First, they sent the missionaries. They built communities, facilities for the common good, and spoke of collaboration and mutual prosperity. They got so many of us to buy into their belief system as a result.
Then, they sent the conquistadors. They took what we had built under their guidance, and claimed we "weren't using it" and it was rightfully theirs to begin with.
Name one famous example of a charismatic coup-attempting fascist getting locked up and rallying their supporters behind a manifesto referring to “their struggle”.
Cuz it itches the part of our brain that looks for status-seeking behavior and labels people as inauthentic.
Being vegetarian places a degree of exclusivity onto your consumer habits, and in the Western capitalist lens, conspicuous consumption has a lot to do with how we communicate our status.
Being vegan stands in direct relationship to vegetarianism as being even more exclusive. This does two things:
Just that in and of itself puts vegans on the receiving end of a whole bunch of cognitive biases.
But wait, there's more!
Because mass production never lets a social identity go to waste, major brands got on board with explicitly labeling things as vegan, which starts to make it seem like you're trying to be cool but really just deepthroating the corporate cock to "buy your way to cool".
And then came the trends of organic/non-GMO, local-first, artisanal, farm-to-table, etc. etc.
At the point where Wal-Mart has their own artisanal farm-to-table cheese brand, it starts to look (to our dumb pattern-matching brains) like vegans are just rubes falling for the most basic version of an obviously fake status-seeking game propped up by cynical brands preying on how desperate you are to look cool.
But wait, there's even more!
Because, surprise -- our brains never actually stop caring about status, even if we think we're just trying to make rational, objective, moral choices. Picturing yourself as a rebel for being vegan, taking the sneers and the insults in stride because you know it's the right choice for the planet... is appealing.
And that self-aggrandizing image is inseparable from actually doing the thing, because that's just how our brains work. Even for the most pure-hearted among us, thinking we're morally superior -- especially in tangible ways that we get to physically play out on a daily basis -- is intoxicating.
So the people who are chuckling about the inauthenticity are... kind of right. But this same dynamic exists for literally everything. So when you chuckle at the vegan, but then take a moment to consider which kind of bacon really speaks to who you are as a consumer, you're playing the same game. It's just one that far more people are invested into. So if anyone calls it silly, nobody takes that criticism seriously. Not like your organic local-first artisanal acai kale kombutcha.
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Basically my recollection of this episode of You Are Not So Smart: https://soundcloud.com/youarenotsosmart/selling-out-andrew-potter
...which I listened to, for the first time, as an attempt at bonding with my then-girlfriend/now-wife's roommate. We had not gotten along up until then, because she was aggressively vegan and I ate a lot of fast food. But I found out she liked podcasts and I was really enjoying this one and there was a new episode I hadn't heard yet! She really enjoyed it, until the guest talked about veganism as a form of status-seeking. That didn't go well. I didn't mind taking over her half of the lease though.
I’ma press X to doubt here.
They're not going to be using cloud services
Job listing for back-end engineer at Arrowhead says:
- Cloud Engineering: Utilize Azure services to build and optimize cloud-based backend components and make use of monitoring tools to track live performance.
Our tech stack
- NET/C#, Docker, Kubernetes/AKS, Azure, SQL Server, CosmosDB, Redis, Grafana, Terraform
Early days playercount woes were before they added more nodes to their solution.
CEO said during the early day playercount woes:
It’s not a matter of money or buying more servers. It’s a matter of labour. We need to optimise the backend code. We are hitting some real limits.
They can't just fire the people maintaining their solution either but that's also baby bucks
A good back-end engineer is at least 100k. And a just-keep-the-lights-on crew is probably 3-4 of them.
FWIW: I also work in IT, on an IoT system that you might also assume has a “nonexistent” server cost. (I assure you, the cost exists.) I also used to work in game dev.
That said: Yeah, protesting by playing the game is a severely misguided notion.
Could also be that the HTTP server lied about the content length.
A frunking typo
My Subaru has a similar setup, and there’s a feature for changing the max height of the tailgate. You might wanna see if the same thing exists for you.
Apple really skewed our idea of lifespans for electronics, didn’t they?
Apple's a weird pick for this.
If you're talking desktop/laptop hardware, I had a 2009 MBP running just fine as a personal server until a couple of years ago and would probably still be doing it except the battery turned into a spicy pillow and I wanted more performance anyway. And I've got a 2016 that's going strong as a daily driver for personal projects.
If you're talking phones, that's even weirder. It's pretty well known that Android users change phones more frequently. Which makes sense, cuz Android phones tend to get stuck on old major versions and stop getting security patches.
For instance if you got an iPhone 5s in 2013, running iOS 7, you could still be using that today on iOS 12, which received security patches as recently as 2023.
If you got a Galaxy S4 in 2013, you could update from Android 4 to 5, which stopped receiving security patches in 2017.
There’s a great reply to this in the same publication: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2024/04/27/quiet-quitters-or-good-workers/
Sir, – I read with interest Olive Keogh’s article (“Quiet quitting: You always had workers who did 9-5 but it’s a creeping malaise, employers say”, April 25th).
The article defines working one’s contract hours as a form of quitting, a contortion of fact that I have struggled to grasp since laying eyes on it.
It is asserted that employees are obliged to put in extra hours, do additional work and recalibrate their work-life balance for the “benefits” of social capital, “wellbeing” and career success.
I have a novel proposal. Pay employees in actual capital for the additional time they are expected to work.
Dispense with the relaxation classes on their lunch breaks and the sweet treats and the tokenistic attitude of management to the labour that drives their business.
Instead, resource staff sufficiently to complete work within business hours, respect the rights of staff to a fulfilling life not defined by their day jobs, and stop using gaslighting terms like “quiet quitting” for fulfilling the terms of their contract of employment.
This may seem radical to those managers who have been around the block, but KPIs (key performance indicators) don’t spend time with my loved ones nor do they put food on the table. – Yours, etc,
SHANE FITZPATRICK,
Dublin 7.
tl;dr: Miyoo Mini Plus
Performance-wise, pretty much anything is gonna have you covered when it comes to GBA, so it really depends what else you want out of the experience.
You mentioned the slot, so if physical carts are important to you, then...
Worth noting for the platform-specific perks:
More modern stuff:
But here's the thing: At the end of the day, the best handheld is the one you have on you.
If you're not going to bring it with you when you go out, then what's the point?
Portability is the key feature of this kind of device, and we all tend to have at least 2 if not 3 pockets already spoken-for. And you might think "Ah, I always have my backpack on me." But do you bring your backpack to the bathroom with you at work? Do you wear it around the house? So pocketability is the #1 factor, IMO.
And with that in mind, here are my pocket-friendly picks:
But my number one pick, specifically because it nails the form factor while being supremely pocketable...
The Miyoo Mini Plus!
It's just a stellar device. It's just big enough to be comfy, but small enough that I don't hesitate to put it in my pocket even for trivial outings.
Onion OS is a great custom firmware (oh yeah, for a lot of these you should look into custom firmware options), but the stock firmware isn't bad either. It's easy to use, everything "just works", and it's plenty powerful for everything that I care about playing on the go. The screen is beautiful, the gray version looks cool as hell (be aware that there is light bleed around the power LED with the translucent cases), and the stock buttons are delightful.
And it's a good price, to boot.
I bought one for my sister-in-law because she was drooling over mine. She's not a super nerd, has zero interest in tinkering, but hasn't gone a day without playing it since Christmas.
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Some good channels for in-depth reviews:
The quality really doesn't matter.
If they manage to strip any concept of authenticity, ownership or obligation from the entirety of human output and stick it behind a paywall, that's pretty much the whole ball game.
If we decide later that this is actually a really bullshit deal -- that they get everything for free and then sell it back to us -- then they'll surely get some sort of grandfather clause because "Whoops, we already did it!"