Minecraft: Story Mode was actually pretty popular. It was basically a story-rich RPG set in a Minecraft world.

It was my dream as a teenager (in the late '90s-early 2000s) to one day have my own LAN room in my house, with at least a dozen computers set up with high speed Internet access and room for people to bring in their own PCs. As a computer nerd, I envisioned having a space for people to socialize over computer technology. I even considered hosting a computer repair shop out of my home too.

Then online gaming became a thing. Suddenly, planning LAN parties was no longer feasible. Why go to another location to game when you can just connect from home?

The last LAN party I ever attended was in 2015. I was stationed in South Korea with the US military and some of my coworkers wanted to play some FPS games after work. But our Internet was terrible in our dormitory, so they suggested setting up a small LAN in our squadron's hooch (squadron-run bar/lounge/clubhouse). We were all IT guys, so building a LAN on the fly for 20+ people was easy. It took longer to set up tables and chairs for everyone.

Ever since then, I have a regular online gaming session every Monday and/or Tuesday with a few childhood friends of mine. We don't live near each other anymore, so we play co-op games online and chat through Discord.

I'm glad to have the technology we have today, but a small part of me is still nostalgic for the old LAN parties. Something about tinkering with everyone's computers and getting hooked up and online in the same space was so satisfying. For an introverted computer nerd like myself, it was the perfect amount of in-person socialization without having to be constantly socializing face-to-face with people all day. If Internet Cafés returned, I would definitely be curious to check them out.

A mall nearby me had a new shop open a few months ago that was basically a gaming cyber café. You bought a timecard, then picked your console (or PC) and played unlimited games until your timecard expired. I was excited to see someone setting up a public gaming shop, but I guess it didn't work out in the long run. I was at the mall a couple weeks ago and that space was empty.

I was serving in the US military the first time Trump got elected. It was an awful time for us military folks. He tried (and failed) to ban trans people from serving during that term. This was after we had announced free trans surgery for service members, so a bunch of people had already outed themselves.

I remember when he almost started WWIII by getting into a fight with Kim Jong Un online. He decided he was gonna fly to North Korea and give him a piece of his mind.

NO ONE goes to North Korea. No sitting president has ever gone there. They're one of the most dangerous and isolated countries in the world. The citizens live in poverty because the government controls who gets to eat. Most citizens are members of their military, because military members and their families get extra rations. They mostly survive on imports from China, because their land isn't suited to grow enough food for their own population.

Regardless, they're isolated from the rest of the world, so all they know is whatever their state media tells them, and they're heavily brainwashed. They're taught that the rest of the world is suffering worse than they are and that they should be grateful to live in one of the most advanced civilizations on the planet. Keep in mind, they live like paupers from the 1950s.

They're also taught that the Kim family are essentially immortal gods who descended from the mountains to help them. Yes, Kim Il Sung, their original leader, is still the "Supreme Leader" of North Korea. When he died, the population was informed that he's just moved to a higher plane of existence so he can better serve the nation. His son Kim Jong Il took over his seat on the mortal plane, and when he passed away, it was the same story. Now his son, Kim Jong Un is the current mortal leader, and getting into a spat with Trump.

Trump refused to listen to his aides and went to North Korea anyway. 'Good,' we thought. 'He won't be our problem for much longer.' But unfortunately, something we didn't expect happened. They became best friends.

Trump returned home raving about how incredible of a guy Kim Jong Un was and how efficiently he ran his country. He immediately started comparing the US to that dictatorship and asking for changes to make things like North Korea.

Fortunately for us, our government at the time was a majority Democrat government, so checks and balances stopped Trump from doing a lot of awful things. He bitched and moaned all the time, but he rarely got his way. So his first term was pretty uneventful.

Then he lost the election to Biden and refused to quit. He spouted all that nonsense about "stolen elections" and swore to run again. I was coming up on retirement eligibility and decided to take that option. I retired in the middle of the Biden administration.

And I'm so glad I did. I thankfully never had to exercise my refusal to obey orders during my service, but I'd definitely take advantage of that right during this current administration if I was still serving. A lot of us weren't happy with Trump, and I still have buddies in the service who feel trapped and can't get out of their enlistment without breaking laws and going to jail. It's a dark time, but there are still plenty of allies in the military and I'm glad to see public recognition of that starting to show.

Hate to break it to you, but this has been a holistic practice for at least a few decades. Long before AI was good enough to mimic anything.

Is this particular book cover AI generated? Maybe. But the practice itself, as well as books on the subject, have actually existed for a while now.

In my military service, we saw Republicans praise us publicly, but then turn around and cut all our benefits and funding behind the scenes. The only reason military members still have any benefits are because of Democrats blocking Republicans. Otherwise, we'd be borderline slaves; nothing but warm bodies for the government to throw at our enemies. (If you serve in the Army or Marines, you're practically that already)

My uncle retired from the US Air Force in the mid-'90s. Because he retired, he was automatically given free medical and dental for the rest of his life. He never earned any disability rating from the VA, but they're covering him completely. His civilian spouse also got free medical and dental for life, just for being married to him.

I retired in 2022 from the US Air Force. They told me I would only get medical coverage for any disabilities the VA approved a claim on. Everything else, I'd have to get my own separate civilian medical insurance to cover. My wife had to serve herself and earn her own disability ratings to get any medical coverage. That retirement benefit has been extremely neutered in the past couple decades, thanks to Republicans trying to end VA coverage for veterans.

I spent two decades traveling the world as an IT professional, so I hadn't been in an American library practically since I was a teenager (I'm 42 now). Any research I needed, I could find online.

But then my dad passed away recently and he was an avid reader and library patron all his life. He was an autodidact, always trying to cram more knowledge in his head. If he left the house, it was almost guaranteed it was to spend time studying some new topic at the library.

Going through his stuff after his funeral, I found stacks of books to return to the library, most of which he'd held onto years past their due date. I found out, though, that overdue fees have been abolished sometime in the past couple decades. The library didn't ask for any money when I returned them! They said it scared people away from borrowing books (and punished poor people), so they just stopped charging for late returns. Not just my local library; they said their whole network doesn't charge late fees anymore.

Speaking of their network, I found out that finding a particular book is super easy now. If my local library doesn't have it, they can look up where it exists in other libraries across America and "borrow" it for me. It'll be mailed to my local library, where it'll be held for me to pick up and check out. I no longer have to rely on just what's in stock at my local library.

I also discovered that the library is no longer just a place for books. There are movies, TV shows, and music to check out; there are dozens of computers with Internet access to use; there are classes held practically daily at my local library; and they're open late into the night so people can take shelter there if they can't go home for any reason. Lots of "teen parties" offered to give kids a safe space with adult supervision to hang out and receive some food, shelter, and professional resources if needed be. They also rent out space for any and all activities people want to host for the community.

When did libraries become so cool?! No wonder my dad practically lived there! I've now become a regular patron of my local library, donating toward their cause to ensure they don't get shut down.

If you haven't yet, at least get a library card. It justifies their continued existence. In a world where everything is becoming a subscription service, very few socialist programs that benefit the community for free instead of lining corporate pockets still exist. Can you imagine paying a monthly/annual subscription to the fire department to ensure they'll show up if your house is on fire? If that sounds insane, imagine if our government took away your access to free knowledge at the library!

A little over a decade ago, I was stationed at a base in the US, working on a huge IT helpdesk that catered to bases across an entire region of the world. We had two TVs in the room, one on each side wall. They were always muted with subtitles, but one was always on Fox News and the other was always on CNN.

It was interesting seeing major news reporting from both sides of the aisle (back when CNN was very left-leaning). We shared our helpdesk with a civilian IT company and they would regularly unmute the Fox News side after-hours. So during nightshift, we unfortunately got a bit more exposure to right-wing media.

The front wall of the room had a bunch of large monitors with live network maps and status charts for all our bases. At night, I would connect to one of those large monitors and stream movies to it. It usually distracted my shift away from the news.

Wow, this is an old meme. I haven't seen it in a decade or two.

How are so many things now worse quality and higher priced than their own knock-offs?

They earned public trust and brand-recognition over many years. Then, once they became the de facto product, they started min-maxing their production. Smaller portions, cheaper ingredients, automating as much of the production line as possible to cut employees, reducing wages for "less work", etc. They're hoping no one would notice that the product you're buying isn't living up to the original standard.

If you're willing to pay the same price for cheaper production, then the company can literally make money without having to sell more product. They can show in their shareholder meetings that sales are going way up, even though consumer purchases may not have changed much at all. Heck, even if sales are going down, profits could still show an increase!

Then of course, there's "inflation," which they use to justify raising prices over time. Even though the product is worse than the original, you're now paying way more for it.

This is the endgame of capitalism. Maximize profits at the cost of consumers. When money is the primary focus of a business, quality of goods and services will always degrade over time.

You can select hidden or public when uploading to Imgur. If you select hidden, no one sees it unless they have the direct URL to the image. If you select public, it uploads to the public feed and everyone on Imgur can potentially see it. It'll pop up on Newest, and anyone browsing that category can upvote or downvote it.

If your public post gets enough upvotes, it'll rise to the front page of Imgur. Much like Reddit. And yes, the community can comment on all public posts.

When I lived in Germany for a while, my wife and I took a train across the country one winter to Munich for the Christmas markets. We stayed in a hostel and walked the streets, enjoying the various stalls. I'd never heard of Glüwein before (hot, mulled, spiced red wine), but it was fantastic! It was an amazing experience and we didn't have to worry about parking lots or figuring out public transportation. Everything was within walking distance and we ended up touring all of Munich on foot.

I wish the US would get off its ass and get some high speed trains set up. We just need to keep oil and auto dealers out of the discussion because they keep shutting it down. Like Musk's "Hyperloop" project, which he proposed to stop legislation from approving high speed trains, but then intentionally did nothing with, so we just don't develop trains to replace his Tesla cars.

TL;DR: "Making democratic threats legible," i.e. spreading the word about how every action Trump takes is a threat to our democracy. It has been proven in several other countries run by authoritarian governments to be effective at stomping out fascism before it can take hold.

Saved you a click.

Nope, this is loss.

For anyone who doesn't want to do the conversion, that's 17 days.

The creator of Lower Decks wrote her a letter explaining how important her character was to him and she read the script and enjoyed it. She also asked if she could just go by Jolene in this, which he was cool with.

Saved you a click.

I knew a guy when I served in the US military who got caught cheating in a semi-related way. He got assigned to a base in a new state and his wife refused to relocate their whole family for the few years he'd be assigned there, so he went by himself, leaving his wife and kids in his home state.

Turns out, he was sexting one of his younger subordinates at work. One of his daughters found out when she tried to use an old tablet and found out his account was still synced to it. She saw all his texts updating in real time.

He was ultra-conservative and didn't believe in divorce, so he was doing everything he could to save his marriage. His wife forced him to install security cameras in every room of his apartment and banned him from going anywhere after work. She knew his schedule and expected him home immediately after work ended. He was basically on house arrest until his job was done and he could move home.

The last I heard, he told his wife the landlord needed to paint the walls, so he removed all the cameras, dunked them in the bathtub, then played dumb when none of them would work when he set them back up again. He was seen inviting young women over to his apartment after that. So, you know... he didn't learn his lesson.

Democrats aren't fighting him, the DNC (Democratic National Convention) is. The party doesn't want him as their representative, because he doesn't match their values. But he represents what the Democrat constituents actually want and the DNC fears losing control over their constituents, so they want to ensure he loses the race.

The DNC and the RNC basically want the same thing, except the Democratic Party is much more subtle about it. The US doesn't actually have a left-wing party. Both our major parties are right-wing by global standards. So any truly left-wing candidates scare them, and they'll fight tooth and nail to keep them out of elections.

Even Cuomo, who was completely stomped in the primaries, is still planning to run in the election as an independent. Their hope is that his run will split the party and make Mamdani lose. If the Democratic Party can't get their man in the election, then they'll throw the race and take everyone down with them.

And what?! I have never played mgs

Liquid Snake is a character in Metal Gear Solid. He's Solid Snake's twin brother and one of the antagonists in the series.

James Bond was an alcoholic, with good reason. He didn't drink vodka martinis for the taste, he drank them to dull the pain and horrors of his job. As much as he drank, he probably didn't really taste the booze anymore.

The original James Bond from the novels was a dark and brooding high-functioning alcoholic, who operated at his best with a drink or two in him at all times. He was pretty useless without the drink. A vodka martini would quickly get him in the right headspace to accomplish his latest mission.

The movie Bond was reinvented to be this dashing, handsome womanizer who drank and smoked socially and was charming as hell. Basically, a 1950s ideal male fantasy. This Bond probably could've used a classier drink than straight vodka, but that's one aspect of the books they kept pretty loyal.