This is stunning

Would you accept Hajime no Ippo (boxing)? It starts with the protagonist as a bullied high school pupil but quite quickly outgrows the framing device and becomes about the sport itself. The anime has a few seasons and specials, and if you find yourself wanting more the manga is insanely long

Biggest mistake we ever made IMO was 24/7 rolling news. Bad enough that newspaper was bad for the 50,000th consecutive time, but at least it only used to happen once a day. Now newspaper is bad every minute every hour all day every day and also pumped directly into our brains

"Whole sections of the working class who have been plundered of all they really need are being compensated, in part, by cheap luxuries which mitigate the surface of life."

As always, goes back and back and back... had to Google around for it but a couple of choice selections from Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier:

Oh my god, I thought I might be the only person in the world to ever play 10S. That's a game that goes to fascinating places and trusts the player enough to reveal *none* of it in the opening section.

I might actually be an abolitionist on this one, or at least close to it. This isn't fun gambling, a flutter on the ponies. It's tweaked, optimised, dark patterned to hell and back to *make* you addicted. I've never met a dealer as dedicated to harming their customers as the gambling industry.

If we didn't invent phone gambling, we've certainly fucking perfected it. Sports betting is nothing, Vegas wishes it had the spread and variety that's available to the everyday phone user here

Gambling is, IMO, obscenely normalised here in the UK. We were on a family-friendly caravan holiday recently and the entertainment complex had a dedicated little gambling area set aside (the main bar also had plenty of slot machines).

I know @bsittler.bsky.social does a lot of archival quality tape preservation, not sure if that covers Electron but tagging in case

Seconding Hou Hou Mei and Salt & Fire. I can't vouch for it personally but a colleague swears by Love Dosa lovedosa.co.uk

Had a look on ZenMarket and the situation on Japanese sites isn't much better. Cheapest I can see is this listing on Yahoo Auctions but at £33 with five bids already I suspect it'll go considerably higher zenmarket.jp/en/auction.a...

I don't do Reddit really so can't respond direct, but I wonder if the OP might have either a local or an industry-specific credit union that could help? Member-owned cooperatives usually with a specific mission rather than just profit maximisation www.findyourcreditunion.co.uk

I think I missed a key point in my first reply. It's not just that it's empty, it's that it demands and creates an enforced emptiness wherever it gains a foothold

Not always a Mieville fan, but something he nailed in *The Last Days of New Paris*. One of the many horrors of fascism is that it is aesthetically empty.