Not good enough. Any OTA updates your TV can get over the web will eventually be trying to circumvent your IP blacklists to shove in any ad-riddled garbage they can.
Literally just blacklist your TV’s MAC address, and use a dedicated set top box of some kind to avoid this shit. My current choice is my NVIDIA Shield Pro 2019, which I installed a 3rd party WOLF launcher (there’s also F-Launcher) and turned off auto-updates so I could avoid NVIDIA and Google doing the same.
At some point, I will probably need to switch to a NUC or other HTPC with some flavor of Linux on it, as eventually the Shield may succumb to this shit as well.
I honestly just want to pay $10 to see a goddamn movie in a clean theater… or pay $15 to see it in an IMAX or Dolby tier theater… and not have to sit through 30 minutes of ads after the listed start time… and for the theater to kick people out like Alamo does when they treat the theater like it’s their home living room.
I don’t need a bunch of upgrades that then let them attempt to justify charging $30 per ticket.
The Dems began bleeding the working class after Carter.
The problem is that - outside of Obama in 2008 (who campaigned as left of Clinton), and Sanders in 2016 and 2020 - there have been almost ZERO efforts to court the increasingly jaded and apathetic working class voters who have to work harder and harder every cycle only to be disappointed by the candidate they believed in not following through with decreasingly attractive policy proposals.
Again, she wasn’t TERRIBLE, and no matter how disconnected she was, she would have been > than 🍊… but her team had her trotting out LIZ CHENEY over allowing a Palestinian to speak on stage at the DNC.
This idea that there was NOTHING she could have done to win over the small percentage of apathetic voters to push her over the edge is simply not true.
The enthusiasm from the Democratic base disappeared shortly after the campaign backed off the sort of initial good decisions they started off with (like choosing Walz and letting him call Rs weird).
…And then the overpaid completely disconnected party consultants just kept pushing her to move all the way to the right as much as she possibly could under the delusion that THIS time (like Clinton tried) we could get the R cultists to come out and vote for her… I mean they had a literal billionaire Mark Cuban excited for their candidacy.
Excellent summary, but I think folks were sad because a bunch of us had tuned in hoping to see :
That first punch that landed on Paul’s face made him stop dancing around like an idiot… but yeah after 2 rounds it became just a war of attrition, where Tyson’s knees (which apparently were in a brace outside of the fight itself) just couldn’t hold up and let him close the gap and deliver any of his admittedly still-fierce punches.
All right dude. Ya missed my point. I’m not saying Harris didn’t support anything nor did I say Trump was good or support any of his bullshit. I’m just saying - a campaign where you put Liz fucking Cheney on stage with you during the 100 or so days you had to scramble an attractive message to activate people is fucking stupid centrist corporate DNC bullshit that fucked what initially looked like it could be a winning campaign into the fucking ground.
“We have a concrete asterisk riddled corporation-friendly plan that I’m talking to you about with Liz Cheney right now for helping… that doesn’t involve anything approaching a green new deal, universal healthcare, or clawing back the massive wealth inequality that continues to worsen and has not improved since the 1970s.”
FTFY…
But seriously, what is needed has been painfully clear not just for at least the last 4 presidential elections, but for DECADES. MASSIVE changes that are -of course - completely unfeasible (politically) but nonetheless necessary to scream about from the bully pulpit for the chance to make voters believe and push for such changes.
Trump lies but he PREACHES (granted like it’s some kinda fucked up GOSPEL to his cult of followers)… and this era of “we go high they go low” as if voters care about anything but victories… and “we won’t lie to you with unrealistic promises” as an excuse not to even give aspirational speeches like JFK once used to do with his (at the time) seemingly crazy speeches about having a person walk upon the surface of the moon…
It just is not a recipe for success. The corporate hacks running the DNC need to be FORCED out, as they don’t actually care that we keep losing. They are in revolving doors that are no different from those of Joe Manchin, Kristen Sinema, or ALL the other Rs.
I am ashamed to admit that I saw “Hawkeye” and thought - “Wow… I don’t remember that bit from Endgame / the Hawkeye Disney+ show… I need to watch it again…” 😓
There are no safe havens for multiple reasons… there are places you can probably guess will be less bad… but there are potential worse consequences for each. For example :
- US military power already far exceeds that of every other country on Earth. It is not post WWI 🇩🇪 rearming after licking its wounds. If you go somewhere that “resists,” there is no guarantee you won’t fall under its 🎯
- COVID has seemed to have a lasting effect EVERYWHERE in the world. Look how many other countries have now elected far right wing officials. In 🇩🇪, the non-right coalition government has just collapsed.
- as an immigrant in any of those countries with newly elected right-wing anti-immigrant governments, you will be the first they punish for any perceived failures of said governments to improve their existing citizenry’s lives.
In truth, despite things like inflation getting “better” overall and other economic indicators seeming to point to improvement, an overwhelming number of constituents who participate in voting across the world have felt pain from price increases without sufficient wage increases to offset that pain… and without action being taken that “feels” like it improves people’s material conditions, they are further ripened for the 🐂-💩 scapegoating of demagogues who gladly lie to pretend they will make their lives better… so everywhere they are being elected.
It’s not fair, but history shows us this is what happens…
My favorite way to explain this to normies is with a weird thing that Denny’s breakfast joint did years ago…
For those I don’t know, by the way, Denny’s is a US crappy breakfast joint that sells two cent pancake breakfasts for five bucks.
Every year Danny’s used to have a “free breakfast” day… Where you could come in and they would give you a free breakfast.
Now again, this breakfast is crappy, but it’s completely free. And as a result of this, Denny’s all over the US have always had lines out the door of people coming there to get that crappy free breakfast.
Do you know why the line was around the corner?
Because people like simple good things like a free meal, no strings attached or special actions needed.
Now ask yourself this :
Would Denny’s have near as many people show up if they offered a means-tested 70% off reusable coupon that actually had unlimited uses and ultimately saved you more?
Or a mail-in rebate that only worked during a certain day of the week, or if they said “hey Denny’s customer! you better come to Denny’s on Tuesday because they’re going to otherwise get rid of free breakfast day later this year.”
The answer is no.
It’s stupid and sucks and is counterintuitive and even if the coupon had infinite uses, less people show up than would just for “free breakfast.”
People are dumb and their needs should be directly and fully resolved, not simply just gestured toward or only marginally addressed.
And so - just like if you tell them “you’re gonna lose the access to bodily autonomy” or “the ACA” or anything else… People don’t show up… At least not enough of them will.
See, generally no one cares when you tell them they’re going to lose something… they show up when you OFFER them something simple and that ACTUALLY improves their lives in a measurable material tangible easily-connected straight-line way.
Anyone posting here keeps up with the news and is well aware of every single policy proposal that each party has and their records…
…BUT 10 GODDAMN MILLION LESS PEOPLE VOTED this time and - as stupid as they are - it wasn’t third-party voters’ fault (because even if every 3rd party vote auto-went to Harris it wouldn’t have been enough for her to win) and the 🍊 didn’t get more votes than he did last time.
Yes, racism, sexism, etc. plays a role but inflation outpaced wage growth and there are people who remember getting a COVID check when Trump was president and the check stopped when Biden was president.
These people are unreachable with platitudes and telling them that “things are better” seems like gaslighting to them when they seem to not be able to afford as much, and they haven’t gotten a raise that even comes close to making up the difference.
It doesn’t matter who is actually at fault - they just know who is in charge when it was hurting… and unless you tell them, “I’m not like the person there now and I am going to fix it” and you make them believe you and you are fully and simply and directly addressing their concerns immediately - Not with a “70% off Denny’s coupon,” but with “free breakfast” kind of simple policies (even if you just lie to them like 🍊 does so openly)… then they will simply (and unfairly) vote for whoever is not “currently in charge” in their minds.
It's also a depressing statement about the state of the Democratic Party, as it is more interested in being just a hair to the left of Reagan rather than offer up major truly progressive policies that would cost the Wall-Street class anything significant... and it thinks that's sufficient to boost enthusiasm for the candidate.
This is fucking insane and is literally how we get the ratchet effect that further emboldens autocrats, fascists, demagogues, etc.
People can't fucking afford rent or housing, their jobs aren't paying enough to cover the basics. Healthcare is completely broken save for the absolute baseline of "covering pre-existing conditions." College is essentially a dice roll for whether or not you'll land a job that doesn't pay enough to pay back your loans, or just be added to the pile of qualified candidates who will never make it past the "A.I." resume-scanning bot.
Billionaires are literally announcing their federal law-breaking plans to pay people to vote for the fascist who OPENLY talks of using the military on his political enemies... and the big policy proposals making headlines are "$50K loans for 1st time small business owners wanting to start a company?!" Are we fucking serious right now?
Harris is NOT a good candidate. She's better than Clinton (partially due to the unfair "demonization" of Hill-dawg for decades... but also because the Clintons are narcissistic neoliberal idiots) AND better than the incoherent jello-brained 150-year old pile of sentient bones who insists we keep green-lighting shipping weapons to the guy who wants to glass countless innocents in the name of "killing terrorists"... but someone like Sanders or AOC or Warren or even just Walz himself would be wiping the floor with Trump... because they would be addressing the concerns that gave the demagogues something to scapegoat for to begin with.
Was gonna say - how long after Elden Ring did Shadow of the Erdtree DLC come out?
I know it’s in vogue to shit on Apple…
Apple does have a lot of vertical integration which allows first party stuff to function well and they work closely with a lot of their premium 3rd party software partners, but you try running an actual RAM hungry process like a local LLM model, for example, and all but the highest end latest edition MacBook Pro WILL shit the bed.
Neoliberals like Harris, Clinton, etc. would fill a swimming pool with any voter to the left of Reagan just so that they could shout at a single conservative voter a mile away to let them know they could walk across said pool now rather than be asked to bear the inconvenience of walking around the edge... only for the conservative to ignore them... or even walk somewhere further out of the way just to spite the neoliberal.
They just never fucking learn.
Completely laughable. Literally had 16 GB of DDR3-1600 for my 2600K from 2011 that I handed down to a kid nephew for their first PC to tinker with. Hell, my local NAS has more than that...
People are products of their environment.
A majority of this country did NOT vote for him. He never won the popular vote. He only won because assholes who crafted our systems of power did so to better serve the rich.
We are overweight because of our terrible deregulated food industry filled with garbage and our lack of walkable living spaces in most places Americans live. Hardly any place can be gotten to in the country with out a car.
We are uneducated because the rich have shaped our education system to remove any word about the Pullman Strike… about the original meaning of red-neck… about the bombing of Tulsa… as none of those things serve capital’s interests. So many Americans are angry because members from both major parties (with a few notable exceptions) mostly serve capital, which has allowed people’s material conditions to have worsened to a point that has ripened these same poorly-educated people for demagogues offering them easy scapegoats to shift the blame for their plight.
You can be angry, but to blame Americans for this is as if we have had much say kind of ignores what’s been happening here since at least Reagan’s time, if not longer.
It's not that she needs to be perfect, but - unfair or not - she DOES have to make a case for a bunch of disconnected dipshit "undecided" voters and clearly show how she will tangibly improve their lives.
She already has my vote, but pretending people rolling their eyes at "I am going to add a Republican to my cabinet" is somehow a "purity test" isn't compelling. The day she replaced Biden on the ticket she should have had been shouting "we're going to bring our healthcare system up to modern standards and stop the barbaric practice of being the only major country on Earth with no universal healthcare solution" or "we're going to remove medical debt" or "we're going to tax all those billionaires like Elon Musk who are literally getting away with naked political corruption."
Yeah... I agree it's not fair... but whining about "fairness" instead of doing EVERYTHING you can with the hand you've been dealt in order to stop the lying McDonald's cosplaying fascist from slipping BACK into the office he almost toppled last time is absolutely insane.