you’ve gotta go left so hard that the current dems would split into right and left.
That's great in theory, but if we do that, we're giving the government to the GOP in the interim, and they've made it quite clear that if they get power, they don't intend to give it up again. Not to mention, the effects of this would extend well beyond our borders. I've advocated very strongly for exactly this sort of action in the past, but now is simply not the time.
The amount of propaganda we're subject to here is just astounding. News programs, print media, billboards, web articles, everywhere. Just looking at the way a given issue is framed completely differently in different states or cities or from different news sources is pretty eye opening. That, combined with rampant gerrymandering, makes it really hard to blame voters for voting against their self-interest; we're just being bombarded with media designed to make us think, act and vote a certain way. I'm completely sure my own views are influenced by it, too, to be clear - I'm not claiming to be some pillar of purity.
It's not that Americans are 'bad people' any more than the people in any other country are. It's just that a relatively few voices are given very large platforms and basically dictate the discourse.
Incidentally, ranked choice voting was on the ballot where I live in 2020. I actually did spend some time trying to spread the word and drum up support. It didn't pass, so we're right back where we started, and I live in one of the most liberal states in the country.
Our state senators, representatives and local government are actually pretty alright, as American government goes, but the fact of the matter is that the country is being held back by a tyranny of the minority and those of us who don't live in the handful of battleground states that define elections don't really have much power to influence that.
Getting any sort of federal-level change into effect is basically an impossibility, because (it is my view that) corruption is so rampant. We'd have to oust the majority of the House and Senate and replace them with reasonable people to have any chance of getting the votes for something like that. At this point all we can really do is hope to hold off the fascist wave that's building.
The power is in the hands of the voters.
That's a really hot take. Tell me, who should I vote for to bring about these magical changes I have the power to effect?
How can an US doctor charge like 10 times the prices on our side of the pond ?
There's an unspoken assumption that when doctors quote a price, the insurance companies will widdle that down to a fraction of that amount when they pay out, so if a procedure actually costs $X.00, doctors will bill the insurance for $X * Y, so insurance actually ends up paying what it actually costs.
The side effect is that we pay co-pays or deductibles or non-100% coverage amounts based on what insurance was billed, not what the procedure actually cost. It's actually cheaper in some cases (especially with regards to medications) to not use insurance because then, we'll get billed what it actually cost, not the grossly inflated amount, and if our coverage is only, say, 50% for a given procedure, or if we have a co-pay on medication, we end up paying less. Meanwhile we're still paying the insurance companies for the coverage we're not taking advantage of. The whole system is fucked beyond belief. We know it, we just can't do anything about it.
"Vote for the politicians who want to fix it!" only works if they actually do want to fix it, and will follow through if elected.
Or is there some massive drawback to windows for gaming handhelds that I’m not seeing ?
The ability to suspend and resume cleanly, that's literally it. The Steam Deck manages it basically perfectly, but no windows handheld ever has or likely ever will, it's just a limitation of Windows. That's (to me, and to a lot of other people) the most important feature of a hand-held gaming device.
Edit: Look at every successful (or even moderately successful) mainstream handheld device in the past... I don't know, 20 years? The NDS (and derivatives), PSP, PS Vita, Switch... all had the ability to suspend gameplay at the push of a button and resume it cleanly at any time. It's hugely important to anyone actually using a portable device as a portable device, and not just as a way to sit on the couch and play games rather than sitting in front of their PC.
No, not yet; I'm pointing out that Deep Rock Galactic does, and that continued revenue from them is a (probably) not insignificant part of their revenue from the game (based on the fact that they keep adding more). In order for them to be a valuable source of income, players have to stick around.
Super Mario 2 wasn't relying on players making additional purchases for a portion of their revenue, though. They didn't care if you bought it and quit playing it the same day.
There was a conspiracy theory back in October that Putin was behind it, with the goal of drawing US military aid and general sentiment away from Ukraine. If that ended up being the case, and he got this as a free bonus, I'd feel pretty disgusted with all of us.
That's neat and all, but I will be incredibly surprised if even a tiny fraction of those players are still playing it in 6 years (which is how long DRG has been around). I haven't played Survivor, but the reviews don't really paint it in a super good light, compared to other similar games... claims that the upgrades are uninteresting and there's not much to differentiate the characters and the balance feels off... Early access problems, hopefully, but we're talking about player counts for an early access game, so that's what we've got to work with. It seems like it's just riding on the coattails of the DRG name, for the most part. If you compare it to the player counts for other similar games, it's doing surprisingly well out of the gate, yet reviews ~10-15% poorer than those other entries did at the same point in their life cycle, which suggests maybe it's being bought for the name, not the gameplay.
It's funny that they call out the lower price as being what's drawing people, because $10 is actually on the high end for 'bullet heaven' games. Most drop in the $3-$8 range.
Anyway, point I'm trying to make is that they're comparing apples to oranges, these oranges just happen to have been marketed very well to apple fans.
“Over the last week, President Biden has had multiple calls with Prime Minister Netanyahu, as well as the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, to push this deal forward. Though gaps remain, the key elements are on the table,” the ambassador said.
I don't believe we know exactly what's been said in those calls, but we do know that Netanyahu has been publicly telling Biden that he's not going to budge...
In her statement Saturday, Thomas-Greenfield called on the UN Security Council to instead ensure “any action we take in the coming days increases pressure on Hamas to accept the proposal on the table”
Ah, so really, the goal is to make Hamas fold, not to make Netanyahu be reasonable. Got it.
What you're talking about is what I'm talking about, too. In my experience, though, (with two different Windows based handhelds, one of which was a GPD Win, though an earlier model than the one being discussed in this article,) it works sometimes. I'd say it had maybe an 85% success rate, but that other 15%, it wouldn't resume, or if it did, the game would crash, and a 15% chance of losing my progress is just not something I'm willing to deal with. I've had 1 case with the Steam Deck where it did not successfully resume mid-game, total, since getting one just under 2 years ago.
I've looked at reviews of a bunch of other similar products but this ended up being a major complaint about all of them. Which one do you have, out of curiosity?