I find that relativity is one of the greatest frictions against doing better - and it’s frustrating for this reason. 5 years is better than most other countries. That’s true. Is that a good number though, or is it just better? That’s the actual conversation I want to have, and I think relativity ruins meaningful progress and improvement.

Eating bland, unseasoned chicken is better than eating raw chicken - but that doesn’t mean we should settle for it.

Just because other nations have antiquated and arguably bad citizenship requirements doesn’t mean we shouldn’t improve ours. And reversing progress is worse than being stagnant, and defending that is encouraging it imo.

This is fucking depressing to read. As someone who moved to Germany two years ago, gaining citizenship is important to us. When we moved here they were just announcing the expedited opportunity and we were stoked to know we were welcome in this country. It reinforced our decision. Now they look to take it away and although the 5 year plan will still exist, it signals clearly that the CDU don’t want highly educated immigration - they will blame immigrants while they raid the coffers of their country - and the SPD will gladly move further to the right if it means they get to stay in power.

This is incredibly disappointing. It’s not enough to change our plans, like if the AFD won, but I consider the grand coalition to be a “continued decline” coalition. If another country offered me and my family a guaranteed path to citizenship, with similar worker rights and benefits as Germany, we’d now have to consider it seriously. As aerospace engineers we’re not exactly struggling to find technical work.

Furthermore the fact that both parties considered revoking citizenship for any reason from anyone is unbelievably terrifying. If anyone’s citizenship can be removed, everyone’s citizenship can be removed and that’s something I completely disagree with. It’s dangerous territory and completely disgusting to read that the SPD considered it.

I left reddit during the API scandal. I had the energy and time to move platforms and so I did. Open software, FOSS, non-for-profit digital solutions are all things I’m trying to support more at the cost of not using those paid or private services. Every dollar out of their pockets (the rich) is another dollar in ours.

On Reddit everything I posted was for the betterment of a private company owned by tech assholes and was sold and scraped for profit by other tech assholes.

Lemmy gets rid of that incentive to shut up and stay quiet. I still don’t post much but that’s just a product of how I partake in the Internet. I imagine I’ll post more as I age.

PoE2 will be Free-To-Play upon 1.0 launch. For now it’s in what they’re calling Early Access (a Beta period) and requires a €30 euro key. I believe they said they did this because it wasn’t the complete game, they were still looking for feedback, and it’s a bit janky in terms of balance.

So far it’s been worth every penny, many times over, but I also think the promise they deliver on in the first three acts they fail to deliver on in the end game. I’d recommend people wait if they have other games or ARPG’s to play. I’d also recommend anyone who loves ARPG’s, if they have run out of content elsewhere to give it a try without hesitation. It’s a fantastic game and the best arpg on the market in almost every aspect.

I’ve stopped preordering most games, partially because of a backlog, partially because games like 2077 ruined my trust in even “good” companies (and no, I do not think 2077 deserves the redemption arc the Internet gives it). I did however pre-order Path of Exile 2 by a week because I had A) played a beta experience which was terribly fun B) followed all of the content creators talk about the beta’s they played and how even when they complained it felt like choices I’d like (more action focused combat) and C) the preorder I got came with keys for friends I wanted to distribute ahead of time. So I knew for sure I was going to play it, like it at least enough to justify the price, and that I wanted to preload it for a launch party.

Pretty much the biggest and best reason to preorder is for the preload so you can play at launch. But not every game needs to be played at exactly the launch time (in fact we struggled on launch day of poe2 but did eventually get to play) and all pre-orders should be done as close to the launch date as possible so you can get an easy refund if it sucks.

I think the solution is attack the systems themselves and when that isn’t sufficient there are only a few people at the top with power.

I am leaving or unsubscribing from as many monopoly powers as possible: Google, Amazon, meta, Twitter, Netflix, etc etc. Be vocal about it, take friends and family with you if you can. I’m choosing open source when possible over more polished closed source, like jellyfin and Linux (transitioning this weekend 🤞), and donate. These actions take a small fraction of their income from them and if enough people do it I believe it will cause them issues.

I’m trying to not just leave these things but build communities for when we leave. For me this looks like trying to get a blog off the ground for friends and family, developing friend circles that have these discussions frequently, and then contributing/volunteering within my direct neighborhood or community (working on this one as I’m new in Germany and that comes with it’s own time taxes).

Also, if you can afford to, buy local. Buy from someone you know. Buy from people with good supply lines. Be vocal about how this is critical and necessary. The more money that goes to our neighbors instead of the 1% somewhere else in the world, the better. That’s all the shift of power, and it starts with not shopping at whole foods or Walmart and buying bespoke or sometimes worse products for sometimes more money so that those good people can work on their process and products.

But these are small steps, and personally I don’t have any idea of the connective tissues between a person or group of people and the political systems most of us exist in. I guess in the past political parties were more grassroots driven, like get in a room with your neighbors and develop policies and debate. I’ve never lived in that reality. Getting back to that is probably incredibly important. I guess new age political parties and old school unions are the best path forward there.

But the inevitable path, if all else fails, is violence. That is the reality. That becomes a lot less personally risky the larger a community you have before starting it, but as we’ve seen one Super Mario brother is sufficient to make changes.

The power the ultra wealthy have to cross historic boundaries and bend the world to their will is unprecedented in history. We have to safeguard democracy against these people. Billionaires need to be taxed into the worker class for the safety of democracy. And doing so would mean massive societal improvement relatively overnight.

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.

1. Individuals can own a maximum of two properties.
2. Corporations can own a maximum of X rental properties (enough to allow a dedicated team to find a career servicing them, maintaining them, etc but not many past that point - I’d like wager in the low single digits).

This discourages using housing as a financial asset past owning where you live. This alone should reduce the cost of housing significantly. Housing gets cheaper, more people have housing.

3. Create programs where people or cities can get stable, low cost loans from the government to construct housing ranging from detached single family homes to high density apartment complexes.

4. If you live somewhere with restrictive zoning laws, revise them for the modern age.

This should allow communities to solve their own housing issues via lowering the financial burden of various solutions.

5. Continue to offer free shelter for homeless who want it and need a place to get back on their feet, provide amenities that make that transition easier.

6. Create a research task force to determine any other causes of homelessness and propose solutions. I’d wager: legalizing most drugs, forced mental rehabilitation, and sunset laws for criminal records would get rid of the rest.