Places that buy other companies to dismantle or lay off large chunks of staff and take over IP with minimal or absent quality to show from it. Just maximize that investor dollar.

Microsoft, Disney etc.

The harm performed far outweighs any investment from a “toward the artists” I see come back.

or even a group that funded it

I noted I’m ok with investors.

I’m against parasitic groups that feed on properties and prevent money getting to the actual dev folks.

Hey man, you can’t park that here

Ditto on Spotify. I have big love for piracy of FLAC for my personal music server, but I also have a decent rack filled with physical offerings from my favorite bands.

My Bandcamp collection is also getting up there, since a few of my favs say they are treated well there, and it’s FLAC friendly as well.

Physical media or merch directly from the band is absolutely the way to go every time if possible.

Cool argument, except a huge quantity of pirated works aren’t “owned” by the creator or even a group that funded it, but instead by parasitic companies that abuse capitalistic tools to actually steal value from those creators.

I have thousands of purchased games. 3 categories here:

1: obtained as part of a pack (humble gog etc)

2: purchased AFTER trying out via pirate copy to know if it is my kind of thing

3: picked up early access due to demo or general interest from being a known smaller dev/studio (hare brained for example)

With less and less access to shareware and viable demos, piracy is often the only conduit to prevent me getting ripped off of $80 for something that looks like a shiny sports car but end up being another “buy $800 in dlc for the full story!” Ford pinto.

Additionally, I now flat refuse to fund the likes of Denuvo, and wish that piracy actively hurt the bottom line of companies deploying that kind of anti-user shit.

I hope that didn’t come across as attacking. It’s frustrating how much pet stores present incorrectly and it ticks me off.

For what it’s worth, proper food etc pays off with these guys. According to some of the chain markets near me (PetSmart and Petco) they can live up to 15 years.

I have 2 that are 19 and 20.

i appreciate the candor.

Gorgeous little furrbutt

… Either you are kidding or you don’t know that sugar like that is supremely unhealthy for chinchillas.

Cute in theory but in reality it’s gruesome

Agreed. Several of his books have suffered the same fate unfortunately.

That said, the ideas do still ring very true… Albeit, many of them are the ideas I wish were more fantasy.

Time enough for love - Heinlein

Nor crystal tears - Foster

A world out of time - Niven

Ringworld - Niven

Sassinak - McCaffrey

The Martian - Weir

An absolute evil. And not the cute fuzzy kind of evil either.

He doesn’t deserve you.

It’s tricky to get an abusive narcissist out of your head. They have a way of living there.

No joke! That’s been the worst!

I’m glad you still have her around, and the chance to share time without the negatives.

I am. My 21 year old daughter has been evidence that I’m doing something ok despite, and it’s amazing.

One of the most healing things so far has been the fact that I can look back and feel confident that I was right every time I thought “this feels like it is wrong and should be different”. My daughter still finds me regularly for spontaneous hugs and any time something needs fixing that she hadn’t figured out yet.

I hope you find a similar chance. It’s deserved.

Solidarity. I can say that from the other side of that coin, it’s not always better… Divorced when I was 12, I told my mother “about fucking time” and got slapped.

My single mother later destroyed my teenage years and 20s. She died and it took 10 years for the financial fraud to fall away. I’m still working to escape damage from her extorting and manipulating me by threatening to accuse me of molesting my daughter with several of her friends willing to lie to police.

I hope you at least came away with positives to build with.

I flat celebrated my father’s death. The upside was he instilled equality of gender well, and considering the 80s that wasn’t common around middle USA.

Father’s Day is complex for me. Balancing my adult daughter bringing it for me vs memories of mine takes effort.

OS/2

Not sure about your area, but a wireguard accessible OOB connection is a great piece of kit to keep handy. I use a cheap 768kbps SIM in an Ethernet connected switch into my personal systems. It’s saved my skin numerous times.

I’m sure this is obvious, especially in hindsight, but just mentioning because the existence of IoT LTE data plans for a minimal fee ( $100/year for me in Midwest US) was NOT obvious to me until 2 years ago.

Sending positive vibes, and passing offer of technical assistance once you get access again.

Hopefully it’s an easy fix once you get into things again.

Does this include media I grabbed but literally never opened or looked at?

Awesome! Thank you so much.