I assumed the meme is related to high prices decades ago: for example, I remember saving up allowances to buy Star Fox 64, which cost about 70 bucks in the late nineties.

More than I realized. As a kid, my favorite of the original trilogy was ROTJ. It had everything - an opening where the heroes got vengeance on a big slug, there was a dramatic-looking Death Star, speeder bikes, and force lightning.

My father told me (years later), how much some folks hated it for some of the same things. Rehashing the Death Star, Han accidentally killing Boba Fett (this hyped up bounty hunter that in the previous movie was clever and even mouthed off to Vader himself), Ewoks being cuddly teddy bears with janky traps, Leia being yet another Skywalker out of nowhere…basically, a lot of the same goofy shit people railed on George for in the prequels (myself included: since these conversations with my dad came up because I was a teenager complaining about Jar Jar, Yoda ping ponging around, etc.).

Later I saw that plenty of folks complained about ESB being moodier, the “No, I am your father” being a twist out of nowhere and dramatically undermining Obi-Wan’s character by his being dishonest. Some of the same “canon-breaking” retcons that we all complain about today.

Granted…I still love ROTJ despite its flaws, and while I never enjoyed the prequels as much as a lot of folks, I find them endearing in an odd kind of way. The Sequel Trilogy less so, but there’s a few bright spots.

Basically, I wonder what the reception of the movies would have been if we had the internet then, and especially if we had engagement-based algorithms driving things, which does such a great job of amplifying hate.

To add to this, there’s a great section in Man Without a Country by Vonnegut where he talks about his approach to humor, and he mentions the time he was in Dresden during WW2 as a prisoner of war, while it was being bombed.

True enough, there are such things as laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows humor. There are real-life situations so hopeless that no relief is imaginable.

While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.” Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it.

A bigger part of the section here: https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/bookworm/kurt-vonnegut-1/excerpt-from-a-man-without-a-country

Oni was so much fun: I would love to see how it feels now, but my nostalgia for it is off the charts. Martial art combos, plus sci fi guns: there’s just nothing else like it out there, which is a bummer.

Well sure, the Democrats could kill the filibuster with a simply majority (if they could get 51 senators on board) but they filibuster a lot as well, to prevent some Republican legislation. So I can see why they’re too pragmatic - or cowardly - to remove it. Not the best source/graph, but a source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-are-so-many-democrats-considering-ending-the-filibuster/

As for the parliamentarian: they haven’t been removed in a while, and the one before that also served for a pretty long time…I think the Democrats (again, cowardly or pragmatically) are simply trying not to escalate and make the parliamentarian a puppet of the current simple majority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentarian_of_the_United_States_Senate

I’m all in favor of nuking the filibuster, mind you: which would make the whole budget reconciliation thing a moot point. but I can understand the desire for some in the party to retain it as a tool. Fat lot of good it’s doing us now, of course.

the Democrats technically controlled the chamber.

Correct - technically, but not practically - because they absolutely can’t get anything substantial done with the Republicans and right-wing Democrats, as they didn’t have a filibuster proof supermajority.

However, there was one brief moment when Biden’s party had a 60th vote, which occurred after Senator Al Franken resigned and was replaced with Senator Tina Smith in 2018

That…just isn’t true though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115th_United_States_Congress They had at most 47 votes, right? Also…recall who was president in 2018. Certainly not enough congressional control to override the inevitable veto.

At best their ‘accomplishments’ you mention were limited, while vastly more dammage was done in other fields.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that many of the accomplishments were limited. I’m not saying they are going to save us, and while I want to wrest control from the right-wing leadership in the Democratic party, I’m not terribly optimistic that it’ll happen in my lifetime. IMHO we need more coordination and cooperation on the Left to organize enough to do what the Tea Party did on the Right with the GOP…the major difference is that the folks in power in the GOP weren’t ideologically opposed to the Tea Party, unlike the corporate Dems v. the “Actual Left”, so maybe that’s a fool’s errand, especially given the power structures in place, and the inherently anti-democratic system of government re: SCOTUS, Senate, Electoral College, etc.

Look: I don’t think we disagree all that much: I’m just trying to acknowledge nuance and correct misinformation. So…what do you suggest we do about the Democrats being at best speed bumps to real progress?

When they have a supermajority, like they had not long ago, they are in trouble.

The last true supermajority I’m aware of only lasted 72 days, back in 2009. It’s when the Fair Pay act was signed, Affordable Care Act, and a few different attempts to reform Wall Street. They were certainly not as life-changing as I’d like, but I’m admittedly pretty far to the Left of the average US voter.

The even stronger supermajority before that was in 1965, and that got the creation of Medicare & Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, Freedom of Info Act, etc.

The Dems are a weak centrist party, and the leadership is center-right at best, but even so - those two times where they had a supermajority in the Senate gave us some good to at least quasi-good stuff. I’m totally on board for bashing the Democrats, but it’s hard to convey the amount of damage the truly undemocratic Senate has done over the decades, and I think we can’t avoid the reality that there was a lot that got done in that brief period when the Republicans couldn’t stop them. The ability to block legislation in the Senate is just incredible. Things just can’t get passed, unless it’s something the Republicans will agree to - so it’s far easier for shitty stuff to get passed. Unfortunately, there are enough right wing democrats that will go along with the shitty stuff the Republicans propose, in no small part because their constituents actually like it. We’re losing the propaganda war, because those with capital have far more power to wield.

So there’s a lot of problems to fix - deeply undemocratic institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College, the entirety of the GOP, weakass right-wing Democrats, and the voters themselves. Unfortunately, yeah…the interests of Capital have intervened and made sure to cripple Education and control the media landscape, so to get back to my main point, since I’m losing the thread here - I’m agreed that the Democrats are shit, but we can’t ignore reality that when they’ve had actual full control of the Federal government, things were at least going in a decent direction.

Is there a succinct way of articulating why we can’t do both? (e.g. vote for the lesser evil while also doing all the mutual aid and whatnot that we can?) Does it boil down to the argument that voting makes people less likely to build said alternative power structures?

I’ll watch the video when I have time, but communicating an actionable strategy I think is essential to folks in crisis.

Outer Wilds gave me that sensation

Yeah, given that it’s around a hundred bucks (at best) a month for a pickup, and I can rent a pickup from a big box store for 20 bucks…the math works out to do that as often as weekly and still save money, considering registration/tag/maintenance. That’s considering that my wife and I have one car, and one motorcycle: the differential in going from a car to a truck isn’t as egregious as motorcycle or no second car, of course.

Also, it’s always fun to get a huge haul of materials with my motorcycle gear on, seeing folks clearly wonder if I’ve thought through my decisions.

The point folks are making is that Stardew was finished on release, it’s just that the developer has the passion and financial ability to continue to improve it.

If it was 1994, maybe the game would have been released on a cartridge and never changed for myriad reasons (publishing rights, being on physical media, etc).

Example: Super Metroid was one of the best games ever made, and was complete when it was released, but you better believe I’d take free updates that further improve on it. There’s always improvements to make, because nothing can really be perfect. Those hypothetical updates wouldn’t retroactively make it an incomplete game. Maybe it’s too a subtle philosophical point

Yeah we’re in agreement, and apologies that my reply was a little meandering! It’s hard to reply without sounding contrarian sometimes.

Thanks for a good reply, and I hope you enjoy the weekend!

All of these things can be true at the same time.

Absolutely true: I’m also far-Left, and am a scientist working in the sustainability field.

I know I have complicated views on this (shaming her specifically), mostly because there’s not the same number of posts shaming CEOs and others making even worse choices.

The way I process it would be as if a major new corporation had a crime segment running nightly, but only showed young Black men who were arrested for violent crimes. Sure, it’s not technically incorrect - since they were each arrested - but it’s misleading in a way that should be examined, and people would rightly question why they’re not showing other folks doing the same things.

To be clear - I’m not equating the folks who share or make these memes with racists, but I am using it as an extreme example of ways in which outsized attention to certain celebrities/public figures can come across. I laughed at this and other memes, but I think it’s worth examining why we can name and shame Swift, but not CEOs and others who are more fundamentally responsible for inequities and climate destruction. I’m way-overanalyzing a meme here, since name recognition is doing most of the work (who would click on a meme with the name of some CEO they don’t recognize, versus Swift?), but I do think we could/should do more to drag some of the true ghouls out there into the light and start mocking them, in addition to the folks normally raked over the coals.

Also, I understand that part of that is the hypocrisy, but I’m reminded of what the great Norm MacDonald had to say about hypocrisy:

The comedian Patton Oswalt, he told me “I think the worst part of the Cosby thing was the hypocrisy.” And I disagree. I thought it was the raping. It’s my feeling most rapists are hypocrites. You don’t meet many that go “I like raping and I know it’s not politically correct but, by god” and people go “well, he’s not being a hypocrite and that’s the worst part!”

Nowhere in my comment did I suggest that, because it would be a silly way to deal with such a big problem. It takes a lot of training to help people in crisis, and a lot of infrastructure to get people on their feet.

It’s not your responsibility alone, it’s not my responsibility alone. If you’d like to discuss any of the points I actually made, great. Otherwise you can try to oversimplify the discussion and I won’t respond anymore

What if the road to becoming “functional” requires, at least in a plurality of cases, help from those that can afford it?

That “free shit” might be what helps them turn their life around. Do you think they have a better chance to improve their station in life if they don’t have access to support from the public?

I wholly reject that it’s somehow dehumanizing to give folks food and shelter during the worst moments in their lives.

There’s a podcast called Behind the Bastards, Robert Evans is the host. Podcast about terrible people in history, Evans and guests have left wing politics and “crude” humor…it’s awesome

I don’t think it does much, but any tiny contribution to the fight against climate change is a good for the world, as is any slowing of the erosion of civil rights domestically, gutting of what remains of medicare/medicaid, etc.

I also know a GOP administration will be worse in terms of fighting against leftist movements in the streets, if only slightly. They’re definitely worse re: labor movements overall, again: even if only marginally.

So I’m not going to claim it’s a panacea, or even someone that will have notable effects, but I do think it matters at the margins, so the effort required is usually worth it, IMHO

Voting for the slightly less shit option makes it easier for the things we do in parallel to have a positive impact: direct action doesn’t get slowed down much by voting once a year or so.