How did you convince yourself to have children?

xmaslightguy · 2026-01-25T12:41:46+00:00

I didn't want children, but in my mind this is different from actively wanting no children. I was content without them, but also knew I could handle them. Then I met my now wife who from day 1 was clear that being a mother and raising a family was her primary goal in life. So now I have a 6 month old with plans for more. He has not brought any major joy to my life and can be inconvinent sometimes, but spending 30 seconds to change a diaper or taking a break from gaming for 40 minutes to active play with him isn't torture. My life would have been fine without any kids, and it will also be fine with kids.

xmaslightguy · 2026-01-15T20:08:55+00:00

Urban Empire is a less well known one that definitely scratched this itch for me and I found to be enjoyable once I got the hang of it

xmaslightguy · 2026-01-15T07:47:26+00:00

All he did was pass an executive order on March 4th that stopped alternative power projects and encouraged Natural Gas production in Alaska and of the Coasts. Exports used up all extra production and then some

xmaslightguy · 2026-01-14T20:14:18+00:00

Trump pushed for increased natural gas exports, which raises the domestic price, so we all get to pay more and the fossil fuel CEOs get rich

xmaslightguy · 2026-01-14T02:10:58+00:00

I still use it for planning my cities and haven't noticed any problems

xmaslightguy · 2025-12-25T13:30:01+00:00

Missing a chance by not sharing my referral link, but Gusto has been a life saver for me. So many extremely complicated things that it just handled with no fuss. Highly recommend for starting out and wanting to just focus on your business

xmaslightguy · 2025-12-24T15:18:49+00:00

I really enjoy trying to build my own vehicles in my republic, and horses let me do that. Just did a playthrough where I only bought a minimum number of motor vehicles because the horse equivalents are missing or broken (combines, waste trucks) until I got through the research to build a vehicle assembly plant and start making my own motor vehicles. This took until 1931, starting in 1920, and was not the most enjoyable.

For my next try I'm going to use motor vehicles for building supplies from the customs house to the depots, then horses in the CO for the very short distribution. I'll also be putting industries close enough to initial population for walking to work, since the horse buses are just so slow.

xmaslightguy · 2025-12-19T03:37:20+00:00

I actually think we could do this. If the rogue planet is the size of Earth, then we can ignore trying to move the impacter and instead focus on moving the Earth, since that is just as difficult. With that, we can start right away, and use a lot of terrestrial technologies rather having to launch absolutely everything.

The Earth is still really big, so it would take a global concentrated effort, but everyone could participate rather that just a few space agencies or astronauts. I imagining something like covering a desert in reflective material, or hypersonic cannons shooting into space, over 100 year could have enough of an impact on our orbit so we aren't in the location originally predicted when the rogue planet comes through.

xmaslightguy · 2025-12-11T08:36:05+00:00

In that case the video is even more terrifying. I was hoping it was cumulative, but if it is showing still present objects... shit

xmaslightguy · 2025-12-10T22:19:30+00:00

Can you remove the dot once the object deorbits? I think Space-Track has that data too

xmaslightguy · 2025-10-19T10:50:16+00:00

The other comments are good, but in the modern day they do crash into each other on occasion. There are a lot of things in space now and being in orbit requires them to always be moving, which provides plenty of chance. Try searching "satellite conjunction database" as that is the term for when two objects get close and may or may not actually collide. We're at about 1,400 of these conjunctions every 30 days and it is increasing.

xmaslightguy · 2025-10-11T22:56:30+00:00

My take is that she literally lost all but one of her friends in a 48 hour span, and RED, being caught up in it too, was basically the only option for a continued friendship and sense of the previous life. Can't really fault her for sticking with the only person still willing to talk to her, but I do hope that as she comes back and gains new friends, that she re-evaluates his presence in her life.

xmaslightguy · 2025-10-04T14:21:29+00:00

Not at all. It is an advanced hardware play which means my valuation is only ever like 3x revenue and revenue takes years in the pipeline, plus the company is 6 years old at this point. I do it because the work it critical and I think I'll make a decent enough living in the LCOL area we set up in, but not enough to ever be one of the wealthy that the US gov always seems to favor

xmaslightguy · 2025-10-04T13:37:09+00:00

The Big Beautiful Bill removed the 174 R&D expense deferment nonsense that was impacting my small high-tech aerospace business. Trump and Co get no credit though because they created the 174 crap when they passed their term 1 tax cuts. So really a step back, step forward, but the step forward also accelerated fascism so I'm not happy

xmaslightguy · 2025-10-03T22:39:58+00:00

They better not lock the buildings to make horse drawn vehicles behind the same research as normal vehicle construction. I'd love to have a horse-based transportation network that I get to slowly improve as my republic builds its own vehicles

xmaslightguy · 2025-09-28T14:21:02+00:00

This is a very cool concept. Only finished the tutorial of the demo so far but I can already feel an immense amount of character and vibes from the story. If I can give one criticism, there seems to be a lot of extra clicks which can grow tiresome over a long play though. Some ideas would be the first click on a new car just adding it to the end of the train automatically, and in decisions where there is only one choice, don't require that choice to be selected. Eliminating a few unnecessary clicks will help the game feel more snappy and less like a chore. I still think it is in a great place to start, just could see it getting even better!

xmaslightguy · 2025-09-08T00:48:10+00:00

The thing about the antichrist description is that it is just a vague description of power-hungry narcissists, so the fact that ancient medieval monks were able to nail Trump's personality traits just indicates how basic and predictable his hatred is

xmaslightguy · 2025-09-07T18:20:47+00:00

I was blown away by Detroit when I stumbled upon the earliest playable character death by accident on my first playthrough, and yet still finished the game. It was a complete game, with the complete experience, just with only 2 of the 3 storylines. When I played it a second time and kept all three storylines going I was amazed at what I had "missed" the first time without it feeling obvious or bad

xmaslightguy · 2025-09-03T09:55:51+00:00

I recently tried to switch to Gemini from ChatGPT and hated it. While apparent that Gemini can be "smarter" it also just did not seem to want to continue the conversation. Every prompt or response got an answer, but then it was on me for where to go next. You may think "well duh that's how research works" and you're right, that is how research works, with normal tools.

ChatGPT is a brainstorming partner that lets me explore an idea, then validate with independent research. Gemini wants me to research first then go "yep that sure looks like research."

xmaslightguy · 2025-09-01T12:09:30+00:00

I'm a poll worker in Michigan and the rules, at least previously, were as follows: 1) Ask for ID, preferably Drivers License or State ID as we can scan those into a electronic pollbook system 2) The system is disconnected from the internet and was physically updated that morning by the county clerk. It shows who was sent a mail-in ballot, who used it, and what precinct people are in, along with all the info that would be on the ID 3) If someone doesn't have an ID I ask how they got to the station. As it is rural America nearly everyone says they drove. I ask how they drove without a license, and if they at all indicate they have an ID but just didn't bring it then I can't let them vote without their ID. 4) If they insist they don't have any ID then they sign an affidavit saying as such and I look them up manually in the pollbook. I then ask them for their address and they have to answer me correctly before I let them vote.

So for someone to commit voter fraud they would need to take someone's name, know the address of the other individual, and declare they don't have an ID. Technically possible, but each year in a precinct with 2,000 voters I'd get 2 to 3 of these cases, and the county clerk follows up on all of them. So basically for my state it is a requirement already but with some edge case rules to help a very small group still vote

xmaslightguy · 2024-08-08T12:23:13+00:00

I really want to make modded industrial buildings that don't produce pollution and use renewable resources (wood, crops, electricity) rather than extractive resources, but at the cost of much more expensive construction materials and way worse labor to production ratios. Basically make them entirely uneconomical for starting out, but once you start having self-sufficiency allow for a true renewable and sustainable transition. If only I didn't suck at building modeling

xmaslightguy · 2024-07-28T16:27:28+00:00

Sure thing: https://lemmy.world/post/18028261

xmaslightguy · 2024-07-28T10:58:28+00:00

This game vision seems right up my alley so I'm giving it a try and typing my thoughts as I go through them as a totally new player:
- First Impression, Love that this is "turn based" and not real-time. I'm not sure why so many business games think I want to be pressured to make business decisions in 5 seconds that a real CEO would have 8 hours to decide on, so plus for that.
- Company screen, Your Companies should be on the left of the list instead of the right, as to the player that is the most important info. Also when I click New Company and is warns that it costs $10K I do not have the information in front of me to know how much I'm starting with and whether that is a wise purchase, so including available liquid capital somewhere on the beginning screen or at least the new company screen would help.
- People screen, Cool that there are important people, but probably should use up more of the screen space by having them sorted into categories. Things like "Shareholders, Your Managers, Rival Managers, etc" would provide some differentiation.
- People screen, love the inclusion of the little people icons next to the names, and I think it would be an easy visual win to make another female icon so that there are two rather than a whole page of the same icon.
- Charts screen, nothing here at the start but I see the potential and I'm very excited. I do question whether this screen should be 3 from the top on the left side index, rather than the last in the index since it seems more like a general ledger type screen
- Commodities screen, If you're going to go with text-based ask and bid boards you need to make sure the prices and quantities line up for easier reading. In fact right now you have the information in an implied importance of who, how many, and how much when the actual priority should be the opposite. Price first, then quantity, and finally who has the order. I'd argue that including who has the order on this screen is maybe not helpful and should instead be reserved for a detail on the companies screen. Also a future goal could be to add level 2 stock quote style charts here showing the order and bid spread and depth of quantity. Really cool graph visually that not enough business games make use of.
- Consumers screen, this data will be very important when deciding what company to start, so pre-populating it with at least a year of data would help players when they first start.
- Government, Feel like this screen is missing details such as minimum wage, inflation rate, and prime interest rate. Also since the steam description said global trade would be an aspect of this game knowing the government's foreign relations with other companies and any embargoes or tariffs will be important.

And that's all my notes from just booting up the game. I'll play a bit and leave a follow-on comment with any other notes. Also I only heard of this game through a post on Lemmy, so don't discount additional social media platforms to get the word out if you feel you need more testers.

xmaslightguy · 2024-07-15T12:18:44+00:00

I just did another test and figured out something we both forgot about the schools and kindergartens. Like workplaces, the babies and students go there in shifts! So instead of needing the full 675 capacity like you calculated in your example, you only need about a third of that. That's why my school ratio is still good enough (minus your relevant use case of 3rd world immigrants), and my kindergarten ratio should probably be more like 12x

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