Yeah it’s crazy to me how quickly they dropped price controls as a talking point as soon as the corporate media was against it. That could have easily been their populist position to counter Trump’s claims that getting rid of illegal immigrants would drive prices down.

The problem I’ve found is that liberals will say that “Now is not the right time” all the time and there never ends up being a right time to talk about it. It feels like a cycle of right before the election so can’t talk about, right after the election so can’t talk about since they haven’t had time to address it, then the midterms are coming up so can’t talk about it, then right after the midterms they don’t have the power to address it anymore so can’t talk about it, then the presidential election is coming back up again so can’t talk about it. There’s also the fact that more people pay attention during election seasons so talking about it then allows you to reach the most people. And at the end of the day all it would take to get these people on your side would be to oppose the genocide. It would have some impact but I would say the majority of voters who care about Israel enough to change their vote based on it were probably already voting Trump with how pro Israel he is, so you would be gaining many more voters than you lose.

A lot of people are saying they’re not really competition judging off sale numbers but I’d say they are, just PC handhelds aren’t that big of competition. They still are taking away sales as I doubt people with a steam deck are also gonna own a switch or switch 2 unless they already had one before the steam deck came out or are well enough off to afford both and don’t want to deal with emulating. I definitely get Lemmy and myself are a biased audience but I think arguing they’re not competition at all is wrong, they’re just not very big competition compared to Nintendo.

I wouldn’t say much worse performance, really depends on the game you’re trying to run. Based on what I’ve seen online ToTK is maybe slightly worse depending on the place you’re at while a lot of other games match or even exceed switch 1 performance. Combine that with all the dumb shit Nintendo is doing around upgrade packs and making you pay to get better performance and I’d rather go with the free option, since it’s gonna keep being worked on and get better and better. As for Switch 2 games that definitely might be a bit more rough at first but all we can really do with those is speculate until the console is out. Might take a bit for emulation to become available readily for those games but again with all the dumb things Nintendo is doing right now I’d rather wait then reward them for it. Plus by then there might be a new Steam Deck Gen or more PC handhelds from other companies that can compete with the Switch 2.

I mean with emulation you can play a lot of Switch games on the steam deck so that does let you get around the closed ecosystem.

I feel like it’s a mix of that combined with a similar situation to the cola wars. Everyone has their favorite and wants to talk about it with others while also saying the other brands are bad.

I generally agree but I think you have to acknowledge if you got rid of ads then best case scenario YouTube either limits more features like uploading or HD video behind paying or worst case scenario the platform collapses and there is nothing to replace it. For the longest time they weren’t profitable and it wasn’t until they pushed hard with ads and premium that they started to be profitable. So as much as I wish we could get rid of ads unless you wanna accept moving back technologically and losing a bunch of these online services people rely on I think ads are a needed evil for the time being. Especially when a lot of services already have ways to pay to get around ads. As at the end of the day if you don’t have ads you’re gonna have a subscription you have to pay for every major website you wanna use as they have to make money some way.

I mean I think if anything that makes it worse and easier for billionaires to control the narrative as now politicians can’t campaign for themselves which means in practice most people are gonna hear about politicians from billionaire owned media. Especially for more worker centered causes which right now tend to be championed by door knocking and more grass roots campaigning. I personally think just abolishing PACs and limiting campaign donations would be enough to make it so politicians have to actually appeal and listen to the people rather then the rich. Could also combine this with a government provider donation that you can choose whichever candidate you want to receive it to help people without the means to donate to be appealed to as well. But I feel like the moment you outlaw campaigning then how do you advocate for ballot measures you like at the state level of you can’t go out and door knock or hold rallies for it? As much as the one TV channel style thing would be an ideal idea it wouldn’t really work in reality as we already have a channel for that, C-Span, which covers government related things which no one really watches. You have to meet people where they are, and I think trying to stop that is a bad idea for getting people involved in the political process which is something we need more of.

As much as I’d be down with this I don’t see it happening considering no one wants to pay for the services they use that are ad supported. For example everyone always seems to shit on YouTube premium but that is a currently existing way to get rid of ads on the service. Every time there’s an option between ad supported and ad free but paid people tend to just pick ad free. So while I think outlawing ads would be good at least with the current state of the world it would only be a net negative, killing off a bunch of small and big websites that rely on ads.

What do you mean by campaigning? Do you mean no political ads or PACs then yeah definitely agree. But if you mean all forms of campaigning then how are politicians supposed to communicate who they are and why you should vote for them to the people? And outside of politicians if political campaigning is not allowed would that also not allow grass roots movements who door knock or hold rallys about specific issues? Political campaigning is all of those things, I definitely agree we need to get big money out of it but I don’t think it should be gotten rid of all together.

I mean at least from what I’ve seen of it so far DSA is a fairly good choice, as I think for a party to be really progressive and represent the working class people it needs to be run democratically with party members actually having a voice and vote on what the party does. Which so far most other parties tend to follow the normal party strategy with party leadership and candidates making choices about what policies they want which just seems like a path to another Democratic party down the line that is disconnected from the people.

I think if anything though fragmentation isn’t really the problem with breaking past local wins. I think it’s more that the higher up you get the more corporate money starts to have a large impact and the harder and more support you need to run a grass roots campaign. The higher up you get the harder it becomes to reach out directly to voters through door knocking and events and the more advertisements and mass media campaigns tend to have influence which is where corporate money thrives. I think the way around this outside of campaign finance reform is building up that local support so you can have those local candidates that have already done outreach directly with their local constituents provide support and endorsement towards electing people at higher levels.

We’ve been doing pretty good at that in Oregon in the Portland area especially, we got a fair few DSA people elected to the city council and to the state house in the last election. Although I doubt that will ever really convert the Dems into an actual progressive party, it’s a lot more likely that the Democratic party dies with the rise of new progressive candidates and new progressive parties winning.

Honestly out of all those switches email is the one I’ve always struggled with. I feel like that one would take a ton of effort to switch over my accounts on various things to a new email. If anyone has any advice or ways to make that easier I’d love that as otherwise I’m still stuck with Gmail.

I mean I would argue the whole system of having to show up in person to a place to vote on a non-holiday day and wait in a long line is in of itself a way to stop poorer people from voting. I’ve lived in a state with only mail in voting for my whole life and as result we have some of the highest voter turn out. It makes sense the Republicans want to do everything they can to to alter that as the harder they make it for poorer people to vote the better their odds of winning are.

I mean at a certain point legality doesn’t matter if they black bag you and deport you before you can even have a trial. Which clearly seems to be their goal by the fact that they move the detainees away from where they apprehend them to avoid the court there being able to have jurisdiction. As well as with the large numbers of people who were put on planes without any kind of trial or process where they can prove they’re there legally. With this becoming the norm at a certain point your only option really is to fight back and resist arrest or be deported without due process.

They do that cause Republicans win the less people are able to vote. When you disenfranchise people who don’t have the time or care to deal with getting an ID you are left with either richer people or older people who both tend to vote Republican. So of course they’re gonna require ID to vote and make it as hard as possible for working people to get a valid ID for voting.

Yeah they aren’t good but also the main reason they ramped up their attacks against shipping in the region was in response to the US support of Israel after October 7th. I mean most of these groups in the region aren’t good but they get supported by the people as they’re seen as a strong opposition to the genocidal regime of Israel and America who are trying to kill them, displace them, and take their land. Sure they also get backed by Iran but without popular support in the region they wouldn’t have anywhere near as much reach and power as they do now.

As someone who’s 23 and grew up with smartphones and all of that as they were starting to become popular I feel like I have some takes on a lot of the opinions I’ve seen on the different sides of issues like this. I lean in general towards giving your kid a phone once they’re old enough to want to be able to talk with friends and do things on their own afterschool but having some non-intrusive ways to keep an eye on what they’re doing with it until sometime when they’re a teenager. That just seems like the best way to not ostracize them from other kids while still making sure they’re being safe online. Even though in general things worked out fine for me with my parents letting me have my own laptop and iPod touch and eventually iPhone from a pretty young age without really watching what I did on them I definitely see a lot of times that I could have ended up being taken advantage of online if things had been slightly different. And the reason I say non-intrusive ways to keep track of what your kid is doing is because I knew kids who did have like parental restrictions on their phones and all of them knew ways to bypass them and do what they wanted to do anyways. So the only way you’re gonna successfully keep an eye on them is if they don’t know you are and you only interfere if it’s a genuine safety problem, and even then you make sure to not punish them for it as that will make them start hiding things from you actively, you treat it as a learning moment and help them understand why what they were doing wasn’t safe. I’m still very much figuring out what my exact views on this are but I think leaning too far in either direction of not letting them have social media or a smartphone at all even when they’re starting to reach middle school or letting them have unrestricted access to social media and a phone both have their problems and you have to find a good balance in the middle.

As someone who uses USPS to deliver mail or packages whenever I need to do that it definitely isn’t universally agreed on. It has reasonable prices compared to the other ones and I’ve never had issues with packages taking too long or getting lost.

I would also make an argument that the limited technology at the time led to different kinds of games versus what we see now. Sure there’s the obvious things like internet enabled games and being able to get updates but I think even the less thought about things like restrictions on RAM and the power of computers led to restrictions on what you could do which led to specific types of games which aren’t made that way anymore because they don’t have to work around those restrictions. And while in a lot of cases those restrictions going away has allowed for better mechanics and gameplay it also still makes the games different which to people who were used to and liked those games will feel not as good anymore.