This also has big implications for consumer rights and society as a whole in other areas of digital technology and right to repair, it is a foot in the door to start actually holding manufacturers responsible for the full lifecycle of their products (digital and real) that requires them to actually relinquish their control when their product reaches end-of-commercial-life, instead of turning everything into digital garbage out of what basically amounts to apathy and compulsive rights hoarding.

I think we can all agree it’s probably a bad idea.

Does that mean you shouldn’t? Maybe. But maybe not. Sometimes it’s fun to do something “wrong”, because you want to, and maybe you’ll really enjoy it anyway. Maybe you’ll learn a lot about why it’s a bad idea, and maybe you’ll find those learnings enrich your life and give you stories to tell. I’m not trying to recommend this at all, I’m just saying you should consider it from all angles and outcomes before you make a decision, especially if this is something he really wants to do for whatever reason. Life is for living, it’s not for making a series of optimal choices to result in the highest score. Experiences, both good and bad, are their own reward. And as long as nobody’s going to get hurt, and you go into it with your eyes open and an understanding of the risks and potential downfalls, and do what you can to mitigate and protect against them as much as you can, maybe it’s something you can try.

If it’s really something you’re not comfortable with, and he is, well then you two are going to have to have a long and hard talk about it and come to some mutually agreeable compromise. But even if it is objectively a bad idea, you also need to think about whether he’s just naive and is going to hate it, or whether it’s going to make him happy that he tried it, and whether it’s an experience he needs to have in his life. Meanwhile, is it going to cause you resentment if you go there and hate it and he loves it? Will he listen to you if you decide you really do hate it and don’t want to continue?

That’s not something anyone can answer for you, but it has little to do with whether it’s a bad idea and much more to do with what both of you want out of life.

and why they treat their drivers like subhuman robots already.

I am still of the opinion that they aimed too small and focused too narrow. Games are a “luxury” anyone can live without and it’s hard to rally grassroots support behind protecting something that people only use for entertainment. Yeah it’s low stakes to force them to let you continue to play it after servers shut down but the same low stakes also makes the petition itself pretty ignorable to anyone who’s not a very invested “gamer”.

Actual right to repair and right to continue to access to the software and services and devices you buy goes SO far beyond mere games, there are other huge impacts to society from exactly the same problem that leads to game servers being shut down, and this petition ignored them completely to focus exclusively on games. I know that was done purposefully, but I think it was a miscalculation.

I’m convinced it could have got a lot of support if it had broader aims. Yes if you go after the big boys who are locking down tractor parts and integrated electronic modules so they become obsolete and unrepairable and directly impacting farmers and our food supply, you’re going to REALLY piss off some very big business interests who are going to try and kill your petition, but you’re also going to help educate and hopefully get a lot of support from politicians who already know this is a problem and from the general public who doesn’t care about games but does care about society (at least once they’re properly educated about it, which is hard but also a necessary and positive step to even attempt).

That “are we the baddies” clip is starting to feel closer and closer to reality every day.

I still just can’t respect a rainbow road that has guardrails.

I would absolutely and unironically fly this flag, although to be even more inclusive it also needs an alpha layer. Perhaps it should be a cube? Actually even that might not be inclusive enough, we need more dimensions. BRB I need to figure out how to attach a tesseract to my flagpole, I guess I’ll need some kind of gordian knot?

Citizens United was the nail in the coffin for American democracy IMO. No democracy can survive unlimited money being used as free speech. Those who have the most dollars speak loudest, plutocracy is inevitable, and from there are only paths to even worse forms of government.

Mathematically right, the best kind of right.

There are a very significant number of shitty, entrenched, high-ranking members of the Democratic Party both in government and throughout the organization itself at the federal and all lower levels who are absolutely in on this. They’re providing a false opposition, appearing to oppose what’s happening intentionally without opposing anything at all. They sabotage and undermine any attempt at resistance or true opposition. They refuse to make an issue of anything that might gain significant traction. They are quiet when they should be loud, and loud when they should be quiet, and this is not an accident, it is a misdirection and a form of self-sabotage.

Remember when they rug-pulled Bernie who was winning the primaries? This is not a new or sudden phenomenon, either. They’ve been working towards this for awhile, and billionaires and corruption have infiltrated both parties maybe not to the same extents but these parties are not your fucking friends. Thinking there’s “one good party” vs “one bad party” is exactly how they want you to think and keeps you locked in that two-party system where both parties are corrupt, “I voted for Kodos” is not a useful choice. The reality is there are very bad people in both parties actively working against the working class real humans just trying to live our own damn lives without getting completely fucked by the economy, the police, healthcare, laws, taxes, social supports or any of the other things they manipulate to make our lives difficult and keep us line. This is class war and the Dems, largely, aren’t going to save you. Some of them are great. You’ll notice none of the “great” ones actually have control over anything, and there’s a reason for that. AOC and Bernie are a threat to the Democratic establishment, and they don’t want that shit any more than the Republicans do.

Trump took over the Republicans and purged everything that wasn’t useful to turn it into his own fascist party. If we all want to rally behind the Democratic Party to oppose it, they must be similarly purged of the corruption that allowed this to happen and continues to enable it. Then and only then can they provide a credible grassroots opposition. Otherwise, we’re just running on the same corrupt treadmill we always have been on.

It works: You can tell the real humans because they’ll be the only ones unwilling to do this invasive bullshit. The bots will just come up with something fake to scan and carry on as they always have.

It’s actually low-key brilliant. Start a gold rush, when you realize the gold isn’t actually there, pivot to selling shovels and keep hyping the gold rush. Fools and their money are soon parted, and there seem to be an endless supply of them.

xmpp is still the best, nobody’s ever going to change my mind. jabber 4 lyfe!