It’s distressing how often the track of inventors has been overtaken by the plans of hyper-capitalists.

• Tesla cars were invented by Elon Musk Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who were then cut out by their investor to enshittify the interface.
• Keurig coffee pods were invented by a pair of roommates that wanted them to become recyclable so they wouldn’t cause so much waste.
• Blizzard used to make fun games, and is now bought out by people that don’t.

I still need to put out my big, long-form video promoting the Accountable Capitalism Act - something that could lead a large body of software devs at a big company to be present for the big-shift plans to, say, “Remove error messages from Windows!” and tell their bosses: Hell no. The same style of issue exists in many industries.

This might be a dumb idea, but I may buy this game just to make up for all the baseless hate it’s been hit by. Maybe just to avoid shareholder claims of “See, people prefer historical accuracy. Hence black people are banned in all future games.”

I haven’t really even tracked much of Ubisoft games for a while, and I recognize usually they’re pretty mindless open world fun - personally I’m often fine with that.

Wow, you mean they didn’t make a successful game and then immediately triple their staff and try to start pumping out formulaic games at double pace?

But what about company growth??

If people are being kidnapped out of their homes for free speech, and plans are made for invasion of other countries, which party is “starting” said war?

America has previously spent TONS of money destroying the property of people with those ideologies. They even had a name for that historical event: World War 2.

They still have a dangerous number of nazis around - Elon recently visited there to rile many of them up, and their popularity boosted in the last election.

I’ll have to be honest and admit back when I was in high school or so, I was enthusiastic about electric cars and his seemed like some of the best. He was also opening up the charging standards so that there could be a mixed playing field. Back then, I was likely ready to dismiss small critiques as the retaliation of the fossil fuel industry.

God I hate old me.

Much like certain other trends like 3D TVs, this helps us see how often “visionaries” at the top of a company are charmed by ideas that no one on the ground is interested in. Same with blockchain, cryptocurrency, and so many other buzzwords.

So maybe I’ll mention it again: The Accountable Capitalism Act would require 40% of a company’s board be made up of democratically voted employees, who can provide more practical input about how top-level decisions would affect the people working there.

I’ve even wanted to bring up Valve in some recent political discussions on corporate governance. With the blatant exception of CSGO child-focused gambling, it is otherwise the “shining ideal” of a good company: They invented a product that people like and enjoy, maintain it well to please their customers, and pay their employees well without growing excessively or finding ways to cheat customers out of their money.

If we got a Gyroscope on Xbox, then all major controllers would have it - allowing for the possibility of cross platform games where people can use gyro ironsights to aim. That would be awesome.

While the “Who would win Batman or Superman or US army” posturing is interesting to some…I have been finding fewer and fewer reasons to expect a military confrontation.

We saw one during the George Floyd protests - Trump sent the National Guard to quell protestors. It…didn’t do much, and the Guard sort of stood around, acknowledging free speech.

I have also read testimonials from those in the Army - while it is true that the (incompetent) very top new leadership, and many grunts are die-hard MAGA, the vast majority of the leadership structure is disciplined and educated in the constitution. There’s supposedly already been briefings delivered on “DEI” subjects that indicates the officers are still very vocally in support of them, and they in turn are still loyally respected by their units. In short: An attack within America against Americans would feel blatantly against what most of them stand for.

ICE, on the other hand, is a fringe set of whackjobs - and thankfully they’re mostly cowards that only accomplish much by stealing in and out like burglars.

Common misconception. None of them want war. They want to show up, intimidate people into surrender, and fight no one. They’re dogs barking through a fence that blindly ignore the open gate.

Hence why all the mass firings were by email. Hence why Trump has twice caved to Canada and Mexico on tariffs. Hence why ICE has failed to force either Illinois or Boston to cooperate with their raids.

I understand the reasons people feel they have to be afraid, but miss that all of the fear is on the other foot.

There was a great video where someone dismantled an ultra-aggressive “we’re gonna destroy you liberals” claim video. He basically said “No, I know you’re not going to do that. Because you said it into a camera.”

Those couple weeks were in fighting for their lives against Nazis. In heat of battle, anyone can form a brand new relationship sooner than that.

You’ve renewed my idea for setting up a Discord server that literally bans zero-effort Twitch style chat messages. Each time someone hits enter, they must be conveying a human thought. Exceptions provided for reactions, which are a specific feature, but that’s it.

Even through speaking of theoreticals, I firmly believe that no societal system can ever work if the vast majority of people are shallow and cruel. The closest thing would be a benevolent monarchy, but that benevolent monarch would still need soldiers to enforce rulings, and then some of those enforcers would end up being shallow/cruel, etc…

I don’t know if this is the priority for many other users, but Epic Games is 40% owned by Tencent, a Chinese corporation. That in itself is an inappropriate level of CCP influence to me - sadly, Chinese companies don’t really get to divest themselves of government influence the way American corps do.

(That said, with Google changing the Gulf of Mexico’s name, I feel less sure of that last claim)

I’ve always had this silly dream of running a large, wealthy tech company, and attempting a startup in Japan, not reliant on business with other Japanese companies, that promotes a healthier work culture, and then stuffs the high productivity results in the faces of other companies. As a stretch goal, it could even locate out in the burbs, with an investment in better infrastructure access.

Japan has so many great things about it, but the major points around banking, sexism, and seniority really twist the image.

The world has gone too long without game developers returning criticism to fans. Some game devs don’t serve their fans well and deserve a blasting, but that’s generally a minority. Most of the time, gamers in online spaces are the same sort of Karen at the register saying “The customer is always right” every single day, and they‘ve needed to take a step back for a long time.

Corollary: I play an online game that’s full of glitches. I’m upset at the dev about it, but also patient because I know programming is hard, and I’m sure they get frustrated at those bugs too.

New Animaniacs lyrics (no really):

“The trolls will say we’re so passé but we were meta first!”

I don’t think anyone claims BlueSky is decentralized, just more fair about moderation. I’d probably be fine with using Twitter if Elon Musk hadn’t completely corrupted it.