exactly. If we can’t practice state policy, how are we suddenly going to pass it federally? State policy gives it precendence and can be a test run for how to do it at a larger scale.

It’s losing, in a landslide

according to who?

I’m very confused on what’s happening here. Not that another establishment not-Democrat went full mask off, but of the odd timeline of this.

So this woman lost the primary months ago to Abdul El-Sayed. She stays quiet and/or pushes milquetoast support for the progressive Democrat for those months, even though it’s clear she’s full on AIPAC supported and has a conservative husband.

Then these last few days, well after a lot of Michigan already voted with early polls, she decides “fuck it we ball” and outwardly and directly decides to endorse the GOP candidate on the ballot? Did something happen behind the scenes? Did she have a mental break? The strategy makes no sense from a sabetour perspectives behind the scenes (she went mask off too early… 2 days too early) nor from a campaign perspective (she went mask off WAY too late for it to matter for the GOP candidate). This can’t have been strategic.

She’s sadly not nothing (yet). She still has 2 months in House and there can potentially be some last minute bills she screws over.

in 2 months, sure. She’s nothing and she can fade into history as yet another turncoat in America’s descent into fascism.

Indeed. I don’t know if that’s unique to CA, but it’s an odd phenomenon.

I think your system does work better. As long as judges aren’t going full Clarence Thomas, I generally shouldn’t know the day to day news of a judicial representative. The whole point is to take a non-partisan stance, after all.

Yeah I realized it this election. The primaries was actually very interesting in choices and candidates.

The actual midterm ballot was milquetoast in choices and recommendations. The props were way more interesting than seeing yet another “do I choose moderate democrat who will change npthojg or MAGA republican?”. The last 3 pages was just judges, and not even a choice: just " do you think this judge should retain their position? ".

It’s crazy more people don’t take primaries seriously

All that does involve effort that some may find exhausting, but you did ask what you could do.

Not really, it’s been done. But I’m in one of the bluest areas and it was like speaking to the choir. We had our ICE invasion: not Minneapolis bad but we know how violating it feels. Virtually no one I knows likes what’s happening.

So it didn’t feel like I did that much.

That’s corporate speak for “seen ✅”. I know people love Valve, but this is very standard playbook for how they operate in PR. Acknowledge the problem, say they are working on it, maybe in a year or 2 we get a nugget of an attempt to kinda poke at the problem.

Maybe Valve will prove me wrong here since this is ramping up quickly, but this also isn’t anything that will threaten their monopoly in short order. If I was GOG, I’d be taking a hard anti-AI stance between Valve’s timid response and Tim Sweeney’s full on cannonball and reinforce what they already do in curating for handcrafted games.

—–

And I don’t think the rest of their statement is promising. First part (the title) is irrelevant: you don’t need to gatekeep tools to gatekeep obvious slop copies of games already announced and upcoming on your platform. Let along a bare quality window. Valve did that gatekeeping for the first 60% of its life. Maybe we need that back.

Second part is borderline tonedeaf :

Noting that games were being cloned long before AI came on the scene—just at a much slower pace—Giardino suggested that developers can protect their work by first building a strong community around it, and then focusing on continual improvements: “Rather than relying on a single mechanic that someone can easily copy, you need to keep growing your game by adding features, personality, and creativity that stem from your own perspective.”

So, “yeah just market more and work harder”. The two expensive parts of making a game. From a billion dollar corporation. If any other AAA studio said this it’d be ratio’d to hell.

or do something about it

What can I dom? It’s kind of a trope with millennials at this point that memes are the form of “action” that represents our overall powerlessness to hold such people accountable, despite it being a scandal that redefines the meaning of “watershed moment”.

If diddling kids for decades isn’t enough to enrage a country into burning it down, what is?

1. Wanting to end the penny (still did it illegally)

2. This (pending legality)

How we describing “significantly” here?

Only way I stay sane in an age of insanity.

I don’t think he thinks he’ll go to prison at this point. He spent his entire life avoiding it.

Nah, screw you. I’m not the one constantly thinking about a dead dude. People can’t even admit who killed him.

If you’re so focused on team politics that you can’t even imagine “your side” killing someone you like, you’re a lost cause. People like that will not help us at all long term.

Its the celebrity effect. I even saw it with otherwise respected individuals like Neil DeGrasse Tyson. People fundamentally cannot understand that a person who is a subject matter expert in one are may be completely out of their element in another area. Add in social media letting then (intentionally or not) amplify their most mundane thoughts and boom. You’re ah “influencer” on any topic you choose to talk about.

Joe Rogan seemed different because he had the sense to bring other smart people on and let them talk. But that mask slipped off over the years.

You’re mostly right. But things do matter. No one wanted to go to war. And the consequences of going to war was so bad that Cheney didn’t even try to run for president. Literally no one in America wanted to be involved in Iran, and now Trump’s cult is melting down as their gas prices explode. This absolutely will affect midterms.

Suck that change for the people is slow, but it happens. Actions still have consequences.

Libertarianism makes sense in a culture where you feel markets will keep themselves honest.

Reality , of course, is disappointing and I was a stupid young man for believing that.

Not necessarily. They believed whatever their podcast host on Twitch said to believe, and they were paid to say “believe in Trump”. Or at best “both sides are the same it doesn’t matter”

Democrats meanwhile did nothing because they are extremely slow with adapting to how the youth consume news.

Wealth doesn’t trickle down, but losses do. Sadly, AAA studios collapsing will affect indies’ abilities to get funding , so expect to feel some pain there too.

This is already being felt these last few years as many gaming publishers shifted to funding AI.

Don’t worry we’ll museums for him. These days, instead of newspaper headlines and TV footage we’ll have wall of unhinged tweets and AI propaganda posted on the official POTUS feed