Yeah, but why should Steam be the only game in town? That's a very dangerous monopoly.
Yeah, but why should Steam be the only game in town? That's a very dangerous monopoly.
It's not just a launcher, it's a storefront. Uplay, EA-whatever, and Rockstar Launcher are all storefronts where you can buy the games those companies make.
The launcher itself is a UI which lets you "launch" the game. Steam for example, is a launcher and a storefront, as is Uplay.
Having all your games in a single launcher/storefront is bad, as it gives a single company entire control over your games, and monopoly pricing.
Also remember that Steam takes a 30% cut, which is totally unnecessary, and is what directly caused giants like Ubisoft and Rockstar to make their own storefronts. Because why pay a 30% tax just for selling your game, this ain't the 1990s anymore with CD-ROM pressings.
Fuck Steam and it's monopolistic, 30% rent seeking bollocks.
UT is such a beautiful state. I miss autumn in Big Cottonwood Canyon. The Day's Fork hike has some of the most beautiful colours I have ever seen.
How could you even track accounting profits that far back in time to repay today? What if the family descendants are poor today? (They lost everything in the Great Depression, as an example)
I read the entire article, and all of those shenanigans are being passed in red states, which overwhelmingly vote republican anyway. They disallowed the use of college ID as voter ID in Idaho, but that's completely moot -- Idaho was never going to vote blue anyway.
How much money do you get if you file?
I think there are loads of people who take it seriously but can't do anything about it. The biggest CO2 polluters are mega corporations and things like airplanes and cargo ships. Ordinary people can't fight that. One family living off the grid and producing zero CO2 won't help anything.
Ergo, most people are apathetic, as they should be. You're not going to change the minds of governments and mega corps.
Ah okay, fair enough, I understand.
I'm very keen to see what happens with the newly elected leader of Italy, as she and her party are openly very far right with real fascist ties/history. Will be interesting to see if she and her government remain in power for long.
Also curious to see what will happen with the AfD in Germany. Each election they get closer and closer to holding real power.
This figure is then misinterpreted by people who failed basic chemistry to mean that cargo ships are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In reality, the opposite is true;
Perhaps it's just poor word choice or phrasing, but it reads like you mean that "the opposite is true" in that they are NOT a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, when in fact they are a huge contributor, more than California and Texas combined.
My guess is you're quoting this? https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
The problem with your statement is fragmentation. Yes, "transportation" is the biggest single CO2 polluter followed by electricity, but there are billions of individual cars and lorries out there, across many different nations and laws, so the marginal effect of any single car is infinitesimal, and too difficult to go after. But things like maritime shipping, aviation, and railroads are monolithic, and transnationally regulated, so much easier to make an impact. Commercial transport also accounts for a way, way larger chunk of the 28% than residential transport.
In terms of most bang for buck, we should be targeting electricity generation and industry, as these are not nearly as fragmented, and easier to directly regulate and enforce regulation. If you immediately outlawed the top 100 corporations on the planet, you'd make a way bigger impact on CO2 than say, every residential house in America giving up their personal automobiles. Commercial lorries pollute far more than residential autos.
I agree entirely, which I guess brings both of us back to the original OP in that people succumb to apathy and helplessness when dealing with climate change. The great unwashed masses will never agree to policies which curtail their economic prosperity or inconvenience them, and capitalism will never agree to anything which halts its self-serving pursuit of profits. So it's Waterworld or bust, and I'll end up as that old dude inside the bowels of the oil tanker.
I like everything you wrote, thank you, but perhaps disagree with your last part about not remaining in power. It seems to me that the current crop of neo-fascist (or fascist-adjacent as you call them) leaders have remained in power for a very long time, even with more or less fair elections. Erdogan in Turkey, Netenyahu in Israel, and Orban in Hungary come to mine. I guess with each of those, they don't even have to deliver any meaningful policy just so long as they keep hurting the people their voters want hurt, they'll keep being re-elected.
Yeah, and GoG is fantastic and I'm so glad it exists. We need more DRM-free storefronts without launchers for sure.
Have you been accused of glibness before in your life by friends, family, or co-workers?
Exactly, and I have written about how much I love GOG and Itch and why I hope they take more market share away from Steam.
Perhaps we do. I meant "easily" in that the tech is already there, nothing needs to be invented. We could start building clipper ships again tomorrow, or design a clipper to hold TEUs. It's a much "easier" problem than converting all commercial lorries and personal autos to electric, across all countries, even 3rd world ones.
Probably because people give up
As opposed to what, Soviet style revolution? People today don't have the same mettle as their forebearers, it's not going to happen. Occupy Wall Street and the George Floyd protests showed to the powers at be that people aren't willing to embrace violent protest for change.
There is no benefit, I never claimed the launcher within a launcher was a benefit.
The problem is the cancer that is Steam itself. We need more competing storefronts which don't require the Steam launcher, and even better if there's no launcher of any kind at all, just a binary to run to play the game.
Just a part of the 4th of July experience really
If you mean "compete" in a capitalist sense, then you're right. But sailing ships absolutely "compete" in that they can move goods and products from one port to another using zero fossil fuels. That's not ignoring any reality, they actually do work and sail using the wind. Open any history book for proof if you don't believe me.
But as we're already aware, relying in any way on capitalism or its definitions is going to do the exact opposite of saving us from climate change.
I dunno, maritime shipping producing more CO2 than California and Texas combined seems like a pretty big CO2 polluter to me, and we have to reduce where we can, ~4% is still a good start.
It actually is low hanging fruit. For 4000 years the human race engaged in maritime trade and commerce using solely wind powered vessels, and humanity thrived just fine without internal combustion engines. We could easily go back to clipper ships or design a wind-powered vessel based on shipping containers.
But efficiency will go down drastically! Transit times will increase massively! Yes, but these aren't existential threats. So people have to wait a bit longer to receive their shiny new laptops or Steam Decks, big deal. Maybe Norway won't have bananas anymore, not a big loss.
The real problem with climate change is that nobody wants to drastically inconvenience their modern lifestyle. Unfortunately, given the short window available to do something meaningful, drastic action is necessary which will result in large inconveniences and disruption for billions of people, but nobody wants that, and no politician will get elected selling that.
Perhaps I too failed basic chemistry, but I do believe you are grossly incorrect -- maritime shipping is a massive contributor to CO2 emissions:
Ships release about 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, according to the IMO, roughly equal to Texas and California’s combined annual carbon output.
Marine transportation is one of the contributors to world climate change. The shipping industry contributes 3.9% of the world’s carbon dioxide output equivalent to 1260 million tons of CO2 and this is one of the large sources of anthropogenic carbon emitters.
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484722020261
I have no idea, I'm not a Republican.
I have no idea, I'm not Republican.
I'm not sure. They definitely wanted one, but after that ridiculous plea deal which Weiss got, it's clear he's an absolute weasel and company man after all, and this is coming from a hardcore Sanders democrat. That plea deal was insanity -- a misdemeanor for lying blatantly about drugs on a federal firearms transfer? And not paying taxes? Imagine if those charges were leveled against an ordinary person, and not a member of the ruling elite.
There needs to be a special counsel appointed, but fuck this Weiss guy.
Absolutely, I'm gobsmacked nobody seems to read history.
Although, a lot of these nowadays fascist leaders are being supported by very large swathes of their own populations, as much as 48%, which is the truly shocking thing.