Most of the points listed here don’t matter a hoot to the average user.

I agree with you there. It’s a known issue, the workaround is to load into comments.

Loads perfectly fine for me. FYI, you have to view the comments for the full image to load. If you click on it from the main feed, you’ll get the blurry low res version you posted.

Can you link to the post in question?

That’s a problem with enforcement, not the law.

But nobody (at least none of the major media outlets) is spreading misinformation. People are making jokes about his brainworms, but unlike the right wing crowd nobody’s taking it for actual medical advice.

He’s one of the main antivax proponent assholes, so all I see is delicious irony. He’s been demonising doctors and medical professionals, he doesn’t get to complain now that nobody’s paying attention to them.

it’s honestly not clear whether he’s even the second worst at this point.

I assume that’s a shot at Biden, correct me otherwise.

He’s also one of Israel’s strongest supporters, so Biden’s only major weakness is shared by him. Given his views, he’s pure modern Republican jackass, and symbolises everything wrong with them. How exactly is he better than Biden?

How do games get rated, do they just submit an application? Or do they need to provide the product?

If it goes over that usually in my experience it’s because people are fucking around and making it take longer than it should instead of focusing on the game

YMMV. In my experience 90% of game time estimates on the box are utter nonsense.

Weirdness. Anyway, kudos for being one of the few people actively supporting FOSS monetarily!

I almost got banned over there just for asking that

Huh. Why, what was the reasoning there?

That depends on context. If you know it’s a 4 hour game, and you join while knowing perfectly well you’re leaving in 2 hours, I’m probably not playing with you again. That’s not the situation in OP’s post, but just to note it’s not as absolute as you make it seem.

I just sat there confused as hell for 4 and a half hours while three guys were all talking about strategies

That’s partly on you. If you don’t understand the game, you should probably be speaking up and asking for help to understand it. I’m a seasoned player who wins more often than not, and I will still ask other players about why certain mechanics are the way they are, or if something doesn’t seem to make sense. If nobody’s willing to pause things for 5 minutes to help you understand, they’re a shit group and you should stop playing with them. On the other hand, if they’re trying their best to make you understand, then either:

• They’re all shit teachers (this is entirely possible, btw) and you need to find out what games will be played beforehand and do your homework before game night
• Accept that certain game difficulties are way above your head and stick to easier games. This level might change as you play more and absorb game mechanics and strategies.

–

Tonight it was Terraforming Mars, where I was told it would be a 3 hour game, but by hour 4 we were halfway done. This time I said “it’s 11pm, I have work in the morning, this will be my last hand” and the host got very passive aggressive with me.

Nothing wrong with that. Ideally you’d want to say that before the game, but I wouldn’t blame anybody for going into a game with 3 hours and thinking that was enough time. On a side note, Terraforming Mars is one of those games where it doesn’t really matter if a player leaves halfway through, anyway, so they were just being a jerk.

–

you are invited to play a game, only to find it’s wildly complex and takes 4 hours to finish, and you find yourself not wanting to play it within minute 5?

As for your original question: Start asking how complex a game is beforehand, and how long it takes. Simple. You may need to adjust the answers you get according to the person replying you, or check out game ratings on BGG.

To clarify, say that BEFORE starting the game. If we’re 3 hours into a 4 hour game and you bail because you’re not interested, depending on how it affects the game lots of people would get pretty pissy.

Yep

There is. See the other longer comment

Yeah, China’s also behind all the postmasters who were knowingly charged with theft for software bugs. Damn them Chinese!

Edit: Shame on me for thinking this was sufficiently blatant sarcasm

Yeah, lemmy is insanely illogical on this topic. Services cost money to run, and the average user is not going to self host anytime in the foreseeable future. I have yet to hear anybody offer a vision of how things might reasonably work without ads OR subscriptions.

“What’s unfortunately happened for these young people is that because of the toxicity of the debate, they’ve often been bypassed by local services who’ve been really nervous about seeing them,” Dr Cass said.

“So rather than doing the things that they would do for other young people with depression, or anxiety, or perhaps undiagnosed autistic spectrum disorder, they’ve tended to pass them straight on to the Gid service.”

“There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour,” she said.

Her report added that the “exceptional” toxicity has had a negative impact on the quality and availability of evidence.

There’s nothing objectionable or controversial in this article, yet it’s getting downvoted to heck. Good object example of how legitimate discussion of the topic is being suppressed