I’ve been seeing small bands play locally. I love metal and all it’s sub-genres and my town has been absolutely stacked for smaller shows this year.

I saw Hippie Death Cult and The Obsessed in a tiny venue for $22/ticket and even got to meet some of the members of the bands as they were walking around or working the merch booth.

I’ve got at least 2 concerts each month for the rest of the year and may fit more in if I can.

Hell, even the most expensive show I went to was $50/ticket and that was for Alcest, Deafheaven, and Mastodon (favorite band of all time). It was absolutely mind blowing and I’m still buzzing from the “high”.

I should note I’m 3 years sober from alcohol and have struggled with crippling social anxiety and panic attacks over the years. I’m using these events as exposure therapy (along with actual therapy) to social situations and knowing that I can leave at anytime helps to avoid the uncomfortable cyclical anxiety loop I was getting caught in. It’s actually been enlightening how much I’ve been able to enjoy and has made a massive positive impact on my life.

You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting.

When it gets humid down there. You know, like a swamp. Also I think this same group of people need to learn how close their butthole is to the twig and berries. Every fart is blowing poo particles all over the cotton dungeon.

For the people that say their junk is clean from shower, do y’all not get swamp crotch like at all? Just stays clean and dry down there all day no matter what? Lucky bastards if so, but I find that highly unbelievable. And no errant droppage after going? Resheath and “oh no! Strays hit the ultra clean barrier!”?

Wai Wai World 2 on Famicom emulator. Don’t need to know any Japanese to play and it has great cartoony sprites.

Bubble Bobble (NES) is great two player, though you’re competing

Buster Bros (PsOne, and probably others) probably one of my top 5 co-op games of all time

Micro Mages (retro despite being released in 2019 because it plays on original NES hardware) probably top co-op of all time for me

There’s quite a bit more but have various degrees of violence so won’t recommend those (Contra, Heavy Barrel, Silk Worm, Jackal, Life Force, etc)

I do love me some gruvbox. First thing I switch with a new install of Obsidian, or anything else that has it…

Pop!_OS is neat. I’ve been running it on my desktop and laptop for over a year now. I like that it doesn’t look like Windows and has enough difference to it to not be a macOS clone either. Plus I think System76 is doing some great things with hardware design.

For actually released consoles, I think the Famicom is just neat looking

100% agree on ROMs for the super expensive stuff. I do like to play on original hardware whenever possible. And I definitely see more Everdrives in my future for those and the translated games we never got in the US. I was officially looking at repro SNES carts, for example and did buy one for Terranigma. But you quickly run into Everdrive price if you buy several repros.

That adds up quick, doesn’t it? I had my Sony Trinitron RGB modded and now have SNES, Sega Genesis/Master system, and a self modded N64 all connected to a SCART RGB switch and have already ordered the parts to get the treatment done on my NES. Looks incredible though!

I did picoboot instead of an ODE specifically so I could still play my admittedly small GameCube collection.

That’s a great way to put it and is why my limit is around $60ish. But even then I’m not paying that for a fun but basic platformer on a retro console. But RPGs tend to get a higher spending allowance from me.

I just sold my Dreamcast for that very reason. Well that and to focus more on Nintendo hardware since it’s what I grew up with. I know optical drive emulators exist, but for whatever reason I don’t like them as much as a flash cart type situation. Says the guy who has two picoboot GameCubes :)

He sounds exactly like the dude who taught me guitar. He’d balk at any modern (at the time, which was the 90s so Alice In Chains, Nirvana, Soundgarden, etc) when I’d ask to learn their tracks saying I should only spend time learning the “classics” which to him meant the Beatles, Hendrix, and the like. Not saying those aren’t classics, but I’d consider the grunge era to have a lot of classics as well. Seems like Rick is “stuck” in the same era and unwilling to budge.

Metal/rock:

Mastodon

Jinjer

Hip Hop:

Prof

Run the Jewels

Bluegrass:

Bridge City Sinners

Pop!_OS

Gnome with a bit of a macOS twist. I really like it. I’m excited for Cosmic!

Yes, and…? Did I claim otherwise anywhere? Privacy isn’t a zero sum game. You cant fully protect yourself short of ditching tech and the Internet entirely. And even then, there’s already a digital footprint left behind you’ll never get rid of. But you can make informed choices like not trusting Google or Microsoft to host your personal data, not buying the smart home devices, keeping data local only/host your own cloud, use Linux instead of Windows, etc.

Jokes on you. My phone is two soup cans and a length of string.

100% agree. I’ve only just started my privacy/self hosted journey almost exactly 1 year ago. Still learning, but I’m loving the experience so far.

It’s absolutely bad when the US does it. I made no claim otherwise. Cheap tech being used as an entry point for data mining the customers, regardless of country the products are sold in is pretty well documented at this point.