My first thought too. I love records, my record setup is where nearly all of my hobby money goes into, but I’d never recommend a suitcase player to anyone. I don’t have a ton of hobby money to spend so my setup isn’t super expensive or anything but I did make sure to get a nice player at least. Low-to-mid range speakers and pre-amps and stuff can still be okay, especially these days the lower end is getting a lot better, but a cheap player can do actual damage to a record over time.

If someone reading this is looking to get into the hobby, do yourself a favour and save up a bit for the player. You can get cheap speakers and all that and upgrade later but a bad player can ruin your records over time, especially if you spin them regularly. I personally have a Pro-Ject Debut III, you can switch between a built-in pre-amp or an external one, so you can start with the built-in one and then get a dedicated one later on to help with initial costs, and Pro-Ject makes excellent players. Zero plastic anywhere except the dust cover, European company and hand made in Europe, so you’re not supporting American business if that’s important to you, and even their lower end players are still very well made with all the features you’d want (adjustable anti-skate and counterweight, switch between 33/45/78 rpm, soft drop for the needle so it doesn’t hurt the record, high quality materials, comes with a pretty decent diamond cartridge, etc) plus they tend to be pretty easily upgradable. Audio-Technica is also supposedly pretty good at that price range but I never found one I loved, meanwhile every Pro-Ject I’ve messed around with has been a genuine pleasure to operate. I’m not an expert but I do have a bit of a hobbyist knowledge and experience if anyone has questions.

No problem! I’m always happy to talk Jesse Welles, feel free to ask any time!

By the way, if you love War Isn’t Murder and Red, check out Domestic Error too. It’s got a similar feel and also has great lyrics (like all his songs).

The way I see it, he sort of has two sides to his music. There’s the Guthrie-style political protest stuff, and then the Dylan-esque poetic stuff. Both are fantastic.

For political stuff, it kind of depends on what you want to hear since he basically sings the news, but War Isn’t Murder, about the genocide in Gaza, and Red, about the Trump administration, are his top songs. The Great Caucasian God is probably my favourite though since it’s such a good dig at the stereotypical conservative rural American, even down to the style he chose to write in (more of a twangy hillbilly country style, unusual for him typically).

For more poetic stuff, my favourite that he’s published is Malaise, which does still have a couple digs, mostly at Musk (e.g. “will they measure mars in acres?”), but it’s not as outright protest-y as the first few I mentioned. But for his poetic side I actually prefer the stuff he hasn’t published and is just on his YouTube channel, namely Nothing which just came out less than two weeks ago, and Siddhartha. His guitar work on both is great and so are the lyrics.

Both Malaise and Great Caucasian God are from his album Devil’s Den (and he also released With The Devil on the same day, with all the same songs just in a different style, both are excellent), and that’s my favourite album of his. It’s not as political though (aside from the first song), for a more political album from him, Hells Welles is probably my recommendation. The first eight songs off that album are great protest songs, mostly done in a sarcastic manner which is his style (sing from the perspective of the person he’s criticizing).

If you like stripped down acoustic guitar, harmonica and vocals, and aren’t feeling overly political music, Patchwork is great. I’ve got it on vinyl, it’s awesome.

TL;DR check out War Isn’t Murder, Red, and/or Great Caucasian God for political stuff and if you like it check out his album Hells Welles. For poetic stuff, Malaise, and then Nothing and/or Siddhartha on his YouTube channel. If you just want stripped down acoustic music that’s more easy listening, his album Patchwork is great.

Love Jesse Welles. He was my top artist last year and I’m going to see him in March. Very excited. More people on Lemmy need to check him out, he really appeals to the politics here.

Only briefly and I don’t own it. Can’t remember how I played it now, probably at a friend’s house or a demo or something. I’d consider picking it up for sure.

A bad optical drive is what happened to my first 360. It failed in 2014 so I just upgraded to an Xbox One instead at the time, which I had planned on doing anyway. That Xbox One bricked eventually and I replaced it with an Xbox One S which then also eventually died in around 2021 or 2022 I think, at which point I switched to PC gaming. Once I switched though I wanted to play my old 360 games still so I picked up a 360 from eBay and my wife (gf at the time) wanted one too so I got her one as well for her place. Now we live together and I have three 360’s, one with a bad optical drive and two that work fine (one of them sometimes crashes but it’s infrequent) so I want to Frankenstein my first 360 into working well again (it’s the R2D2 360 which is objectively cooler than the two black 360’s I’ve got and also matches better with my PS5 I bought with a work bonus a couple years ago that’s mostly just a 4K blu-ray player at this point).

I’d probably like it then. Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

How is it? I dropped the series after playing and hating Valhalla, but Mirage looked pretty good. I loved all the AC games before Valhalla.

I just hooked up my 360 again too. I’ve been meaning to give it a good cleaning and possibly replace a couple parts if necessary (I have three 360’s) but haven’t had the time. I haven’t really played on it much yet either, just a quick test run with a friend of mine playing 1v1 gun game in Black Ops II. I’m not much for shooter games usually but it was the first split screen game I found and it was actually a lot of fun. I sucked at it though, he destroyed me. Oh well, good thing I’m not competitive at all.

The apartment I was referring to used boiler heat, not furnace heat. It all came from one place and we couldn’t adjust it ourselves. Not shut-off valve for our unit, not even a water control valve to slow the flow rate of water for our unit. The superintendent was the only one who could control it. We were up on the top floor too so it was hotter up there. I did complain about the heat several times, but while we were hot, the lower floors would be comfortable or even cold (heat rises and all that), so usually she wouldn’t do anything about it. Any time someone would complain about the temp (either too hot or too cold) she’d do a building survey. If most people would agree then she’d change it, but usually the top floor was always too hot and the bottom floor was always too cold. We only lived there for a year before moving out.

Not everyone gets to control their own heat. My last apartment I had no way to adjust the room temp except with windows or buying my own mini/portable appliances.

I play a ton of Hitman 3 on a laptop (11800H, 3060 mobile, 16gb ram) and it runs fantastic. Just in case anyone has similar or better specs to me, wondering if they could run it well.

I’m in exactly the same spot. Not looking to get out just yet, I’m actually starting as manager tomorrow, but maybe in a year or two going back to school, but I have no idea what for. I’d consider just moving up to higher management positions but the next step up from where I’m starting tomorrow is outside the union and I’d like to stay unionized. At the same time, the non-unionized job pays way more (over double) so it might be worth it in the future. That’s a bit away yet though.

Wishlisted. Definitely will give it a look when it goes on sale. Your review sold me.

Halo Reach is so good. It’s been a while since I’ve played it all the way through, I really should give it a shot again soon.

Yeah, I’d probably agree with that. Some games are just better being tighter and more closed off. I love open world and semi-open world games but it’s not always appropriate.

Awesome, thanks for the write up. I’m not sure I’ll have time tonight but I’ll try this out when I get the chance. I appreciate the help, and I’ll let you know if I need any more assistance.

I loved this game. The sequel was actually pretty decent too, but nowhere near as good as the first imo. A rare case of a branch of EA making a good game that doesn’t just feel like a cash grab. Maybe that’s because it was made in 2008 though.

I’m going to try this later on and see if it helps. When I moved from windows to Linux on my pc I had a similar issue with steam not recognizing my external, and doing this solved it. Unfortunately I can’t remember how I did that now so I’ll have to try and find a guide online or something.

This was my first thought. Upon looking into it further it seems Jellyfin doesn’t think the directory to my drive exists. I might have to change its location like another commenter suggested, but it’s been a while since I’ve done that and can’t remember at all how to do it anymore. I’ll try finding a guide online or something.