I have, thank you! Unfortunately, I don’t see the niches I’m looking for, and even when they do, they’re basically dead. I can only scream into the void so long…

If I’m understanding this correctly, you’re looking for fiction that focuses on framing more of cultural and societal shifts than technological changes?

What you’re looking for is difficult to find in the framing of Science Fiction because its very framing invokes technological advancement - technology is the application of science, and machinery is the result of technological innovation. Science fiction is, at its core, about how discoveries in science may change the world.

Nonetheless, you may want to look into the sub-genre referred to as “social science fiction”. Although it’s not going to be devoid of advanced technology, the focus will be more on the social and societal impacts thereof, than the machinery itself.

The problem is honest conservative media is basically gone.

Yep. And it’s frustrating, because it also makes it harder to engage with people who are on the edge or might be drawn back to a more sane position, when you can’t say “So I read this article, and I think I understand where you’re coming from…” when there are so, so few sources which aren’t totally divorced from reality.

(moderate left, for reference)

• BBC. Mildly right-wing, very national POV.

• WSJ… sometimes. There’s definitely points where they become utterly insufferable, but sometimes it can be helpful for an insight into the approach of a business-centric, right wing POV.

Really, as a moderate lefty, the collapse of the right-wing movement in the US into its current state has made it very difficult to find reasonable sources from the opposing side. Even “mainstream” right-wing sources take a lot of the batshit stuff at face value, or try and excuse off the more overtly insane elements.

Like:

• It has that small-community feel still. I don’t see (perhaps because I stay out of a lot of the more tech-ey communities?) the kind of farming, low-effort, generally mediocre content I saw on Reddit.
• Lack of the sense of a hyper-corporatized, “You’re only allowed to do things that make us money” sense that’s enshittified much of the internet lately. I’m not even sure if Lemmy can be monetized.

Dislike:

• Not yet large enough either. I don’t want hundreds of millions of users, but I still miss a lot of the more niche hobby/discussion communities I used to be able to participate in. Even communities for fairly large hobbies or interests can be dead on Lemmy.
• The awful political takes. Everything from typical dumbness up to advocating violence (but it’s okay because it’s my point). And it’s everywhere.

See, this one I like, because it’s one of those “man, I know the writers didn’t mean it that way, but it makes sense… and it’s horrifying!” theories.

The Falcon is so good, because for decades it has essentially had the crippled, half-dead “ghost” of a droid locked inside its computer systems, unable to fully die yet clearly devoid of her true consciousness.

Char Aznable’s wild shift in character between the end of Zeta and the beginning of Char’s Counterattack can be directly pinned on Kamille Bidan’s mental crippling at the end of Zeta and Haman Karm’s actions in ZZ.

Char, who always had a rather strong protective streak, more or less pinned his hopes on Kamille as a key to the future. Instead he directly experienced the Newtype backlash of Kamille being mentally crippled, and subequently could no longer sense him. This convinced him that humanity was doomed to eternal conflict, unless it was forced to advance.

Still unable to get over his protective streak, Char then manages to extricate Mineva Lao Zabi, the last remaining Zabi and perhaps the only one who he doesn’t actually seem to harbor any hatred towards, to Earth. But Haman just creates a double, which she uses to drag Neo Zeon into yet another war for personal power. This convinces Char he cannot trust the future to anyone else, even after protecting the ones he cares about.

Thus, we reach CCA with a Char who is fixedly convinced of both the need for forced human advancement, and that he alone must be that leader.

Vox Machina, Scavengers’ Reign, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal.

But yeah, one of the last gasps of the streaming bubble was a surge of adult-oriented cartoons which were far and above anything of the type before them. I’m a little worried that that bubble has started to deflate, we’ll see this go away.

Tossup between:

• Seeing a sporty little car neatly stacked on top of a full-size sedan at the local shopping mall. Owner had floored it, jumped the curb, and somehow managed to climb atop the sedan. It was remarkable just how little damage there was on the Sedan, relatively speaking.
• Seeing a truck on the highway shoulder, which had somehow managed to roll itself on its side facing the wrong direction. Like, 180 degrees around into traffic and on its side. Somehow it didn’t look like other vehicles had been involved.

I think this would be more meaningful if things cash flow and hirelings had any reasonable purpose in 5e. But the reality is most players will have a pretty stable cashflow by level 5, and most campaigns simply don’t have a meaningful role for Hirelings to play.

So like, I could see this being a thing in Waterdeep Dragon Heist, which encourages you to acquire a home base and then take a side in a gang war. One building, 4-5 rooms acting as a bastion for each player? I guess. But it’s essentially making mechanics for something a lot of DMs did already, and a lot of other campaigns simply don’t have a good basis for this.

I’m also kind of underwhelmed by the attacks mechanic. “A random special facility is shut down for your next bastion turn”? So like, I can’t ever actually lose anything I put into the bastion, it just stays there even if I have literally no defenses, the attackers overrun the place, and squat in it for 7 days?

One of us, one of us!

I came here to say pretty much the same thing. It’s even more interesting when you’re working with a future-of-the-real-world setting, and so you actually have to think about how present-day cultures might evolve into the future.

This is the way.

Right? It has such a distinctive look.

Soooooo, about that indictment…

These fears are both true and (kinda) not.

First, I would preface this by saying that many of those hobbies are functionally things which from the early-20th century / post-WW2 US wealth and population boom:

• Having a CNC machine at home unrelated to your business? Unlikely. Farmers might have had machines needed for their labors, but dense urban populations were very unlikely to have had any machine at home which did not have either practical utility (i.e., spinning wheel)

• Some were simply financially out of reach. “Hobbyist drones” and various chemical experiments for fun were far less available to the pre-WW2-era urban population.

• Some are even directly related to the conceit of living on open, privately-owned land. (No land? No need for each apartment to have motorized snow removal thingies.)

…now, understand when I’m saying this, I’m 100% with you. I love tinkering. One of my dreams is to set up a small machine shop for running various hobbyist engines.

So, what can you do?

Well, there aren’t any easy answers. Trust me, I’ve looked. Local makerspaces are hard to find, and pricey to boot. You can try to limit your housing search to locations which do have a suitable garage, recognizing that this will limit you. You could try and rent a garage or utility space from a local business or something.

But one thing I would say is that if you’re using your garage for actual hobbyist purposes, then I don’t think you need to feel “car guilt”. Or, at least, I wouldn’t - at that point, you are paying not for a space to house a car (and all the associated issues), but space to house your hobbies.

Agreed. And it wasn’t just blind trust in his promises despite a lack of deeds, unlike Trump’s wild promises. Like I said, Long actually managed to achieve many positive things for the working-class Louisianian. I also didn’t mention it, but he was remarkably hostile to racism for a 1930s Louisiana politician; one of his issues with the Social Security system implemented by Roosevelt was that individual states might deny its benefits to African Americans.

I do wonder if he would have remained so benevolent indefinitely - there is the aforementioned secret control of an oil company profiting from State-owned lands, whose profits Long used for political purposes - but at the same time I can’t deny he did a lot of objectively good things which helped the people who needed it the most, was rightly beloved for it, and didn’t seem to be stepping away from it in his future plans.

If nothing else, he’s a fascinating study on how the political positions associated with populism have shifted over time in the US.

It may not be an exact comparison, given changes in both popular media and US culture, but Huey Long (1893-1935) is possibly one of the closer comparisons.

A wildly popular populist demagogue, Long similarly set about expelling political opponents from the government system following his election and engaging in political maneuvering and strongarming which ultimately got him impeached (though, like Trump, the effort collapsed before before long). His efforts included setting up Louisiana state boards which directed the distribution of state money to political allies, a move to deny hostile newspapers “official printer” status, worked with a businessman to create an oil company which profited from public lands allotted to it, produced his own newspaper which published positive stories, and other similarly totalitarian moves.

However, it must also be noted that unlike Trump, Long actually achieved many populist goals, such as dramatically expanding the road system and increasing school enrollment. He was hostile to Roosevelt’s New Deal, claiming it was actually insufficiently populist and overly friendly to businesses, but also was highly isolationist and opposed to US involvement leading up to World War II.

Long was assassinated in 1935 by the son of a political opponent. Most believe he was shot by the assassin, though some believe his bodyguards accidentally shot him in confusion after the assassin missed.

I’m afraid you’re not likely to get many actual answers on Lemmy. The politics here can be wildly, wildly skewed, and it doesn’t generally create a conducive environment to calm, rational discussions. (In fairness, I’m not sure if any other site really does support truly balanced political discussion either.) I admire your attempt, however.

Another issue (which some others have already commented on) is what constitutes a “compromise”. For instance, if I have four issues which left and right-wing movements are at odds over, is it “compromise” if for each of the two I decide to go with a strongly left- or right-wing position? Or is it only compromise if for all positions we take a moderate position which cleaves to neither bloc’s position?

Anyhow, let me at least try to answer. Though I lean more left, I still find myself out of line with both major parties on some issues. For example: In the interests of addressing climate change and achieving stronger energy reliability and independence, I favor a drive to increase, not remove, hydroelectric dams and nuclear power facilities in the country.

It’s not Earth-focused, but Eve Online had a minor subplot about how the coordination of time between multiple competing human civilizations became a major political problem because no one wanted to accept the system promoted by a rival empire.

Some years ago, I lost a drawing notebook full of sketches I’d done over a few years. Dunno if that counts as ‘valuables’?

I’m 99% sure it’s somewhere at home, but either way I’d really like that back.