I mean, this pope is still all about protecting priests who got behind small children.

The “funny” thing is that trump/musk/doge could have had SO many “easy wins”. Because… the US government is ridiculously bloated and inefficient. Even just “Development of Military Weapon X has been terminated due to being over budget and no longer fulfilling the requirements of the contract. Boeing or whatever the fuck has been instructed to terminate all R&D into Weapon X and to instead focus on continued maintenance and optimization of Weapon Y for the next N fiscal years”

Same with government oversight. SO many policies are basically built around covering their asses ten times over (cough cough Challenger cough). And while there are very good reasons to do that (again, see the fucking Challenger), there is also a lot of room to reevaluate that and make things kind of worse but a lot cheaper in a way that most of the actual employees would love.

Instead? It was just “let’s immediately gut everything while we decide if we want to just become a full president for life dictatorship”.

Its not even that.

It is throwing away your jacket because you don’t want to go out for lunch in the middle of the day. And then realizing you still need that jacket to get to and from work and having to buy a new one. And THEN buying lunch anyway because you are hungry.

A few articles have done a great job of documenting it but it boils down to the problem being the fundamental argument of WHY they are doing this. Officially their stance is to move fast, break things, and then repair what they actually needed. Except those repairs cost a LOT of time and money.

And… to add on to the brutally beaten metaphor: It also costs money to get rid ofy our old jacket because you can’t just throw it in the trash. You have to drive down to a good will to drop it off. Because government employees have PTO that needs to be paid out and so forth.

I always want to think the worst of bezos et al but:

If the plan was just to jack up prices they wouldn’t make this distinction.

Just trying to function under capitalism while providing for their family? Often both immediate and extended since many of our scholars and scientists are immigrants who came here for a higher wage to send money back home to their parents.

And mostly being increasingly annoyed at how almost all media attacks intellectuals and paints us as “out of touch” and “having no common sense”. All while acknowledging that the entire world is shifting authoritarian but not expecting the US to speedrun a decade or two of erosion of civil rights.

But hey, good on you for continuing to demonstrate just how ingrained anti-intellectualism is into the cultural zeitgeist. Because this shit has been going on for a lot longer than 24 years. Most people attribute it to reagan. But the end result is that basically everyone grew up on (national equivalents of) nickelodean sitcoms where the protagonist kid proves they are smarter than their teachers because they understood a pun or knew one tidbit of trivia.

Yeah. I have a lot of problems with Kamala The Cop. But she lost what might be the final election in American History. That takes a lot out of you

Assuming this is actually true:

trump was just angry that there was a meeting he wasn’t invited to. Which… he was, he just ignored it.

Which is still a lot better than Certain Other American Leftists who can’t even say “I condemn the horrors by the <blank> regime” because said regime identified as communist.

AOC has very much demonstrated over the past few years that she understands how to be a politician and not just a tankie firebrand.

So she would at least be able to answer that with something like “No. I actively condemn the human rights abuses by North Korea and <insert whatever list of pseudo-communist fascist regimes get spewed>. What I do not condemn are government programs to assist those in need and…”

Whether that would be enough? I doubt it. But it would give her a fighting chance with familes that actually understand how horrific these “communist” regimes actually were. Rather than refusing to condemn them because they had good branding like certain other American Left Wing politicians.

He’ll get sanctioned for arbitrary bullshit by republicans and given a stern talking to about unity and bipartisanship from schumer.

The republicans are actively trying to erase and eradicate trans people. And, at the best of times, the democrats don’t care enough to fight. One of the most important things to understand is that your political party/affiliation probably doesn’t give a shit about you (a sadly not uniquely Asian American experience)

But there are countless “concessions” and horrors coming everyone’s way. So why fixate on something that is unlikely to happen and which all evidence points against? Even the attack on trans people was more about dead naming and causing emotional pain but the upper middle class (and above) trans folk were able to get revised passports pretty quick.

Because hurting trans folk? That is just ratings. Restricting the upper middle class? THAT is how you get people in the streets AND piss off news networks enough that they show it. Because that news anchor who is just keeping his head down? He has a vacation coming up.

Which is why:

So… if you can get out, get the hell out.

The “why” is important to understand.

“It won’t happen because it is illegal” or “it won’t happen because the military will save us” is patently stupid and an indicator that people aren’t paying attention.

“It probably won’t happen because it undermines their goals and the countries trump et al worships don’t do it” is actually assessing where their control comes from.

The danger with assuming everything bad will happen because it is bad is that you just give people “lines” that are easily avoided. Or quick ways to say “Oh, it isn’t THAT bad. They aren’t ACTUALLY setting babies on fire”

And dispose of it if someone actually is carrying it.

It is incredibly unlikely that the republicans pull passports. They are very much dependent on people to be placated and insist “it is just temporary and I am going to live my life”. Passports are owned/used by predominantly upper middle class families who are the most likely to try to ignore the republicans while bitching and moaning that somebody is being rude and protesting in front of a Starbucks. Take away their passports and now this impacts them rather than just “trump, biden, whatever. Groceries are still expensive and I am just going to live my life and go on vacation to Italy this year”.

Historically? Yes, fascist regimes do that. That is also incredibly ineffective. We are more likely to see the China/Russia model where political crimes become increasingly prevalent (see: attacking a tesla is terrorism). The other reason to pull passports is for draft purposes. And the US Military, for as massive as it is, is not one that can be run by drafted soldiers. But republicans are also fucking idiots so… we’ll see.

So… if you can get out, get the hell out.

Specifically it seems to be steam input. Likely a side effect of intercepting devices to remap them.

In theory that is nice. In practice that is just as expensive to re-tool for and isn’t needed. Any adhesive being used should (and, in my experience, does) soften up under a simple heat gun (or hair dryer if you are lazy). That obviously gets REAL sketchy if you are dealing with a spicy pillow but… in that case you should not be touching things unless you know how to handle those (bucket of sand). At which point dealing with a battery you probably don’t want to get hot is not an issue.

Like a lot of stuff, I blame “popular science” tech youtubers like Linus Sebastien. He thought it was funny to lose his mind with a butter knife and stab at his steam deck and everyone pointed out how dangerous that was while memeing it around. When the reality is that you just get a plastic spreader/old credit card and a heat gun and stuff pops out pretty quick in these “reasonable” uses of glue/tape situations.

Yeah. People underestimate the thermal and “durability” benefits of just holding that in place with some double sided tape.

Going by https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+OLED+Battery+Replacement/168676 it doesn’t look great but it looks “reasonable” and the replacement battery comes with new tape.

The other month I was reading up on a white paper proposing an industry standard adhesive designed to pretty much dissolve instantly when exposed to the right solvents. Whether said solvent is at all human safe or what the cost of switching to these kinds of strips were was not discussed which… kind of is an answer in and of itself.

But, in general, I come down on Right To Repair being more about making it reasonable for small repair shops to exist rather than for Joe Schmoe to fix his own iphone. And if you can be trusted to deal with ribbon cables and tracking screws, you can be trusted to use a heat gun and a plastic shim.

I am increasingly disheartened by the obsession over “Desktop SteamOS”. People don’t want Linux or even “a desktop computer”

They want a video game console experience on their PC. Some other company manages everything and they just run updates any time people post stability memes.

Which… is not too much of a shock considering the trajectory of things over the past decade or two. But also more or less confirms that things are gonna go real bad from a computing standpoint (as opposed to every other standpoint where we already know this…) over the next decade or so.

But it SHOULD at least mean Valve can be confident about releasing the Steam Box 2 (meh) and associated Steam Link 2 (woo) and Steam Controller 2 (HELL YEAH!!!) sooner than later. So… silver lining?

Of course, this outcome has repercussions that go beyond just the survival of the protoss: The demonstration of protoss power means Kerrigan isn’t really needed to ensure the survival of the universe, and since nobody has to deal with that headache, the trickle-down effect is that the trilogy never happens.

Never underestimate how far Gamers will go to take away the accomplishments of a woman.

(Note: I actually have no idea who Davey Gunface is, aside from a good ass Starcraft player. This just amused me).

They worked great for 4x games and even slower paced real time strategy games or grand strategies. And they are an excellent shim for more action oriented games that are built around M+KB and don’t support a gamepad.

The problem is that this came out at the time when EVERY PC game was rapidly getting gamepad support. And with very few exceptions (Terraria and Stardew come to mind), it was a worse experience to set up your own mess rather than just use the bindings that let you play civ on an xbox controller anyway.

But yeah. If we can get both this time? That would be perfect AND encourage people to really dig deep on their setups for steam deck games. I know I would use the trackpads and even back buttons more if it wasn’t learning a completely different scheme for a game I also want to play at my desk or in front of my TV.

That said, I am also very wary of fitting all those controls on a single controller. Most of the mock-ups people make have HORRIBLE ergonomics. But… Valve knocked the Steam Deck out of the park so day one.