I just had a Biden supporter argue, after I pointed out that there was ideological unity between both parties and candidates on this issue, that I shouldn't be a single issue voter and that I needed to be "pragmatic" and consider my own "self-interest" and man if that doesn't sum up how fucking morally bankrupt the vote shame police are at this point.
Sheer grotesque moral bankruptcy aside: I'm also low-key offended by the audacity to presume what my own "self-interest" even is.
Going through that thread is fucking jokerfying to the nth degree squared. Jesus fucking Christ what the actual fuck. Basically if I understand the average r/politics users logic:
If you don't vote for Candidate A, you are essentially voting for Candidate B and complicit in them continuing the genocide that Candidate A is currently doing and planning to continue if you do the "responsible" thing and vote for them.
Very cool. Most important election of our lifetime indeed!
The correct and objective answer is: 2.
....because It takes 2 triangle welded together to form a polygon which can have a texture/sprite applied to it.
Always remember kids: all political ideologies justify violence. No exceptions. In fact that's in many ways their entire function. Political ideology is the way by which you determine who has the exclusive moral authority to use violence and who it can be used against. The degree to which you believe your ideology/system is nonviolent is only the degree to which you have been conditioned to see the violence inherent in your system is just the natural default state of the world. Even if you adopt a philosophy of hardcore uncompromising pacifism you will wind up having to justify your nonintervention in other violence happening around you at some point.
If you go back far enough you can find my post from the very early days of this site where I had a bit of a live update of that entire catastrophe and just how unprepared we were for it.
A lot of people were ready for rolling blackouts and dripping our pipes but some people like myself wound up going essentially a week without power and almost no cell/data service. I braved it out for 3 days in my home before I woke up under every blanket and coat I owned trying to stay warm, saw the layer of frost covering my phone and realized Ralph Wiggum style: "oh...I'm in danger!!!". Thankfully I was able to make a blind drive to my mother's and she had power but man it got kinda real there for a minute. Forget being career ending: in a sane society we'd have been calling to have this jackass drug through the street
I hear its amazing. My reasoning for putting it off is that everything I've heard has said that the biggest problem with Alyx is that its a double edged sword because it is the greatest experience anyone has made thus far in VR and nothing else anyone has made out there has come even remotely close. I kinda wanna savor it a bit. Right now everything is still new and fun and I'm worried if I jump into Alyx it'll just leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
Still grinding my way towards being the best Jamie player in Street Fighter VI. Its a long road but I do feel like I'm getting stronger.
That aside: OMG y'all! I bought a valve index and its the first thing that's gotten me to take a break a street fighter in a while. Superhot VR is low-key my runner up gaming experience of the last year. I also have been enjoying the hell out of pistol whip. It makes for an insanely great cardio workout during the cold season here when I can't go for my daily run cause its like 11 degrees outside. I have a huge backlog of games to get through now.
Future plans: I am going to try to play the entire Half life series in VR starting with the black mesa remake and culminating in Alyx over the coming weeks/months. My VR legs are starting to get pretty strong so I feel confident I can do it without motion sickness being a huge issue. I've played a segment or two and it definitely makes the experience radically different. In other news: I also have this radical urge to replay Shadow of the collosus with some of the more recent HD texture mods so I might try and fit that one in.
Sidenote: apparently there's a Deus Ex Remaster project that has a VR element as part of its scope and I am gonna lose my noodle if/when that drops.
In terms of what I'm excited for in 2024: man I don't even know. I don't really follow game releases anymore these days. I guess i'm excited for whatever balance patch plans and future DLC Capcom has for SFVI after capcom cup for sure. Otherwise I still have such a huge backlog of games to play right now I can't imagine picking up new ones.
Speaking as a competitive fighting game player who has traveled to tournaments: even if this wasn't banned (it would be) and operated the way they say it will in theory (it won't) this would still be, no hyperbole, one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard in my life. The macro suggestions are nothing but windows hotkeys brought to a gamepad, and a controller or joystick which does the equivalent of "adjusts DPI settings in real-time, ensuring that your cursor movements are always accurate and fluid" is completely bass-ackwkards and completely misses the key feature(s) that actually defines a quality controller: durability and consistency.
This is cringe I know but: the entire point of investing in a high end controller is the understanding that the hardware is strong and the flesh is weak. A sanwa plunger or mechanical key will trigger the same response in engine the same way every time. That's the whole point: its up to the pilot to train themselves to hit it on the right frame. A button or a joystick that dynamically changes to do what a dumb algorithm has decided I'm trying to do sounds like a special level of hell for someone like me.
So the whole fear mongering campaign against Chinese foreign surveillance is straight up a psyop to get people to forget that their own government is watching everything they do literally every second of the day....right!
💯
Said many times before: even if we accept for the sake of argument that the Uyghur genocide is real and on the same scale of what is happening in Palestine (something I've not heard even the fiercest advocates claim):
The fact of the matter is that I am an American citizen living in America and therefore I have what I see as a self evident moral obligation to focus on and address the things my own government is directly complicit in right now before I start trying to hold China accountable. These people don't actually give a shit about human lives and rights beyond the ways they can be used as a cynical political cudgel.
It was an amazing time. I came. I saw. I got my ass kicked....and I might be going again next year!!!
On the subject of Palestine? Probably not. I was trying to play this out in my head earlier and I feel like the only way he'd be less hawkish is if he thought Netnyahu was cucking him or something by ignoring his authority. I feel like that would be hilariously easy to manipulate tho such that he see's shit like the ICJ as being what's actually holding both of them back. End of the day I reject the notion that Trump or anyone could be materially worse on this than Biden is and believe things would be basically identical....BUT I do think Trump would be more mask off about it certainly.
On that subject....him being mask off is kinda equal pro and con I think. Like the bad is obvious buuuuuut Trump would further expose sham of it all. That's no reason to cheer for a Trump victory but I don't know...its something maybe.