Hah, live and learn, I guess — just goes to show how long I’ve been using Twilight.

Harm reduction approaches are useful in scenarios like this, imo. For me and my Android phone, this means using the app Twilight to filter blue light from my phone display (iOS has this feature natively. It calls this “Night shift”, and the setting is found under Display settings)

Your comment has caused me to re-evaluate my perspective; thanks for sharing. The situation is more nuanced than I realised.

I’ve not used it, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about Helix

I don’t feel good about this. I used to be heavily in favour of assisted dying rights, but I fear that disabled people who have been failed by the system will end up going down this path. I’ve seen examples of it happen in Canada. I have very little trust in the UK’s health and social care system at the moment, because as a country, we don’t seem to care about actually supporting people.

Only a couple. I can imagine that “the user is not the enemy” may be a difficult sentiment for some people with heavily user-facing roles. I’m curious what federated service you’re interfacing with this from. I imagine that’s why you didn’t see the votes on your comment. I am posting this via Lemmy

Soft checks don’t matter as much as hard checks do. A lot of places that will check your credit score hardly care about soft checks, if at all. I think I have heard that soft checks don’t negatively impact one’s score at all, but I’m not too confident on that. But even if it did negatively impact your overall score, it’s important to remember that places that are checking your credit aren’t just getting the score — that’s mostly just an abstraction to help us to get an overview. Lots of hard checks on your credit do end up having a significant impact on your credit rating, but mostly because it paints a picture of someone who is desperate to get credit and is perhaps not managing money well. A potential lender will be able to see what the checks are for, and they can evaluate that in context.

I did this when I turned 18 and it’s been super useful (one of the few areas that my mom was a role model for me was that she had excellent credit, despite being poor as shit).

This just underscores OP’s general point for me though. Beyond the car dealership stuff, I have heard of plenty of examples in which having no credit history was worse than having bad history. It’s one of those things that I think does make sense, in the wider picture, but is also pretty fucked up.

I really wish you didn’t wish that. Which is to say that I sometimes find myself wishing similar to yourself, but ultimately this wish is just because I would like to be financially secure and not scraping by as greedy scammers make bank. Perhaps I’m just projecting, but if your wish comes from a similar place, then I wish that circumstances were such that we were secure enough that we didn’t wish for less scruples

This reminded me of a delightful comedy sketch by John Finnemore (“Penguin Diplomacy”. 20ish minutes long radio clip). https://archive.org/details/BBC_Radio_4_FM_20170628_173000_John_Finnemores_Double_Acts?start=80

"The Dodgers initially posted on their X account that the federal officials were with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The federal agency, however, denied its presence at Dodger Stadium through its X account.

“False,” ICE posted. “We were never there.”"

Cool, so if the ICE Xitter account is to be trusted, then we have more people impersonating ICE. Really a bad look for them either way.

On the bright side, I’m a Brit who hardly knows anything about baseball, but I now know enough about the Dodgers to say “LET’S GO DODGERS!”. I think this is as good a reason as any to be a fan of a sports team

Despite the downvotes you’ve received, I appreciate you posting this, because I am always jazzed to discover “classic” pieces that are new to me.

This is a really powerful sentiment. I understand why people’s instinct is to close up, because social protocol often involves people asking things in a superficial way (I don’t mind so much when people ask stuff like “how are you” without expecting a real answer, but I hate when people actually offer concrete help and then get annoyed at you behind your back for accepting said offer). However, we do live in a society shrouded with such social protocol, so if we do want to be there for someone, it’s tremendously useful to make that overtly clear.

Whilst the meme is overtly sexual, the underlying message of the meme isn’t necessarily: Some of the humour that I found in this meme was the idea that sex work is often particularly stigmatized in a way that I finds baffling, because in a sense, we’re all selling our bodies to avoid choking under capitalism (Though I realise the meme doesn’t invoke sex work specifically)

However, I do feel like invoking sex generally has a useful rhetorical function. The first thing I thought of upon seeing this meme was the idea of consent; it’s most frequently discussed in a sexual context, but I think the world would be better if consent were something we properly considered in other contexts to. Given that coerced consent isn’t consent, the meme causes me to question the extent to which I am consenting to the exchange of my labour for basic life necessities.

Granted, most people aren’t prone to overthinking memes to this extent, but also these aren’t necessarily things I’m consciously thinking when I see a meme like this. You may find this cringe, but different people respond to different kinds of messaging. I do also find it somewhat cringe, but in a self-aware manner, which, for me, negates much of the cringe. Besides that, I am (or historically have been) a prude, and because of this, memes that invoke sex in a glib manner helps to remind me to not take things so seriously.

This is all to say that your preferences are your own, and they’re as valid as anyone else’s in this space. However, for some people, dumb, crass memes are a part of their leftism. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be, for the people who find that useful.

“Eggshells are actually (usually) good for them because of high calcium content.”

Given that producing eggs must use up a bunch of calcium, this makes sense, in a "circle of life kind of way

Seeing your reply in my inbox reminded me that I got up to get some ice-cream, but forgot again en route to the freezer. On the bright side, it means I still have ice-cream in my freezer

Your comment has caused me to reflect on the early game, and I think I agree with you. I suspect I hadn’t noticed the slow early game because the catalyst for me playing the game was grieving a friend who had loved the game — this means that even if I had found it painfully slow, I would have been likely to push on regardless.

I’m trying to remember at what point it potentially gets better. It’s hard to say without knowing how far you got in (especially because it’s entirely possible that maybe you just didn’t jibe with this game (which is fine, because subjectivity is cool)); I remember part of what I enjoyed about the game was the general vibes.

That being said, going off the map above, I think the most engaging parts of the game for me happened after Boulder City. The world gets more content dense as you approach New Vegas, and I remember enjoying the anticipation as I got closer to the city, and how I was beginning to feel like I understood the various moving parts of the world better (such as the politics around the NCR).

So I think the short answer is that yes, it does pick up. If New Vegas seems like the kind of game you usually play, it might be worth giving it another crack (but I can’t gauge how far into the game it starts picking up, time-wise)

“Multiple new scylla songs too, Supergiant are spoiling us.”

Awesome. I love how catchy the Scylla songs are

Silly, cute cat. I’m sorry for your loss

Anyone who doesn’t understand this reference should consider playing Fallout: New Vegas, because it is a very good game