Yeah, I keep in touch. I experienced some deprivation as a kid, so as an adult, I pursue interests with glee. Maybe even to my detriment, but overall I think it's a positive thing to rush toward interesting things.

The flip side is, really draining sometimes, and I push it away in favour of gratification. Could also be a sign of an imbalance in life, if recovering from work-based responsibility doesn't happen well enough, and it intereferes with personal life responsibilites.

I have two Hori sticks, the RAP4 (modded) and fighting edge unmodded.

Both work great on pc and playstation. Hori at least had a switch stick, but not sure if any more. It was based on the RAP, which is a fine stick, even out of the box.

If you don't have budget constraints, ordering a custom could work too, since you could get it to work on the switch and ps. I don't think many sticks support both out of the box.

If you can leave the switch out, Qanba is real nice. Razer sticks are pretty cool too, very heavy and boxy, but I like that. And Hori is a bit more budget friendly.

The Nacon stick with Sanwa parts seems like a good deal too.

There a youtube channel and a steam curator called Mortismal Gaming who loves CRPGs. Their shtick is also completing games at 100% before popping a review, and they are churning out new material at an amazing pace. Check it out for some decent coverage on the genre.

As for a maybe hidden gem, Age of Decadence looks pretty good. I have not played it yet, but the genre seems to match, and the premise is solid.

Expedition Rome is well appreciated too, even if it leans more toward tactical battles.

Yeah, Addict is great for what it is especially for thr price. Paying that much for basically a nothingburger seems weird?

Just bought a wollen cape for those crispy autumn mornings. It's nice to lounge around in, but maybe I'll summon the courage to take it out too.

Kinda feels like a trenchcoat in function, but lighter and with a hood to boot.

If you care about fashion, everything will go out of style every now and then. If you like cargo shorts, wear them. There's no reason to cater to someone elses gatekeeping. If you think that they don't fit your look, then that's a completely different issue.

They are very handy too in all the right ways.

Driving people out because of their past isn't fruitful. Someone used to have bigoted views but something made them change their mind, and they pushed hard enough to reform their life? Sounds like they wanted it, and are probably a changed person.

I know a few people like this. They help others leave similar situations. Great people doing important work.

I guess when I ran into Aesop Rock, and got absolutely infatuated? I don't do a lot of rap, so his stuff hitting so damn hard was a surprise.

I remember a few of the other times. Mostly it has taken the right moment, the right mindset and the right artist. A dark autumn evening and a walk in a park for Dark Sanctuary, falling asleep to SunnO))) and waking up to it was a mindblowing experience.

Carpenter Bruts album Trilogy opened up electronic music for me, and Crypt of the Necrodancers soundtrack cemented it.

Oh wow, it's still going? I really thought the game got shut down! It's a cool shooter, definitely fun to mess around in.

As it stands, vocational education is faltering but high school is still ptetty strong - and they are mandatory untill you are 18. Not all vocational school/trade schools suck, but I've talked with a good deal of young students (hundreds) to get s feel that there are staggering differences in how much the teachers care, or are able to motivte the kids into caring about learning.

If you take vocational education/trade school, there's a good chance you have a single course or two of publics, history or similar subjects and that's that.

It's also turning into a bit of a gender issue, since our high schools are skewing heavily toward female students, with boys opting more and more to do trade school, partially due to lack of grades, partially because they feel like the school system isn't for them and studying theory is unpleasant or downright hard. So they get demotivated and go where it's considered "easier", and scrape by.

After you graduate secondary education, a lot if guys don't pursue further studies, so their access to education and discourse stalls. Young women do pursue higher education though, but it is not an idel situation at all.

Wasn't this in an episode of Futurama?

Where are the belching robots when you need them? Or even a giant ice cube.

This seems to be the case yeah. The rhetoric of the left is preaching acceptance and solidarity, but in an uncertain world "feelgood rhetoric" isn't strong enough. The right are preaching what appear to be solutions (close borders, nationalism, tax cuts to income and gas, segregation and defunding social programs to adress debt) so people buy into it.

What they don't realise is that the tax cuts hurt the debt cutting messures and eroiding social security hurts nations and paves way for more insecurity, hate and fear (which fuels the right wing machine).

There's precious little education on politics and choices for 20-somethings, and people are left to try and understand what the media pushes out. Finland benefits from a trusted national news media, though they have been criticized by the right of being politically biased and not worth their budget. So people slanting toward the right tend to be sceptical of it, and are pushed away, toward other news sources.