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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • This means that anyone who doesn’t like a particular rule or regulation can pick a venue with a friendly judge, challenge it in court, and likely get the outcome they want. Even if judge shopping wasn’t a major problem right now, this would still be a bad idea. The reason Chevron told judges to defer to agencies in matters where the interpretation is ambiguous is because those agencies have the experience and and expertise to understand the issues involved far better than a judge who has to try to master the subject from inside the courtroom.

    This is all the more crazy in light of the recent racial gerrymandering decision, where Alito not only ignored the deference that appeals courts are supposed to show to trial courts (where the case is actually experienced and not just summed up in a brief) but then says that the judicial branch must defer to the legislators when they claim that they are being fair. So judges can just override the executive branch in subjects that they likely do not understand, but they can’t actually contradict the legislature over something like whether a policy is violating someone’s constitutional rights, despite that being one of their core functions for the past couple of centuries.



  • Well, for starters, it’s over 50 grand for the base vehicle, and that’s before adding the bed. And it’s bigger than what I’m looking for.

    What I want is something more like an electric version of the Ford Maverick, but one that adds to the bed length by switching to a regular or extended cab, and by moving the cab forward a bit since we no longer need to accommodate an engine. I want different proportions, but the same basic size and price (obviously making it electric likely comes with a price increase, but that shouldn’t be enough to double it).



  • I just want a reasonably sized two door electric truck with a decent sized bed and only minimal space taken up by the frunk. I haul enough stuff that I could really use the cargo space, but I don’t want to drive an aircraft carrier on wheels that doesn’t fit into parking spaces. And I don’t want it collecting as much data as possible on me, but that’s not just a truck thing.

    So, my options are basically leave the country, drive a 30+ year old ICE truck, or start my own car company. Because despite the fact that there is clearly demand for a smaller truck that’s actually a truck, no one is interested in making them for the US market. Not when you can make a big useless luxury truck that has a much larger profit margin.


  • I like wireless, I just fucking loathe earbuds. Unfortunately, they have completely replaced the wrap around on-ear headphones that were the best for wearing while running errands or exercising.

    I don’t want something big and bulky while I’m walking around, but I also don’t like having shit jammed into my ears. And critically, those on ear headphones are just the right size to have a convenient button layout so I can easily pause or go back a few seconds in my audiobook whenever I need to.

    But Apple decreed that wireless earbuds were the future and the market for everything else fucking died.


  • Makeitstop@lemmy.worldtoStar Wars Memes@lemmy.worldI'm getting old
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    3 days ago

    Why do people defending Star Wars keep shitting on sci-fi and fantasy? “It’s just a movie about space wizards with laser swords” they say, as though having fantastical elements negates all criticism.

    The original trilogy isn’t schlock. It’s fun, relatively lighthearted adventure in a fantastical setting. It has its flaws, but there is genuine artistry there, and it resonates with people because of that.

    And even if I am looking at classic Star Wars through nostalgia goggles, that doesn’t invalidate criticism of new Star Wars stuff. Rise of Skywalker is a train wreck of a movie all by itself, no comparison needed.





  • Everyone who is alive today is descended from slave owners, thieves, rapists, murderers, conquerors and oppressors. They are also all descended from people who were the victims of slavery, theft, rape, murder, conquest and oppression. If people are responsible for the actions of their ancestors, then we are all guilty of damn near everything, and it’s basically just original sin without all the Catholicism.




  • Seems like the first step should be taxing those personal loans that are being used as income. That seems like a simple fix (simple by tax code standards, I’d still expect such a law to be ridiculously complex).

    I do worry about the unintended side effects a of a wealth tax targeting stock ownership directly. That just gives the rich an incentive to squeeze more value out of their investments in order to cover their tax bill. And it seems like it would likely push private companies into selling out more as they grow since the money has to come from somewhere, thus giving even more incentive to cave in to investors who just want to make a quick buck and don’t care about the long term survival of the company.


  • Because they could sell them as new games.

    Fallout is hot right now thanks to the show, and from a business perspective its kind of crazy that they didn’t plan to have something available to capitalize on that interest. A Fallout 1 & 2 remake or remaster would have been an easier option than a whole new game. And it’s the kind of thing you can outsource to another studio, so it doesn’t have to disrupt their current plans.

    If I were some soulless executive at Microsoft, I’d have been getting this put together the second I saw that the show was a huge hit. I’d be trying greenlight remasters of basically all the games, plus a new non-numbered game in the series that could have limited scope but keep the same basic flavor, and maybe a new game in a different genre altogether. Things that could be handled by other developers and pushed out over a reasonable time frame so we could at least have something to announce before season 2, while letting Bethesda keep Fallout 5 for whenever they finally get around to it.


  • His support in Wisconsin is largely outside of Milwaukee. And his core MAGA base wouldn’t stop supporting him if he showed up and took a shit on their porch. Hell, they’d probably agree with Trump about Milwaukee (regardless of how they felt before Trump said anything) rather take any offense.

    But of course, I also assume that Trump didn’t think about anything like this before opening his noise hole. He just says whatever nonsense passes througg his failing neurons and manages to escape his mouth.


  • I learned the term from a dirty limerick in a sci-fi anthology about dinosaurs that I picked up in middle school at a school library book sale. It was told by a telepathic tree which was trying to convince a guy to jack off into a condom and shove an acorn in it so it could reproduce, as that’s how it had been created. It was weird.


  • Steam isn’t a monopoly, I can get my games elsewhere (epic, gog, humble store, origin etc). But Steam is dominating the market because it does it better. It offers value and features that others don’t, and it generally hasn’t abused its dominant market position to squeeze the consumer or crush their competitors. The closest thing to enshittification we’ve seen from Steam was them allowing third party DRM and launchers, which isn’t something they wanted, it’s them backing down from a stand-off.

    I want competition, but there’s good competition and bad competition. Good competition is what we see from Steam and gog, where they stand out by being good at what they do and giving customers what they want.

    For an example of bad competition, just look at streaming sites. We went from everything being on Netflix to everything being divided among dozens of shitty platforms, each of which costs more, and the prices keep going up, especially if you don’t want ads. Nothing was improved for the consumer when Netflix lost its defacto monopoly. Which isn’t to say that Netflix is great, only that the competition for marketshare has only made things worse for the consumer.

    I think it’s easy to look at all the bullshit EA and Ubisoft and the like pull now, and imagine that same pattern from streaming playing out in gaming.


  • Sounds to me like a way of backing down from their saber-rattling and threats of invasion while trying to not look like they are backing down from anything.

    [Realizes he’s talked up a war that would be disastrous, win or lose] “We’re not going to do that, it’s exactly what they want us to do”

    Of course, that could also just be Xi being full of shit for diplomatic reasons. It’s not like he’d be bound by this in any way. “We’re not going to be tricked by their provocations” can always be followed by a “but now they’ve forced our hand.”