If wielding power in our “democracy” is so complicated that we must exclude non-experts isn’t that an indictment of our democracy? What is it about the legislative and executive process that people are ignorant of?

While I am skeptical of the celebrity as politician trend which has been prominent over the last few decades; especially on the right. I don’t think lack of experience is the problem with the trend.

Put aside what you think about Trump’s political project for a moment. He was effective at giving conservatives what they wanted. Tax cuts and Supreme Court seats. Despite having zero legislative and executive experience. You could say the same thing about Reagan and perhaps Schwarzenegger.

I agree, expecting a strongman to come in and save us from all our political issues is problematic. We shouldn’t recreate feudalism. We need to learn to organize ourselves into a base of democratic power that we can wield towards our broad economic interests.

But at the same time our media apparatus runs on spectacle, it takes someone with the charisma of John Stewart to be taken seriously by mainstream power brokers. Perhaps he could breakthrough the spectacle and kickstart a new progressive era that could enable those democratic ends.

Because the alternative to charisma for gaining political legitimacy is going through the political system. And the longer you’re in that system the more time that system has to influence you towards ends that want to stop progress. Just look at Jamal Bowman and John Fetterman.

It’s a bad enough idea we don’t need anymore for the next few centuries.

They could potentially release source only with no art assets. Then you wouldn’t be able to compile the game without either owning the game or pirating the assets elsewhere. But it would allow community members to update the game when it breaks or to add new features. Similar to the Mario 64 decompile.

While all this would be great for consumers it would probably take legislation to get publishers on board with something like this. Publishers have a financial incentive to let the games languish then force you to pay to get a “remastered” version.

The reason why subsidies in the US lead to corruption and subsidies in China lead to innovation has nothing to do with how long the industries have been subsidized.

The US subsidizes industries to bailout corporate executives that made bad decisions.

China subsidizes workers who innovate towards ends that we know we need to be working towards as a species. Such as building electric vehicles to address climate change.

Even if the economy worked how you’re suggesting addressing climate change would be a worthy investment. It’s an end that has been obvious that we should be investing in for decades. The US refuses to do it because it would take power out of the hands of the corporate executives who they are busy bailing out.

Well, where do you think the money for subsidies comes from? Taxes.

This is logically incoherent. Money doesn’t exist in nature my dude.

Take out a physical dollar and look at it… what does it say on it? If you do this you will find it says it’s a note from the federal reserve.

Every US dollar in existence was originally spent into the economy by the federal reserve which is managed by the US government. That is a matter of fact. To suggest money comes from taxes is incoherent. Taxes are how the government destroys money not how it creates money.

Now maybe to control inflation we should take money out of the economy through taxes. Especially in places where money is being mismanaged… if we do, the aforementioned corporate executives seem to be at the top of the list of places where large amounts of money is being mismanaged. Given that in the context of the automotive industry China is managing their wealth better than the US.

Yeah, I’m not sure I agree that YouTube wants their platform to shrink. Even if you don’t watch ads you are still giving them your data which they can monetize.

Personally I would be willing to pay for YouTube premium but not under the current terms. 1. If I’m paying for the service they should no longer collect and sell my data. 2. Allow me to have a YouTube-only account not connected to other Google services and 3. The current pricing is a bit high.

They can offer these terms or I’ll continue to use them logged out with Adblock. Or they can continue to enshitify and eventually their platform will start to shrink which will make the data they sell to advertisers less valuable.

TLDW: Landlords are colluding to fix pricing with algorithms. The FBI is actually doing something good for once and breaking them up.

I don’t remember them saying that specifically. But we did spend a lot of time on supply and demand curves which heavily implies that.

To be fair to my econ101 class for a moment when I took that class it was during the Obama years and that was a bit before progressivism made the come back it has now. A lot of people were still Fukuyamaists.

I think economics is a pretty complicated subject that is deeply intersecting with ideology. It maybe impossible fully to disentangle how the economy works with how it should work. To expect kids just out of high school to critically examine all the nuances of a field beyond the assumptions they grew up with, while simultaneously learning the basics of that field is a pretty tall order. And if the experts at the time are moving away from that way of thinking anyway, why bother?

Of course in retrospect they probably should have bothered. But that’s just how the flow of history has to work I guess.

Edit: There’s some nuance and detail I could probably add to that conclusion. But I’m running out of steam for tonight.

I learned this in my Econ101 class; if you impose rent control you will disinsintivize investment into building homes exacerbating the problem of housing supply. Some one in my class literally asked why rent control was common in places like NY and my Econ teacher dodged the question. Econ101 in the US is basically neoliberal indoctrination.

The easiest response to the textbook is to point out that the current problem isn’t supply. In the US we have 6 houses for every homeless person. We have plenty of housing stock. The problem monopoly power over housing.

Beyond that I believe that housing investment should be managed cooperatively; rather than by the profit incentive.

I don’t know of any specific laws against them enshitifying adblockers. But there are things like the GDPR and in the EU big tech corporations are under constant scrutiny by regulators. Making them a lot less likely to do these kinds of shitty things in general. I assume that’s why she/he’s asking. Perhaps pressure from regulators has caused them to reframe from engaging in this same behavior in the EU? Out of caution?

Edit: I use the modified version of the Youtube app on iOS (uYou) and the skipping behavior happened to me and it reminded me to respond to your comment. I’m pretty sure they’re breaking adblockers on purpose.

I assume he’s asking because the EU has a bunch of laws that protects users from this kind of shitty behavior. When I went to the EU many of the apps I use became less shitty.

I’ve done it on my WiiU/3DSes as well. I’ll message my friend with a 3DS to do it later tonight as well.

Is there anything else I/others can do to help with preservation on my/their systems before the Nintendo network goes down?

I have HP reverb G2. It has seemed to work fine with everything I’ve thrown at it. Though I’m not sure about the cheaper devices. I probably wouldn’t recommend spending that much on a WMR headset at this point.

But, WMR devices can be found for $75-$150 dollars on eBay. I don’t recommend them if you’re serious about VR. But if you just want a cheap entry point, they work.

It seems like the open source drivers for windows mixed reality devices are maturing. So maybe we won’t have to rely on Microsoft by the time they drop support.

I bought a quest 2 a few years ago. I searched for hours and hours to try and get it to work with no FB account. Best I found was that you can sideload APKs to it… with a Facebook account.

Eventually broke down and temporarily made a Facebook account to at least try it. Was pretty unimpressed with the content which was meager in comparison to PCVR. Ended up returning it and deleting Facebook account.

In my opinion the experience is not worth making a Facebook account for even if the headset was free.

If you want to get into VR on the cheap get a windows mixed reality headset off eBay. Most of them aren’t as good of a headset as the quest 2. But it will probably be comparable if you’re streaming most of your content from PC anyway. And you’ll avoid Facebook’s shit.

Be forewarned though windows mixed reality headsets don’t yet work on windows LTSC or Linux :(. (Though maybe windows 11 LTSC later this year?) So you’ll have to use the garbage version of windows to use it.

They need to move to a P2P model of hosting. Radicle is an open source P2P GitHub replacement. Ideally all open-source development would move to Radicle or a similarly P2P hosted model. If it were made easy enough I would set up an instance to help with hosting on my NAS. These corporations should have no right (or ability) to take down projects that the community has funded and built.

Not a fan of crypto-currencies generally but I would also set up recurring donations to any legit fork of Yuzu that will accept donation via Monero. Fuck these corporations.

This may surprise you but Nintendo no think Industrial Revolution good for humanity.

Facebook has been enshitifying for years and the stock has gone to the moon.

A lot of what enshitification is, is fucking the users to increase shareholder value.

In Tennessee there is TennCare but it’s hard to get on to it now.

It’s like walking out of a doctor’s office without thousands of dollars in debt… I assume.

Peter Zeihan is full of shit. He’s been predicting China will collapse in a decade for well over a decade now. Here’s a video explaining some of the basic mistakes he makes in his analysis.