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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • agegamon@beehaw.orgto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneRule
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    2 months ago

    “Too broke to play PC” is a vanishing argument IMO. People have been saying that forever, to be fair, but given how bad Xbox and Playstation have gotten I don’t anyone who’s actually into gaming purchasing a new one today. Maybe used, that might make sense if it was really cheap.

    A budget gaming PC can check out at slightly over 600 now. PcPartPicker has two recommended builds priced right at 600, though honestly there might be even cheaper ways to arrive at that level of perfromance. Compared to 300-400 for the less garbage Xbox, and there’s not much argument to lock someone into the xbox’s ecosystem vs something you can upgrade for much less.

    Now I think it’s a different matter if it’s a hand-me-down or given for free. There’s no reason not to do that.

    I gave my last console away and got a friend of mine into gaming, then helped them build a decent PC when they actually wanted something new.


  • Advertising campaigns that straight up lie (“now you’re cooking with gas” and that kind of shit) don’t help. Nor do the substantial natural gas subsidies that some states offer ng suppliers.

    Then again, it’s only been very recent that electric induction ranges in north americ have been offered at sane price points. Up until recently it wasn’t easy to find an induction range for under $1k, whereas now it’s a bit more realistic.

    People also get unreasonably attached to their cheapo $25 nonstick (even if it was marked up to $200 with some bougie brand name) and will refuse to ditch it for actual quality cookware when they find out that their $25 pan isn’t induction compatible.





  • Smith said he purchased the Sun with his own funding, independent of Sinclair. The Sun (1/15/24) advertised the purchase as “the first time in nearly four decades that the Sun will be in the hands of a local owner.”

    Let’s see how many days his alleged “private ownership” of the Sun takes to turn them into another regressive media turdfactory.

    Remember in 2018 when sinclair forced hundreds of TV broadcasters to air pro-trump fake news bullshit? The same incident mentioned in Fair’s article above? Yeah. YEAH. That feels like just a little flex in hindsight.

    I’m guessing less than 60 days personally.



  • I agree that pi-hole is an option here, but yeah, the reality is that most daily users don’t even know what it is. At least, not yet.

    Adblock Plus and it’s betters became ubiquitous in large part because they were so incredibly easy to install. As easy as gramma accidentally installing yet another yahoo toolbar on accident. Like, too easy.

    Pi-Hole isn’t hard to install, and there are some fantastic guides to help users get it running with essentially zero prior knowledge. But in my opinion, I think until it gets closer to “push-button” easiness, pi-hole and systems like it will really be limited to the <5% of users motivated enough to go through the steps, who aren’t mortified of logging into their router’s admin page. I want us to get there faster, and we’re a hell of a lot closer than 10 or even 5 years ago. But we’re not quite there yet.

    Edit-typo


  • I won’t give the mouthpeices much credit. But be careful in underestimating them. Self-delusion is deep and complex, and that’s frightening enoguh. Even more frightening though, is that if you go searching deep enough in conservative donors networks, conservativeism always winds it’s way back to members of the 1% seeking unchecked power.

    Conservative and religious institutional donors do think ahead, and they are a special breed of cruel, ruthless, and smart. Yes, most of the conservative bloc is dickwaving while they push the “give money now” button of reaction hate politics. It’s pretty obvious that on the surface there’s nothing particularly thoughtful going on there.

    But the underlying strategy is as fascinating as frightening. There is a LOT of effort that goes in behind the scenes to figure out how to manipulate literally every aspect of people in society. These big donors typically have highly lucratice connections, often very direct ones, to big corps. Some of the most insidious manipulation that goes on in our society today is the result of capitalist businesses finding ways to perpetually squeeze us harder for a dollar. It’s no coincidence when we see the same tactics being used in politics.

    So yeah. I don’t entirely disagree with you but progressives consistently get our asses handed to us when we underestimate anything.





  • Literally only the best strategies here! I mean lets recap:

    • Threaten to buy company then double down and agree in writing as a bullying tactic: check
    • Roll a nat 1 on your intimidation check: check
    • Be forced to follow through when called out on being mentally an 8 yo by the feds: check
    • Fire critical employees, like basically all of them: check
    • Yoink verification away from public news orgs: check
    • Let anyone pay to be “legit,” even if they’re parodying you: check
    • Rename twitter to the stupidest thing imagined since head-on (apply directly to the forehead): check
    • Gut content moderation policies but also stop enforcing regardless: check
    • Post own hate content and racism to the platform: check
    • “Accidentally” run ads next to hate content: check
    • Be told your sign sucks and to take it down by city: check (lol)
    • Become a living embodiment of “big yikes” energy while telling aforementioned advertisers to “go fuck yourselves” on live TV: check
    • Hallucinate about making x into a libertarian wechat alternative: check
    • Tank the value of the company while blaming literally anyone else for your failures: mission in progress, #1 priority

    10/10 solid buy, gonna grab some long calls rn. The koch boys and rupert murderjock must be holding back a tsunami of jealousy by now 🤣


  • Yes, exactly. The short term solution requires that people recognize the greater evil in the room and defend what little progress we’ve made. We can’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Our first part the post voting system is horrible, but until we can build up enough progressive movement to update it to a better system, priority 1 is exactly what you said.

    Choosing not to vote for Democrats because they’re not perfect is choosing to step back and give republicans a free ticket to burn all of our progress to the ground. It’s naïve to think otherwise.

    And honestly, that naïveté is holding us back from actually addressing issues like us aid to israel. Enoguh splintering among progressives will by default give control back to republican leaders who would happily sit back and watch palestinians die while lying about it and blaming it on anything anyone else other than themselves.