Yeah this feels like another thing that's downstream from low wages.

Movies are a luxury. If most people are struggling to get by in debt, they're less likely to splurge.

I tell people I have a 24 hour SLA. I'll respond to messages within 24 hours, barring circumstances like a trip to somewhere remote or illness. Likely sooner, but that's a bonus. No one has ever complained.

I just hate the feeling that someone could suddenly message me. I hate having to pull out my phone because a message has arrived and I have to respond. I hate having to look at it every few seconds when I am trying to do something else, because someone messaged me.

There's probably a nicer, more effective, way to say this, but: stop doing this. You don't have to respond. You don't even have to look. Put your phone on silent. Leave it in the other room.

I don't think "This other, largely unrelated, problem is bad so we shouldn't do this thing" is good reasoning.

I don't think in the real world, in all places (or even most places) all the stores are in a cartel. Where I live, there are several large supermarkets and a handful of smaller groceries all within walking distance. They are not a cartel. They compete. You're just making stuff up for some weird dark fantasy of yours.

Furthermore, if there was a monopoly, and we have the political might to implement UBI, I dare say we'd also have the political power to do a tried-and-true popular move of breaking up monopolies.

If there's only one grocery store, maybe. But that's a monopoly, and that's going to be shit no matter what. Ideally you have multiple grocery stores that compete, and if one raises prices the other will take their customers. (If they all coordinate to raise their prices, that's a cartel and that's also bad.)

So you're not really exposing a problem with UBI, but rather with unregulated capitalism.

When I play an RPG (or RPG-like game), I want to know upfront: is this a storytelling kind of game, or a problem-solving kind of game? The rulesets that try to blend both often feel like they pick up the worst of both worlds, demanding players switch between two very different sorts of minds or risk spoiling the whole affair.

This is an interesting point I'd thought about before but never articulated.

I think it was part of why I didn't gel with one of my old DND groups. They'd sometimes be faffing around doing "funny" stuff, but I mostly was sticking to the "use your resources wisely or perish" mode of DND.

Probably a support character. I'd expect they are good at emotional and physical first aid, morale boosts, and diplomacy.

They probably aren't good at physically fighting, but they'd be good at stopping fights non-violently.

I had an argument about this with a friend once. I was saying if we just abolish the police, private enterprise will probably step in to fill the gap. I don't want that. I don't want amazon offering policing services (as part of Prime. vomit).

I think the police need to be split up into smaller institutions, and have a lot less murder powers.

Someone needs to address the "Someone broke into my house and stole my TV" problem, without a profit motive and with accountability.

There should be something to address "My neighbor is screaming at his wife and I think he's hitting her" that doesn't involve some low empathy assholes with guns rolling up to mock the woman.

I don't know how to fix this.

The guys in those hypothetical lynch mobs are the cops today.

At least in this scenario you could get your buds and shoot back at the klan fuckers, maybe.

Conservatives aren't known for being smart or rational. It's a worldview of emotions and immediacy.

I looked it up, it's $15 currently. Suburban NJ to Manhattan.

$15 is still kind of a lot when you're a kid

Part of why I moved to the city was wanting to escape the car based nightmare of the suburbs. Couldn't do much of anything without a car or an extremely risky walk.

I could have walked a mile to the train station with no sidewalks , and then paid $20 for a ticket into the city on a train that stops at like 10pm, but all of that sucks. I stayed inside and played a lot of video games.

Can also get an emulator and enjoy all the classics of yore. Chronotrigger holds up, for example