If you’re gonna sell dates you better be a grower! Dates don’t just grow themselves!

And we wouldn’t have to cross the border to fight wildfires anymore!

Canada has a massive program of equalization transfer payments where taxes collected in rich provinces go to subsidize poor ones. The US does not have anything like this. None of the state governments have their budgets subsidized by other states.

Yeah, right. If California joined they’d be subsidizing health care for the rest of Canada through transfer payments since every province would be considered a “have not province” compared to California.

This is like inviting your billionaire uncle to move in with you and also open a joint bank account.

Edit: just to put some numbers on my point, the GSP (gross state product) of California is $4 trillion, nearly twice that of the GDP of Canada which is $2.18 trillion. Canada’s economy would effectively triple in size by bringing in California.

You owe it to yourself to try some traditional Roguelikes:

• Caves of Qud (Just released 1.0 a month ago. Amazing game. Unique science fiction world full of weird and wonderful characters, complex tinkering crafting system, crazy mutants and really cool cybernetics. Huge amounts of lore and a rich detailed world. I can’t stop playing it!)
• Shattered Pixel Dungeon (Really awesome game with a friendly developer who posts on Lemmy. Extremely well balanced classes: 5 main classes with a 6th in development. Cool character customization and equipment upgrade system. Super deep alchemy system. Probably the best mobile roguelike but amazing on PC too, with a great UI for every platform)
• NetHack (old school, developed since 1987 and still active, very tough game, might not want to try this one first. Incredibly rewarding once you learn it! Absolutely crazy amount of interactions between items, characters, and features in the dungeon. Takes its “verb-based action system” much farther than any other game, including text adventure games)
• Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup (very complex but not as brutal and spoilery as NetHack. Extreme replay value due to the huge number of species, backgrounds, skills, and gods)
• Tales of Maj’Eyal (not as many races as DCSS but still a huge variety of character builds. Great music as well)

Wow you aren’t kidding! I was expecting some 3D modern graphics thing but it’s literally a new Escape Velocity game without the EV name!

Thanks for this. Wishlisted!

Edit: oh it’s actually free!

Just like it’s easy to quit smoking — for a day or two. Much worse is the fact that so many traditional institutions have been supplanted by online ones. Try getting a job for example.

I’m not seeing it. If anything, South America is moving hard right faster than anyone else.

No one knows how to do that. Global civilization is in decline. Canada’s been very lucky to be mostly free of war but that’s about it.

The true problem of democracy is that it’s the government of a million tiny special interests, each of which screws over the entire society a small amount in order to benefit themselves a larger amount.

Well you could eat one in South Korea instead. They love hotdogs there. They have developed some cool new takes on the corndog:

That’s a great idea! I need to do that at some point! For a long time I’ve wanted to hike the pacific crest trail. Maybe I’ll bring books along for that! Thanks!

Yeah I do tons of reading in the games I play! I’ve been playing Caves of Qud and there is a gargantuan amount of reading in that game. A lot of it is AI slop, admittedly, but its text to wade through nevertheless!

Not a single mention of the word game or gaming in that article. It’s my hypothesis that video games have largely supplanted fiction reading for boys and men over the past several decades. Men do read some science fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction books but not general fiction or erotic fiction. Those latter categories are heavily targeted at women (eg. any of Elena Ferrante’s books or smash hits like Fifty Shades of Grey).

There’s nothing here to suggest that toxic masculinity or the rise of Trumpism or the alt-right have anything to do with it.

I (as a 40yo man) stopped reading for the most part many years ago. And it’s not for a lack of trying! I have purchased many books (fiction and nonfiction) but I struggle to bring myself to read them. I just don’t have the attention span and it’s really frustrating. I actually really want to read these books!

You have not denied that Rossmann engages in rage baiting. Everything you’ve said dances around that point. You’ve tried to make this a discussion about who is paying for it. THAT DOESN’T MATTER. It’s the subject matter which is toxic. And Louis Rossmann is guilty of it. I’ve watched plenty of his videos and they’re all the same. Endless rage masturbation. It’s garbage content. The modern day equivalent of Jerry Springer.

His activism could cure cancer and end world hunger but that wouldn’t excuse him for it, because others are doing the same activism WITHOUT THE TOXICITY.

You just named them yourself. FUTO. His company.

Without views he has nothing. It doesn’t matter who is paying him, he’s not getting paid if he doesn’t get views. The algorithm brings him views when he gives the algorithm what it wants. What does it want? Engagement. And the path he has taken to generating engagement is outrage, toxicity, and negativity.

He says “my finances don’t depend on YouTube” then why is he still publishing on YouTube? Shut it down! Oh wait, he can’t, because then he’ll stop getting paid by his sponsors.

YouTube has consistently reduced the amount it pays creators per ad view over time. Yet creators are making more videos than ever. Why? Because they make money through 3rd party sponsors. YouTube is a platform. The value it provides to creators is the audience it brings to them through network effects and through the algorithm.

I’ve already addressed Rossmann’s political activism in a previous comment. I appreciate all the work he’s done on it. But he’s by no means the only person fighting for right to repair. There are tons of others doing so as well, such as iFixit, the EFF, and loads of organizations representing farmers all over North America.

My criticism of Rossmann is specifically with the style of content he puts out. Negativity-based reaction videos are his bread and butter. That’s how he makes money. This puts an asterisk on all of the good things he does, just as MKB’s occasional soft takes put an asterisk on the work he does.

This kind of toxic negativity is heavily favoured by the YouTube algorithm and it leads people into mental health spirals. That’s my point. Louis Rossmann makes money by damaging the mental health of vulnerable people in his audience. None of his beneficial activism makes up for this. You can look at other right to repair activists and see that they are working towards their goals without this odious behaviour.

There are thousands of youtubers just like Rossmann. They sit there in front of the camera and react to other videos or news. People watch because they get a thrill out of seeing someone get angry and “pwn” the bad guys. There’s no creativity in it. It’s just emotional dumping. It’s totally toxic.

Louis used to be all about creativity. He used to make repair videos and teach people useful skills. He stopped doing those when he realized the algorithm would give him a bigger audience for these negative takes.

Call him a victim if you like. Algorithmic capture I’ve heard it called. Many many youtubers have gone down that road.

As for MKB. I like his videos because he’s a very good speaker, he puts a lot of thought and creativity into the whole production, and he is actually honest about the drawbacks in products he reviews. Is he perfect though? Clearly not. I would prefer if he didn’t interview Apple mouthpieces to let them deliver well-practiced marketing directly to his audience.

Sometimes I also think MKB gets a bit too starstruck because he can’t quite believe where he is and what he gets to do for a living. If you go back through his videos and sort by increasing date you can see his very first videos. It’s rather stark how far he’s come.

Both guys are in the business of self-promotion. One is based on positivity, the other negativity.

You want to fill your life with negativity? Go ahead. I’ll pass.

I’m a big fan of right to repair and I appreciate all Louis Rossmann has done for the movement. Having said that, I wouldn’t say he’s strictly a pro-consumer guy. He’s a professional gadfly.