Remember Musk’s cameo in Iron Man 2? People were even calling him the “real Tony Stark.” Or when Musk guest starred on The Simpsons, and Lisa called him “possibly the greatest living inventor,” even though Musk has never invented anything in his life?

With the benefit of hindsight, this was clearly ludicrous, but even at the time it should’ve been obvious to everyone that it was nonsense. Unfortunately, it wasn’t obvious to everyone, many people bought it. That’s scary. It’s scary that a megalomaniacal narcissist with enough money can convince large numbers of people that they are something that they are not.

If a game requires that you install what basically amounts to a rootkit in order to play it, I don’t think I want to play that game.

That’s his business. If a stranger bitched at me because I took a job and they had some fucking problem with it, I’d tell them to cram it up their ass, and mind their own fucking business.

Still, those disappointed in the star’s decision to be involved in Rowling’s work have begun flooding the comment sections on his other posts, with one reading: “You always were an artist I highly admired. Please think again if you want to get involved with that woman, you might lose a lot of fans with that decision.”

He’s an actor, it’s a paying acting job. Are these supposed “fans” he might lose going to replace that pay check? No? Then shut the fuck up.

Unfortunate that the entertainment and digital goods and services industries have not been able to create enough good union jobs to replace those lost from offshoring manufacturing, especially in the “rust belt” areas.

Here in Britain this remains a cornerstone of the junction between politics and economics. Most of the world still believes in comparative advantage. It is the intellectual core of globalisation.

Globalization did not result in each country of the world sharing in the production of the world’s goods, and sharing equally in the growth and improvements in living standards, it resulted in China becoming the world’s producer, making them much wealthier and elevating them to the status of a super power.

The economic “might” of the US over the past half century has been based on the fact that we have the defacto world reserve currency and still have the world’s largest military. We don’t produce very much. We import a lot. If one of our companies does develop some important new technology, the products themselves are more than likely produced in China, or in some other foreign country. Advanced semiconductors are fabricated in Taiwan, using high tech lithography machines developed by a Dutch company. The only thing we specialize in is financial speculation and buying a whole lot shit, most of which is imported.

I suppose I’m happy for the economy. I mean, I’m glad it’s doing better than ever, I guess, but I’ve got my own issues. Sorry if that sounds selfish, but it’s just hard for me to get too excited for the economy when I’m stressed about my own situation.

I think you’re going to have a pretty sort of normal transfer, and I think we will respect the wishes of the American people …

Yeah, why fight it. We had an election and the outcome was very clear.

Two reckless parties: it is unthinkable in a mature democracy.

Why? Why is that unthinkable? Because it goes against the belief people like this author have about their own conception of “democracy?” Maybe the problem is that liberals aren’t fully living in reality, and instead reside in a purely hypothetical world. “This can’t be happening because it goes against what we believe should happen in a democracy.” Well, maybe your beliefs are just wrong, or at least incomplete.

That’s not the message working people heard. They heard, “we are the establishment whose theories have been fucking you over for fifty years, but in our infinite wisdom and benevolence we have decided to make some changes that WE have determined will make your lives better, and so you must vote for us. After all, we are your intellectual superiors.”

What is the solution?

I have this fantasy that I and everyone in the US who shares my ideology could all move to the same state, take over the state legislature and just build our own semi autonomous micro nation. But then I realize that 12 people moving to the same state probably isn’t going to make any difference.

American’s support “progressive” policy when it’s not framed as a political question.

That article you linked to supports my point. From the article:

Consider: Ordinary people in both parties turn out to like ordinary people in the other party well enough. In a 2021 study in the Journal of Politics, researchers found that when a person in one political party was asked what they think of someone in the other party, their answer was pretty negative. That certainly sounds like polarization. But it turns out the “someones” respondents had in mind were partisans holding forth on cable news.

If told the truth—that a typical member of the opposite party actually holds moderate views and talks about politics only occasionally—the animus dissolved into indifference. And if told that the same moderate person only rarely discusses politics, the sentiment edged into the positive zone. These folks might actually get along.

“There are people who are certainly polarized,” says Yanna Krupnikov, a study co-author now at the University of Michigan. “They are 100% polarized. They deeply hate the other side. They are extraordinarily loud. They are extraordinarily important in American politics.” But those people, she adds, are not typical Americans. They are people who live and breathe politics—the partisans and activists whom academics refer to in this context as elites.

That hardly recommends today’s politics, and goes a long way toward explaining why many people avoid partisans. “They dislike people who are ­really ideologically extreme, who are very politically invested, who want to come and talk to them about politics,” says Matthew Levendusky, a University of Pennsylvania professor of political science.

But, yes, moderates can, like progressives, want to improve the healthcare system and address climate change. Where they differ is in how they would go about it, and I think most moderates would prefer to go about addressing those issues by making as few radical changes as possible.

There’s a theory called the Overton Window and Dems moving to the center has shifted this whole country to the right.

I don’t agree. I don’t think Democrats shifted anything, they were just going where the voters were. Democrats have to win elections and that requires getting people to vote for you. The Democrats didn’t shift voters to the right, the voters shifted Democrats to the right.

We lost abortion rights because of it

I think abortion rights are a winning issue for Democrats, but not because it’s an exclusively progressive policy. I think abortion rights is a very popular policy among moderates.

If you want to look at a winning strategy that directly refutes your point look at FDR.

I’m talking about where American voters are today, not where they were 80 or 90 years ago, and today I think a majority of Americans are politically moderate.

I think progressives tend to overestimate their numbers. Maybe Millennials and Gen z are moving the needle a little further to the left, but I don’t think it’s as much as many progressives want to believe. There are many millions of Americans under 40 who are moderate, center right, or right wing. The US in general is further right than most other democracies, I would say. In fact, I think the US overall is center to center right. For this reason, I think it is generally a losing strategy for the Democrats to prioritize progressive policies, especially in the presidential election.

Most progressives live in deep blue states; states that are going to go for the Democrats regardless. Whereas, the states that matter, the swing states/purple states are much more moderate. Those are the states the Democrats have to focus on, because of how our election system works. For this reason alone, it makes more sense for Democrats to try and court moderates, at least in the presidential election. But, it’s probably true of Congress as well. I think moderate candidates do better in most states and congressional districts than progressive candidates.

It brings me no joy saying this. I’m politically left, I would estimate further left than the majority of Americans. I have been advocating for radical changes for years, but it’s mostly fallen on deaf ears, and some of my fellow Americans have been aggressively hostile to the ideas I’ve been advocating for. Americans, generally, like capitalism, they like class hierarchies, and hierarchies in general, because they believe that some people are just inherently superior to others, and that doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon.

Fedora, so missionary position, but the lights are on and we’re on top of the covers.

That shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. We should all expect a Harris administration to be very similar to the Biden administration. Democrats didn’t want to replace Biden with Harris because they thought she had better policies, or that any policy changes were necessary at all, they did it because Biden was too old. The Democrats wanted Joe Biden but younger, and that’s what they got.

Good. Obviously it won’t pass, but we have to start somewhere.

Nintendo doesn’t want you to play their games if you’re not willing to follow their rules. Ok, that’s their prerogative, but that means I will not be playing their games…at least not their new ones.

I prefer playing on my Steam Deck these days, and I really don’t want to buy another handheld just to play Nintendo first party titles. I’m going to play some of my favorite classic Nintendo titles on my Deck using emulators and just not play the new stuff. I’m sure they’re great games, but so what? There are lots of great games. I’ve got a huge backlog of great games already in my Steam library, and 20 more on my wishlist. If Nintendo some day decides to make their titles available for Steam Deck or PC, I’d consider buying them, but since that’s extremely unlikely to happen, I think I’m just done with Nintendo.

Ideas about how men are expected to live and behave will always differ from culture to culture, but even within a given culture there are different expectations, based on things like class, for instance. In fact, I would say that’s the big difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, at least in this instance. Walz is a working class man, Vance is firmly a member of the upper class. Given this, it shouldn’t be surprising that Walz seems more in touch with the “average American,” where Vance seems very, well, of touch.

So why then do so many working class men identify more with Vance? It’s complicated, but it generally all comes down to hierarchy. Working class Americans have been told their whole lives that workers are lower in the social hierarchy, especially those who work more physical jobs and make less than what is necessary to be considered at least upper middle class. By this metric, Walz is a “loser” while Vance is a “winner.” Hierarchy is very important to many men and few of them want to be associated with “losers.” It doesn’t matter so much that Trump and Vance are weird and out of touch, what matters is they are rich, and in this country your place in the social hierarchy is largely determined by your wealth and income.