The article is behind a paywall. Do they have any statistics or evidence backing that sentiment or is it just vibes?

You can find articles and reddit posts claiming this same exact thing going back years, and yet personally when I go through the store and look through reviews it’s really hard for me to come across hate speech, especially if you don’t specifically look at reviews that have been downvoted to hell. It’s never going to be perfect, but I encounter less hate speech on Steam than most other platforms.

They also have guidelines for “user generated content” which includes reviews, and you can report people for violating those guidelines.

Sure Valve does not pay for moderators to check things proactively. I quite like that they don’t have AI or some other half-assed attempt at “moderation” like other platforms have. I hate the way that the whole Internet has moved to censor “fuck” and made up the word “unalive” because the automated systems of platforms I don’t even use have decided they are the arbitora of what language is allowed.

I think the responsibility to monitor reviews should lie with whoever controls the Steam page: I would assume the publisher most of the time? The publisher and developer should be looking at reviews anyways. Add in the ability for users to vote reviews as helpful or unhelpful and I think it’s one of the better systems left on the internet.

There are guidelines on Steam that ban such content, and you can report people for violating them.

So no, Steam does not do “nothing” as you claim. A very basic Internet search can confirm that.

Even better, users can rate reviews as helpful or unhelpful. Which is great for a wider variety of reasons, but is also good for reviews that get into a grey area or use dog whistles to hide their true intentions.

BioShock 1 and Infinite both have the same problem.

On your first time through, the story pulls you through the game. There setting and characters are so mysterious and interesting you’re compelled to figure out what the hell happened and get to the bottom of it. You might notice, on your first run, that the games are really easy and the gun play isn’t particularly good. The actual gameplay gets repetitive, basically moving from big room to big room shooting things.

The special powers are fun the first couple times you use them but are mostly situational and the kind of thing other games just use items for (land mines, grenades, etc), just re-skinned.

Then at the end there’s a big reveal. Some plot twist that re-contextualizes the whole game and leaves you thinking about the game for an entire week.

Then you replay them and realize… The big twist at the end? There’s almost zero foreshadowing and it would be impossible to have predicted either of them on your first playthrough.

There are plenty of factions that have different political ideologies, but they are nothing more than a setting. The most obvious is how they spent the first half of Infinite pretty clearly establishing that Comstock and his associates were violently oppressing the working class in Colombia and that Daisy Fitzroy’s rebellion was both personally and ideologically justified. Then all of a sudden Booker is there enemy because… He thinks they were too violent in their pursuit to overthrow that oppression or something? It really felt like the devs just needed to throw more enemies at you in the back half of the game so they made a flimsy excuse to do that.

The BioShock games give the illusion of talking about politics and ideology, but really the only message is just “extremism bad”.

I have had issues in the past with bad SD cards on my pi-hole that cause it to stop working after a few minutes. I know you said it works fine without Mullvad, but was that just a quick verification or an extended long-term test with traffic?

Look at his voting record before vs after in the Senate. He has the stroke before he was even sworn in, but mostly voted along party lines in 2023 and 2024. His only real deviation, going back to his campaign, was that he was pro-fracking.

Anyone cane go ahead and look up his voting record, but it’s incredibly tedious to try to figure out what a vote actually means, how It aligns with the rest of the DNC (which is not necessarily what I would call "progressive), and how to feel about it. Everyone really SHOULD do this on their own, but for the lazy here is a website that at least claims to be progressive and tries to evaluate how members of Congress have voted over time.

2023: 200/207 votes were progressive 2024: 210/230 2025: 454/594 2026: 30/33 so far

You can find other websites that show a similar trend, and this matches my own personal observations as a Pennsylvania. Part of what got Fetterman elected in the first place was distancing himself from a tarnished DNC, and he was mostly doing a good job for his first year or so. In either later 2024 or 2025 something changed.

Someone got to him, and I could only speculate who. I doubt he’s in the Epstein files because he was not important enough for Epstein to care about until years after Epstein died. Could be AIPAC. Could be that oil companies had him in their pocket the whole time. Could be something else. But it’s certainly not correct to say that PA voters should have seen this coming.

There is some evidence that it depends on the yerpenes, which vary by strain.

Humulene (also found in stuff like ginger and hops) might be an appetite suppressant.

I hope weed gets re-scheduled or legalized in the US so it gets easier to actually research this stuff.

Humulene, terpene found in some weed strains (and also other plants like hops and ginger), has some evidence of being an appetite suppressant.

When I first went through the process of getting my medical card, I was required to have a consultation with the pharmacist and she recommended strains with that if I have a problem with the munchies. Personally, I really like to get high and eat so I’ve mostly avoided those strains, so I cannot attest to the effectiveness of this myself.

They are very flawed, but I appreciate that they do this important legal work that other organizations like the Global Order of Satan don’t have the resources to do.

Check out OP’s history

OP appears to be another comic bot. A few hours old and posts nothing but a handful of comics.

Tons of these accounts have been cropping up since early January. A lot of the accounts delete themselves after a couple days. I have no idea what the goal is, but the comics these accounts post tend to be either really mediocre (like how this one is more of a premise than a joke) or purposefully have some sort of divisive content (often about gender).

I hope that the goal is just to get people engaged in the comments and grow Lemmy, but this being the internet I can’t help but wonder if there’s something more nefarious going on.

Ah. Another account a few hours old that just posts a handful of comics. Wonder if this one will delete itself later too?

Also interesting to note that it seems common for the ruling party to see a lot of retirements in mid-terms, at least in the House.

Republicans have 30 retiring this time. In 2022 the Dems had 29 retirements under Biden. Trump saw 34 Republicans retire in 2018.

There are other outliers of course. The top year, 1992, was a presidential election and both parties saw a lot of retirements.

I would disagree with this quite strongly. Most brands have several different tiers of products. Often, especially for the budget-level options like Squiers, the manufacturing is outsourced. For example, my first electric guitar was from Cort, a South Korean company whose main business at the time was doing contract manufacturing for Ibanez, Squier, PRS, and G&L, Kramer, Honer, and more. Literally the same wood and parts, just with slightly different shapes and branding.

The highest-end, elitist guitars would be small shops that focus on handmade custom work. Stuff like Dunable or what PRS used to be. Jackson is now owned by Fender, but it used to be a more premium brand. Custom shop stuff is always going to be premium regardless of brand- Schecter, Ibanez, Dean, Gibson, Fender, doesn’t matter.

To compare this to OP’s prompt, it would be like if Hershey did custom high-quality chocolate options, also sold good quality chocolate, and also sold a decent value option in grocery stores, and also sold the plastic brown goop they sell today as a budget option.

The message should have been “take accusations seriously” rather than “believe women”.

Justice can be messy and unsatisfying. The “me too” movement highlighted a lot of patriarchal flaws in the current justice system, but it also sought to create its own separate “cultural justice” system even more flawed in the other direction. Believing every accusation is how we ended up with so many innocent black teenaged boys getting lynched in the south.

We will probably never know the real numbers- how many sexual assault are unreported, or how many sexual assault accusations are false (or perhaps target the wrong person). But there is a very good reason that the justice system applies “innocent until proven guilty”.

For breakfast I like egg cups. Take a muffin tin, spritz with cooking spray, and line each depression with a slice of ham, basically acting like a cupcake wrapper would. Crack an egg in each one. Add some salt, other seasonings, cheese, veggies, whatever else. Bake at 350F, usually for 20-30 minutes but I would recommend checking every 10 to start. Put them in a container and refrigerated for a week or two. Every morning I take 1 or 2 out, microwave them for 30-40 seconds, and put some hot sauce or ranch on them.

For lunch: protein smoothie. Orange juice, vanilla protein powder, peanut butter, ice. Optionally, a banana. I typically make one batch real quick and split it between my wife and I for lunch. Basically add them in and blend until smooth, and I would recommend starting with 1 serving of each basically (8oz OJ, 1 scoop protein, 2tbsp peanut butter, and as much ice as you need for texture). It’s like an orange creamsicle- the peanut butter adds a lot of texture but not a ton of peanut flavor that might be weird with orange.

My wife and I are on a low-carb diet, so we use low-sugar OJ and only 4oz. 2 scoops of low-cabe whey protein. Considering switching from peanut to almond butter, or just a bit of peanut oil instead.

For dinner is the real serious meal prep: chicken breast/tenders and vegetables. Put 5lbs of chicken in a casserole dish. Add whatever seasonings you like: pickled jalapeno, soy sauce, rosemary + thyme, Dijon mustard, ranch seasoning, etc. Chicken is an incredible canvas for pretty much any seasoning across the world. Bake at 350F for… At least an hour, probably more like 90 minutes. Get some decent re-usable sectioned containers (microwave + freezer safe required, dishwasher safe is required for me personally too). If you have whole breasts you might want to cut them into portions before cooking (halves or thirds usually. You could cut it into bite-sized pieces if you’re ambitious). Or you could cut after cooking, just let it cool off a bit first.

For sides, I like frozen bags of broccoli and cauliflower. Carrots, squash, and peas are good when I’m less concerned about carbs. Some things are better fresh, like mushrooms (with soy sauce), cucumbers (with soy sauce), or other local seasonal stuff. Brussel sprouts are good frozen, better fresh. Artichoke hearts are great. Stuff like onions and bell peppers can be good additions, but j typically need them to be mixed either with each other or something else to work.

The idea is you can put all those containers in a freezer and then microwave them for roughly 3-5 minutes depending on how much is in them. We have a dedicated freezer in our basement for this. It’s nice that my wife and I can independently choose whatever flavor we are in the mood for that night.

When the price of chicken has been really high, it’s easy enough to switch to another meat. Sausages are good. Pork loin cut into medallions.

All our friends have so many conflicting diets and dietary restrictions that are a certain point we are better off having sinners that are Being Your Own Meal, so those frozen dinners are really nice.

To make these vegetarian… If eggs are alright then you could probably remove the ham from the egg cups, but the egg might stick to the muffin pan. Maybe you could find some other sort of liner. My mom uses canned crescent roll dough in a similar way to make miniature quiches, so maybe something like that would work?

Protein smoothie does not require any animal products. Could be vegan pretty easily as long as you check the ingredients. The big issue is cost, especially for protein powder.

Frozen dinners might be trickier to make vegetarian just because I’m not sure what protein sources would do well frozen and microwaved. Maybe tofu? Or noodles?

Here are some things that I’m not eating on my current diet, but are great for saving money.

Oatmeal for breakfast (make steel-cut oats in a slow cooker,you can add milk, egg, peanut butter, maple syrup, brown sugar, butter, salt, spices, frozen or fresh fruit, protein powder, whatever).

Chilli. If you want ground meat, brown it and season it first (if you aren’t familiar with seasonings, start by grabbing a chilli powder mix from the store, look at the ingredients, then buy those things and experiment with proportions). Then add it to a slow cooker. Add at least 1 can of tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, and beans (I like black beans, but kidney is good too). Add more tomatoes and/or beans, or if you really want to save money add rice (might need a bit of water too). Cook on low- it’ll probably be ready after 4 hours but will be fine for 8 hours. From there you can dip tortilla chips in it, make some cornbread, pour over rice, make sandwiches like Sloppy Joes, etc.

Rice, bread, noodles, and potatoes are all great cheap fillers.

You forgot divide 4-panel comics. Bonus points if Loss is hidden inside somewhere!

I swear every time I start looking into a romhack that claims to just be a mostly vanilla QoL update they always add in a bunch of random stuff to “fix” the difficulty.

Like, yes I am aware the games are incredibly easy. They’re for children. I originally played most of them as children. Just let me get high and stomp all through FRLG with a perfect-IV Feraligatr and the Gen 4 physical-special split. If I wanted to do Nuzzlockes I would… Do Nuzzlockes. If I wanted a game with difficult gym leaders and level caps, I would go play one of the thousands of romhacks that have that.

The article was updated in 2023 with the most recent data.

Almost all of the sales of videogames are front-loaded. Most at launch (or at the launch of a re-release), and then it falls off hard over a couple of years. Morrowind came out in 2002. It’s incredible that Bethesda even released any sales data still by 2010. The units sold since then would be immaterial to the conversation.

Morrowind only sold ~4 million units. I think you’re overestimating how big the fan base is. The fan base is loyal, opinionated, and vocal, but small.