Retro game prices have been skyrocketing too. Everything’s kinda fucked.

There’s already [email protected]

I’ve had my Galaxy S9+ for roughly eight years now. The battery doesn’t hold much charge, and the screen has this known bug where it stays completely black unless I do this funny workaround by activating Always On Display first and only then turning the screen on.

But everything on the market now comes with some catch, I really don’t want to give up that SD slot. And I’m unemployed and prices are fucked. So I’ll ride this thing out until it fully dies - which feels like it may happen any day now, honestly…

South Park has had some really good moments. The last season was especially fantastic.

But South Park has also had many equally terrible moments. They’ve been pretty awful on trans issues. The whole PC Principal arc really said a lot about who Matt and Trey are as people. And even if they eventually walked it back, the fact that they tried to deny climate change has to be brought up in conversations like this.

For the most part, I’d say the show has been at its best when it’s kids getting into hijinks and at its worst when Matt and Trey use the show as their mouthpiece.

Play niche indie/retro multiplayer games, join a community small and tight-knit enough that everybody knows everybody, so you can easily become a regular in the scene.

They already discontinued the vending machines because of this.

Some films are made for turning your brain off and some films are made for turning it on. The important thing is whether the filmmaker succeded in what they were aiming to do.

Why do you keep using the word ‘we’ if you only meant to talk about yourself?

I would say truly good word usage should go unnoticed. If the fact that you’re using a lot of big words sticks out, that means you’re using too many.

Neopets
GameFAQs
Various forums
IRC
Digg
Reddit
Twitch
Fediverse (fgc.network, kbin.social, fedia.io)

You might be right about the relative impact of AI alone, but there are like a dozen different problems threatening the job market all at once. Added up, I do think we are heading towards a future where we have to start rethinking how our society handles employment.

A world where robots do most of the hard work for us ought to be a utopia, but as you say, capitalism uses unemployment as a threat. If you can’t get a job, you starve and die. That has to change in a world where we’ll have far more people than jobs.

And I don’t think it’s as simple as just having us all work less hours - every technological advancement that was once said would lead to shorter working hours instead only ever led to those at the top pocketing the surplus labor.

Anime is a medium, not a genre. It’s a medium that’s very prone to Sturgeon’s Law, but there’s so much more out there than just the tropey stuff. No matter what your tastes are I guarantee you can find something you’ll like somewhere.

But it’s hard to really know for sure what you’ll like without knowing more about your tastes. If I have to squint real hard to compare it to Cowboy Bebop, it does share some themes in having a ragtag group of misfits that slowly becomes a found family, and it starts off lighthearted before slowly transitioning into more serious character-driven drama.

I’m beginning to suspect this thread is just you having a personal grudge and vagueposting about it.

I’d love to see it being used by enemies so they’re challenging without cheating, though.

This is a different sort of problem that’s outside the scope of generative AI. Making a computer opponent that can kick a human player’s ass is technology we’ve had since Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997.

The problem isn’t actually making a computer that’s challenging, that’s been solved. The problem is that it won’t be any fun for the human if the computer is actually allowed to go all out, if Kasparov couldn’t win in 97 then you sure as hell aren’t winning today. But it also won’t be any fun if you nerf it too badly, low level chess bots are weird. The sweet spot isn’t just a matter of difficulty either, the nearly unsolveable part is getting it to play in a way that feels like a realistic human opponent.

And that’s just from a turn-based game, kinda the closest thing to a level playing field humans were ever gonna get. For any game played in real time, the computer is able to treat it like it’s being played at 60 turns per second. Is it “cheating” for the computer to have perfect reflexes, but otherwise still be following the rules of the game perfectly? How would you even try to take this away from the computer to make it see games the way humans do?

Generative AI doesn’t have any kind of solution for any of this. ChatGPT famously can’t play chess, at all. It’s a different type of AI that really can’t have any useful application here.

You’ll never convince diehard MAGA true believers. But it’s worth recognizing that that’s not all Trump voters, it’s not even the majority of them. Swing voters can always swing back the other way.

You can really only talk to those who are on the fence and willing to listen. If they’re not willing to listen, don’t waste your breath.

For those who are willing to listen, start with why they voted for Trump to begin. Many voters in this country were struggling to make ends meet and didn’t feel like the Biden administration was doing enough for them, so they were desperate for change. Trump preyed on that desperation, told them that it’s all immigrants’ fault, it’s trans people’s fault, it’s woke’s fault, it’s whatever scapegoat he blames next’s fault, so if you vote for him he’ll own the libs to Make America Great Again. A lot of people voted for him because they felt unheard by establishment politicians and were desperate enough to believe a con man who sounded like the only person in the room actually speaking to their fears.

If they are willing to have the conversation, get to the root of those fears. Ask if Trump has actually made their lives better. Attempt to deprogram anything directed to the scapegoats he blames it on. Try to pivot to Democratic policies that actually can help in tangible ways.

But again, I cannot stress this enough, this can only get through to people who are open to listening in the first place. If you try to preach at people who are not, they will dig their heels in deeper. Pick your battles carefully, figure out who is worth talking to.

I would prefer to have it come from someone who… is not Andrew Yang.

Mamdani won by focusing his campaign on the most pressing issue to voters today: affordability. The cost of living keeps going up, wages stay the same, and everybody’s scared and frustrated looking for someone to promise they can do something about it. And he had answers.

In increasingly uncertain times, we can win voters over by appealing to their fears and frustrations and promising change that will directly address their needs. This is, in a way, how Trump won. He told voters, “I know you’re upset and scared in a changing world. Well it’s the immigrants’ fault, it’s trans people’s fault, it’s whatever target I tell you to hate next’s fault, and when I own the libs, I’ll bring the price of eggs down.”

Of course you and I both know Trump was full of shit. But as long it sounded like he was addressing their fears, the most frightened people struggling to make ends meet latched onto whatever false hope he gave them. And I believe we can win people back by speaking to those same fears, but this time we offer real solutions.

However, there is a very important catch. Do not ever say the word ‘socialism’. The legacy of McCarthyism has ensured that that word is still political suicide on the national stage today. You can get away with it in a city as deeply blue as NYC, but not in a general election.

But it’s really only the word that’s the problem, not the ideas behind it. People really are fed up with capitalism, they just don’t know that that’s really what they’re fed up with. And as long as you avoid the word, I think you’d be surprised what you can get people to agree with.

Look at Obama in 2008. He ran his campaign on universal healthcare as his main issue, knowing that healthcare in America is a major problem voters wanted addressed. Detractors called it socialized medicine, but as long as he never said that word himself, voters just understood that he was offering change and they wanted to try change. They were fed up enough with American healthcare that red scare tactics didn’t stop them from considering change.

I believe a viable next step that could work in 2028 could be to campaign on universal basic income. The job market is becoming increasingly unstable, especially with the AI bubble. People fresh out of college can’t get jobs because everything that claims to be entry level wants three years of experience, and they can’t get that experience because they don’t have experience. We’re coming to a point where it’s time to rethink one of the fundamental flaws of capitalism, that everyone must work or else they starve and die, as this is about to break when too many people lose their jobs. But don’t use the c-word, don’t use the s-word, just talk about UBI as its own issue and I think people will warm up to the idea.

I think you vastly overestimate the education level of previous generations.

Yes, Idiocracy misses that education matters far more than genetics. And education is something that has steadily gotten better for each generation. We stand on the shoulders of giants with access to the combined knowledge of everyone that came before us.

Idiocracy is an entertaining fictional comedy, but any time someone tries to compare it to real life I want to smack them. IMO, the movie would’ve been improved if they’d chopped off the eugenicist intro and just said he’d been isekai’d into a world of idiots.

The movie portrays a world where everyone is stupid, no exceptions, but nearly all of them are well-meaning. President Comacho cares about doing the right thing, he just has no idea how to solve the problems the country is facing. But then when someone smarter comes along, Comacho at least understands that he can step aside and let Not Sure save the day.

The problems facing the real world come from people who are both intelligent and evil. Smart people at the top use propaganda to manipulate dumb people at the bottom. That’s nothing like Idiocracy, not even close.