I’ve been playing the shit out of Assetto Corsa Competizione for a sim racing league I’m in. Weekly races, streamed and commentated. Good stewarding, good people. It’s a blast! I end up staying up til like 1am on race nights because everyone hops in a party to watch the replays and talk about incidents, passes, etc.

I guess to answer the specific question, it’s not what I want, but it’s where I’m at and I’m OK with it. The risk of racing could, quite literally, kill me or maim me beyond repair, and I have somewhat less-risky alternatives. I go to local races to watch, I keep up with professional racing and watch events basically 32 weekends out of the year. I also am just a big motorsport fan, so I watch some IMSA, WEC, and F1 when I can. I guess, identity-wise, I have transitioned from being a racer to someone who has raced, but the door will forever remain open for me to return when I want. I’m just happy with the position I’ve found myself in anyway.

I grew up racing motorcycles. I do a lot of 2-wheel stuff; mountain bikes, recently dabbled in BMX, and if I could, I’d still race motocross. The financial requirements of that are wild though, so I’m using these non-engined outlets to cope lol. My job is fine; it’s not going to get me to a point where I can race again, but I’m not actively seeking it at this point, and the alternatives are pretty nice anyway.

I mean…yeah, this is kind of what it looks like. You find outlets eventually. It only being a “hobby” is not a positive or a negative. Get what you want from it; do you want it to be your every day thing? There are ways to work into some commercial music work; it’s not great pay or easy, but that’s the requirement. No bachelor’s needed. But I don’t think I’d want to monetize anything in the professional sense. I don’t think people get into their hobbies for the great pay, but for what it provides. If you get into music, it isn’t going to be glamorous unless you are lucky. It might not even bring financial stability. It’s also not going to just be sitting with your thoughts and writing music; lot of marketing and self-promotion, lot of putting yourself out there to hope that people resonate with it. Lot of very long days, weeks, months, with 0 guarantee of a pay-off.

A lot of people think being comfortable is settling, and in a sense, it may be that. But it’s also where a lot of people exist for a reason. I look at it as you could either raise your floor and have a lower ceiling for “true” happiness, or lower your floor and have a taller ceiling, so you have a wider range. There is no promise that you will be at the ceiling, or near it, or even above your current floor. May fluctuate wildly, you may have a very slow, steady climb. No one knows.

Firefighters also get a sweet pension to my understanding. Idk your age, but I assume late 30’s to 40’s, and you’re staring a decent retirement in the face in the next 10 years. Lot of life left to fit in there as well, and what would be a measurably comfortable one at that. Just a stranger on the internets opinion though!

Yeah, it got a dead senator’s sister appointed to replace him with absolutely no experience.

This has been the most maddening thing about it; it’s just whole-hearted willful ignorance. NO ONE is doing gender conversions on kids. I guess if you want to make the argument that hormones are thrown around as teenagers, sure, but teenagers get on birth control, there are plenty of legitimate hormone therapies done already.

I’ve had decent progress with some more conservative, non-religious family members on the “indoctrination” shit by likening it to religion. No rules on what wild shit religion can do; promising you to an older man, severing social ties, and putting you in a situation where you don’t know you’re being abused. No crackdowns, no vehement marches, no violence over that. But an adult family and their near-adult child can’t make medical decisions with oversight from a medical professional? It’s absolute, willful ignorance at best.

Doing my first BMX race next weekend. Really going into the deep end, and going to a National-level race. I’ve been on a track 1 time previously. Now I’ve done a loooooot of MX racing in my life, so I’m comfortable on any kind of bike, but I haven’t raced anything in over a decade probably, so the nerves are there.

LEMMiNO is my favorite bi-annual creator.

Nexpo does some really good stuff too, but I think recently he’s just been doing like Reddit deep dives, and that is only so interesting.

I missed those, I go through phases with him. I get it though, guy cranks out videos and probably gets old using the same cave diving stock videos lol.

Scary Interesting does some horror documentary stuff about, idk, scary situations people have been stuck in. No AI images, which is saying something, cause he always has some kind of background or graphic going.

They have venture capital backing as a direct competitor to Twitter. I’m sure there are other sources as well, but that’s the big one, I think.

If you would read your comment, you would see you are referring to Fine as he or him multiple times. Which is why I said I was confused. Fine is not a man, nor did AIPAC pick a “him”. I was wanting clarification on that part of the comment. The rest of my comment was not me stating you are wrong, but why it continues to be confusing, as Biss also has pro-Israeli ties, just not to AIPAC specifically.

We are not in disagreement over anything. Your comment is just unclear on who you are referencing.

I’m confused. Laura Fine was the AIPAC candidate, she got 3rd. Biss was the winner, and Kat got 2nd. AIPAC didn’t pick him, they backed Fine. Biss did get some funding from other pro-Israel sources, from what I’ve seen, but they’re more moderate in their takes on Israel’s Palestine policy and were recommending economic and aid/weapon sanctions against Israel (J Street or something?).

Everything is pretty smoke-and-mirror with this shit though so I won’t claim to be an expert on every Israeli-tied PAC or lobby, so please correct me if I’m wrong!

He’s saying that they do run all the time, and then when the election is over, they disappear and do nothing until the next election. This is likely more in reference to National races or big federal seats.

Depending on the age, you may need a new drum unit, but I think that may also just be a deficit of laser.

Echoing others, Brother laser printers. Cheap, reliable, and toner lasts forever. Initial one with purchase is like…40% of standard, and will still get you a few hundred pages. The regular ones are like 1200+, and the large ones are I think pushing 2k for like $70.

You can do stickers on sticker paper with lasers, but idk the quality. Is it like…address labels? If so, lasers are perfect tly fine for that. Fine details? Idk.

Yeah, this would be good in my mind. I don’t even care if it’s just the communities my instance is federated with only; I would imagine I land with an instance that shares my values, so their federation I’d be OK with (hypothetically). I just don’t want to feel like I’m missing out by being somewhere else and not knowing/being aware of a portion of the community. I want the discussion just as much as I want the information presented.

I’d say for the most part, yes. I am not actively researching bands or authors that come up on lists and other things beyond just “do I think I will like this”. And if it’s, idk how else to phrase it, not “major” grievances, I’ll still likely consume the media. I tend to pirate books then buy them if I enjoyed them, and I pay for YT Premium so the music just comes along with it. However, for the more serious stuff (a la Lost Prophets), they are skipped and removed from libraries. If stuff is brought to my attention about new artists, I’ll also act how I feel accordingly. I don’t take it upon myself to push others to share my view, but I do appreciate when others inform me, so I try to do the same.

If it’s just humor of creators, I would probably still watch it, but when it skews toward hateful, it becomes less funny. I don’t need an agenda, I want something smart and funny. Humor that is reduced down to slurs or just trolling is not funny. If I was 12, maybe, but those days are (long) gone.

Oh cool. So now they will offer a service for customers (e.g. Palantir, US Govt, whatever ABC agency) to accurately pinpoint locations of people based off of images. Luckily our phones don’t have backdoors into them and surely won’t have a way for Face Unlock images to be seen, and functional real-time updates on any given person’s location? And with how much these phones are used for communication, surely they won’t also have evidence of perceived dissent, all in a nice little rectangle package.

I understand that Apple and, I guess sorta, Google aren’t necessarily willing to allow this, and it might not be legal, or any number of other hurdles, but it’s just one step easier for actors who want to and have the means to do so. Good lord this place sucks.

Hah thanks! I’m gonna slowly swap stuff over. Dual boot seems the way, and I’ll always have that fallback available if needed. Feel like I need to get on 5er or something and how A Linux guy for a few hours just to talk to em…lol

True. Gaming landscape feels weird rn, looking at it from current standing. Tough sledding for aspiring devs. I’m also right about that age where nostalgia tends to make everything new look a bit less shiny, so I may be choosing not to see the best current offerings.