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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) has urged her Democratic colleagues to stop attacking the “oligarchy” on Thursday, arguing that the word did not resonate with most Americans

    Everyone believes that their politics are the politics of MOST Americans, but reality is more complicated than that. I’m not sure that anyone can say what most of the roughly 260 million voting age Americans think, about much of anything, really. Yes, polling can give us some insights, but polls are inherently flawed.

    The fact is, the American people are complex. They believe many things, and some of the things they believe contradict other things they believe; and just because an American thinks a certain way today, that doesn’t mean they’ll think that way tomorrow. Plus, we just have such a large and diverse populace, spread out across fifty states. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to point to any one American and say, “that person represents most Americans.”

    If I had to guess, I’d say that most Americans don’t give a rats ass about oligarchy or kings. If they could live their lives the way they wanted under an oligarchy or a king, they’d be fine with it. Kings, oligarchs, emperors, despots, who gives a shit, as long as the price of eggs doesn’t go up too much. I think what matters to most Americans isn’t semantic, philosophical or ideological, but material. I think most Americans would be perfectly content to live under a king, if under that king they were able to live a decent, middle class life.

    But, that’s just my guess. Again, it’s hard for anyone to say what most Americans want or think or believe.







  • People are products of their culture and the material conditions that they live under. So, we have two choices: we can either take a hands-off, or laissez-faire, approach and allow conditions to change organically and just accept any political or social changes that might come about, or we can take a more direct approach and try to change the conditions that people live under, and the culture, in such a way that will make something like the Trump movement much less likely to emerge. But, the second option probably won’t just happen, spontaneously or organically, it would probably require a fairly heavy handed, top down approach. I know many people are quite apprehensive about that, so that approach would likely be quite controversial.

    So, what’s it going to be? Let things just play out organically and see what happens, and accept that the outcome may or may not be desirable, or try to steer the course of US society more directly and deliberately?











  • Because the American upper classes feel it’s worth it for them to pay for a large, advanced military and surveillance state, but they don’t think it’s worth it for them to pay for “other people’s healthcare.” They’re not enlightened enough to recognize that we all benefit when we all contribute to the health of the nation. The same is true of education, housing, and other universal necessities. I hope that enlightenment will one day come to the United States, but it’s not looking good.


  • Why can’t you use the Deck for streaming?

    Oh, I do, and it works very well, overall. I’m just hoping that someone will release a device that does streaming even better. I would like a better screen (I have a regular LCD Deck, not the OLED), that’s 1080p with a 16:9 aspect ratio. I have a 16:9 monitor for the PC, and I would just prefer that the aspect ratio on the handheld screen matched my PC monitor, so I don’t have to fuss with that. I would also prefer a lighter device, with better controller layout. I think the sticks could be improved, I might need to replace one of mine after a few years because of drift. Also, I don’t like the Deck’s D-pad, and I don’t like where it’s positioned. These are relatively minor things, but I think they would make the experience even better.



  • If you want to (legally) play Nintendo games, obviously buy a Switch 2. You don’t have any other option. If Nintendo games aren’t that important to you, and/or if you already have a large Steam library, a Steam Deck is a great option.

    Personally, I love my Steam Deck, but I’m looking forward to a Steam Deck 2, or maybe a third party handheld, running SteamOS, that has a nice, big, 1080p screen, better controls, and better battery life. More power would be nice, but not if it comes with a louder fan and poor battery life. Honestly, I’d even be ok if the device was focused on local streaming, from my PC.