Oh, this is WAY worse than 2016.
Before, people said that Biden was fine. Now, they’re saying, “There’s just no way to change, so we have to accept it.”
Bullshit. This is supposed to be a democracy, and every volunteer and staffer and voter and activist and voter needs to rattle the bars of the cage that the Democratic party is trying to put us in. Do. Not. Let. Biden. Do this to us.
I think you’re out of touch.
Fascism isn’t unpopular. It’s very popular when people are feeling desperate.
I keep hearing people say stuff like this: He can’t win! He’s so fascist! He can’t win, Biden did such a good job if you actually look at the facts!
That’s not how elections work. People vote based on what they think will satisfy their interests, and a lot voters don’t see any reason to vote for Biden, and so they’ll stay home. People don’t need to vote for Trump for Trump to win. They just need to give in, and Biden is a “give in” machine. He’s poison to voter hope or enthusiasm, and he’s going to lose if he doesn’t get off the ticket.
If we want to take the threat of Trump seriously, no more hiding our heads in the sand.
Unfortunately, this is not in touch with the reality of our situation.
I find people, when trying to cope with the hard truth that Biden is going to lose, revert to talking about how much he SHOULD win.
He should. He’s been a pretty good president (a genocide not withstanding).
That’s not really relevant. Because if he loses, we are likely to lose our democracy. And currently, he’s going to lose.
He is losing in the polls. He has been losing in the polls and the swing states for the entire election. At some point, this needs to change, or we’re going to watch Trump get reelected. And last night made clear that as long as he is the candidate, this isn’t going to change. When he applied all his effort to proving he could win the election he failed spectacularly.
I don’t just mean flubbing lines. I mean he lost complete control of the narrative. He demonstrated that when trying his absolute hardest, he cannot reliably explain to voters why the vote for him. That isn’t a debate problem. That’s a fundamental candidate problem that doesn’t appear fixable (except with a new candidate).
If he were winning, at least by a little, we could pretend that maybe that’s not a big deal. But he’s not. He is losing. He has been losing the entire campaign, and if he doesn’t step aside, the election result will be the same as every time pollsters have asked in the last year:
President Donald Trump.
No more “it’s not that bad”. This debate is a clear synopsis of the campaign until now, and the outcome in November. If this debate “isn’t that bad”, you might as well say losing is not that bad. (It is. It really is.)
This is why they should’ve had a primary.
We could’ve watched Biden collapse months ago while figuring out who is actually fit to run a good campaign. Now we’re going to have to go through it the hard way, because they tried to hide from the obvious for about the last 8 months.
That’s true, but I don’t think they can do that with Biden at the top of the ticket. He’s spoiled goods.
I’m not a Democrat. I left and joined the Green Party. I’m that crazy lefty. But even I can readily concede that I’d like democrats to win, and I think they could with someone like Elizabeth Warren. Or Cory Booker.
I’m not demanding Bernie or AOC or that Ro Khana be the nominee. But don’t act like there aren’t a few Democrats who have credibly taken a stand once or twice in their career for the greater good. They aren’t the majority, but they’re not so rare as you couldn’t find one.
We don’t have much control over this, frankly. But if we have any, I say we use it.
My personal attitude is that although I will concede that it is possible for Biden to win, if we don’t want to have to hope for a prayer, the only way things get better is if we all pop the bubble that Biden and his supporters are in that they can just ignore reality and hope for the best.
It has to be so clear to the Democratic party that not only are they likely to lose this election (and obviously with it, democracy), but they’re going to lose their jobs. No one who works in the election industrial complex is going to keep getting invited to cocktail parties and get hired on for whatever Potempkin election follows this one if Trump wins. No LARPing that they’re “the resistance!” in their endless fundraising emails while they enjoy being in the minority FOREVER. Rattle the fucking cage. Make it clear we blame them for this nonsense, and will continue to assign them the blame for choosing to run a failing candidate in a time of crisis because no one wanted to be the one to speak up and suggest doing anything else.
People keep getting mad when I criticize Biden, as if doing so is helping Trump win. My take: NOT doing so is helping Trump win. Protest this guy like our lives depend on him dropping out of the race at the convention. (They might).
That’s nuts. I was hoping it might explain how, but nope: they’re like, “We’ve got no idea.”
Remarkable. It’s nice to be reminded how much about our world still lies undiscovered.
Thanks. I hope you get some use from it!
Ultimately, I really hope this just clicks with some people. I feel like there is a huge well of potential here, and if some better game developer took this idea and ran with it, I’d be thrilled just to have these ideas seeing larger audiences. I really think this is a fantastically fun setting to play in.
Yeah, he’s got some dope stuff, and seemed nice. He made a fuse-triggered mechanical thumper from Dune. This was before the movie, so I don’t know how it compares, but it’s quite clever.
The game’s core manual is on Itch (https://fully-automated-rpg.itch.io/fully-automated-solarpunk-rpg). I haven’t uploaded the playable adventures yet, though they’re available on our website, where you can download them for free without an account.
I’ll add them to itch eventually.
Also, we just released the third adventure of the four-part starter campaign: https://slrpnk.net/post/10660226
I’ll cross post it here, but I need to wait until Wednesday to keep it under 1 per week.
Anyone watch attoparsec on YouTube?
I saw him at open sauce last year, and got to type out a tweet using his typesetter’s keyboard:
Absolutely. Analog is retro. That’s low tech for sure.
Can you give any examples, either good or bad?
To add to this, I’ve been using GIMP on and off for a decade and I’ve never given any thought to the name. It’s all capitalized. I didn’t think it was a backronym, I thought it was just an acronym.
I’ve used this in professional settings (I used to work in academic molecular bio), and I was very evangelical about it. Especially because we’re not doing high-level artistic work, we just sometimes need something for processing microscope images or making graphics for scientific publications.
I’d say to any and everyone, “You know, you don’t have to pay an annual subscription fee for Photoshop: there’s this free, open-source program called GIMP that does most of what you need and you don’t have to pay a thing! Want me to install it for you?”
I didn’t even think to be embarrassed about the name, and no one ever seemed to care in conversation. As others have said, the bigger impediments are people’s attachment to commercial software and interface challenges. This is just an absolutely silly complaint to make.
Yeah!
Fully Automated is the game system and world. And “A Demonstration of Power” is a playable story. It’s basically a short, interactive story about an auditor trying to find out why someone appears to be trying to keep them from accessing some unremarkable archival sensor data from the date of a blackout five years earlier.
That’s totally fair. I think the main system provides a heavy dose of what people associate with DnD, which is rolling dice, adding them to something and shouting out a number and then it’s either big (yay!) or small (oh no!) without having to think about it any more than that. But we understand the subjectivity, and really tried to make the content as portable between game systems as we could.
I’m still curious to hear others try out combat. I know it’s a wild claim, but I think our combat systems is genuinely kind of next-level. I know that sounds totally braggadocios to say, but I really think there’s something there.
Listen, all I can say is that one of us doesn’t know how to use the internet. Which one? Impossible to know. It’s a mystery.
On an unrelated note, since you pointed this out I’ve edited this post to include a link. Unrelated, though.
Oh wow: 350 items?? I’ve never seen a bubble that big!
Thanks for sharing.
No, I’m not familiar with this bundle, but I’m going to go looking for it now! Also, that’s a great cause.
If you find a link, drop it here!
I am here to gently wake you up.
Biden has been losing the whole time, pretty badly. I listened to Pod Save America to get their read, and one of them pointed out that predicted election outcomes can change in one of two ways: a major event can force a big shift, or you can rise or fall slowly over time. Tonight showed that neither is coming for Biden. At his best possible opportunity, he didn’t under perform, he made it far worse. The theory that he could slowly gain ground with media appearances is now popped.
Biden is a nice guy, but he’s experiencing a pretty normal cognitive decline, and voters aren’t going to magically come around to him when they’ve been telling pollsters for months that he’s going to lose.
That isn’t going to change unless the nominee changes. You’re right that this isn’t the end for Biden. But sadly, that’s because it’s actually been over for a long time. It’s time to pick up the pieces and begin the overdue work of fielding a competitive nominee.