This is quite a complex issue, with multiple layers that compound on eachother.

1. Most people are just managing to stave off homelessness, living hand to mouth. They live to work, and have very little energy or time to concern themselves about trying to change fundamental issues, if they are even educated on those issues, which leads into…
2. The US education system is failing quite badly. People are not taught well how to critically think, and almost never cover fundamental societal issues or how to organize to improve them. It’s a meat grinder that is designed to get you smart enough to be a good employee, and generally kills the flame of curiosity in most people. This is especially true in republican states, where they are actively gutting the public education system in favor of private schools that will teach Christianity, and that slavery wasn’t all bad (literally, in Florida they want to teach that slavery gave slaves on-the-job experience)
3. The red scare of the 50’s and 60’s is still effecting older generations, and they view any sort of collectivism as Stalinist communism. This is reinforced by Fox news, which is genuinely fascist propaganda, and is wildly popular amongst the elderly and rural populations.

Saying all that, there are people trying to make things better actively, and we’re starting to see an awaking of the working class as unions are making a comeback, and more people are beginning to realize that the system itself cannot pull itself out of this capitalistic nosedive, and that grassroots mutual aid and prefiguration is a more promising way.

I was actually able to find ultra high res scans of the other two! (use the arrows to hop between the three). I think these might be even higher res than the other one I posted, as all together they come to 2.5gb, where as the other scan was only 32mb.

I’m guessing virtually no one has a set of snow tires down south, which make a huge difference in drivability. They’re essentially mandatory up north.

Star Wars: Andor is one I can highly recommend, and that’s coming from someone who found everything outside of the original trilogy to be extremely meh. Andor punches so hard above its weight and source material it’s absolutely crazy. It’s some of the finest sci-fi I’ve ever seen, and in themes is genuinely antifascist. Give it a shot even if you have star wars fatigue, it’s that good! I can’t wait for season two.

Another show that I’d recommend (though slightly less enthusiastically) would be Peaky Blinders, which is about British WWI vets who become gangsters after returning home. The acting is incredible, and it covers a surprising amount on working class struggles of that time, the persecution of socialists by the state, the rise of fascism in Britain with historical people, and is overall pro-socialist. The only reason I recommend it slightly less than Andor is it can feel a little repetitive if you binge it, so I recommend spacing out episodes a bit if you can to hopefully avoid that feeling. It is a great show despite that.

I’d also recommend Firefly if you haven’t seen it.

You may enjoy Turn, which is an older show about the spy network during the american revolutionary war, which has some great acting, and at least a good revolutionary spirit of resisting tyranny.

Lastly, and this one might be a tough sell, but I personally enjoyed Blake’s 7, which is an old low budget scifi from the BBC revolving around a small band of misfits as they essentially try to find ways to undermine a totalitarian empire with an advanced ship they find. It can be super cheesy and campy at times, but some of the actors kinda carry it (Paul Darrow), and it has a certain charm.

As someone who also bounced off Manuskript for similar reasons, I think this will be right up your alley. :)

You and some friends could start a tea shop worker owned cooperative in your area. How far you want to take that (turn your back yard into a shop if you live in a suburb, or rent a space in downtown) is up to you, but if you think your area has demand for a tea shop, there are some great guides on how to start a worker owned coop! :D

In that context, I’d recommend checking out the Rama OST, which might be up your alley.

For sure, these are way out of my budget, and as Clint mentions, it’s more of a luxury item at that price than it is a practical alternative for most, but it’s interesting to see new old stock parts be repurposed like that. Personally, I’ve fully embraced emulation, especially with how good Dosbox Staging has become.

Starlight Brigade is one of my absolute favorites, such a masterpiece 🤌

Black Swan is another banger from TWRP, absolutely love their sound.

I used it to follow a couple communities a while back, but I found that it ultimately was causing me to actually use reddit more to respond to posts there, which I didn’t really want. After blocking it, I found that I haven’t missed it whatsoever. I’m down for banning it. 👍

Strange. I don’t consistently use it myself (I’m more a Lemmy type person), but it always worked pretty okay in my testing. I tried it again just now, and I was able to respond to someone and visit my profile without issue. Perhaps there is an issue with your friendica instance? I did my testing on friendica.world.

I’m using the older 3.1 version from f-droid, so maybe there was a regression in the 4.0 release as well, if you’re using that.

Regarding mobile apps, Raccoon for Friendica is a pretty polished and nice app, and it also works for mastodon accounts too.

Apparently Photoshop CC 2017 has a gold rating on winedb, so that could be viable if you are willing to sail the high seas and apply the tweaks for that app listing.

Otherwise I’d stick with Krita, and then GIMP if you find Krita lacking.

Kinda reminds me of Malone, an 80’s action movie with Burt Reynolds about a White Nationalist buying up property in Oregon to facilitate his terrorist cells, but without the infiltration part.

Wait, is that an actual line from the show?

It was a travesty that pensions were largely replaced with 401ks in the 80’s in the US (curious if a similar thing happened elsewhere in the world), effectively forcing participation in the stock market to have any chance at retirement.

They found another way to shore up the continuation and capitulation to capitalism while boosting their share prices at the sane time.

What an absolute con.

I feel like more people using smaller instances is a good thing, as it helps them become one of those desirable instances, and helps keep the Admins of those small instances motivated to maintain their instance (since they see their efforts being rewarded).

I do get that a bigger instance provides a smoother experience out of the box, but with Lemmy Federate and Lemmyverse search, I feel like it’s easier to overcome a small instance limitation on lemmy compared to a small mastodon instance.

That’s just my two cents though.

I went outside of my usual wheelhouse and tried playing some of the Wario games for the gameboy advance. Finished Warioware in one afternoon (very fun short little collection of mini games) and currently on Wario Land 4. It’s a platformer with light puzzle elements, and I’m quite surprised at how much I’ve been enjoying it, as I usually don’t mesh with platformers.

In a way, it reminds me of one of the later Commander Keen games, but with much better level design and variety in gameplay.

It’s a polished and quirky little game, and its handheld roots lend itself to short sessions, which has been all I have time for.

I think I’ll be investigating the earlier entries after I complete it. Certainly recommend it if you have access to a handheld emulator!

That was a damn good read, very well written and quite enthralling.

It’s unfortunately also very concerning, and with how much direct support militias like this will recieve under a trump presidency, I fear they could proliferate substantially.

He’s an Anarchist, and the topic is about the lack of openly leftist guntubers, and the unfortunate reality that most guntubers take issue with 2A4ALL despite it being something that in their own espoused views should be something they’d champion.