Bandcamp mostly. They do writeups sometimes like "the best metal from Colorado" or "a deep dive into acid jazz". They seem to be human written too and not ai slop, at least in the past.

Also seeing who's playing with who. If I like band A, and band B is opening for them, well I'll check out band B. I saw "Year of the Cobra" play with "The Well" and it was a good show, and I bought their album.

Mostly because it's not like whatever nonsense you just imagined.

But you do get the ability to walk everywhere you need and incredible amounts of culture. Food, music, art, history, social gatherings.

Not all noise is the same. White noise is easy to ignore but hearing half a conversation will stress out almost anyone.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hearing-just-one-half-of-a-conversation-is-really-really-annoying-2657804/

That's just how the brain is. A lot of city noise doesn't register as important (and it isn't), but overhearing half a conversation or random snippets of YouTube is annoying on a pretty deep level.

I will not mourn when someone harms you for your anti social actions.

I almost never wear headphones in public. I prefer the situational awareness and being able to hear "This train is skipping union square" announcements.

I'm also a guy so I don't need the "don't talk to me" signal they provide.

Republican women can't help but notice that their partisan identity conflicts with their self-image as strong and competent women. "I started to learn what misogyny was, and I started to learn what patriarchy was,"

Better late than never.

Kid is lucky the racists didn't murder him and say that he did something to deserve it.

I hope those racist almost-murderers are ruined.

It is completely insane and regressive. Poor people who need the money to live should be spared the tax, and rich people who aren't going to miss it should pay.

A lot of places ask if you have a criminal record, often so they can not hire you for totally unrelated reasons wink wink.

There's something of a campaign to get applications to not ask: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_the_Box

Trump has repeatedly accused his Democratic opponent of lying about working at McDonald's, in large part because the job wasn't listed on her later resume for a legal job.

This man doesn't know how resumes or jobs work.

I think you have to also account for the kids' ages. An infant is different than a toddler, teen, or adult child.

Sure, if you stop externalizing all the costs that let them afford it.

Lots of people never reach more advanced stages of moral reasoning. They don't do bad things to avoid being punished, or maybe because they have a simple understanding of "it's against the rules"

The current justice and prison system is abhorrent, but something needs to happen if someone tries to murder someone else. Most people are alright but there are a lot of anti social people out there, too. And a lot of people who would be alright if they were in more stable circumstances

Eggs are also used in other ways than just scrambling and eating them directly, like baking.

I'm not vegan but I don't love animal products so much I'd oppose it. When people are like "I need my lunch to be tasty I don't care about suffering, the environment, or disease" they sound really simple minded and selfish.

I would eat nothing but rice and beans every day if it made a difference for climate change. I'm not emotionally invested in food and it's not part of my identity.

Baldur's gate 3 characters aren't even that complicated. You pick stats at the start from a limited range of options, and then make very few choices when you level up. Some levels you don't pick anything at all. This ain't path of exile.

I got a mod for bg3 that gives you a feat every level and holy shit did that make it more interesting.

To WotC's credit, making character choice really shallow is probably why the game succeeded so well. A lot of people don't really want a lot of choices, especially when some are traps.

The larian games have some interesting interactions beyond just oil. You can make people slip on ice.

The old Magicka game also had some fun interactions that more games could learn from.

For a generous definition of "these days", check out the pillars of eternity games. They're very good and clearly a love letter to Baldur's gate. Unfortunately the team is now making a Skyrim-like for some reason, but I hope they come back and finish the main game story sometime.

There's also that solasta game that's DND 5e but on a smaller budget from a few years ago.

"constantly be jumping while conjuring a skeleton" is pretty stupid and counter intuitive for an optimum thing to do, but it that's what you should do if you want to level those skills up.

Morrowind also had some bizarre optimum behavior if you wanted to get the +5s on stats when you leveled.

Sex scenes on the other hand, come out of nowhere, add nothing to the plot and only leave you in disgust

These are not universal truths

I remember a bunch of years ago talking about This Film Is Not Yet Rated, and how I thought it was absurd a scene where someone's brains get shot out and they die is ok, but a non-graphic cunnilingus shot was unacceptable. The two people I was talking to, a woman older than me and someone my age, were both like "No that makes total sense. I'd watch a violent movie with my kid but not one with sex in it"

I was like, "You'd rather your kid run around fantasizing about murder than sex?" And they were like "yeah"