Welcome! :)

I figure it’s not too different from a regular text post here, so if there’s a community that seems relevant to the post somehow, that’d prolly be best.

As to how to find them, I’d recommend the communities tab of lemmyverse explorer, and searching a word or category that seems close to what you’re posting to see if there’s a community that already exists for it.

Sorry to hear things are rough for you. I hope whatever is causing it improves!

Mine is an odd choice, or maybe not, but its the first thing that came to mind: Night in The Woods

It’s about a girl that comes home from college to her old dying town. I know that doesn’t sound terribly uplifting, and there’s some downer stories mixed in there, but overall I found it a very heartfelt and uplifting game, because the main character’s friends are the most wonderful bunch of people, and you hang out with them and go on little adventures throughout. It’s got a cool creepy mystery story going on, but the game is mostly about deep friendship, family, and overcoming struggles with their help, and I found that very uplifting and worthwhile.

(This was going to just be the first paragraph for the joke, but I kept going and kinda got carried away…)

The Beoing executive towards the back of the gathering was the first to respond to the question left hanging in the room, raising a small plastic container above his head “I have-” He turned the thing in his hand to read the label “-Playdoe. Can that be a screw?”

The executive next to him became animated at his cohorts words, which seemed to mean something. He thrust his arm outward, pointing at a small sweaty man sat in the corner of the office, his spectacles crooked, like his mustache, and his soul. “Economy man, quickly! Will that work? Will it be cheaper than whatever we’re doing now?!” The executive demanded.

The economy man visibly squirmed in his Herman Miller, swivelling from side to side and biting his upper lip as his AI assistant ran the calculations. The stain under his pits expanded visibly from anxiety, willing against hope that the AI would not see the danger in his request. Finally he looked up from his screen, visibly more relaxed, yet just as sweaty, and cleared his throat “Based on my calculations, if we switched to using Playdoe as the new substrate for our fasteners, we would save approximately 2.6 percent on manufacturing costs, netting us, er, I mean you, a distinctly healthy profit!” He deftly flipped the switch under his chair, allowing him to lean back with his hands behind his head, releasing his stale stench into the room as he took in their reactions.

But the office was deadly quiet. The executive who had propositioned him made no move, still pointing as he asked “Does that mean… Bonuses?” He whispered the last word as though it were sacred, for it was.

The economy man simply smiled and nodded.

All at once the room exploded into sound as each executive present, who had watched the exchange wide-eyed, began to convulse and moan louder than the economy man had ever seen. He raised from his chair nervously as one of executives began to rhythmically hump a leather sofa with cushions that the economy man knew would be unyielding. His eyes flicked to another man, who had chosen a ficus plant as the object of his desire.

This was too much, the moans of pleasure coming from the executives was edging on the verge of ear piercing wails, and some eyed him with a wildness that scared him, as though he could produce another rabbit from the hat and provide them with another reason for a bonus. But the fools, they didn’t understand; he was lucky enough his AI account wasn’t banned after the last prompt, asking how much profit would be derived if they played an unskippable ad on the headrest display everytime the emergency oxygen masks were deployed. He couldn’t risk another one, as without the AI, he’d be out of a job.

“What if…” An executive mumbled as it lunged at him, desperate for more. The Economy man fell backward into his chair, horrified as more closed in, encircling him.

“You’re already getting a bonus, it’s more than I make in a year. Isn’t that enough?!” He pleaded, his voice rising above the cacophony of pleasure.

The room, full of moaning just a moment ago, became silent once more. The ficus plant executive turned from his bush, his expression empty, devoid of life. His face was eggshell white, his tortoise shell glasses reflected the overhead fluorescent light. “Enough?” He spat the word as though it were death itself, for it was.

Legends. Put the screws to 'em, lads!

For minor things it works alright. For slightly advanced things, like making making curved text, it’s not intuitive compared to Photoshop. Though personally, even for minor things I found Krita more pleasant.

A UI designer made this little short about Gimp, which I think captures the sorta things that can be frustrating.

I’m extremely pleased to hear they will be taking UI seriously.

Not great. You’d probably want to flash lineage os on it for security, which apparently works okay.

Ooh, that’s nice. I could see that effectively replacing disqus comments below articles. Cool beans!

Smaller phones do still exist, such as the Unihertz Jellystar or upcoming Jelly Max.

And, at least from what I recall, the incentive for bell to toss that excess money into research, is the corporate tax rates were so high it would’ve been taken from them if not spent anyway.

Maybe I got the right message from it then; went from being a religious conspiracy nut to a scientifically objective solarpunk! :D

It’s almost a shame that Deus Ex has the crazy illuminati conspiracies included, because (at the risk of sounding crazy again myself) there’s a surprising amount of truth to some of the things talked about in the game, and on topics that essentially no other game has ever attempted to cover. Ross’ game dungeon did a fantastic video on that topic specifically (linked to the relevant part).

I wrote more about it a while back in this post, if you’re curious. But it’s more on how I got out of it, and not the specifics of all the crazy shit we believed, which would be lengthy.

a semi-auto AK and an AR are functionally identical for most practical purposes.

As for the scenario proposed: any direct long engangement would be suicide, but other tactics would be viable. The most likely scenario in the US would look something like The Troubles in Ireland.

But it’s possible a significant portion the military could defect, which could make things look a little more like the Spanish Civil War.

Also, I would point to the existence of Rojava, which for years has been able to hold out against Turkey despite Turkey having access to significantly more sophisticated hardware.

The OG Mafia and the Metro 2033 series are excellent linear games. Night in the Woods is a really fun little quirky game that’s not too long.

If you like adventure games, I’d suggest Gemini Rue, Primordia, and Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis.

Perhaps Snatcher, if you’re open to something older and different. Same with the classic cinematic platformer, Another World.

As someone who used to be one of those nutjobs many years ago; there was an extreme mistrust of FEMA, and the main conspiracy at the time was that the New World Order would someday use FEMA to begin rounding up people to be put into concentration camps, and had millions of plastic coffins waiting to be deployed for the people who resist.

We fully believed that with every fiber of our being, and if we had seen a FEMA response to a disaster, especially if communications were down, we’d probably just assume the end times were upon us and that they chose this time while we were vulnerable to strike.

Religion is a hell of a drug that can paralyze critical thinking skills beyond comprehension.

That’s extremely sad to hear, I hope they recover someday :(

There’s a few areas where it’s lacking, the text tool being one of them, and it also can’t export to PDF for professional book cover printing. But I’m not a professional photo editer either, and almost exclusively use Krita for editing anyway, since it’s so my h easier to use.

gimp isn’t being held back by money, they have over a million in bitcoin just sitting there from an old donation that grew in value. In over a decade, no one has figured out how to pay the taxes on it if they start using it to fund developers.

I read on reddit a long time ago that a UI designer tried to help improve gimp, but the devs were hostile to it (i may be remembering that wrong though). Considering how long its been with no UI improvements, I don’t think gimp will ever revamp its UI. Instead, I think Krita has a good chance of moving into photo editing with enough funding.

The old saying is; if you go far enough left, you get your guns back.

The gameplay of VNs doesn’t particularly appeal to me, though it’s not offensive either, so I can be won over by a particularly good story. So far, the best VN I’ve played is Snatcher for the Sega CD.

Snatcher (nice use of negative space on that cover) is one of Hideo Kojima’s earlier titles, and his insatiable desire for long cutscenes/story lends itself to VNs. As with many of Kojima’s works, it’s heavily inspired by whatever western movies he would’ve seen at the time. In this case, Snatcher is heavily inspired by Blade Runner.

You play as Gillian Seed, an ex-scientist with amnesia that’s now working as a Junker (the equivalent of a blade runner) in Neo-Kobe, a cyberpunk metropolis that’s not quite as dark and dreary as Bladerunner’s, feeling more like something out of Akira.

The game features a lot of voice acting, some of it actually surprisingly good for a game of that time (early 90’s), and it has a particularly fantastic FM soundtrack courtesy of the Genesis’ soundchip, and even some redbook audio for the intro. I’d recommend listening to the soundtrack even if you have no intention of playing the game.

The story for the game can get surprisingly dark and gruesome at times, though overall has a more 90’s anime up-beat vibe, and is one of Kojima’s more linear and coherent tales. The characters are pretty fun to talk to, and the writing was compelling enough to make me push through some of the more dated design decisions (you sometimes will have to click the same action/dialog 3 times or more, with no additional feedback, before something unlocks to progress the story).

The gameplay is a bit more involved than a standard VN, sharing some attributes with an Adventure game. In addition to being able to move around the city and various buildings (skillfully drawn with some of the finest pixel art of the era), the player has access to an inventory and can investigate various parts of a scene. There’s a small combat mini-game that will sometimes spring up that was designed for use with a lightgun (The Konami Justifer) but thankfully works just fine with a standard controller), and is used sparingly enough that doesn’t overstays its welcome. In fact, I’d say the combat is surprisingly well integrated into the story, and helps add a bit of tension, since you never know when it’ll pop up (I imagine it would’ve been quite immersive back in the day with the lightgun, since you’d have to quickly drop your controller and physically ‘draw’ it to defend yourself).

Snatcher is a short game, usually averaging about 4 or 5 hours for most people, but that’s all it really needs to tell its tale, and by the end I was thoroughly satisfied.

The Sega CD version is the only one that was translated for the English market, and AFAIK is no longer legally available to purchase anywhere. With physical copies being rare and demanding a premium ($200 or more), I’d recommend emulation to experience it.

If any of that sounds appealing to you, I’d certainly recommend giving it a try! And if you do, good luck, Junker!