We used to call that “machine learning” but the tech bros developed a god complex.

Not just phone. All electronics. And your car, which also has a modem talking to every coms tower and GPS at all times.

I understand your frustration, but if you stick to this, you will be abstaining entirely from the electoral process.

Once again, there are only three choices:

1. Party that can win.

2. Other party that can win.

3. Shooting yourself in the dick.

You seem to be a #3 voter. Is feeling good about shooting yourself in the dick really better than effecting real change? Nah.

Check out some Doom Eternal speedruns. (I guess 100% speedruns so you aren’t seeing people glitching through the game.) That game is actually extremely fast-paced. Good players are swapping through all fifty of their weapons every 4 seconds. Come to think of it, I wonder if the need for gore kills is a consequence of me sucking. (I think the chainsaw for ammo is unavoidable, though.)

As you said, it doesn’t matter because you don’t live in anything resembling a swing state, but for those of us who do: please vote strategically. Vote for whomever you like in the primary. (And DO vote in the primary, for fuck’s sake!) Vote for Bernie Sanders. (I did!) Vote for the DSA candidate. (I often do.) Vote for the green party, or libertarians, or write in your cool uncle. Whatever! The primary is your time to vote for who you really want. But when it comes to the general election, please vote for the left-most nominee of the party that has a realistic shot at winning. It doesn’t always feel good, but there are exactly three options in a first past the post general election:

1. Voting for the party that can win.

2. Voting for the other party that can win.

3. Not participating. You might think your write-in or third party is distinct from Option #3. I regret to inform you that it isn’t.

If we were to do this for a decade or so, the GOP would evaporate and the Dems would eventually split into a neoliberal pro-business party and a progressive pro-labor party. Do I want Newsom to be the nominee? Fuck no. I hate that prick. But if he’s the one running against Marco Rubio or whoever? Yeah, I can hold my nose and fill in that bubble.

If we fail to do this, we only empower fascists. Look around.

(And BTW, the party more likely to give us Ranked Choice so we don’t need to do this is, you guessed it, the Democrats…)

I didn’t like the mandatory finishing moves either, and to be honest, I didn’t finish the game, but I got a lot further than DOOM 2016 and I thought the gunplay felt really snappy and satisfying in the way the OG games did. The levels were diverse and I actually liked the platforming puzzles, but I’m also the kind of guy who played surf maps in CounterStrike and strafejump races in Quake, so I’m predisposed to that sort of thing.

Oh well. They made a thing and it’s not for everyone. I wonder if you’d like The Dark Age. I haven’t played it yet.

it’s easy to just completely avoid interacting with LLMs.

I wish that were true. Have you seen reddit lately? Lemmy isn’t immune but I haven’t encountered any obvious bot posts here yet.

History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.

It seems like we’re plunging into fascism, but maybe this upcoming midterms will (not be rigged and) prove to be an effective backlash to the US’ reactionary coup. What do you figure the odds are we pull out of this and say, “huh actually let’s try that FDR thing instead of this Nazi shit”?

Renting can be a good option, especially when you consider the way equity vs interest are structured in the first few years of a mortgage. It’s 99% interest at first, and then it slowly inverts year-over-year, which sure feels like renting my house from the bank for the first ten years… but I can’t call up the bank and make them fix my electrical, plumbing, or appliances.

It would be nice to see a ban on renters snapping up existing properties, and a limit on how long single family newly constructed homes can be kept as rental properties.

Safe space? I’m an OG internet troll. You suck at this.

Not really. I don’t engage with maga edgelords.

Every year, take the 500 wealthiest people and…

It’s a long series of mistakes. Not finishing off the Confederacy, not putting Nixon in prison for Watergate and sabotaging peace talks with the Vietcong, not putting Reagan in prison for sabotaging negotiations during the Iran Hostage Crisis. They’ve been crooks for a century and there’s only one solution.

I just don’t see why they had to make X Men woke? Why does everything have to be about a persecuted minority group finding its standing in a society that fears it?

(tee hee)

And also Instagram and whatever other Zuck products are in your life. I’m happy they wasted so many billions of dollars setting of virtual Mii meetings lmao…

Nobody cares. Go back to 4chan.

It’s depressing because too many people have distanced themselves. You were given the gift of self governance and you have a sacred duty to your fellow citizens to engage with democracy to ensure everyone’s rights are protected. Nobody cares if you post political memes, but if you don’t show up to vote once every two years to keep fascists out of power? That’s unacceptable.

What didn’t you like about Doom Eternal? That one was widely praised.

I’ve also been playing since the late 20th century. It took me years to realize how much more comfortable it was to play with the strap shortened and the neck pointed up a little so the pickups sit around midriff level. (This was crystallized by playing a classical guitar for the first time.) Do people find a low-slung guitar comfortable to play or are hundreds of professional guitarists doing it because it looks cool? No wonder people complain about bar chords!

Japan is honorary Western.

(So is Korea.)