Well not all empty and pessimistic, but yeah there’s certainly a lot more of that than good content.

You could build some shelving and use it as a baking tray holder, with the trays facing vertical. They would be easy to slide in/out.

A long time ago on a random modders forum, I was a part of a very small contest to judge mods at the end of the year. No prizes, just kind of a honorary showcase post which I guess was considered cool at the time.

It essentially fell down to just me to play about ~6 entries over the course of the month and then post the rankings.

Well I was having dire internet and computer issues at the time. My internet was bad but my average was suddenly dragging at 0.5kb/s on average and I had what I later learned was a failing HDD. I kept thinking it would eventually get better but it didn’t. I barely got a single mod downloaded.

Now the dumb part: Rather than be a sane person and admit I was having technical issues and would have to hand it over to someone else (which I was already running up on the deadline, leaving anyone I handed it to unable to complete it before then), but instead I tried to power through.

I kept expecting the internet to magically get better and then use the power of last minute energy to tackle it. When the magic never happened, at the last minute I simply ranked the mods based on vibe with the only one I played being in the number one spot.

No one seemed to dispute it until one contestant saw his entry didn’t have a single download and immediately figured out I never played it. Then it all came into question and soon enough the site Admins banned me from being a judge and canceled the whole thing.

That was the last contest the forum hosted until it ended up folding a year or two later.

Fake one. Bought it a decade ago and its still doing just fine.

I keep seeing the “well its got nudity what did they expect” take and saw this article that talks about the meta-narrative and theme:

https://noescapevg.com/all-that-fucking-bullshit-abouthorses-and-for-what/

It being weird and uncomfortable is the point - Though obviously its not meant to be a game for everyone.

Readers are voracious and always looking for new things to devour. But your writing isn’t for them, its for you. Every page is slowly honing your craft, getting your ideas onto paper, and turning an amorphous idea blob into a tangible story.

I hate when people tell me this but annoyingly it works, but sometimes ‘just write’ is a solid strategy to just start putting words on the page. Sometimes its rough and you’ll want to go back to edit it, sometimes seeing things start to flow is a great feeling, and the words get easier.

The other trick is spite. Just lots of spite. Spite for the sometimes terrible writing that gets published anyways, spite for the reader who you might lure into falling into love with a character you plan to brutally murder, and spite for the music player that can’t seem to find the right song to match your mood for the scene you’re writing.

I shop at small businesses if its an option. I prefer my money supporting the community than someone’s fourth yacht.

That being said there is a particular type of small business whose customers are largely old retired people. They’re usually open 8-5, have higher than normal prices, and are in no rush as they usually like to chat - Which their customer base likes.

There are other types of course but sometimes you got to do hunting because they likely don’t have big advertising bucks.

Its very very difficult for small businesses to compete with big box stores. They can’t out price Walmart or outship Amazon. So they usually try to find a niche to focus on… Or wither on the vine.

I usually only listen to music when I’m doing something else, like driving.

I listen to a lot of game audio or background music though I couldn’t tell you who the artists are, only what game/movie they’re from.

I think that puts me into the ‘not really a music person’ category.

You mean ‘ram’ it?

Yeah here’s an example from yesterday:

This is posted to /c/[email protected] and /c/[email protected], marked by this stacking icon thing.

You can see the comments from both communities if you visit either post in either community.

My aim was to take an existing Mastodon post and basically repost it somewhere else here on Lemmy, but then have the discussion attached.

For example, John Mastodon makes a post about XYZ, then I crosspost it to the Open Source community, and if you open that post you can see the Mastodon comments and such, and commenting here on Lemmy would add to that conversation.

Ok this ‘appears’ to work. Each community is viewable as a group in Mastodon, so you can tag it as you post and this creates a PieFed/Lemmy post onto PieFed’s testing community.

Now to figure out the final step, how to crosslink posts.

Oh most definitely, here’s this post on Mastodon:

Still unsure of how to do the reverse though.

Those were actually versions of you from parallel universes, each saving you in the manner that the prophecies foretold.

Well I can’t answer the other parts, but for games: The games industry has been going through a massive upheaval from ~2022-2025 has seen a staggering number of layoffs, games being canceled, and studios being shuttered. We’d be seeing a lot more games right now if they hadn’t been axed over the years.

In the indie game dev side, its sort of* an indiepocalypse where battling for a smidgen of spotlight on Steam is brutal - and even financial “success” doesn’t mean you’ll have enough to follow up with another game. Also because of the above publishers aren’t funding many AA games so its hard to get those going to.

*Its a little different for niches and certain genres so this is a generalization.

I’m assuming your age but I think its normal when people hit early adulthood to start drifting a direction and possibly start losing contact. At least for a few people, not everyone.

That being said, there’s a lot of unnatural disconnect lately due to stress and such and I think people tend to ‘replace’ them with parasocial or low effort social media relationships instead. Basically if you’re overwhelmed you can get some socializing in on Facebook or Instagram or the Ask Lemmy section of the fediverse and it feels like communicating but its actually leaves you wanting more but with less energy than before.

There’s also a possibility they’re dealing with something they haven’t been able (or wanting) to talk about.

The things that have worked for me are low bar meetups. That is, not a lot of time or effort to join. Like hey I’m jumping on XYZ game tonight, who’s down. Or there’s a new coffee shop near your house, want to check it out, etc.

More than I’d care to admit.

Chairs. You can sit on the ground or on a mat by a low table, as many people have done for centuries.

NAL but I don’t think this is illegal, though it is a pretty large red flag that you’re going to get lowballed.

I got a handful of houseplants that I’ve kept alive for years (one close to a decade) and I’m not sure its really done anything for me.