I appreciate these comments saying the tech hasn’t degraded and it’s been standstill, or that it was never great in the first place, all of which is true but I would like to interject my own Model 3 experience. When we first bought the Tesla in 2019 the self driving functionality on the highway felt safe and functional in nominal conditions. When we sold the Tesla 2 years ago (2022) the self driving felt noticably more finicky. It struggled to switch lanes, recognize when lanes started and ended, and had noticably more issues with maintaining proper speed and distance with other cars.

It probably wasn’t significantly more dangerous, but it felt like it was. What was a feature we used for the first year or two without much complaint turned into something we never used and our driving time when down in that third year not up so it wasn’t exposure time I don’t think.

It’s worth it. I’m almost two years in Germany. Wouldn’t move back for a million dollars (although at 3 I could be bought). Work on the local language, volunteer or other community involvement activities, treat it like the new home it is. We’re fortunate to be able to move to a new country, try to be a part of improving it and earning your spot there. I’m even more fortunate to be white, male, straight etc - assuming you’re at least some of those things, do your best to counter the anti-immigration fear mongering that comes out of the political right. It effects you now, but more importantly it’s ramping up and it’ll effect people less fortunate far worse.

Hope you love it and welcome to Europe.

I never finished it because the alien would teleport too much. I need to install the larger leash mod and give it another go. It’s also sooo long for such a tense game. I loved everything about it and I’m upset I haven’t finished it lol.

I think the problem was their balancing strategy was largely nerf based and their design vision was primary weapons should suck against most things. That’s how it felt anyway. Like most guns weren’t viable and they kept nerfing the viable ones until they felt noticably worse but still noticably better than other options.

I really don’t understand their vision for the weapon landscape - most assault rifles felt bad compared to the laser rifle variant, most shotguns felt bad besides one pump and one auto and then they nerfed both of those so I haven’t taken a shotgun in some time, and a sniper or semiautomatic has never felt good as a primary despite being what I’d normally gravitate to.

Half of my play time is taking something like the auto cannon or the Quasar (before they were nerfed) and using them more like my primary weapon.

The slots don’t have identity because of this imbalance and the weapons within those slots don’t have meaningful decisions because they fit either check some boxes - A) can harm most things B) is efficient at harming most of those things - or they don’t.

In a game where part of their business model is releasing a couple of new guns every month I’ve used 90% of those weapons less than 3 times because they immediately feel bad at the highest difficulties.

So this new patch is, to me anyway, a blunt way to improve all guns and all viability - seemingly because they dont know how to do it any other way.

Ergodox EZ has my whole hearted recommendation. Their keyboards are amazing and the only thing better for ergonomics would be a more custom curved piece.

They’re a good company, I would recommend anyone checking them out.

I’ve read it, I read the discussion around it, idk man. One guy’s thoughts on a company and it’s founder isn’t enough to move me off of something without better proof, better alternatives, and worse crimes than maybe having a bad long term vision.

Hopefully every company outgrows it’s founder and becomes a system. We’ll have to see, right now I’m satisfied and that gets me off Google and signals to others I’m willing to pay.

Ya, for an alpha game with unfinished assets and lacking polish - it’s stupid good. I’ve been out of the mobs scene for like a year or two and haven’t had a shooter register for a while, so maybe I’m starved, but this thing keeps me coming back every night.

I recommend Kagi, I’ve been using it for about six months now and results - especially small web results like blogs - are so much better. I also have a pretty good time image searching compared to when I was on Google.

Yes it’s paid, but that to me is the price of resisting enshittification. Find a company that isn’t a publicly traded for-profit world-burner and pay them for their service. Is the idea of paying for email and search an alien concept to me? Yes. But I’m either paying Google whatever €120 a year in eyeballs on ads and an increasingly worse experience, or I’m paying €80 a year and getting a markedly better experience.

Now it’s up to Kagi and Proton to not turn into shitty companies while other competitors catch up and we have a thriving ecosystem again.

It’s amazing what insulation and proper sound proofing can do. Never lived in thicker walls than here in Germany. Other than the blasted church bells, it’d be hard to convince me I was living next to people if the windows were opaque.

Kagi seems to surface great independent content and I’ve been loving it.

He’s saying what you’re attributing to “a specific lack of willpower” now has scientific backing that disagrees. Your take is old school and misinformed if the current science is correct. I personally haven’t done research on the subject or read many studies but Adam Ragusea, a YouTube food science journalist covers this concept in one of his vids and several podcasts surrounding food science and (in my case) the drugs coming down the pipeline to regulate body weight touch on the research as well.

If housing is an investment vehicle for growing your money, then the people who can participate in that system will work to produce outcomes that fundamentally go against affordable housing. A society that believes in affordable housing as a right or a goal can’t allow housing to be used as a place to park wealth so that it grows akin to a stock.

Whatever prices are, they are higher when a landlord is involved. We must get progressively outlaw multiple pieces of land. Owning more than two homes/flats should cost the owner something every year, not generate wealth - and that second one should be nearly neutral.

If housing is an investment (“a nest egg”) then the people and policies that support it as an investment will stand directly opposed to people and policies that want housing to be affordable and a right.

Housing cannot be an investment vehicle akin to stocks in a society that meaningfully values housing for everyone as an objective to strive for.

Yes, of course. I wish you and everyone stuck there luck.

I am paying taxes and am able to vote, but because I make less than the required amount my taxes are essentially zero to the US because we have joint tax agreements between the two countries.

I don’t know if I’ll renounce after earning German citizenship or not but the exit tax is something I have to consider.

Ya, that’s rough. That feels like a very immature take. The two parties are not the same, voting does matter, and I’d even argue that there are people so awful that assassination does make sense but I’m happy Trump survived because I think the Republican party would have been stronger without him.

I left the US, I’m between a millennial and gen z, and I left explicitly because I was worried about the future of the US and because moving abroad is akin to time traveling 20 years into the future. I have healthcare now, I live in a walkable city with great public transit, the crime rates are lower (although most places in the US aren’t super violent, the probability of getting murdered goes way down when you leave), I have 6 weeks vacation, essentially unlimited sick time, and I’m not allowed to work overtime.

Both parties are not the same but if Democrats won in a landslide in every single election both state and federal in every chamber and every seat, how many years would it take to achieve all of those same things. I have no doubt these policies would happen with the right people in office, with radical change to the party they could even happen quickly and I believe it’s what half the people want. But the two other outcomes are 50/50 with the parties and little gets done in a timely manner and worse the corrupt judges continue to error the system, or the Republicans win one big election just one more time and project 2025 starts getting a percent complete tracker and we slide back into the dark ages.

So I left. I believe if things go bad in the US historians will look at Trump’s first victory as a period of brain drain from the country. But that’s my two cents to go with this article.

Some of the “claims without a citation” are things that were done under the first Trump administration.

• taxes did go up for most Americans under the last tax bill. It’s safe to say that if Republicans need to raise taxes it’ll be through the lower and middle class.

• kids go hungry or into debt for school lunches today because of how little some families make. Trump admin agnostic but definitely a feature for the Republican party and not a bug.

• books are being banned in the US at an alarming rate, look at Florida as a prime example. Trump admin agnostic but definitely a party priority.

• trump suggested multiple times as president that people should just be shot, killed, or executed for things as benign as protesting outside the Whitehouse. He didn’t do it, but it’s a pretty short distance between “the president wants to kill you” and “the president is having you killed”.

• the president did send in national guard and other militarily equipped groups to beat and pepper spray journalists and protestors while president.

• trump appointmented judges clearly lack the experience, qualifications, and apolitical-ness expected of a normal judge. You can see that in the supreme Court and you can see that at the federal judge level.

Hydrogen is a stop-gap resource that is being pushed by oil companies to continue both producing destructive energy sources and slowing our transition by wasting money on less efficient projects.

“As at the end of 2021, almost 47% of the global hydrogen production is from natural gas, 27% from coal, 22% from oil (as a by-product) and only around 4% comes from electrolysis.”

• source

Everytime someone hears or talks about or supports hydrogen we should cautiously assume oil companies are funding the project and it’s worse than other already established solutions.

Will there be a place for hydrogen? Yes, probably in several niche or minority cases. But it won’t be good for 90% of cars, trains, energy storage, etc because in each of those situations we have a clear path to full electrification or cheaper less harmful solutions that don’t require an oil/gas byproduct.

I just took a train from Mannheim DE to Lille FR. It required one swap and cost me about €250. I felt like that price was too high for that distance and speed (5.5 hours roughly) but that’s comparable to a plane ticket in the US from one major city to the next so it’s a better way of traveling in this instance because trains are more enjoyable than planes for me.

That being said I agree with other commenters that we need to continue to invest in our international rail systems and continue to improve speeds, reliability, and cost.

I’d like to take trains all over the EU in the future (rather new to DE). If someone could get me a single train from Frankfurt to Madrid in under 8 hours for €250 I’d be in love. Make planes obsolete for distances a high speed rail can achieve in under 8 hours. Get me into Italy and Portugal and Sweden and Turkiye and Ukraine (after they’ve defended their home successfully against the imperialists) via train. I want to see the world by train.

US labels also contain weight. And again, unless you are baking all the water out and curious about that nutritional value, you’re picking up a package that has nearly identical labeling and testing standards and are therefore comparable and using that to make nutritional choices. In this case almonds are more calorically dense than tofu and have less protein per calorie. Water included or not.