It also can't be understated how much private corporations benefit from technology this research yields. We spent $25 billion ($175 billion in today's money) on the Apollo programs alone, and NASA research has led to everything from cell phones and laptops to the rubber molding process used for sneakers. The DoD wasted a ton of money in the 80s on this new technology that involved getting computers to communicate with each other, and now we have the internet.

The government spends money in ways that could never be justified by cooperations, then the cooperations enrich themselves with that research and use the profits to lobby Congress for lower taxes and limited spending. It's absolutely infuriating.

I mean, the fact that they only had any potential with the super majority is the problem. In 2001, the Senate Republicans just fired parliamentarian Robert Dove because they didn't like the answers he was giving them. In 2010, Senate Democrats realized they only had four weeks to get their agenda through unimpeded, passed a single bill, and spent the rest of Obama's presidency comprising with obstructionists. In 2021, Biden let immigration reform and a $15 minimum wage get killed by the parliamentarian despite his party begging him to ignore her. Now, in 2025, a literal fascist will be in the White House and his allies will control both houses of Congress; do you really think he's going to care if someone in an advisory position gives a non-binding ruling saying he's not allowed to do something? The fact that Democrats can't get anything done without 60 Senate seats isn't an excuse, it's embarrassing.

They had the super majority at the start of that term. They couldn't have pushed something as complicated as the ACA through, but they could have moved on something small like affirming Roe. Besides, the Republicans always find a way to ram through legislation without a super majority (and I'd suspect we're about to see them abolish it entirely), but the Democrats never do.

For example, when the Senate parliamentarian tells the Democrats that they can't pass a $15 minimum wage through a simple majority, the Democrats give up. When the parliamentarian tells the Republicans they can't do something, they ignore them, and one time, they just flat our fired the guy.

You can argue about whether the Republicans are being unethical or underhanded, but at the end of the day, they achieve things, and the Democrats don't. The Democrats will tell you that they need 60 votes to do anything and that the parliamentarian won't allow them to pass non-budgetary items without one, but Senate filibuster rules can be changed, and the Parliamentarian has no real authority. Playing by the rules while your opponent cheats isn't noble, it's stupid.

I am so God damn sick of reading articles from pundits who think they can just numbers-and-statistics away people's financial experience. Listen to this shit:

America has recovered more quickly and more completely than almost any comparable country. As The Economist put it, “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” Real wages have risen fastest for those at the bottom of the income scale. Today, inflation is at 2.4%, compared with the 9.1% peak in June 2022. The fight against rising prices has essentially been won.

But few in the electorate seem aware...

Wow, the electorate sounds like a bunch of dipshits. But just for the hell of it, let's check their source for the wages of the bottom income scale. According to the Economic Policy Institute, real wages grew 13.2% between 2019 and 2023. Now, inflation was 19.2% during that period, but "real wage," means, "wage adjusted for inflation," so I guess the author is right. The lowest income earners got a raise during the Biden years. Guess the poor are a bunch of dipshits.

But which of Biden's policies led to these increases in wages? Well, the Economic Policy Institute says:

Between 2019 and 2023, state-level minimum wage increases along with a tight labor market have translated into faster real wage growth for low-wage workers, particularly faster growth in states (and D.C.) that increased their minimum wage during this period.

So, it sounds like the wages went up because of a competitive labor market (which the Fed intentionally killed to combat inflation) and minimum wage increases at the state level, and that states that increased their minimum wages saw more of that growth than others. So, you could make an argument that Biden deserves little credit for this increase, but let's not even worry about that. Let's see look at the minimum wage by state.

The EPI has a handy Minimum Wage Tracker that color-codes states by their state minimum wage against the federal minimum wage. A quick glance shows you the states with the highest minimum wage are mostly states that went to Harris. But what's really interesting is that, of the 7 key battleground states that Harris lost, 4 of them (Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) have the same minimum wage as the federal minimum of $7.25, a starvation wage that hasn't been raised since 2009. So it's not unreasonable to assume that in more than half the key states Harris needed win saw the smallest share of that 13.2%, but did see prices increase by 19.2%.

Now, I'm not an economist, and I don't have hours to research this shit, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing a lot of nuance regarding cost of living and non-minimum wage increases in these states. But that's not the point. The point is that I've already spent more time and energy examining why people might not feel good about the economy than the sneering chud that wrote this article. And I'll end this tirade with one last quote from the EPI report he cited:

Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.

The Pelosi interview is honestly batshit insane. She doesn't see the election as a rejection of the party, thinks the Democrats are doing well, Kamala Harris did everything right, Sanders is wrong, and then she made some backhanded comments about how Biden should have dropped out earlier. I know some of that is spin she that she has to say, but it's still deeply out of touch.

Are you fucking kidding? Because Biden 2020 was a progressive platform and Harris 2024 was a centrist one. They weren't even remotely similar. Biden may be a centrist, but he's very pro-labor, and he could see how important the progressive base was that election, so he literally sat down with Sanders and hammered out a platform that they could get behind. And while I've got a lot of problems with Joe Biden, he actually was very committed to that platform. He really wanted BBB to get through and he kept trying to find ways to abolish student debt.

Harris, on the other hand, had a handful of disparate, vaguely left policy positions, like the first-time homebuyer's credit and legalizing pot, but her campaign was mainly centered on economic opportunity for the middle class. She also committed wholeheartedly to the most right-wing polices of the Biden administration, like arming Israel and cracking down on the border. But worst of all, she made bipartisanship and Republican consensus a huge part of her campaign, promising to add Republicans to her cabinet , campaigning with Liz Cheney, and even praising Dick Fucking Cheney.

TL;DR, Biden campaigned like Obama in 2008, Harris Campaigned like Hillary in 2016. And the results were the same.

If Nintendo weren't such pricks about their IP, they would be a perfect company. They don't chase short-lived trends, they don't make live-service slop or loot boxes, their DLC is usually great (without feeling necessary), they constantly experiment and innovate, and most of their hardware is incredibly durable and reliable (joycon drift being the big exception). But if you make a fan game or host a tournament using one of their games, even if it's been out of print for 20 years, even if you're not monetizing it, they will come after you. It's the one thing I really hate about them.

It is truly insane to me that the one party in this country has moved into straight-up holocaust denial, but the only thing that will get you labeled an antisemite by either party is suggesting we politely ask Israel to do a little less genocide with the weapons we give them.

It's also worth noting that she served less than one term, so her sample size is incredibly small compared to most Senators, but I honestly couldn't give a shit. She's not a facist and she's not sundowning, so whatever, fucking run her. Whatever gives the Democrats a shot at limping over the finish line is fine.

Yeah, these ads almost write themselves. Show clips of right-wingers describing Biden as old and senile, then splice in clips of Trump rambling incoherently. The entire Trump campaign has been built around attacking Biden, so there will probably be a lot of tangential benefits of switching to Harris.

You ever feel like you live in some sort of Murphy's Law parallel universe, where the worst possible outcome of every major event happens?

In my experience, 100% of executives don't actually know what their workforce does day-to-day, so it doesn't really surprise me that they think they can lay people off because they started using ChatGPT to write their emails.