every passing day it feels like the world i grew up in is slowly being replaced by a worse, less free version of it and most people seem either completely numb or generally don’t feel like it’s worth fighting for the fear of losing their comfort

this is not referring to anything specific, it just feels like everyone is becoming more apathetic about everything (you can literally apply this to everything, be it consumer rights, politics, i feel like this is kind of a universal issue)

what i am saying is going to mean different things to different people, and that’s ok, that’s actually precisely what i mean: i feel like (on average) people used to truly believe in stuff and fight for it, while now as long as our baseline comforts are met we are on average less willing to do anything to stand up

don’t worry i am not depressed or doomer posting, don’t worry about that lol

what i am saying is like: dude, if you like something, if you believe in something, you should actively be its advocate/defend it, because the second you stop doing that whoever wants that thing gone is still going to be there pushing for that

some ppl in my area in order to flex their money decided to import big pick up trucks from the USA and they are not able to physically fit them through most of my town’s streets and i would be lying if i didn’t say this is fucking hilarious

random rabbit hole deep dive not connected to tech or gaming or anything

i was thinking about when i crashed into a wall on my overclocked electric scooter with bad brakes

even tho i was mostly feeling fine after that i went to the emergency room to get a ct scan for free just in case and i was thinking about how in a lot of places around the world you would have to pay for that SO

i was curious to see how the whole concept of "public healthcare" spread throughout europe and found out GERMANY HAS IT SINCE 1883 HOLY SHIT

the UK and France both got there in the 1940s, with pretty different models (that alongside the old German model kinda became a blueprint for other countries to follow too, with some of them then putting their own unique spin on some smaller details)

while pretty much every country here provides public free coverage for everyone who can't afford paying without asking any questions, some do it by controlling the entire pipeline while others rely more on public - private partnerships (and the funding varies too, some tax everyone while others use payroll deductions)

in some countries (like italy) the big shift pushing that eventually led to it becoming a thing happened WAY LATER, in the case of Italy the SSN (which was pretty much a 1:1 clone of the NHS) was only founded in 1978 (and while this is speculation on my side i can't help but think that the fact they were in the middle of the years of lead AND at the same time both the communist and socialist party were growing more more kinda forced the then ruling christian right party into conceding this one to avoid losing ground to them)

Spain took even longer, they had to wait up until Franco died and then some, their SNS (another NHS copycat) only launched in 1986

the last country to make the jump has actually been Cyprus in 2019, before then apparently the system was kind of a mess where only some specific categories got complete public coverage while others had to settle for limited one + potential out of pocket fees (in this case they were forced to do this to bail out some debts with the IMF and some European entities)

i think that probably the shock post WW2 was also a huge driving force behind this maybe? but yeah it's just interesting to see how this concept spread throughout countries that in general can vary wildly in culture/general political climate

fun fact: thanks to that CT scan i discovered that i don't have any frontal sinuses (which are like, small cavities full of air in the bone of your forehead), just SOLID BONE

apparently around 5% of the population just lacks them

I have yet again stumbled upon a custom embroidery store irl

found the best sweater ever at a thrift shop yesterday

with everyone talking about stopkillinggames my mind constantly goes back to the postal dude asking to sign his petition

btw since some people are (understandably) unaware of this: the stop killing games petition is not a change dot org or anything useless/boring, it's a formal request that would force the eu commission to give a formal answer about the topic and eventually act on it

and we kinda have a good track record on consumer rights so yeah this could drastically change things for the better

we are pretty good at forcing consumer protection even on huge megacorps (see usb-c on iphones) since we can regulate whether you can get access to 449 million consumers or not lol and usually (like for iphones) the consequences of these laws spread worldwide so if you don't live in the eu and are still helping out by spreading info about this online: thank you!

my youtube suggestions just decided to go full dark woke insano style

this didn’t age well

but that's just a theory,

what kills me is the text saying APPEARANCE OF HIGH ACCURACY COLOR

you are not actually getting it, you only get the appearance of that

i would say that having to explain to zoomers how game server browsers used to work and how most multiplayer games would let you self host a server pretty easily if you had the resources would make me feel old if the zoomers in question weren't ironically older than me

MANDATORY source engine games server hosting classes for everyone, we need to show people how good shit used to be frfr

kinda connected to Stop Killing Games I guess? since some people say it is unrealistic to expect any meaningful legislation coming from it and i totally get the skepticism

in case you didn't know, EU law already asks developers to offer full refunds in case their game's servers shut down permanently within 24 months from a customer purchasing a copy of it (Directive 2019/770 - Art 11 S 2 + 14-16)

we also have already set precedents that would allow you to resale used copies of digital games (UsedSoft (C-128/11, 2012) + BGH 17-7-2013)

same law that allows us to resell our used windows or office keys if we don't need or use them and basically tell microsoft to stick their EULA up their ass btw

Steam managed to be an outlier thanks to a loophole (French courts accepted Valve’s argument that a Steam noscript is an “online service”) BUT that loophole could be shut down by a future CJEU reference or by an amendment to Directive 2019

so yeah i can understand the skepticism but we do have a pretty good track record on all of this