I actually started early with gamepads, dating all the way back to the Gravis and the original Logitech Wingman, but it might be relevant that I still primarily use a mouse and keyboard, and especially for anything that requires precise aiming.

I use a gamepad for emulated console games, since they’re designed for a pad, and for things that require free and flowing movement, so respond well to a stick or a d-pad - racing games primarily, and many platformers and similar action games. But for things that combine separate movement and aiming - first person shooters and RPGs and the like - I just think a mouse and keyboard is better than dual sticks ever could be.

Seriously, WHAT is THE DEAL with conservative disinformationists scattering ALL-CAPS WORDS throughout EVERYTHING they WRITE?

My THEORY is that it’s MEANT as a SUBSTITUTE for LOGIC and REASON - that in LIEU of saying things that are ACTUALLY logical, reasonable or true, they JUST say things really LOUDLY.

It MUST be TRUE because it’s so EMPHATIC, right?

And it PROBABLY triggers a PAVLOVIAN response in the DUNDERHEADS who READ it. “LOOK at all the CAPS! This is MY kind of TRUTHINESS!”

It’s just… WEIRD. And sort of PATHETIC.

Lied. The word you want is lied. They lied.

People are almost more susceptible to simpler charts with race and IQ than they are to the really complicated stuff

Ironically enough, that’s because they’re stupid.

Hierarchism never puts the working class on top.

The class on top, no matter its origins, is always and without exception and literally by definition the ruling class, and it inevitably and not coincidentally ends up broadly indistinguishable from any other ruling class throughout history.

“Their authoritarianism is bad but our authoritarianism is good.”

Said every hierarchist ever.

What’s with this mealy-mouthed “extremists” stuff?

The Israeli government overtly supports the illegal settlers, and the IDF and the police actually distribute the weapons with which they then terrorize and murder Palestinians.

It’s not just “extremists” - it’s Israeli government policy in action.

Israel is a rogue state. It’s just that simple.

Israel is a rogue state.

“Doubts grow?”

Why would they even need to “grow?” This is just June and July all over again, with the only difference being that Hamas isn’t buying any of it this time around.

The Biden administration isn’t trying to negotiate anything. It’s just trying to strike a pose to dodge the entirely deserved condemnation it’s getting for enabling a genocide while continuing to enable a genocide.

“I think she’s beautiful — very beautiful! I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful, actually — unusually beautiful!"

I don’t think it’s with her popularity that the creepy old serial sex abuser is preoccupied…

As intended. The wealthy few don’t buy Supreme Court justices for no reason.

The decisions aren’t just about undermining climate policies - they’re more broadly about eliminating any impediments to the wealthy and empowered few raping and pillaging to their hearts’ content, entirely free of any threat of consequences. But that’s ncessarily largely about climate, since that’s one of the most notable areas in which the wealthy few are causing significant direct and measurable harm and thus are most eager to avoid the consequences they so richly deserve.

Should they be? Yes.

Will they be? No.

It really doesn’t matter what should happen, because the simple fact of the matter is that the fossil fuel companies own enough corrupt politicians to successfully avoid the wholly deserved consequences for their overtly malicious acts.

And a billionaire singer who’s already such a common target for AI deepfakes that she’s quite likely the one person on the planet most ready, willing and able to sue someone’s ass off over them.

Wow - that was quite possibly the dumbest thing he’s done yet.

Interesting strategy there…

The exact and only point of overturning Chevronis to make it so that corporations (and apparently branches of the government?) will be free to destroy the environment in order to generate more wealth for the c-suite and the investor class, but it isn’t going to happen all by itself. It’s necessary for someone to make this specific challenge, so that then the wholly corrupt and compromised supreme court can rule in their favor, then the corporations will be free to pollute to their hearts’ content.

That isn’t a slam dunk though. The plutocrats have to be careful about who files the challenge, since a particularly egregious or unpopular corporation will likely draw too much attention to the scheme and generate opposition, which in turn will spotlight the brazen corruption of the supreme court.

So it’s an interesting strategy to not even use a corporation at all, but a branch of the government itself. On the one hand, it not only sidesteps the risk of the opposition it could face if it was a corporation with a poor reputation - by having it not be a corporation at all, it will potentially distract from the underlying fact that the whole thing is being done primarily to benefit corporations at the cost of the health and well-being of people, and of society as a whole. But on the other hand, as a branch of government, it could all be irrelevant, since it’s not necessary for the EPA to have enforcement authority - there are other mechanisms by which the Air Force can be held liable for the pollution for which they are self-evidently liable.

And maybe that’s the point. The Air Force can serve as the test case that will establish the desired precedent that the EPA doesn’t have the authority to enforce environmental law or to hold polluters accountsble for the harm they’ve done, but can then potentially avoid the demonization a corporation would rightly face for being the point organization in this blatantly destructive and self-serving and short-sighted scheme by going ahead and at least carrying out some token effort to rectify the situation, under some other authority. It’ll potentially serve as a way to minimize the clear threat - of making it seem to casual observers that eliminating EPA authority won’t make it so that polluters will be entirely free to destroy the environment, in spite of the fact that, in cases other than a branch of government that’s subject to other lines of authority, that’s exactly what it will do, and in fact exactly what it was intended to do.

Dastardly…

Of course it does.

The broad point of Project 2025 is to eliminate anything and everything that provides any measurable benefit to the common people and/or in any way impedes the wealthy and the corporations doing absolutely whatever they want to do, no matter how much harm it might cause to people. That’s the exact reason that so much of it focuses on eliminating or at least neutering government agencies - the goal is to make it so that corporations and the wealthy few face no constraints and no consequences - so that they have free rein to rob and pillage and rape and destroy.

And it’s not only the playbook Trimp will follow, but the reason that billionaires like Musk and Thiel are backing Trump. They aren’t really backing Trump per se - they’re backing Project 2025.

He doesn’t need to do it this time - he has a veritable army of fascists, a brazenly corrupt and compromised supreme court and a squad of billionaire plutocrats to do it all on his behalf, and not coincidentally they have a detailed blueprint in Project 2025 that tells them exactly what to do, step by step, to transform the US into a christofascist/plutocratic autocracy.

All Trump has to do this time around is just carry on being Trump, while all those other people do all the dirty work.

To “win?” No - not really.

But I don’t think that matters much.

Honestly, I think that Trump and the overt fascists and plutocrats who are backing him fully intend to get him into office or destroy the country trying - that if he doesn’t win legitimately, he’ll “win” through fraud, or through the machinations of the brazenly corrupt and compromised supreme court, or through violent revolution.

His backers - the Heritage Foundation and the rest of the fascists and Musk and Thiel and the rest of the plutocrats and so on - don’t just want to try to get him into office - they want to destroy American liberty and democracy. It’s not even so much about him specifically - he’s just the right combination of charismatic and shallow that they see him as their opportunity to impose the autocracy they want. And I don’t think they’re going to let anything stand in their way. So whether or not he actually wins the election isn’t even really relevant, other than to the degree that that will determine what other strategies they might have to, and will, implement.

I would expect that any random person on the street would be more trusted on the economy than Trump

If economic expertise actually consisted of lying, filing false financial statements, running businesses into the ground, dodging creditors and filing bankruptcy, then Trump would be unmatched. But those decidedly are not signs of economic expertise - exactly the opposite in fact.

I’m regularly struck by the literal insanity of politics, but this whole deal with Israel is a particularly notable example.

The fact of the matter is that we have no idea what Harris’s actual opinion of the situation is. Regardless of what it might actually be, she has to support Israel, which at this point means supporting a government of literal murderous psychopaths who are simultaneously carrying out a genocide in Gaza and a violent incremental illegal land grab in the West Bank while also brazenly trying to provoke, and drag the US into, a war with Lebanon or Syria or Yemen or Iran. And why does she have to support all of that patent evil? Because if she doesn’t, AIPAC will spend millions and millions of dollars trying to destroy her, like they already destroyed Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, for daring to have principles.

And what’s the likely net result of that? To elect a Republican, which is to say, a member of the party of actual antisemites.

They accuse Democrats of being antisemites merely for calling genocide genocide, and meanwhile, the actual antisemites - the people who comtinue to hold to the notion of Jews as evil, money-grubbing vermin who are conspiring to take over the world, are Republicans, even including Republicans in high office, like “Jewish space lasers” Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Think about how insane that is - a politician has to publicly support a genocidal regime or face being called an antisemite and having an Israeli advocacy group spend millions and millions of dollars to destroy her and instead elect the candidate from the party of actual Jew-hating antisemites.

And as if that isn’t enough, we have Jill Stein in the middle of it all, who, with zero chance of actually winning, is free to take the position that any rational person should take, and the position that the majority of the Democratic base takes - that genocide is genocide and is rightly condemned. And that then introduces the risk that she’ll draw off enough Democratic voters, merely by taking the position held by the majority, so the position that the Democratic candidate should take, that it will hand the election to the Republican - the candidate of the party of actual antisemites.

The whole thing is bludgeoningly insane. I don’t think anyone could’ve created such a grotesquely dysfunctional and actuslly counter-productive system if they’d deliberately set out to do it.

And yet that’s the world we live in - the world we’re forced to live in - a world warped by the literal insanity of a wealthy and powerful few.

It boggles my mind.