I’m a cis Canadian and I’m terrified for everyone in the US. Even the ignorant masses who viewed for him. Project 2025 is going to dismantle American democracy, and with a stuffed supreme court, there are no remaining impediments to reverse this for a generation, until it’s too entrenched to change. If the USA lasts that long.

Literally wondering if an American civil war, or breaking apart into smaller countries, will be coming.

Longer term, terrified what this will mean for anthropogenic climate change and the world my children will inherit. (A climate-science denier is going to be the PM of Canada this time next year, too, and many are already provincial premiers.)

I didn’t think this was possible, tbh. I don’t understand how 51% of Americans can think the “grab-her-by-the-pussy” con artist is the best choice for president. He’s literally told them, repeatedly, what he’s going to do and they don’t care, don’t pay attention, or don’t believe him. I can’t even.

I’m going to go bury my head in the sand. No more news for me for the next long while. This isn’t good for my health.

Had a horrible wait on election day a few years ago; a hateful bigot was polling really close to the (effective, thoughtful, visible-minority) incumbent leading up to the election, and people turned up in droves. Broke records for number of votes cast in a municipal election.

But waiting in line 3+ hours to vote, with 2 preschool kiddos with us? Never again. Never. Again.

Early voting, every time. It’s the way.

Mood.

Very well summarized.

Project 2025 includes a detailed plan about how to dismantle the entire Federal government and replace thousands of government managers with alt-right extremists.

Project 2025 matches most of his campaign promises and is written largely by former Trump administration staffers.

The Overton Window has shifted to the right.

I’m sick of the regressive values of conservatism.

Mood.

I’m not going to pay $45 for any game. If I’d known about the “never on sale, price only goes up” model they were using, I might have bought it back when it was $20, but I’ll just never play it now and I’m okay with that. There are literally hundreds of amazing games I already own to play, and if I had 100+ hours to sink into a game like this (I don’t, post-kiddos—for now, anyway), then I’d strike the earth for some Dwarf Fortress !!!FUN!!!, which I know I’ll enjoy.

Or maybe finally get around to beating Baldur’s Gate 1… (I never made it past the early game… BG3 I’ll get to in the 2040s at this rate, ha ha!)

Aside from people who just want to play football/CoD/D4/whatever multilayer game, I don’t understand why anyone pays full price for games. I’m glad they do, mind, since they’re subsidizing the development costs mean games get made, and I get amazing games for cheap.

As a recent example, I nabbed MH Rise for cheap recently, and bounced off it. I might try again later, but it didn’t grab me. So glad I didn’t pay more than $15 CAD for it!

Published Oct 16, 2024

(In case anyone else was confused by the timing of this.)

The ultra-wealthy are terrified of reprisal from Trump. And they control the media (Bezos/WP) and social media (Zuck).

Democracy in America may fail next week. Terrifying to watch.

Meanwhile, Steam is raking it in by continuing to offer a better product than piracy. The Steam Deck is making that even more true; it’s so much more convenient to have games in the Steam library than try to keep a repack updated with new patches/content.

Right, but pirating Disney-owned IP is more moral than paying for it. Disney is the number 1 company in the world for lobbying for copyright over-reach. Every dollar that goes to Disney pays for lobbyists who will continue to push for life-of-author + 90+ years, because life-of-author plus 70 years just isn’t enough time to control our shared cultural heritage.

Similarly for Nintendo and software piracy.

Paying for Disney/Nintendo media is immoral.

Putting 2S at the front is part of Truth and Reconciliation, recognizing the intersectionality of being Indigenous and two-spirit and the importance of including Indigenous Knowledge across all systems of power.

With all due respect, decrying their inclusion is racist and continues the perpetuation of colonialist systems of oppression.

I say this coming from a position of immense privilege, as a white, cis male from fairly wealthy and educated non-immigrant parents.

Absolutely. STV is the dream system. Proportional representation but with fully local representatives.

My favourite feature is that it holds politicians directly accountable to their constituents. If you don’t know much about politics, you can just vote by party, like regular ranked ballot. But if you know more, you can rank individual party members against each other in the same party. There are no “safe” seats party insiders can hold to assure being elected, keeping everyone accountable.

MMP either has party lists (and its potential for corruption from seeking higher list rank from the party), or systematically over-represents areas with more fractured political views. MMP also can lead to more fracturing of parties, since you only need a very small percentage of votes to get 1 seat, instead of 20%+ (locally) to qualify for a seat in STV. We don’t need single-issue fringe parties holding the deciding vote(s) to get to a majority coalition government able to force a snap election at any time!

ikr? And they re-elected him!

If you’d read the article, you’d know that the author isn’t suggesting that.

Nothing, as far as I can tell, but political opponents have been running attack ads and blaming him for everything that’s gone wrong in the local (and global, for that matter) economy for the last decade.

I think he did amazingly well in the Trump presidency threading the needle of not giving in to Trump but also not antagonizing him, so Canada had limited personal vendettas and attacks from Trump.

He’s very articulate and careful with his words, and his pauses to think carefully about wording are seen as a lack of confidence. And, granted, it does make him a less inspiring/exciting/dynamic speaker.

Contrast that with Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Cons, who’s not at all worried about offending minorities and is constantly telling people how Trudeau has ruined everything, is ruining everything, and will ruin everything, for exemple by letting in immigrants, allowing schools to support trans kids (provincially controlled, not in Trudeau’s jurisdiction), and for long medical waiting times (also provincial), etc. Literally everything.

ikr? By buying online, it’s saving them money on staffing, and they want to charge for it? Bullshit.

If anything, they should raise prices and give a discount for buying online to cut down on box-office staffing needs. Customers prefer discounts to fees; everyone knows that. And it lines up with customer expectations that paying more to get more “service” (staff time) is reasonable.

What a stupid plot to alienate your customers.

I worry that age verification will backfire spectacularly; users can just tunnel their traffic through a VPN and then once on a VPN, they would also miss all harmful content blocking. Middle schoolers can figure out how to get around school web filters, and they, and everyone else, will figure their way around age verification just as easily.

Pierre Poilievre is going to do the same in Canada, too. He’s been threatening to defund the CBC (Canada BBC, basically). And our current PM, Trudeau, is reviled by so many Canadians that he’s unelectable, so the Cons are going to cruise to an easy majority next year.

It sucks knowing that the country is going to be in a worse place 5 years from now but being unable to do anything about it. At least the US has a 50-50 shot of coming out okay, if the polls are to be believed. (I’m more optimistic about the actual election results, personally, but very concerned about a coup/civil unrest of some sort.)

Attacks on the press are attacks on democracy, and the Canadian press is crumbling.

A friend of mine has (had?) most of the world records in Sayonara Wild Hearts; it’s not as relaxing if you’re going for high scores since you need to get close to collisions for bonus points, but if you just play to beat levels and chill, it’s great.