Seriously though, democrats are getting way too hyperbolic about this

 So...I'm not gonna lie, striking down this section of the VRA does suck for us. I mean, it does cost us potentially 10-12 districts. However, we gotta remember, there are 435 districts, and those districts are all in southern states where democrats are largely uncompetitive anyway. Like...I get that it's a loss for us, but people act like OMG WE'RE DOOMED FOR A GENERATION. BS. Dems can come back from that, just gerrymander a few more blue states. 

I mean, that's the game the republicans seem to be angling at, gerrymandering the fudge out of everything, so...in the short term, so must we. Again, I'm not really a fan of gerrymandering. I support changes to the house that would make this behavior darned near impossible and ACTUALLY lead to an era of undisputed democratic party rule. I would basically eliminate the rural advantages the republicans currently have. More districts = more granularity = more democrats. In contrast, ten seats? I mean, it can make a difference, but it's not unwinnable. I mean, I currently predict around 235-200 for the house results, so this would mean what, 223-212? Not great, but not terrible. of course, I'm also expecting a huge blue wave. But still. Again, if dems gerrymander their states, we could potentially offset that. I'm more interested in finishing the fight that they started.

And on the racial implications, well, morally, I don't care. Why should race get such preference anyway? I get it, white southerners gerrymander to stop blacks from having their own districts. But then we allow gerrymandering for literally any other reason anyway, so what makes that so special? Again, this is what I think is the real problem with the dems. Their weird veneration of black voters and race politics is an achilles heel of the party. It's a crutch. And quite frankly, part of me is glad to see it taken away. Not because I have anything against racial minorities, mind you, I wanna make that clear. But because the weird pedestal dems put black voters on is weird, creepy, and offputting.

Like, I joined the democratic party in 2012 during the Obama era. I joined...as a pissed off white millennial in the rust belt who was 1) aggressively atheist at the time, 2) leaning economically progressive. But I never cared about race. I always saw those idpol people as weird. 

But then in 2016, I was forced into greater conflict with them. And as a white "Bernie bro" i was always lectured about the black vote and blah blah blah, and it was always used against me as a cudgel. And I hated it. And I really feel like the dem overreliance on black voters and minmaxing identity based demographics was offputting. I mean, that was the democratic party that I grew up hating. It was based on grievance politics. It actively alienated white voters. It literally took an existential crisis on top of the worst recession in 80 years to actually get me to vote democrat. And then they...alienated me. They basically told me they didn't need my vote, and while they wanted it, they wanted me to give it freely, not realizing that hey, I literally was a conservative before this point and i dont give AF about the privilege crap.So they used that stuff as a cudgel while ignoring me. It always left a bad taste in my mouth.

Honestly, I believe the dems can do better. And again, I'm gonna say it, if this forces the dems to shape up and consider an alternative electoral strategy where they just cant count on certain racial groups to vote for them no matter what and they have to actually go out and appeal to people directly with actual ideas and policy, well, that's for the better.

Basically, what I'm saying is I hope this decision leads to a democratic party that is far less racial in the future. I have no doubt they'll retain the demographic advantages with such groups. And to be frank, and this is why I'm not sweating the decision, this was an EXTREMELY narrow decision. if striking down that one tiny section forbidding gerrymandering is all that this decision did, then we can move on with our lives. Again, I really would rather the dems drop the race stuff and pursue a different strategy anyway. I think they should appeal to rural voters, semi rural voters, and small city urban voters more. I'm not saying they can win that way, but right now, their current strategy is literally the min max strategy. And that's why we're getting destroyed anyway. Instead of going 40-60 or 30-70 with rural voters, we go like 20-80 and then the dems try to make it up by going all 96-4 or something with black voters and 66-33 with latinos. That's LITERALLY what the dems were trying to do in recent election cycles. And if you're not part of the demographics they're trying to maximize the vote share of, they hate you and dont seem to care. Like, I'm a white male. "oh well, 70% of them will vote trump anyway, so F them." Like, they dont even try. And i've had convos with liberals where they dont even wanna attempt to appeal to such voters because unless they're seppukuing themselves on the altar of white male liberal guilt, they just see them as "racist" anyway. 

Again, to me, it feels like a weird cult mentality. And seeing the dems lose their crap over this like we're gonna have one party rule for a generation just tells me "GEE, YOU NEED TO COME UP WITH A NEW STRATEGY THAT DOESN'T DO THAT CRAP." And you know what? Maybe it's for the better. I feel like this stuff has been used as a shield to cover up the dems shortcomings for far too long. It's also been used as a cudgel against white progressives who actually want the dems to move in a more progressive direction for too long as well. 

Really, maybe getting race out of our politics or toning it down is what we really need. I keep saying that 2016 was like the original sin of modern politics, and that the hyper identity based crapshow we've had since is why the world is falling apart. Maybe this is the first step toward fixing it and being a proper working class party again. That's what I hope happens long term. Just my view. I know my view aint your normal "democrats" views, but again, I always hated the race crap, so...yeah.  

My controversial opinion of parts of the voting rights act getting shot down

 So...SCOTUS did it, they gutted a provision in the voting rights act that mandated that gerrymandering can't occur on the basis of denying a racial demographic the vote. This could allow republicans southern states to gain around 10-12 seats if they redraw their maps.

However, I'm seeing a lot of doomerism around this like it's over for the dems and they're not coming back from this. And I say BS. If anything, I'm gonna argue a controversial point, that this is some tough medicine that the democrats need to take to move into the seventh party system once and for all.

To understand why, let's revisit the last 6 decades of politics in a nutshell. In the 1960s, the voting rights act was passed. This gave blacks more representation, but it also backfired on the democrats and ended the new deal coalition. Since then, the democrats have cobbled together a coalition that's heavily racialized, in which they emphasize combining coastal urban interests with obnoxious identity politics. And that's been the defining features of the democrats in the 6th party system. This obnoxious condescension toward "flyover country" combined with obnoxious racial pandering. We saw in 2016 and 2020 how, when some of us wanted a more working class coalition, these same people would circlejerk about like, black voters in South carolina, and act like they're the "base" of the party. hell, I've seen centrists playing this weird definitional game with the idea of a party's "base" claiming that it isnt the most progressive voters who are "the base", but the most loyal voters, like black voters and urban centrist voters. Like they're the REAL base, progressives aren't the real base. Again, the democrats have been systemically ignoring working class voters for a while. It's the defining story of the 6th party system. The democrats abandoned working class voters, and as such, the working class voters abandoned the democrats. To the point that the "true democrats", those centrist 6th party system sycophants, dont even consider working class and progressive voters to be "real" democratic voters. No, they're just finnicky independents, and they dont care about them. Instead, their whole strategy is to rack up successes among minority voters by minmaxing demographics and appealing to suburbanite voters.

And that's where we are looking at a potential seventh party system. As it stands, democrats in 2016 traded white working class voters in the rust belt, for suburbanites down south. And this demographic shift of minority voters combined with growing suburbs is supposed to ultimately deliver the south to the democrats on a silver platter some time around the 2030s. We're seeing it with georgia, arizona, and north carolina, and we're seeing it with texas, potentially. 

With me...I always HATED this strategy. Because it just allows the centrists to be centrist. It encourages the abandonment of the rust belt and places like michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania, as well as states like ohio and iowa. It encourages the democrats to focus on identity politics instead of class politics. And it encourages them to be the useless centrist party that they've been. 

But...my own strategy was always different, more color blind. I have nothing against minority voters, I'm not racist after all, but I never gotten into  this weird obsession with race the dems have. And people will say that's privilege, but that attitude in itself is part of the problem. They use it as a cudgel, and as an excuse not to do better. They'd rather divert from class issues to focus on race issues. They bashed Bernie Sanders in 2016 for not appealing to black voters, whose votes were overprioritized in the primaries,  when in the general, Bernie would have wiped the floor with Trump. In 2020, the democrats relied on South Carolina as Biden's firewall to manufacture consent around him being the front runner, despite his ### being soundly kicked up to that point outside of south carolina. And in 2024, the democrats prioritized south carolina first instead of iowa or new hampshire because they knew that these old, conservative black voters would push the party in biden's direction. 

And what did my own strategy look like? Take the obama map and hold it. Hold the rust belt, rely on the blue wall. I admit, by 2030, the blue wall might lose some importance due to population loss, but as long as the dems can hold like one swing state outside of it, they can still win an election. Georgia is going that direction anyway. Nevada's another possibility. And if we can win back Ohio and Iowa, while holding the rust belt trio deciding elections lately, yeah, we can just hold things in perpetuity. The problem was that MAGA and the dems going all southern suburbanite messed that up.

here's the thing, I never wanted the dems to pursue the south. That's "god's country." It's conservative. it's regressive. I hate having to rely on it to win anything, because that means our ideology is compromised, because guess what, it's full of conservative religious people. Even the minority voters there are conservative and religious, outside of race issues. They just vote democrat because the whites down there hate them. And again, you can see where I'm going with this. As long as these guys have an outsized influence in the party, the party will not be a working class party. It will be a conservative lite party that's instead obsessed with idpol.

So what should the democrats do to counter this? Well, I'll give you two answers: 1) bernie sanders, 2) Minnesota. Bernie Sanders is a socialist from Vermont. Vermont is rural AF but he was able to break through with voters up there in ways that seem abnormal for the rest of the country, given how racialized the politics of the rest of the country are. That's why the rest of the country rejected him in 2016. They didn't think he was hip enough with minority voters because ideas like social democracy aren't what matters, it's idpol. But if idpol becomes toxic to democrats because the VRA is struck down in this way, democrats are gonna have to go back to the drawing board and find new ways to win elections. And one way is to find ways to win rural voters. Not through cultural issues, but economic issues. And that brings me to the second example: Minnesota. Perhaps the state democratic party in the whole country I respect the most is the DFL of minnesota. Their democratic party isn't the rest of the country's democratic party. it's actually the "democratic farm and labor party". Farmers. Laborers. It's a hold over from the New Deal, in a state that didn't have the idpol of the rest of the country because Minnesota, like much of the upper midwest, is mostly white. So rather than adopt the weird sneering cultural progressivism combined with centrism, they actually had to get off their ###es and appeal to rural voters. Now, their influence has declined in recent decades and they've followed the same trends as the rest of the rust belt. BUT...they are still the die hards holding out in favor of the democratic party. And they've gone democrat every election since like 1972. They're literally one of the only states that can say that. Now, if we export that model and apply it to Iowa, and Wisconsin, and Michigan, and Ohio, and Pennsylvania, maybe we can still have a shot. We can counter a republican southern resurgence with a northern blue wall, just like I always wanted to to begin with. 

Now, this isn't to say that the south is off limits entirely. This doesnt disenfranchise minority voters. it just screws over their congressional representation, allowing more gerrymandering. Well, to that, we in the north should gerrymander every single state we can get our hands on. This is, of course, a band aid. Long term I support the end of gerrymandering and the uncapping of the house of representatives, but that's also why I'm not sweating this. Gerrymandering has been functionally legal for every reason except race. And I personally HATE my current house representation. First, I was in some rural district that didnt represent me. Now I'm in some district full of suburbanites despite my politics being diametrically opposed to them. Of course, after trying to design my own maps, the problem is obvious, the districts are too big, and this unfairly favors rural voters. That's the core problem here with the house. Urban voters are underrepresented unless you live in a city that's too big to functionally gerrymander. It's why the dems are so attracted to suburbanites. They see it as "well we win in the cities, we lose in the country, let's win the suburban voters." But ultimately. That's why we need to rethink our entire strategy. Living in a small city, my issues arent the typical urban area's issues. Urban areas typically have stuff like jobs, and high cost of living. Here, the problems are the opposite, low cost of living, combined with crushing poverty from a weak job market. And let's face it, a lot of rural and semi rural america has the same issues. And the democrats just ignore that, because of those incentives.

So, as I see it, democrats need to change the game. They need to make more inroads with white working class voters in burnt out rust belt towns, and semi rural areas where the landscape is full of decaying main streets and blighted properties that have long since gone out of business and have never been repurposed into anything useful. And maybe this is the kick in the ### to do it. I don't know, maybe im wrong and this is entirely bad for democrats, but honestly, I think we can adjust and overcome this if only we change our electoral strategy, and I've been kinda wishing the dems had gone in a different direction that didn't involve insufferable identity politics for a while now. If this kills that strategy for good, then that's a silver lining here, and maybe democrats can start winning by being a genuine working class party again, instead one obsessed with minmaxing voter demographics. 

The dems are offically favored to win the senate (Election update 4/29/26)

 So, it's happened. A new poll out of texas has shifted the average there in favor of democrats, meaning for the first time this election cycle, the democrats are officially favored to win the senate. Now, do I trust this data? Not really. I mean, it was one outlier poll that tipped it, and I'd like to see a trend. And I also ain't sure what to make of the data out of Alaska and Iowa. So we can't count our chickens before they hatch, but I did want to mark this moment as a milestone of the 2026 election cycle. This map should be darned near impossible for democrats to crack, but it seems like they're...cracking it. Just seeing them ahead in polling averages is a sight to behold. Blaska? Bloiwa? Blexas? All seems to be happening. That's what happens when gas is $4 a gallon nationally because you broke your campaign promise against foreign interventionism and started a war that you can't finish. Americans care about the economy. They care about their pocketbooks above all else, and when they ain't happy, nobody's happy. Trump just incurred the wrath of the same forces that threw Joe Biden out of office and it's a sight to behold!

 

 Still not sure which Michigan is red, but it looks like Haley Stevens' campaign isn't dead with all the McMorrow/El Sayed mud slinging so even that could change if i shift the candidate or just average all three. Still favors republicans, but to be fair, the data IS old. But yeah. Dems seem to be winning big elsewhere so it's more than evening out. 

Discussing my philosophy of peripherals (more steam controller commentary)

 So...I watched more stuff on the steam controller, and I see a lot of influencers acting like the price is reasonable. I understand that I've been out of the console market for a good 15 years now, and over in PC land, it's a lot harder to pull one over on us due to our market behaving more like an actual market, but I also acknowledge console rot has been ruining things as well.

Consoles....are walled gardens. As I discussed not long ago, consoles are just glorified PCs with closed operating systems and proprietary peripherals. They're cheap up front, and appeal to people with little technical know how or patience to trouble shoot their own problems, so they "just work." However, in exchange, you kinda get screwed in other ways. I got out of that market because of micro$oft charging for Xbox Live. Nowadays, all 3 big companies charge for online, and everyone sees it as normal...except PC gamers. But that's the point. When you're in a closed ecosystem with limited competition, these companies can do whatever they want to you, and what are you gonna do, leave? Fat chance. Except on PC....well....yeah....we will. Steam got popular not because it was forced on us, but because it offered a better service than anyone else. it's a de facto benevolent monopoly that people LOVE. like when epic games tried to break it, most gamers hated it because it was like "screw off EGS, we just wanna buy games on steam, we dont care what you have to offer." And when they relied on forced exclusivity to force us to use them, those games sold rather poorly, and most of us resented using the store. Even now, I literally only use epic to collect free games. And that's how it is for most of us. 

But yeah. Push comes to shove, alienate us, and we're gonna be more resistant to push back against stuff. Charge more for a controller, and while some might buy, most are still gonna buy the cheaper ones. I mean if you look on amazon right now, while the xbox elite controller is on their top list for $150, most of it is dominated by $20-70 offerings, with $50 being about the average I'd say. And to me, that's the range I'd say is reasonable. Below $20, you get into the boots theory of economics zone. Above $70, it's like....yeah, while there's like ONE premium controller people will flock to for people into that sorta thing, most of us will top out around $60-70. As I said, if you take a $35 dual shock from the PS2 era and adjust for inflation, you get around $65. You take a $40 wired Xbox 360 controller, about the same thing. And even then, there's clearly a market for less.

Me? I dont think much about PC peripherals. I try to spend the last amount of money possible. Keyboards, any keyboard will do. Buttons are buttons, they often take a couple years to get weird enough to replace them. Get a $20-30 keyboard, I'm good for years to come. I could even get by on a $10-15 one although it might lack some features like lighting or more robust build quality, and keep in mind what I say about boots theory (for those who dont know what that is, it's the idea that if you cheap out on boots, you'll pay more long term than if you just bought a decent pair to begin with). 

Mice is where boots theory REALLY comes to life for me. I mean, I've gamed on $5 mice. I'm not kidding. FIVE. DOLLARS. Look up like, the OM3400U or something. Yeah. Total. piece. Of. ####. 400 DPI, bad sensor, broke and had to be replaced literally once every 4 months. Then I went for a slightly more expensive e-blue cobra for...I think...$13. Much better sensor, greatly improved gaming performance, still a POS that broke in 4 months.

So then I started buying logitech mice. G400S, G502, G402, etc. I buy one every few years. They eventually develop the same double click issue that all mice get, and that is fatal to them being usable in games for me, but it takes on average...2-3 years to happen. So I spend around $45ish on average....and I replace my mice 6-9x less often. So instead of going through a bad $5 mouse every 4 months, spending $30-45 in that same time period, I just spend $30-45 on something actually good. And it has super high quality sensors that greatly improve precision. So for that, yeah, that's the one expensive peripheral I'd buy. And again...my logic is rooted primarily in boots theory. Just as you want a good pair of work boots that lasts for years and not some cheap POS you replace every few months, the same can be said with gaming mice.

Which brings me to...controllers. 

Again, last time I was in the market for a controller in a serious way, was the 360 era, where they had $50 wireless and $40 wired. I had wireless that came with the 360, but they were a pain because well....batteries go dead. And honestly, I think one of my controllers corroded the last time I tried to use it from having batteries in there for years, since i play on PC. Not that it matters, since ive since rebought most games cheap on PC. Because a lot of them go on sale for $2.50-5? yeah. Steam rocks. But yeah....I go in the market looking for a cheap controller, and first time, it was like....okay, I can get a cheapo controller for $15 (logitech submarine special), something more midrange for $30, and up to $60 for an actual xbox branded controller. Since I dont use controllers often on PC, I went the super cheap route. But after getting into retro gaming again, Ive come to realize that was, in fact a cheap POS...so I wanted something a bit better. And I found out the 8bitdo wired controller for $20 is far superior. And it is. It's...actually better than the kishi that came with my edge, which was...$80 standalone. I mean, let that go to show paying more doesnt always equal quality. Like, the razer kishi on my edge is kinda finnicky, sometimes buttons dont register properly on the dpad, a few buttons feel a bit weird clicking them. it still works, but yeah, for $80, I'd expect a perfect experience and it's far from perfect. More money isnt always better. 

And that's how I feel here. Like, I just want a good enough experience. Sure, you can market some fancy controller as having gyros i wont use, or bluetooth i despise using (again, i HATE wireless stuff, and peripherals? man with my limited exposure to wireless mice and controllers from the 2000s? never again). But yeah. I want something basic, wired, and functional. I dont need fancy features. I dont need steam's trackpads, since any games I'd use them Id rather just use a mouse with anyway. Idk. It seems like an overly premium product in that forbidden zone of pricing. Again, anything up to $60-70, I can see an argument for. But even that's too much for me. I'd rather keep my own peripherals in the $20-30 range, and only get something expensive if I NEED it like a gaming mouse. 

So yeah. When I say $100 is too much for a controller, that's where I come from. But then I end up dealing with...the console gamers, and most of them are so dumb. Like "what do you mean thats too expensive? We've been paying that much for years on our platforms". Yeah. because you guys get ripped off. And I hate to whip out the whole PCMR mindset here, but a lot of us PC gamers ARE more informed consumers than console gamers. We might pay more for PCs, but we got cheap peripherals, cheap games, and we want things to remain cheap. I look at the predatory crap companies like nintendo, microsoft, and sony and pulling over on their customers and im like "wait, you people buy this stuff? wow, you guys really are being ripped off." 

So...when I deal with people defending a $100 controller, I feel a culture clash coming on. In my corner of the market, we've been insulated from those kinds of price increases for a while, and when we start seeing them here in the PC space, we're like OH HELL NO. Not saying the PC space is perfect. look at GPUs and how nvidia has been conditioning us to pay more for years and how they've cultivated a class of out of touch yuppies willing to spend seemingly unlimited sums on GPUs. But given hallmarks like the 3060 and 4060 are still the go tos for many of us, I feel like more people are like me more than we are willing to admit. We just dont engage on forums as much because the upper class people trying to use their GPUs as a member measuring contest end up dominating those spaces. But yeah, we exist. And there's more of us than the forums realize, we're actually the silent majority. We just end up checking out when stuff gets too expensive and we drop out of the market. And then people are like, "oh, well they chose not to buy, so we dont need to appeal to them, let's appeal to these rich people instead." It's survivorship bias. But yeah. 

Anyway, just wanted to break down my mindset. 

Can the democrats win the senate after all? (Election Update 4/26/26)

 So....take any election update before say, August with a grain of salt. I'd say July, but for some reason some states have their primary schedules going well into August and certain questions will never be settled before then, like who will be the Michigan democratic candidate? Who will be the Texas republican candidate? We don't know, and this makes it hard to predict general elections.

normally, i wouldnt bother this early. I'd just make like one prediction leading up to the final one in November and sit on that. But...that was when each prediction took hours of painstaking work to put together, I've automated said predictions somewhat through the use of spreadsheets, and thus, have an election model I can input data into to get rudimentary results. And this map...well, this is weird. I'll just show it. 

 So yeah. As I said. Weird map. The thing is, I normally use realclearpolitics/realclearpolling for data, but sometimes they just dont cover some data for some reason. And apparently, polls were coming out in places like Iowa and Alaska that were kinda spicy in the sense that democrats were somehow winning. Now, it's possible these pollsters just arent good enough for RCP to cover, or maybe they just arent following states. but given the lack of data on RCP, i decided to add these to the model. And it's leading to a weird tie. 

The democrats have an uphill battle, dont get me wrong. not only do they need to hold every senate seat they currently have (including Michigan, where McMorrow and El Sayed are both tied and both are behind), but they need to flip at least four new ones. North Carolina is looking like a shoe in. Assuming Platner wins the primary in Maine, he's also at a quite comfortable 7+ point lead. Some say Maine's polling is funky and can be off, but I think my own probability calculations would hold here. A 7.6% lead is nothing to sneeze at, and theres only a statistically 3% chance to overturn that result. Not saying it cant happen, but yeah. 8+ is my two tailed 95% confidence interval, and only afford each candidate a 2.3% chance to defy the odds in a one tailed environment. But from there, it gets tricky. Recalculating Texas, given Paxton and Cornyn are equally probable outcomes, we get a 1.5% Republican edge. That's a 65% shot that they win. Michigan is somehow worse. McMorrow and El Sayed are tied in the primary. McMorrow is down 1.5%, El Sayed 3%. The average being 2.3%. So thats around a 72% chance the republicans flip that one. That means we'd need THREE seats to effectively flip the senate. And Ohio, another one I've pointed out, is in the direction of 2.6% lead for the republicans, leading to a 74% chance they retain the seat. So...not good odds for democrats.

But then...but then...we got 270 to win with these weird polls coming out of Alaska and Iowa. So let's discuss these. Both states are states I previously had ZERO data on, and I assumed would be heavily republican. Iowa is in the same category as Texas, Ohio, and Florida by this point. And I estimated a R+6 or so lead. But, the polls have them ahead by 2%? What gives? Did Ann Selzer try their luck at polling again? This polls looks as off as THAT was. And for all we know this one is. Well, this one comes from Echelon Insights, which is a republican pollster, but has a history of being relatively credible. Anyway, they released a poll showing the dems ahead. It is what it is I guess. Throw it on the pile, and given I have no other data, well....I'll settle for it. It would be crazy if this flipped out of nowhere.

What's worth talking about especially here is Alaska. Mary Peltola is the presumed democratic candidate there. She's quite popular there despite being a democrat. She actually did win a few house races up there, despite it being a republican state. She lost in 2024, but is now running for the senate. And...let's be honest. Alaska is a one house district state so if you can win the house, you can definitely win the senate. it's the same constituency. So...is this in error? Does she have a chance? Again, if she could win house races there, she can win a senate race. The whole state is a single house district, so running for the senate, you get the same exact voters. And given she was winning prior to 2024, the republican high water mark, I honestly think she CAN pull it off. 

It's weird, normally, I'd consider alaska a R+10-12 state and not even consider it in play BUT....it's looking quite "in play" right now. Some individuals are charismatic and can defy how their state normally votes. Maine is very democratic but susan collins is still a senator there (although I expect her to lose to platner this year). Ohio has candidates like Sherrod Brown where despite it being all but lost for the presidential elections, Brown still holds a special place for that state's constituency, and tends to overperform there. He just got screwed by 2024 as well. And of course, north carolina shouldnt be as locked up for dems as it is, but Roy Cooper seems popular there. So individual candidates can overcome the odds of their states normal predispositions.

So...yeah. At this point, we take North Carolina, Maine, and Alaska, we're up to 49. We keep Michigan, we're up to 50. We get Iowa, we get 51. We get Texas and Ohio, we could see 52-53. So the senate is looking increasingly winnable for democrats. Even though the odds are against them, there's just so many possible paths opening up for them and a system wide overperformance could cause those republican advantages to disappear.

Still, probabilistically, as my prediction points out, the dems have a 35% chance, the republicans a 31% chance, and there's a 34% chance of a tie. That's near 50-50 on paper, although in the event of a tie it depends who the vice president is, and that's JD Vance, so a tie is still functional republican control. So 35% chance for democrats, 65% for republicans in practice. yeah....

Still, a lot better than i thought. And given the "multiple paths" thing, I would like to run 100 simulations right now and report the results.

So, out of 100 simulations, we got:

Dems: 29

Reps: 38

Ties: 33

Pretty even, but slightly favoring republicans. Considering ties, the republicans have a net 71-29 advantage, but yeah, this is getting interesting. Keep in mind, my simulation is rudimentary and doesnt really track red/blue waves well. Each state is simulated separately, with no relation to the others. In reality, we have wave elections where overperformance is one state means overperformance in most. Either way, when the map gets THIS competitive, even the simulator has problems picking a solid winner. I mean, we can see it's slightly GOP favored ignoring the ties, but yeah. That COULD just be random statistical noise for all I know. I'd need to run a second hundred to see, but I won't bother. Point is, senate map is increasingly competitive, and there are increasing opportunities for surprise upsets to happen. Now, do I trust this new data coming out of Alaska and Iowa? Eh....I'd like to see MORE before coming to a conclusion. Alaska I can believe, Iowa, I'm skeptical of.

I mean think of it this way. Some of these states are states that in 2024 went around R+13 or so. Now they're at risk of flipping democrat?! Even in a D+7 environment relative to 2024, we're still talking R+6 here. And if I had to guess, my brain wants to say, yeah, these polls are wrong, these are R+6 states. 

However, remember what happened in Illinois, New Jersey, and New York. None of those had any business being so close in 2024. And I discounted a lot of that data too as polling artifacts from not having enough of it. But...those polls Biden had that showed dems underperforming there were dead on. So many these states ARE in play. Only time will tell.

Anyway, I aint gonna be posting these super often until like...August or so. Mainly because some of these states literally dont have their primary cycles until then. So, yeah. Anything I post now should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, this is shaping up to be interesting. By all accounts, this should be a map democrats have virtually no shot at flipping. But it's actually opening up for them. Really crazy crap. Anyway, we'll see what happens I guess.  

Telling other people what to do with their money apparently... (Steam controller criticism)

 So...a review for the steam controller leaked, and it was apparently $100. Which...I think is insane. I mean, here's my logic. As a PC gamer, I dont even use controllers often. For years, i used the infamous logitech submarine special, which I got for $13. As discussed in the linked article, it was mid. And this past Christmas, after seeing how even among cheapo controllers it's kinda lacking, I upgraded to an 8bitdo wired ultimately 2C controller for around $23. I could've gotten an uglier color for $18, but I wanted something that looked cool so I went for the more expensive wukong version. And while I havent played with it extensively, I thought it was a pretty good deal. it's a marked upgrade from the Logitech F310 and it's something finally worthy of using. 

And...don't get me wrong, I can see people pushing for a more expensive controller. As I said, xbox branded ones, which presumably have better build quality are like $50-60. But I also know controllers get pricey these days. The switch was pushing like an eye watering $90 controller, Xbox and Playstation have elite controllers like $200. And yeah, a $100 controller? That's A LOT of money for a controller. I'm sorry, it is. I grew up in the PS2 era where those controllers broke and name brand ones cost like $35, or $30 on sale, and you could get some rip off mad katz one for like $15. Not that I'd recommend buying the mad katz one. Those things were boots theory in action. but yeah, $35 for a controller was pretty reasonable. These days, that's more like $65. And that's kind of fair. As I said, i can see a good quality controller being around $60. I wouldnt spend much more than that. Hell, i wont even spend that. I dont have tons of money to buy gaming stuff with, and quite frankly, I wanna allocate what I have efficiently. less money on controllers means more money for games. So for me....cheapo $20 controller, it does the job. And it kind of makes me wonder...what's even the point in paying so much for these things? I mean, again, I admit I'm going for something a bit above the mad katz boots theory special here, but given how we advanced from the logitech submarine special to something that feels a lot more premium for the price, why bother spending more? Idk, i think beyond a certain point, you're wasting your money. Ya know, in PC gaming, there's price/performance. You wanna get the best value for the money. That's what you do when you're money oriented. 

But....other people on the internet dont like my opinion. And I've gotten a lot of really butthurt comments like HOW DARE I TELL PEOPLE HOW TO SPEND THEIR MONEY! And THE FEATURES ARE WORTH IT TO ME, BLAH BLAH BLAH, PREMIUM, BLAH BLAH BLAH, EXTRA FEATURES! And BLAH BLAH BLAH SO YOU DON'T WANNA BUY IT, THEN SHUT UP ABOUT IT.

No, you shut up. I'm sorry, but if you're making me double down, I'll double down. Buying a $100 controller is an irrational and stupid buying decision that plays into the hands of the same corporations jacking up the price of everything. Like, seriously. We have a cost of living crisis, and everything feels inflationary. And it's not just a little inflationary like 3-5% a year, some stuff seems to be going up WAY more than that. Like, as I said, a $35 controller in like 2002 is worth around $65 now. okay, but that doesn't justify a $100 controller, let alone a $200 controller like the really "elite" controllers out there cost. That's 50% above even the going rate of inflation. If we even wanna make that argument. I hate making that argument with tech because I think tech should be at least SOMEWHAT inflation proof given the whole point is stuff that used to be expensive is now cheap. Like flat screen TVs used to cost like a hundred bajillion dollars back in the day, now you can buy one for $100. Stuff like that. Of course, raw materials and stupid crap like tariffs can influence that. And I guess we do see that happen with the $20 controller I bought. But that's the thing. if something like that can be made for $20, why are such expensive controllers justified? It's like buying a 5090 for $3250 or whatever they cost now when you can buy a 5060 Ti 16 GB for $500 (and even that's too high, let's be frank, I've complained about GPUs in the past though). 

Like that's the thing. i feel like there are two kinds of consumers out there. There's middle class, budget oriented people like me, who like normal americans are complaining about EVERYTHING getting too expensive these days. And then you have...the top 20% of the income earners. Those guys have gotten virtually all of the economic gains since the 1980s. They make up the majority of purchasing behavior, and while most people like me are spending less and less as gaming gets more expensive, these guys are gung ho into throwing their massive disposable income at the problem and arent very price sensitive. So $100 for a controller is nothing for them. It's like 1-2 hours of work. So what? And they're the ones driving the price of stuff up. one commenter made a point that $100 controllers didnt exist in the 2000s because there was no market for it and because consumers would've given them the side eye. Ya know...like I'm doing, since I still think like someone like that. but in the 2020s, the market is different. The middle class is dead, the market is adjusting to a more premium audience willing to throw higher and higher sums of money at stuff, and the rest of us are getting squeezed out. 

And then when you tell them their purchasing behavior is stupid and irrational, and quite frankly, ruining it for the rest of us, they get all high and mighty. Hell, even toning that down, and on forums these days, i HAVE to tone it down because we all know how snowflakey people are when you call them an idiot or something (they're idiots), I still get huffy people who feel like merely pointing out that MUCH cheaper options exist make the value proposition of more premium products questionable, I get a whole bunch of HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT, I SPEND MY MONEY AS I WANT BLAH BLAH BLAH. Fine, spend it as you want I'm not saying you CAN'T (although i think people with that much disposable income should be taxed more heavily), I'm saying you SHOULDN'T because the value isn't there. But then i get people who are like "im a butcher and im at risk of carpal tunnel syndrome so i need a super comfy controller and I'm willing to pay a lot of money for it", okay, but is this controller really that specialized? it's not.

But then I get, BUT BUT, THE FEATURES! Okay, so...others brought this up too. But....remember my discussion of how yeah, you can get better value than a $20 controller with more features if you spend like...idk...$50-60? The same company that made my controller (8bitdo) has a controller with the fancy pants features like bluetooth (which i think is a waste, I hate bluetooth), gyroscopes in the controller (which I can use on my edge, but never do, because motion controls are stupid to me), etc, for $60. 

Heck, the only thing that version lacks is...the touchpads. And let's discuss the touchpads. Okay, so you can argue that adding them costs a premium. idk how much. $40 for touch pads? Not sure that's worth it. but let's discuss the touchpads. 

The touch pads were used to great success on the steam deck. Another device I don't care for because it's fundamentally flawed in many ways (man I write a lot of articles about how I hate certain tech), but for that device, you can make an argument for them. here's why the steam deck trackpads exist. Because the steam deck is a handheld gaming PC. Gaming PCs typically use keyboards and mice to control games. So the steam deck offered trackpads to give people an alternative to a mouse, to simulate mouse movement. I assume it works similarly to a laptop trackpad or a touch screen on a mobile device. And having played shooters on android, I would rather use that over joysticks as controlling FPS games with controllers is a miserable experience IMO, the fact is, you want to use a mouse if you play PC games. Kind of like...if you wanna play console games, sometimes using a KBM is a terrible experience. Hence why I needed a cheap controller, for those niche situations where using a KBM kinda sucks. 

But on PC, I'm like 90/10 KBM vs controller. This controller is to be used with the upcoming steam machine, a "cheap" gaming PC made for a living room experience. It ain't cheap, it's looking to cost maybe $800-1000, even though my PC arguably packs equal to better specs. But...again, RAMmageddon, I can give SOME leeway here, but yeah. You're talking a PS5 tier experience for like $1k. Which is...pretty bad given that level of hardware is 6 years old and we've barely made significant progress since then and now we're talking of replacing that with super expensive consoles. Again, price of everything seems insane these days. But yeah, this controller is meant for that. And it's meant to offer a "living room" experience for those who want a console like PC experience....but not really a console like PC experience....like they want the benefits of a controller...while not having the drawbacks...because controllers actually suck for PC games...idk. it doesnt make much sense.

Hell, the idea of a steam machine doesnt make sense to me. Valve tried all this literally a decade ago, including that horrendous controller with the touchpads and it failed. But apparently the market has shifted so...they're trying again? To be fair I think steam OS and the like is a good idea, but pushing these super expensive gaming PCs as....consoles....isn't necessarily a good value proposition. Which is why it failed the first time. 

But apparently in the 2020s it's like, the internet has been lobotomized or taken over by those top 20% yuppie types who come into tech spaces with all their market fundamentalism and are like BUT THE MARKET, THIS IS WHAT THE MARKET WANTS, YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW THE MARKET! Which is hilarious, and brings me back to why im rambling about this. Markets exists for humans, humans dont exist for markets. Well...actually, humans do exist for markets, but that's that really dark theory about how markets were used to enslave us. Either way, markets SHOULD exist to serve us, we SHOULDNT exist to serve markets. And....honestly? i feel like this weird market fundamentalism is just used to astroturf the internet into making us WANT to pay higher prices for stuff and to silence critics like me who actually are pro middle class consumer and wanna keep prices stable. But no, the logic of the 2020s is just, "everything's expensive, that's just how the market is now, if you have a problem with it, the market is right, you're wrong, and you should feel bad, and join the consumption craze, or feel bad for being poor." It just feels like massive gaslighting. And it's not just this. It's the $450 switch, the $70-90 games, the next gen consoles reportedly costing $700-1000, controllers being $100+. We're literally being gaslit into accepting higher prices, which means higher profit margins for these corporations screwing us, and we're not supposed to say anything about it? like, if you dare say "that's too expensive" or "that's not a good value", we're just supposed to stfu while upper class yuppies throw their money away for overly expensive products while telling the rest of us to STFU?

Quite frankly, this is one of the reasons I hate the overmoderation of the internet. Because it allows bad faith trolls to astroturf and encourage these behaviors, while anyone who speaks out gets dogpiled on, or even worse, modded when they dare get a bit too rough with the verbiage to criticize these kinds of spending habits. I HATE it. 

Well..sorry, not sorry, $100 is too expensive for a controller, you're stupid if you think it isn't. Either that or way too rich for society's good. And while I didn't initially make my criticisms against this product about individual consumer habits and spending, if they wanna get butthurt and take it personally, I will double down on that, saying that anyone who throws their money away on this stuff is not just wasting THEIR money, but participating in the same inflationary forces that we've been complaining about since 2021. Seriously, by buying it, you're showing the big corporations that people are willing to pay this kind of money for this stuff, which...just leads to them charging this much or more next time.

For markets to work PROPERLY. You NEED people like me to say no. You NEED people to say, "no, this is a stupid product at a stupid price and i aint buying it." And then it fails, and then the company goes back to the drawing board and makes something more reasonably priced next time. It's kinda like how, we need unions to ensure people get good wages in the work force, while we look down on those scabs who cross the picket lines. Basically, if you spend $100+ on a controller, you're a scab. I'll say it. It's funny these same people will say "well back then, this idea would have failed, but now things are different." Yeah, they wouldve failed because consumers wouldve laughed the idea out of the room and not bought it. But now, in the 2020s, people just buy everything at ridiculous prices, say "this is how things are now" and then complain not at the people charging ridiculous prices but at other consumers pointing out the absurdity of such a price? Like...what's wrong with this picture? Well, from my analytical perspective, everything. Because as I see it, much of these price increases are happening because:

1) Businesses have all the market power

2) Enough consumers refuse to say no

3) This enables the offending behavior

4) Stuff is more expensive for everyone as a result

Back in 2006, horse armor was laughed out of the room. Then we went on a decade long binge of "season passes" and stealth $110 games. And now, while we've axed the season passes, all games are full of microtransactions that make horse armor look relatively tame. 

Back in 2015, these steam machine/controller ideas failed. because they didnt make a lot of sense. Now we're conditioned to just accept $100 controllers and upcoming $1000 consoles. Back then, consumers said NO, and forced businesses to backtrack. Now, we just open our wallets, throw money at the problem, and then the rest of us are increasingly priced out of the market. 

Quite frankly i think the problem IS income inequality. Some people just have TOO MUCH money, and they need to be taxed more so the rest of us can get a UBI. Call it "class envy" or whatever, I dont care. Society doesnt work right when most wealth is held by a handful of people. Just look at how rich people are destroying the entire PC hardware market right now by buying up EVERYTHING for years on end sending prices to the moon. Markets work when you have more equality, because people can spend dollars a bit more democratically, and businesses have to appeal to a broader customer base to get more dollars. but now, we just got a handful of people owning more and more stuff, and the rest of us are just the slaves to make it all, but can't really consume it because we dont get all the money any more. Fordism is what made the american consumerist model possible, but with that being abandoned, so are the bottom 80%. 

And yeah. This isn't just me ranting about tech. It has politics and economics in there too. 

And yeah, that's just my opinion on this. Take it or leave it.  

Discussing the White House Correspondent's dinner incident

 So...for those living under a rock, we had an incident yesterday at the white house correspondent's dinner. Trump normally doesnt do these things because he hates the press (the good old "lugenpresse" if we wanna make a historical comparison) for criticizing him, but he did it this year for some reason.

Anyway, some dude tried to storm the barricades and shoot the place up. Now, the security worked as intended, Trump is fine, they stopped him, and quickly evacuated Trump and his inner circle from the scene. 

Despite this, there's a lot of discussion in the media where they're treating this like a security failure. The argument is that there wasn't ENOUGH security, and OMG, THE SHOOTER WAS 15 SECONDS FROM THE PRESIDENT. As I see it, we can argue couldve, should've, would've, but my honest opinion is if secret service quickly stopped the guy, and no one was really hurt (one secret service agent took a bullet to a bulletproof vest but that's about it), that's a success. The security was successful. It worked as intended. Why is this a debate?

Well, some are saying, well, they didnt do enough. Like, a lot of it had to do with the venue. It was in a hotel. There are multiple ballrooms having multiple events. They couldnt secure the whole building because it was a public place where people were saying. They're not gonna shut down the whole hotel for this event apparently. And that led to the event being less secure. Apparently the suspect stayed on site, and put his weapons in his room. Apparently they also couldnt put multiple perimeters around where Trump was because of the way the hotel was setup. There were multiple ballrooms all having events, so they couldnt thoroughly secure the area to stop this from happening before it got to this point. Hence everyone freaking out.

One could make an argument that they shouldnt have held this at this venue. I'd agree. If this isnt safe enough, then maybe they should have put the president in an area where it was more secure. Trump is using this as an excuse to say "this is why i should have a ballroom." he could have hosted it at the white house. Yes, BUT....

Let's be honest. His ballroom idea is bad because it bypassed historical preservation of the white house. He was supposed to get approval to change it. He just did what he wanted. Because he doesnt care about rules unless they benefit him. He didnt get congressional approval, he didnt get the site looked at by historical preservationists, he just demolished the east wing and is building this monstrosity instead that looks like a massive tumor hanging off of the white house. And yeah, it's ugly too.

I'd say it's a waste of taxpayer money, but apparently it's funded by donations so...yeah. I cant criticize it on those grounds. But yeah. Either way, not a fan of the ballroom.

Some are wondering if this was a false flag to manufacture consent for his ballroom. I dont really think that, I mean playing through the logic above, the logical conclusion is it should have been held elsewhere if securing the area was so difficult. Just having an event with the president in a random hotel ball room with random people there seems....problematic. That doesnt mean this particular project is justified but it does make an argument for it, and I reached that conclusion before Trump even said it. 

Alternatively...how hard is it to find a venue where they could shut down the whole building and area around it? he spoke at how many fricking hundreds of stadiums and arenas for campaign rallies? Just plop a ton of tables down in a place like that and bring in the caterers. Ya know? Or find a different hotel with a different layout with better security. Not like there arent hundreds of swanky places in washington DC. idk. I guess if you want to argue we dont have enough security, just....look for other options. 

I will say this though. Security comes at the expense of other priorities. You have an event in a public space like this, and let's talk about what it would require to make it more secure. If you got a hotel with people staying there, more security means more scrutiny of guests. It means cancelling reservations and the hotel losing money if you wanna be extreme about it. It means more perimeters that cancel other events nearby in the same hotel. Again, means losing money for the hotel. I could see some argument for it, ya know, cordoning off an entire hotel or an entire floor to secure a space for the president, but yeah, you actually could ironically argue for the president having their own venue, or ballroom here. Not saying his current plans are good ones. Quite frankly, I'm fine with just plopping him in some abandoned building somewhere and letting them set up there. But yeah. There's an argument. 

Either way, I think we're getting way too lost in the weeds here. Rather than reflect on what his security detail did wrong, I think we should be focusing on what they did right. HELLO?! THEY STOPPED THE GUY WITH MINIMAL DAMAGE OTHER THAN A RUINED NIGHT. Shouldnt THAT be the story? I know with the Butler thing, we love to talk about what secret service did wrong. And OOOF, they messed up there. Thomas Matthew Crooks never should have been able to do what he did, and that was a glaring security failure. This, however, was a security success. They stopped the guy before he could even get to the president. And despite so many gunshots, the guy was captured alive. Bonus points there. Really professional quite frankly. Secret service deserves credit here. 

Again, rather than frame this as some massive security failure, we should be treating this as a success. The secret service stopped the bad guys with minimal damage. Yay.