Israel doing a 9/11 every day and the UN’s only response is “Please Iran, don’t hit back”.

glances at the current state of the Internet

Uh… are you sure?

It was great when they’d tricked investors into giving users an ecosystem with no (obvious) ads.

But I don’t feel that Steam alone accounts for PC gaming.

If we’re putting the SteamDeck against Nintendo, I’d say the natural comparison is Steam exclusives against Nintendo exclusives.

Even on my Steam Deck, I use GOG, Epic, and itch.io quite regularly.

Sure. Because it is functionally just a computer with a Valve-branded Linux distro. But there are PC games ported to Mobile. I’m not going to count all Android phones to the “PC” side of the aisle just because I can install Balatro on my OnePlus.

The whole reason the Steam Deck exists is to compete as a portable full sized hand-held console comparable to the Switch. If you’re not talking about portable consoles, you’re not really talking apples-to-apples. Anyone crammed into the coach end on an airplane can tell you the quality of life difference between a gaming laptop and a hand-held.

It’s Politico. I’m surprised they didn’t go full passive voice and write the headline from the point of view of the handcuffs.

I wonder if Democrats will learn something from this, or if Schumer will demand Padilla apologize before next week.

What kind of slob gets their opinions from the comments sections of a local news outlet?

Hell, do major publications even have comments sections anymore? I’m lucky to see the first paragraph of a story after the barrage of “Please Sign In!” pop-ups. Nevermind getting all the way down to the bottom of the article to see what some random assholes think about it.

Fortunately, you can just sit on it and wait for the inevitable bevvy of reposts.

So, the landlord can effectively wait a month.

I guess Michigan could pass a law requiring landlords to accept rent payments every day. I’m not sure anyone would actually want that as a reform.

So… I don’t get it. You cannot enforce 48 hours unless the repair is requested less than 48 hours before rent is due.

I guess the question becomes - can you bill your landlord if you are forced to live outside their property, and deduct that cost from rent? If that’s the case, the withheld rent becomes a means by which you can immediately recoup the cost of housing outside the rental unit.

Even then, just the threat of non-payment is a big deal for a landlord who is - themself - likely paying a note on the property and at risk of default if they can’t use your money to pay their own creditors. The possibility of missing a mortgage payment creates a natural incentive to fix the property sooner rather than later.

As it stands, this would be a significant improvement to landlord/tenant relations. Which is why it likely won’t pass.

Seven days is a long time to be homeless simply due to a landlord’s neglect.

So no, Steam Deck didn’t outsell the Switch 2. It didn’t need to.

I don’t disagree with the sentiment. I would still consider the Steam Deck a “failure” if it couldn’t move enough units to justify its production cost, but it looks like they’re still churning them out, so… eh, it’s not great but its fine.

I would argue that merely comparing generic PC sales to Switch sales also misses the mark. At the very least, you’d focus on unique Steam installs or Active Steam Accounts if you’re really interested in counting the success of Steam relative to Nintendo.

Even then, what you’re really competing with isn’t “SteamDeck sales v. Switch sales”. I’d say its “SteamDeck sales per $1 advertising spent v. …” Given that Nintendo spent around $730M in advertising last year and Valve spent under $100M, it seems that Nintendo has to spend roughly $50/unit to move a Switch relative to Valve coming in closer to $40/unit.

It’s very difficult to compare popularity under two wildly divergent marketing strategies.

The joke in all this.

The penalty for offering a job illegally is a slap on the wrist. The penalty for accepting a job illegally is imprisonment, torture, transport, and possible death.

Almost as though the fixation on “crime” is a distraction and the cruelty is the point.

I guess I’m a highly sophosticated Palantir bot account trying to trick you into interacting with me.

if you don’t stop upvoting memes and stupid subs

Who says “we’re” up voting it? Nobody questions where the upvotes for “PuppyOfTheDay” come from? Once you concede the algorithm is rigged, it’s silly to blame the humans for what’s on your feed.

The wholesale takeover of the site by /r/The_Donald posters gaming the algorithm back in 2016 is entirely down the memory hole.

Nobody who still uses the site wants to believe they’re being hoodwinked again.

Petrodollar has value because its used to purchase petroleum from the Saudis.

If you’re not using dollars to buy Saudi petroleum, you need a lot less of them.

Part of the Trump brand is “Fuck you, I’ve got mine” which isn’t condusive to international coalitions.

Hell, just look at the Ukraine/Russia conflict. As soon as Trump got Zelensky to sign a bunch of Western Ukrainian real estate over to his cronies, he unleashed a large traunch of weapons to fuck over Putin. As soon as he got another Perfect Phone Call from Xi, and secured some unspecified promise, the Chinese tariffs evaporated.

My man stands for nothing that won’t fit into his pocket.

There are supposed to be millions of them, so many that HitlerPig even won EVERY battleground state (an exceptionally unlikely outcome), but I’ve never heard one actual voter claim they voted a straight Democratic ticket, except HitlerPig for president.

If you look at the actual vote counts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election_in_Michigan

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_Senate_election_in_Michigan

Trump | 2,816,636

Harris | 2,736,533

Slotkin | 2,712,686

Rogers | 2,693,680

Harris and Slotkin net out almost perfectly. Trump outran Rogers by over 3% of the vote, which suggests people were showing up to support Mr Cheeto and then leaving the rest of the ballot blank.

That is… not unbelievable. The Trump Cult is strong, while the GOP as a party lags Trump’s personality cult substantially.

Polling gets even worse in other Midwestern states, with Harris outright underwater to her down ballot Dems. But there’s nobody in the GOP Trump doesn’t outpace. The idea that people are voting Trump + Dem is far less likely than voting Trump + Nobody.

They both faced the same MAGA threat and the lib won.

Largely thanks to the local public backlash to Trump tariffs. If Kamala had prevailed in November, both countries would likely have MAGA governments today.

Human posting of AI-generated content is definitely a problem

It isn’t clear whether this content is posted by humans or by AI fueled bot accounts. All they’re sifting for is text with patterns common to AI text generation tools.

There wasn’t necessarily anything stopping people from doing the same thing pre-GPT

The big inhibiting factor was effort. ChatGPT produces long form text far faster than humans and in a form less easy to identify than prior Markov Chains.

The fear is that Wikipedia will be swamped with slop content. Humans won’t be able to keep up with the work of cleaning it out.