@pjwestin - eviltoast
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Cake day: January 11th, 2024

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  • pjwestin@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzFrog's Gift
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    13 hours ago

    It also can’t be understated how much private corporations benefit from technology this research yields. We spent $25 billion ($175 billion in today’s money) on the Apollo programs alone, and NASA research has led to everything from cell phones and laptops to the rubber molding process used for sneakers. The DoD wasted a ton of money in the 80s on this new technology that involved getting computers to communicate with each other, and now we have the internet.

    The government spends money in ways that could never be justified by cooperations, then the cooperations enrich themselves with that research and use the profits to lobby Congress for lower taxes and limited spending. It’s absolutely infuriating.


  • The Switch is fantastic for what it is. Sure, it’s anemic and old, but it’s a creative design that more or less created a whole product category and allows for very creative gameplay.

    This is actually their design philosophy: “Lateral thinking with withered technology,” or, “what can we do with old technology we’re really familiar with?” Nintendo was much slower to market with their 16 bit console than Sega, but they took their time to understand the new tech, and developed the first handheld cartridge console with 8 bit technology at the same time. Sega tried to emulate its success with a color handheld system, but it was large, had poor battery life, and didn’t sell very well. Instead of rushing to catch up with a color handheld, Nintendo released the Game Boy Pocket, which was very popular. and released an entirely superior product in the Game Boy Color a few years later.

    This philosophy isn’t always a benefit to them; they lost the Final Fantasy franchise because the cartridge system on the N64 wasn’t powerful enough to run it. However, it’s usually a boon; the switch has been incredibly successful despite its graphical inferiority, and despite being comically underpowered compared to its competitors, the Wii is the secon-best selling console of all time, behind only the PS2.







  • Wokeness to them means, “progressive policy positions we believe will be a net loss with the electorate.” This year, that will almost certainly mean abandoning trans people, since the bigoted, “she’s for they/them,” campaign Trump ran against Harris was very effective. It’s similar to how the party was happy to capitalize off the energy of the 2020 BML protests, but once the phrase, “Defund the Police,” started test poorly with the electorate, they began distancing themselves from the movement.

    I haven’t heard any Democrats blame minorities. I mean, sure, I’ve seen terminally online people say that Muslims and Latinos deserve what’s about to happen, but the actual Democrats don’t seem to want to even acknowledge the loss. They pretty much only have identity politics left for a platform; they’ve adopted conservative positions on fiscal policy, foreign policy, and border policy; all they can really do to differentiate themselves from Republicans is to not be openly hostile to minority groups. The fact that they are now losing these groups seems like something few of them want to acknowledge.





  • No one is blaming minorities for the rise of Trump, they’re pointing out that since Trump expanded his margins across all demographics, Kamala Harris’ failure can’t be easily explained away by racism or misogyny, and there must be a deeper frustration among many of the groups that make up the Democrats’ coalition like black and Latino Americans. Also, I rarely hear Democrats make this point; they seem to mainly blame wokeness.

    Edit: OK, when I say “Democrats,” I mean actual Democrats — people who are in leadership positions in the party. I am not talking about unhinged liberals that are reveling in Trump’s anti-Gaza cabinet picks because they blame Muslims for their loss. Actual Democratic party members are much quieter about the collapse of the demographics that make up the Obama Coalition.


  • Here’s what I wrote to my delegate’s office:

    I am writing to you because I am worried about the upcoming DNC chair elections, and I’m attempting to reach my local delegate. A recent piece in Politico seemed to suggest that many in the party believe that the takeaway from the 2024 election is that the party moved too far to the left, and that it became too involved in identity politics. As Joseph Paolino Jr., the DNC committeeman for Rhode Island, put it, “The progressive wing of the party has to recognize — we all have to recognize — the country’s not progressive, and not to the far left or the far right. They’re in the middle."

    Of course, the idea that the Democratic Party has gone too far left is absurd. This is the party that passed NAFTA. This is the party that ended Glass-Steagall. This is the party that added work requirements to Welfare. This is the party that prioritizesd banks over homeowners during the subprime mortgage crisis. This is the party that adopted and passed the Heritage Foundation’s healthcare plan. On paper, this is a center-right party.

    However, I believe it is true that this party has focused too much on identity politics, and we need to place that blame where it squarely belongs: on the center. It was centrist Democrats who, in the absence of any coherent economic message, increasingly adopted the language of identity politics. It was the center who used identity politics as a cudgel, not only against their right-wing opponents, but also those on the left who questioned the party’s priorities. It was Hillary Clinton (who no serious person would describe as, “far-left”) who said:

    "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow…would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?”

    If the party were to decide that it was going to spend less time on identity politics and more time on a serious progressive platform, that would make sense. Polling indicates that many progressive policies, even those considered, “far-left,” like higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, a higher minimum wage, Medicare for All, and even Universal Basic Income, all command widespread support from across the electorate. They are certainly more popular than the crypto-based, “economic opportunity,” platform pitched by Mark Cuban this year.

    However, based on what I have read from Politico, it does not seem like the party is interested in a progressive economic message. It seems that many in the party are simply concerned with abandoning the aspects of identity politics that they believe are unpopular. One Florida member made some offensive and thinly veiled attacks on the trans community, saying that he didn’t want to be a member of the, “freak show party.” It appears that, instead of reflecting on how the Democrats’ centrist economic policies have failed the working class, many members would like to abandon vulnerable members of the party that they believe are no longer politically useful.

    The Democrats don’t need to start jettisoning demographic groups, they need a progressive platform that can bring the party together. They need to move to the left economically, not to the right socially. However, if the party does decide to stop protecting the most vulnerable Americans in the interest of being more, “centerist,” there is an upside; voters will finally be able to abandon the Democratic Party without harming marginalized groups.


  • Well, I doubt he blames himself for anything that’s occurred, and I certainly don’t think he’s going to become a socialist or anything like that. He does seem aware that 40 years of free market capitalism without any pushback from a real progressive party on behalf of the working class has created the conditions necessary for Trump, and that’s more self-awareness than I’ve seen from Nancy Pelosi. That being said, I’m sure this newfound progressive streak will boil down to, “let’s raise the federal minimum wage so we can get back to capitalism as usual.”