Mamdani won by focusing his campaign on the most pressing issue to voters today: affordability. The cost of living keeps going up, wages stay the same, and everybody’s scared and frustrated looking for someone to promise they can do something about it. And he had answers.

In increasingly uncertain times, we can win voters over by appealing to their fears and frustrations and promising change that will directly address their needs. This is, in a way, how Trump won. He told voters, “I know you’re upset and scared in a changing world. Well it’s the immigrants’ fault, it’s trans people’s fault, it’s whatever target I tell you to hate next’s fault, and when I own the libs, I’ll bring the price of eggs down.”

Of course you and I both know Trump was full of shit. But as long it sounded like he was addressing their fears, the most frightened people struggling to make ends meet latched onto whatever false hope he gave them. And I believe we can win people back by speaking to those same fears, but this time we offer real solutions.

However, there is a very important catch. Do not ever say the word ‘socialism’. The legacy of McCarthyism has ensured that that word is still political suicide on the national stage today. You can get away with it in a city as deeply blue as NYC, but not in a general election.

But it’s really only the word that’s the problem, not the ideas behind it. People really are fed up with capitalism, they just don’t know that that’s really what they’re fed up with. And as long as you avoid the word, I think you’d be surprised what you can get people to agree with.

Look at Obama in 2008. He ran his campaign on universal healthcare as his main issue, knowing that healthcare in America is a major problem voters wanted addressed. Detractors called it socialized medicine, but as long as he never said that word himself, voters just understood that he was offering change and they wanted to try change. They were fed up enough with American healthcare that red scare tactics didn’t stop them from considering change.

I believe a viable next step that could work in 2028 could be to campaign on universal basic income. The job market is becoming increasingly unstable, especially with the AI bubble. People fresh out of college can’t get jobs because everything that claims to be entry level wants three years of experience, and they can’t get that experience because they don’t have experience. We’re coming to a point where it’s time to rethink one of the fundamental flaws of capitalism, that everyone must work or else they starve and die, as this is about to break when too many people lose their jobs. But don’t use the c-word, don’t use the s-word, just talk about UBI as its own issue and I think people will warm up to the idea.

I miss my old Motorola Droid 2. I don’t need a thinner phone, give me that slider form factor.

Active users are what matter. Dormant accounts aren’t doing anything.

Miyamoto says: If the player is not locked into a succession of inescapable and slowly plodding text boxes where they’re offered neither choices nor agency, it must mean they’re not sufficiently engaged!

What Miyamoto game is this describing? If anything I’d say he’s got a reputation for being anti-text.

Did you have a modded console? Without modification, the 10NES lockout chip prevents PAL cartridges from running on NTSC or vice versa. But it is possible to disable the chip to get around this.

The real point here is that they don’t have the ability to manufacture at the scale of the big three. It literally can’t be in direct competition.

I don’t think that’s had much of an impact when Nintendo sold more Switch 2s at launch than Valve has manufactured Steam Decks over its entire lifespan. The Steam Deck is still an enthusiast product for a niche crowd, and will likely never be in direct competition with the big three.

NES and SNES were region-locked. In addition to an actual lockout chip, they even had different cartridge shapes so you couldn’t physically fit Famicom or Super Famicom games.

Handhelds were not (until DSi and 3DS), but I specifically said home consoles.

It’s early and there aren’t a lot of heavy hitters yet. But for me, Kirby Air Riders alone was well worth it, I waited 22 years for this sequel and it delivered.

That was always the case for Nintendo’s home consoles, not like it was a new thing that started with the Wii. Switch was the first one to be region-free.

These seem a little pointless when you can barely only see color under the analog stick. Unless you detach them from the console, but even then don’t they want you to reattach them to the grip thingies?

I’m in favor of IP law reform, but you’re going after the wrong targets. Complaining about rereleases won’t get new legislation passed.

So then what do you want?

Gray cartridges run in GB mode. The GBC can apply some limited colorization, the firmware has a database of game IDs to apply specific palettes to, or you can select one manually with a button combo on startup.

Black cartridges are dual mode, they’ll run in GB mode on original hardware or GBC mode on a GBC.

Translucent green cartridges are GBC-only. If you try to boot them on an original GB you’ll get an error screen telling you this game is only for GBC.

I know the economy sucks and we’re all struggling. I’m in those shoes too. If you pirate games because you can’t afford them, that’s valid and I won’t look down on you for it.

But I think it’s wack as hell if you do look down on people who want to support official releases. It’s a good thing for content to be available officially. What is it that you even want them to do, not release anything? What are you upset about?

I know what community we’re in, but I do think that having content be available through legitimate channels is a good thing. Too much of gaming history cannot be accessed legitimately, and that’s something that genuinely sucks.

There’s an old saying that piracy is a service problem, and here they are trying to respond by offering a better service. Many of these compilations are actually pretty good in terms of extras offered, they go above and beyond just selling you a ROM.

I think you vastly overestimate the education level of previous generations.

Yes, Idiocracy misses that education matters far more than genetics. And education is something that has steadily gotten better for each generation. We stand on the shoulders of giants with access to the combined knowledge of everyone that came before us.

Yes. Some models even let you have multiple profiles configured with a button to toggle between them - on my Pro 2 I have profiles for Nintendo layout and Xbox layout.

Idiocracy is an entertaining fictional comedy, but any time someone tries to compare it to real life I want to smack them. IMO, the movie would’ve been improved if they’d chopped off the eugenicist intro and just said he’d been isekai’d into a world of idiots.

The movie portrays a world where everyone is stupid, no exceptions, but nearly all of them are well-meaning. President Comacho cares about doing the right thing, he just has no idea how to solve the problems the country is facing. But then when someone smarter comes along, Comacho at least understands that he can step aside and let Not Sure save the day.

The problems facing the real world come from people who are both intelligent and evil. Smart people at the top use propaganda to manipulate dumb people at the bottom. That’s nothing like Idiocracy, not even close.