I feel like basically every time I debate any kind of topic (doesn't even have to be controversial, like politics, but of course there it's more common) with people where the participants don't all agree never actually leads to any conclusion where one of the participants would actually change their mind. No matter how the debate goes. No matter whether there is some irrefutable evidence that disproves what one of the participants believes, or if their position is illogical, or basically anything. I feel like people just become entrenched in defending their side, usually the debate starts going in circles, until someone just walks away from the debate or the topic gets changed.

I don't really like this, it just feels like wasted time... I'd rather if when people actually discuss topics that they'd come to reasonable conclusions that make more sense, make the world better, are better supported by evidence etc. I guess it can be considered to be fun, though I don't really feel it is very fun and instead it just frustrates me. But I guess "debate" is often being done basically fully as entertainment, just look at how big channels like Jubilee are getting on Youtube for example, though I kind of hate it.

Is there a better way to steer "debates" into something more productive that can actually change peoples minds?

Sorry to be picky, but it's hard for me to find games I enjoy - and part of that is I don't really know where to look.

I'm a fan of games with no/skippable story, no/limited exploration, no/limited unlocks, no/limited power ups - but high in strategy and/or skill based games that are pretty simple while still giving depth to it (aka something that can be picked up and put down without issue, eg picking right back off where you were after not playing for months). Online is okay but no login bonus/requirements and something that can be played at ones own pace.

I think what I'm looking for and what I'm NOT looking for would be easiest by giving examples:

One of the big things that makes me asks this is that I find collectible card games (eg Hearthstone, MTG, Marvel Snap) to really fit the mold that I'm looking for, but the toxic skinner box of their economy to not be worth having in ones life. I don't want "daily quests" to be something I worry about.

I found Slay The Spire to be okay, and have mostly been jamming Balatro as of late...but it's very annoying that basically all card games I can find now are basically Slay The Spire knockoffs. Going back to the "no/limited unlocks" and "no/limited power ups", that rouge-lite aspect to them really ruins the games to me - I get that there's the macro strategy about picking the power ups and what not, but it personally ruins the actual gameplay aspect to me and just feels too much "am I going to high roll or low roll?". Runetera's Path of Champions also fits this mold that, to me, was ruined by the power ups. I've heard good things about Monster Train, but the fact it gets compared to Slay The Spire has led me to skipping it.

To give an example of card games I enjoyed, Marvel's Midnight Suns I thought was quite fun. It was nice that you could completely ignore the story and RPG aspects of the game to solely focus on the card combat. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales has interested me since I've heard good things about Gwent, but since it's a Witcher game I don't know if that means it's mostly a story-based game and the gameplay is just a means to server the story. I've been enjoying the duet expansion of Wingspan and see that it has a video game counterpart, so that might be interesting to try out for single player (but I also don't want to get burnt out on the game to be able to continue to play the board game)

Autobattlers (which I basically consider deck builders) like Hearthstone's Battlegrounds I enjoy, outside of the fact that by being an online multiplayer game you have to give 100% focus on the game. I also quite dislike the constantly changing cards and what not with just how much information there is to the game (it's a big reason I haven't picked up other autobattlers like the League of Legends one). Are there any good offline autobattler-type games?

Going off card games for strategy games...I do enjoy simulation games like Civilization to an extent, but the "one more turn" aspect of them really hurts - very rarely do I want to go back to a campaign I've already started and have to re-figure out what my plans were. Something that is either a lot quicker of a loop or a lot easier to drop back in would be interesting to me though.

Tetris is probably one of the easiest games that fit the mold I'm looking for - strategy game that has very simple game play but a lot of depth to it. Shoutout to the old tetrisfriends.com website, though playing on it so much kind of burned me out from the game (definitely used to get the Tetris effect lol)

X-Com 2 has been of interest to me since I enjoyed the game studio's Midnight Suns as mentioned above, but it's been hard to get into the start of the game and it's not exactly the easiest to play on a Steam Deck. I do think I'd enjoy it though.

Going more skill-based group, Cuphead and Furi are two of my favorite games I've played in the last decade. I've definitely been leaning more strategy games though as I've gotten older, but still down for anything that is pure straight awesome gameplay without any other fluff like those two.

This post is probably getting long enough lol. But thank you for any suggestions/pointing in directions for me to look

Inspired by https://tildes.net/~life/1q0v/what_is_a_business_org_thats_so_terrible_no_one_should_use_if_possible

If you're finding it hard to come up with something, remember that medium, small, and local businesses do exist ;)

Also, good deeds are not enough; their product must be awesome too!

If at all possible, let's keep this positive!

Background: I started daily driving Linux (specifically Mint) several months ago and for the most part it's been great. Some weird hiccups occasionally but nothing I can't handle/deal with. When doing my research to set the system up for the first time, I decided to go with 30GB for the / partition and ~220GB for the /home partition (the other half of the drive is for Windows 11 and the various essential tiny partitions). For a while this seemed to be fine, but lately I've been starting to get warnings when performing software updates via the Update Manager that the / partition is running out of space. I think it peaked at maybe 90-95% full a few weeks ago, at which point I started doing some research and cleaning up a bit (apt autoremove, deleting old logs and kernels, etc). I was able to claw back ~4GB and kick the can down the road, but now the warnings have returned and I'd like to handle this properly. I'm working from the assumption that I simply made the / partition too small and intend to double it by giving it some of the Windows space.

My question: How do I know if this is expected or if I've been doing something wrong? Is 30GB indeed too small on modern Mint, or should that have been enough? I know it partially depends on what all I actually do with the computer, but I really don't have very many applications installed (aside from defaults of course) and only four of them are Flatpaks, which I read tend to be larger. If it helps, the Disk Usage Analyzer reports that within /, /usr is taking up 13.2GB (55%), /var accounts for 9.1GB (38%), /opt is 1GB (4%), and everything else is <1% each.

Thanks in advance!

I add hot sauce to nearly everything savory that I eat, but I've never really had a go-to brand. Usually I've got a ton of tiny no-name-brand bottles around from various gift baskets that my wife or her family got me as christmas or birthday gifts, or my wife will pick up random stuff she finds on sale when grocery shopping. But those are pretty hit-or-miss whether they're actually any good or not, and I crave consistency, so I've decided that I want to find a good all-round sauce (or perhaps a brand of sauce with a few variants), ideally something I can purchase a decent quantity of at a time, either online (direct from the company or Amazon or whatever) or reliably from a grocery store, and just replenish whenever my reserves start to get low. Ideally something that won't break the bank, too, considering I go through it at a decent pace.

I like the taste of Frank's, but I'd rate its heat at a 0.5 and I'm looking for something at least 7 or 8 (or higher). I've tried Tobasco and it's pretty mid on all aspects (and way too watery). I really dislike the flavor of Sriracha--it hits me completely wrong for some reason. I recently tried some Cholula extra hot and its heat is acceptable, flavor-wise nothing amazing but right now based on price/availability it's my top contender. I know there are better sauces out there, and brands that I've either forgotten or never even heard of because I'm not a connoisseur and never really paid much attention, and I don't have the vocabulary to really speak to what I'm looking for flavor-profile-wise, so my question is basically the title: What's your go-to hot sauce? Not necessarily your favorite, but the default you'll happily reach for regardless of what you're putting it on and that you've always got stocked?

edit--Too many responses to reply individually, but thank you all for all of the suggestions! I definitely plan on checking several of the new-to-me sauces out in the coming weeks.

September 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.