Two things massively help Valve:

Steam is a goddamned money printing machine, they are the most profitable software company per capita, per employee... possibly bar none.

Also... they're not publically traded.

They do not have investors constantly forcing maximization of short term profits at the cost of literally everything else.

... So they can afford to ... not price gauge everyone.

In case anyone is not aware:

Are you currently employed?

Have you actively sought a job in the last 4 weeks?

If the answer to both of those questions is 'no', then congrats, according to the BLS, you are not unemployed!

You just aren't in the labor force, therefore you do not count as an unemployed worker.

So yeah, if you finally get fed up with applying to 100+ jobs a week or month, getting strung along and then ghosted by all of them...

( because they are fake job openings that are largely posted by companies so that they look like they look like they are expanding and doing well as a business )

... and you just give up?

You are not 'unemployed'.

https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#unemployed

You are likely a 'discouraged worker', who is also 'not in the labor force'.

https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#discouraged

.........

Also, if you are 5 or 6 or 7 figures in student loan debt, and... you can only find a job as a cashier? waiter/waitress? door dash driver?

Congrats, you too are not unemployed, you are merely 'underemployed'.

But also, if you have too many simultaneous low paying jobs... you may also be 'overemployed'.

.........

But anyway, none of that really matters if you do not make enough money to actually live.

In 2024, 44% of employed, full time US workers... did not make a living wage.

https://www.dayforce.com/Ceridian/media/documents/2024-Living-Wage-Index-FINAL-1.pdf

(These guys work with MIT to calculate/report this because the BLS doesn't.)

You've also got measures like LISEP...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2025/05/27/stunning-unemployment-survey-says-millions-functionally-unemployed/

Which concludes that 24.3% of Americans are 'functionally unemployed', by this metric which attempts to account for all the shortcomings of the BLS measures of the employment situation.

Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes.

So basically this is a way to try to measure 'doesnt have a job + has a poverty wage job'.

https://www.lisep.org/tru

.........

A more useful measure of the actual situation for college grads, in terms of 'did it make any economic/financial sense to get my degree?' would be 'are you currently employed in a job that substantially utilizes your specific college education, such that you likely could not perform that job without your specific college education?'

Something like that.

It sure would be neat if higher education in the US did not come with the shackles of student loan debt, then maybe people could get educated simply for the sake of getting educated, but, because it does, this has to be a cost benefit style question.

• sincerely, a not unemployed but technically 'out of the the labor force' econometrician.

This is extremely common rightoid behavior, even at a personal level.

Make a big outward show of being independent, self-made, wholly responsible for your own success...

... and the reality almost always is that this person is in fact getting subsidies or assistance or help from a wealthy friend or family member, but, they're lying about this, and very often mismanaging the money, which is 'ok' in their minds, because 'nobody knows' that money even exists.

...

Every Republican voter who is on welfare, but hates everyone else on welfare.

Every Republican business owner who gloats about being successful all thanks to themselves publically, but privately, amongst close friends, laughs about how good they are at manipulating their taxes or legal business structure so that they can get as many tax breaks and subsidies as possible.

Or, the 'dumbass' variant of that:

I'm a big tough hard blue collar worker who works real hard and real tough, and thats the right way to have a life and make a living... wait, what? That only even kind of works if the corporation I work for gets massive tax breaks and subsidies, or my own company gets tons of Federal grants and subsidies and tax breaks directly? I thought that was the free market?!

Also every 'entrepreneur wunderkid' story that ultimately boils down to: daddy gave me a whole lot of money and also knew a whole bunch of key figures in relevant industries.

... every mega church pastor that is very obviously fleecing their impoverished flock, but claims that they are so wealthy because god loves them so much.

... every rightwing raido talkshow host / podcaster who gloats about how successful their business is, but never mentions that they get a massive, stupidly large amount of money from wealthy right wing individuals and/or lobbying groups/think tanks... or by selling scam health products, scam financial products, etc... or, more recently, just literally gets directly funded by Russia's FSB.

...

It is literally a core tenet of being a Republican that you lie and gaslight about where your money comes from, or at bare minimum be just actually so stupid that you don't even realize where your money comes from, so I guess those ones arguably not intentionally lying... they're just actually too stupid to be trusted with any kind of non rote task.

Like it is essentially impossible to be a Republican and not do this. Its a fundamental aspect to their personalities.

Hence why it is just a social faux pas to even have a frank and transparent discussion about finances with them, and why they get so blustered snd indignant when the idea of 'fiscal responsibility' is applied onto them, instead of just projected outward as a demeaning attack on everyone else.

Thats my 2 cents anyway, from having grown up in a rightoid, fundamentalist family. Of course this behavior is not unique to Republicans, but it is essentially a mandatory requirement of being a Republican.

https://www.vintagestory.at/

Vintage Story is basically... what if Minecraft had many, many more layers of realism and complexity to its world sim systems, and then also had a whole lot larger of a beastiary with Lovecraftian origins?

It is also largely open source, though it does cost money, a whole lot of its subsystems and essentially modding tools are just opensource.

Please tell me none of these bombs were nukes...

Fucking amazing.

PNAC gets its way in the end, despite at least 40% of Trump's rise to political prominence being due to him being one of the few Republicans to criticize... you know, all the pointless meddling and wars in the ME.

... And Trump is almost single handedly responsible for all of this.

He tore up the nuke deal Obama made. He massively mismanaged every element of the Israeli/Palestine situation. Fucking stepson Kushner's gonna figure it out, don't worry.

Oh yeah lets piss off everyone and move the embassy to Jerusalem.

Beyond contemptible.

The man is a demon.

Kefka?

Is Trump Kefka, or is that an insult to Kefka?

Fucking childish demon clown that just wants to blow up the whole world so he can feel special.

• 40% of cops freely admit to abusing their spouses, when guaranteed anonymity.

I was so, so very close to directly calling jordanlund a shitlib after it was almost certainly him who mod deleted my comment, in my own thread, in .world, stating that, speaking from a historical standpoint, the only thing that stops fascists is bullets in their brains.

He of course interpreted that as 'advocating violence', because ... he is a shitlib.

But instead, I composed myself and wrote a more eloquent explanation as to why my comment had been deleted... and, so far, at least that response hasn't been deleted.

Why not post to power tripping bastards?

Because we already know the .world mod/admin team is a bunch of shit lib collaborators from how they acted when Luigi was framed for shooting some asshole who murdered tens of thousands of people by overseeing the denial of their healthcare.

Sorry to rant but goddamnit am I on the exact same wavelength as this post right now.

Jordan, if you read this, go fuck yourself and keep telling yourself Warren was a better choice than Bernie, you slimy rat fuck.

My paternal grandpa was a mechanically/technically inclined person, a socially awkward, blunt and stubborn person with multiple failed marriages, and no friends ... who turned to tobacco and alcohol to cope... and he literally did have an extensive, hand crafted model train set and environment, the size of two queen mattresses, that he built, and often neglected his kids to spend time on/with. That and the alcoholism also caused some serious familial neglect.

My dad was a technically/mechanically inclined person, a socially awkward, very brash and overconfident, sutbborn person with a history of tumultuous romantic relationships, is still in a very unhappy marriage, no friends, who turned to alcohol to cope, which caused him to neglect his kids and wife... and then also went through various hobbies every 2-4 years or so, which became his whole personality untill he switched to another one.

I can remember him one time, piss drunk, explaining to 10ish yearold me the ins and outs of structural concepts in aircraft design.

I am also a technically/mechanically/computer programming inclined person, a socially awkward person with a history of tumultuous romantic relationships, who is overly literal and often quite blunt, with no real friends beyond the age of about 25... who would often isolate with the computer to get away from insane family drama... but at least I have not fallen into alcoholism nor had any marriages or kids, as I realize that social/traditional pressure alone is not a good reason to sign up for massive responsibilities...

But nope! Ask any of my dad's family if maybe Autism is a thing that runs in the male line of our family, and this is evidently a ludicrous, unfounded notion, but also at the same time there's 'just no real explanation' for the astoundingly obvious pattern I have here described.

They don't disagree that the pattern isn't there, they are all just massively biased/stigmatized against any concepts of mental illness or neurodiversity, choosing to view atypical, consistent behavioral patterns as simply indicative of the underlying, quality of moral character of a person.

Unless you're an Autist who has heavily specced into the Corpo dialect/persona/mask.

May the spirit of St. Mangione soon visit Mr. Vance and impart upon him his Saintly honesty.

As is written:

Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.

Luigi 1:7

I mean, makes sense, Hitler is one of Trump's favorite authors.

No, I am not being hyperbolic.

https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kept-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8?op=1

Trump kept a collection of Hitler's speechs from the 1930s in his nighstand table, and would read from it before going to bed in the 80s and 90s.

When asked about this,

" 'Trump hesitated' and then said, 'Who told you that?' "

It may have been lemmy.zip

It did in fact go down for about 48 hours... prompting me to make this new account on dbzer0.

Basically, the admin attempted to update to a newer lemmy version... and it failed, multiple times, and they just rolled back, restored the old version, posted an explanation and apology, and they'll be further looking into ... exactly what went wrong.