Pheta

What a treat of a read. Always nice to see a new story like this pop up, thanks for sharing!

Unless they can't see the difference between the dickhead and themselves.

Typed out a whole thing because I didn't really agree with you that it's not just the people up top, but also this perpetual growth, zero sum game most C-suite level people seem to think the world operates on.

Most of my points ended up agreeing with you, but I do want to add that profit seeking isn't a bad thing, but that the constant desire for more profit, 'growth' is where the real evil lies.

politicians are really just career criminals. They can't earn an honest dollar on their own so they have to buy and sell favors for it, all while selling out the rest of the country underneath them.

If you're not careful, that'll incentivize competing companies to collude with or acquire suppliers to drive up prices for competitors. I know that wasn't the thought behind the suggestion, but there's always someone there to break the spirit of the law, if not the word. And there's always people breaking the word of the law.

It's not about paying to not see ads. Anyone with an adblocker could understand that much. The point is to support an app you personally like, and appreciating what comes with an app that has an income stream.
Part of that comes with understanding that all things come at a cost. Like many have said above, FOSS comes at the expense of the time and money of the developers of the app themselves, and some of that cost is passed down to the consumer (anyone who uses FOSS without contributing to development is a consumer in the end, after all).
The consumer has to bear the cost of slower, more infrequent updates that are entirely dictated by the developers schedule and whim, with less focus or effort put into the design or other features. And honestly, if a consumer can't tolerate that, that's totally fine, that's what dedicated teams and people who do these things for a job are for.
If you're one of those people who doesn't mind slower, less intuitive, or buggier software, then go ahead. But until you can actually prove that a FOSS offers better services than a marketable service, people are really just going to dismiss you as someone who can't think for themselves.

Sounds like a statement I can get behind. I don't know who Banksy is, can you point me in the right direction?

I played the heck out of it too! The base building mechanics are pretty satisfying. I do like how they've set up exploration, and I can't wait to see some of the location designs, plus once they build up combat, it may create a pretty fun loop. The underdust is a pretty cool location too, hopefully it gets more than the one variant soon. That being said, I do think the roadmap is a pretty achievable one, and it'll keep people coming back when there are major updates.

Some of that really resonates with me. My personal take on the lack of empathy and the aggression towards protestors, volunteers, or other non-profit work really spirals into one thing; the widening wage gap. I know if I could make enough money without having to work 50+ hours on an above average wage to make ends meet, I'd probably do more things with my life. I'd create, do volunteer work, protest about things I care about. When I was making less and actually struggling, any little extra hurdle on what was supposed to be a fun day off or little chores were suddenly a lot more emotionally draining, demotivating, frustrating, and all the other negative connotations.

I think as more and more people start losing what comforts they are used to, they lose a lot of the safety nets that kept them pleasant in the first place. keep in mind, there are a lot of people who were middle class just 5 years ago that got squeezed out, and even if they were polite people, wealth doesn't make people grow, it just makes problems go away. So we had a lot of people who never grew because they didn't go through these hardships and haven't had time to learn all the hard lessons. Probably feels like they just fell off a fun slide and broke their leg on the dismount.

So, yeah, I do think people are more apathetic to problems. I've been told multiple times to my face by personal friends, "It's not a big problem", "It doesn't affect me, so I don't really care" and other ways to politely deflect the conversation into a "it's not my problem" and that's the real stickler. People like that won't really care until it's a problem that affects them, personally. It's why I think, in a twisted sort of way, that people being ripped out of middle class and others losing some of their safety nets is a good thing.

I do want to clarify that for the generals, it is not okay, and is a worse trend for everyone overall. But it forces these people to suffer the indignities they regularly come to expect, forces them to realize that this 'minor setback' is in fact not minor at all, and will keep them perpetually in this place in life if they do not deal with a problem that is not unique to them. Forces them to think about someone other than themselves, which is a hard thing to do when they don't want to do it themselves, especially if they have no reason to.

Now they do.

I love the new overlay UI while in game. The menus are smaller and take up less screen space so you don't have the annoying problem of UI elements overlapping each other, unless it's by user intent. When steam needs to open a chromium browser in the overlay, now there's properly a tab feature and URL bar, which is HUGE when you're trying to browse discussions or guides. The design and gray nature means it's not difficult to read and is in line with the library UI update which has cleanly smoothed out the feeling of disconnect these past few months. Overall, props to the UI/UX people working behind this update, it looks great and functions even better!