That is literally all of my debt left, so yay!

If Dave Chapelle from the early 2000s wrote that post it would have ended with “Go home baby!”

I believe that a lot of issues lile this would be solved with legalized sex work and the destigmaization of mental health treatments.

I’d rather remain comfortable not buying games from Ubisoft and EA.

I refuse to waste a single dollar on every game from both companies, since we were all bent over and continue to get bent over because they just don’t care about anything but making more money.

A good example from Ubisoft is the handling of the Driver series. They kept on releasing the games in the series in a near unplayable state before when most people had dial up.

A good example with EA was the failed DRM with Spore. They only let you install the game 3 times, which glitched out to the point where people had to turn to piracy (warez and crackz) to play a game they paid for.

We vote with every dollar spent, which gives me hope when people rally around good companies that do the right thing.

No way in hell I’d trust just one backup method for my data.

A 6 TB drive is less than $100 on Amazon and two cloud backups is like $30 extra a year.

This is exactly why I look at companies and corporations with a side-eye of doubt when they claim to have some sort of “do not be evil” motto baked into thier company culture.

It doesn’t matter if a gigantic company has a hundred philanthropy focused CEOs, all ot takes is one greedy or evil one to destroy a company’s dogma

After the investors, managers, and profiteers taste easy money, they will continue to demand to be fed that blood flavored stew.

Once that happens, they either need to be lobotomized or put down for the good of all lest those who are not in the know continue to put money into the frothing imitation it has become.

That is like saying that the screwdriver is the most over-rated tool in the tool box.

Each tool has a place and a usage. AI is just another tool in toolbox that is used to get things done.

I’m using my steam deck right now as a gaming PC while moving across America.

It works really well. I got a dock from Amazon that gives me the ports to plug in my gaming mouse and keyboard. I can do HDMI out to the hotel TV or, better yet, lead out one USB-c cord to a fantastic portable monitor.

I only ran into two minor issues. The first is getting enough juice to the steam deck and heat. Both can be easily solved with a good fast charging station and better air flow (I use this tiny hyper fan and have had zero issues in 90 degree Florida winter weather).

Of note, I dual boot with Windows 11. It’s a bloated mess of an operating system, but I want to use certain mods and programs that windows only. Plus, I’m not tied down to only steam games. The addition of being able to run nearly everything that’s Windows compatible takes the deck up a level, I feel.

The best way to get the most out of the Windows environment is to run a debloater admin tool, which removes unnecessary programs on Windows 10+ systems. The difference between the performance is shocking, making it pretty much required for usage. It’s not too hard to use, too.

The best part of it all is that you still have a stream deck at the end of the day. You don’t have to do any hardware mods. You can pick the deck up and walk out of the house and still have the gaming PC with you.

I’d be very interested in your theory.

I thought it had something to do with the distance to the server or ping timeout, but that is more of a guess.

I’ve not experienced that problem again despite working as a network engineer for 20 years

Random computer quirks always fascinate me. The strangest one I had involved a computer that shouldn’t have existed.

One time in the early aughts I had a patchwork computer that I put together from the junk pile of a local computer store that a buddy of mine ran.

It was barely holding together in a rusty frame, with zip ties and wood glue.

Its modem was temperamental as hell. It would only stay online so long as it was pinging a website via command prompt. It was only some websites, too. Like I could ping Geocities, but not livejournel.

I remember many weekends doing Mephisto runs in Diablo II, praying that my command prompt doesn’t bug out anytime I’d get anything worthwhile.

Everyone should be using the Facebook addon “Facebook Purity” if they are still using the platform. I’ve been using it for over a decade and I can’t stand using Facebook without it…

Not only does it work better than most adblocks, but you can completely move, remove, and restyle features.

It’s the only way of working with that platform is not harmful to one’s sanity.

It’s too bad it’s not the US mint. It might help inflation.

Where’s Jeeves when we need him? I’d ask him but…

It wouldn’t shock me if they removed ublock origin from the chrome store

That’s the same reason I don’t complain about having to pay taxes for schools, even if I don’t have a child in school right now.

I did telecom work about 5 years ago

It was shocking the amount of area that depends on a low-quality copper wire infrastructure.

I don’t know if that changed in 5 years, but companies are going to have a hard time getting that replaced nationwide

I’d love to be a fly on the wall in like 50 years when they are able to open the CIA archives to the public on everything top secret that Trump did.

I’d bet half of the GOP would be in chains if that stuff came out today, let alone what Trump has said.

I agree 100% - It’s an eventuality.

As of right now, Trump simply acts like it. Actions speak louder than words sometimes.

I’m not Christian, but I did study Christian mythology while working on my doctorate in philosophy.

There are several near universal signs that a person is the Anti-Christ

✅ Religious Leader - As I pointed out, MAGA is arguably a fanatic cult within the Christian belief system

✅ Come in the name of Jesus - He literally used his power as president to take a picture of himself in front of a church with a bible while people were protesting him. He also likens himself to Jesus whenever he faces the consequences of his actions, like one of his impeachments.

✅ Preforming ‘miracles’ - He has falsely taken credit for miracles of modern technology, like the quickness of the successful COVID vaccine, predicting the paths of weather phenomenon, and even gender equality in the work force.

✅ He will be elected to a place of great leadership and use his ‘power’ to change laws and ‘fix’ a broken society - See the year 2016 through 2020

❌ Denies Jesus existed IRL - He’s not outright said it, but due to his actions, he does not act like a believer in Christian mythology

✅ Rejects the laws of the Christian god - Through his actions and inaction, he does not live by the laws of Christianity. His violations range from divorces, hurting others, to being incredibly wealthy… The list goes on and on.

✅ Persecute Christians - The whole point of the MAGA Republicans and its propaganda is to target people who are Christians and make them bend to the will of Trump.

They took the tactic from modern day Christian televangelism.

They use Trump as the focus of a belief system

They twist the old and outdated morality of hyper patriotism and conservative values. They do this in order to cherry-pick rules and laws to form a grotesque dogma that bares little resemblance to the original intention of said laws and morality.

They then use the twisted dogma to manipulate the population. They do this by feeding into the fears of poverty, ‘evil’, xenophobia, and racism. Then they offer solutions to those issues so long as they tithe (donate money), worship, and “spread the good news.”

The solutions offered are wildly unrealistic… Free money for loyalty? Killing a whole group of people?

Unless your name is Israel, those solutions are obviously a farce to anyone with even the smallest amount of situational awareness and common sense.

That’s why a lot of the Trump propaganda dulls the common sense and attempts to rewrite the memory of others using memes and obvious lies.

You have to essentially hypnotize people into believing that they are being oppressed, attacked, and that everyone but those a part of the belief system are evil baby-eaters.

One of the major reasons that fundamental Christians and the tea party generation are such numerous Trumpism supporters…

The hard work of brainwashing them was already done by another religion. All the MAGA leaders had to do was swap out one god for another.

It worked for ancient Rome, and it’s working here.