Just my subjective opinion to add, but I think they also succeeded at making the open world itself feel more puzzle-like, as opposed to the general set dressing it provides in a lot of RPGs. Being in a cold/hot/mountainous/wet/etc area is meaningful for the impact it has on your ability to explore.
I feel like it just gives a better sense of engaging with the environment, as opposed to engaging in the environment, if that makes sense.
Nothing federated is private, mind. Even with E2EE on in private rooms for specific messages, Matrix still relies on a constant information feed during use that can be used to deduce who is messaging whom and when, even if the content of the message itself is encrypted.
This is why it’s important to seed your online activity with deliberate false identifiers. That way, no one with bad intentions will learn that I work for the ICE office in Santa Fe, and always attend church every Sunday (when football isn’t on, of course).
I would argue though that it depends on the space you’re in. Conservative bubbles are astroturfed as fuck to inspire fear, sure, but it’s supposed to assure people that they are in the “in group” and there is a justified “other” to vilify and take the blame everything bad in the world. They have all the answers, and all you need to do is share on your socials and vote for the right person.
But I guess I’d consider political doomscrolling (which it seems like this is more veering towards) to be a separate phenomenon, which is not entirely immune to astroturfing either, but does not have it as a prerequisite. That discomfort is usually just the product of anxiety among people who realize they are not in the in group and are sharing their concerns.
Yeah I didn’t look that hard, was the first video I found that was sub 3 minutes. They’re all just marketing reels, no one else seems inclined to just upload a quick video on how teleprompters work.
Yeah, they’re still reflective enough to mirror the text when viewed from the right angle.
Here’s an example from YouTube so you can see what it looks like from the perspective of the one speaking:
Teleprompter. They’re mirrored on one side and reflect a screen with a script scrolling below them.
Yes, the right wing who goes out of their way to make the internet feel as “America First” as possible, that’s what I said. Again I ask, how does that not make Americans feel comfortable in online spaces? Unless you’re referring to one of the “wrong” kinds of Americans that the right-wing doesn’t approve of, I suppose.
I’m not saying astroturfing doesn’t exist, just questioning the idea that Americans are being left without a place to enjoy or feel comfortable in. If anything, I see astroturfing doing more of the opposite, shoving the American propaganda machine into every crevice it can. Which “coincidentally” happens to align well with Russian interests, too.
I wouldn’t read that far into it. American defaultism is such an omnipresent phenomenon across most of the popular internet, it feels like most places are catered to Americans in some capacity.
What I can sympathize with are the communities that restrict US politics, or politics in general. Other than the echo chamber/circlejerk nature of it, it often just becomes an anxiety-inducing spiral into nothingness that sometimes people, American or otherwise, just want a break from. Because it’s already everywhere else.
Our place is ventilated well enough that I don’t need to open the windows for ventilation or to manage humidity per se, but I am fortunate enough to live in an area with good quality air, so I often do in spring/summer/fall just because it feels fresher.
In winter, I don’t want to freeze or waste energy, so I usually keep them closed. But once in a while, if I have my computer running for a long time and the heat is also on for the rest of our place, I may crack the window a bit just to keep that room from becoming unbearably hot.
Terrarium is probably what they meant, though it wouldn’t surprise me if the term might be used differently in different languages, even.
I don’t believe that it was explicitly stated that refunds had to happen, but the avoidance of that possibility was a motivation of the dissent.
In his dissent, Kavanaugh wrote that “the refund process is likely to be a mess”, which operates under the assumption that refunds remain on the table now that Trump’s tariffs were ruled unconstitutional.
I’m guessing it will come down to individual lawsuits by the affected parties against the Trump administration to make the specific case that refunds are needed and justified. If a few succeed, that sets the precedent for more. At that point, the government may decide to simply set up a refund program to reimburse folks and try to save some money by not challenging every claim in court.
Some was context pulled from this NPR article:
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/21/g-s1-110987/supreme-court-tariffs-refunds
Ancient Chinese emperors used to drink mercury to achieve immortality, too. 2000 years of history couldn’t be wrong.
Worse for sure.
At my age, they were already married with kids and had enough to build a dream house in a decent town. Both had stable jobs that were considered good despite neither having a college degree.
I’m in a decent job that pays me (on paper) more money than my parents used to make, but I had to get my master’s degree to get here, and I’m still trying to pay off 8 years of student debt (though I’m getting closer each paycheck).
Between that, rent, and the sheer cost of everything these days, my partner and I are nowhere close to the point where we could afford a house, and we definitely could not afford to have even one kid, let alone three.
We’re at least not living paycheck to paycheck, but there have been industry layoffs left and right that have me feeling like any day could be my turn. I’d love to have more of a safety net in that situation, but there’s not all that much left over for us to put towards savings or retirement. Meanwhile, my parents are retired now, while I’m fully expecting to work until I die.
Edit: Forgot to clarify that this is the US, if the existence of student debt wasn’t already a giveaway.
E2E encrypted messages in Matrix contain more user metadata than alternatives like SimpleX, nothing scary but a MitM is able to see origin points, destinations, and times of messages. Server to server, if you’re using E2E encryption, it relies on trust that the other server is not compromised.
And it seems Matrix.org is not the best at security disclosures: https://soatok.blog/2026/02/17/cryptographic-issues-in-matrixs-rust-library-vodozemac/#matrix-response