may not know why or how to fix it and may just throw more monsters at it because that’s what they think will fix it.

As for player death. We embraced it. If we really liked our character, we’d just come back as MyGuy the 2nd, or 3rd, or 4th, and when we got tired of that character we’d move on to something else rolling a new character at the level everyone else was at and picking a few items to keep (assuming someone else made it out alive).

I don’t care about the headphone jack. Bluetooth earbuds are super convenient, and when I want higher quality I plug in a Fiio BTR5 to the USB-C port and use that to power good headphones. Way better than a built in dac/amp would be.

Another topic I see a bunch is whenever there’s an article about Samsung folding phones, it inevitably mentions Samsung killing off the Note line. The Note line isn’t dead. S Ultra is the Note. They just renamed it. It’s the same damn phone. Compare a Note 10 to an S 20 Ultra and tell me that’s not the same series. I’ve been using the Note/Ultra since the Note 2. This really highlights that they don’t care to look beyond the surface level and instead they just regurgitate press releases.