Discussing the reality of blue no matter who

 So, Kyle Kulinski discussed blue no matter who on his program today, how he was skeptical, but came to accept its wisdom in the trump era, but now is witnessing all the blue no matter who types refuse to actually support...progressives when they win primaries. So, I wanna have an honest discussion about the practice and how I view it, both from a more abstract poli sci standpoint, but also in the current reality. Because I've shifted on this too, but the shift is more due to circumstances, and not principle. And I wanna really give people the real scoop on this idea.

Blue no matter who was always a scam

I could tell from the second I first saw this phrase that it was just some cheap flimsy excuse to bully progressives who clearly didnt like Clinton into voting for her. I mean, the democrats in 2016 would always go like...."oh bernie is never gonna win, but you better support whomever the nominee is" along side "it's always gonna be hillary." It's like, the fix was in, we gotta vote for clinton, or we get whatever republican wins. Back in early 2015, it wasnt trump. It was just...whatever republican wins, we MUST support the democrat because theyre some grand existential threat.

This never sat right with me. it's exactly the kind of phrase some bad faith actor would come up with to justify voting for a turd. And yet, this virtue of "voting blue no matter who" became so commonplace in the democratic party that you were treated as a pariah by self righteous and antagonistic centrist libs who insisted we MUST vote for their crappy candidate. It was never a good faith argument, it was always parroted by centrists, and it was always positioned along side arguments of electability, assuming people wouldnt vote for a progressive candidate. But it's apparently okay to force us to vote for a centrist one? We cant leverage power in the same way? yeah, it's bullcrap.

From a political science perspective

 While we've had a two party system since the 1796 election when Washington refused to seek reelection, establishing the two term precedent for presidents in American politics, it's never been an intended design choice. If anything, James Madison in federalist #10 kind of saw the american system as designed to prevent factions from arising, and to control them when they do arise. The founders never wanted there to be parties, and the idea of there being two parties no one actually likes but people had to vote between was just sadly one of the worst outcomes for the American system of government. 

And early on, the two parties didnt even stay the same two parties. We had the federalists and antifederalists disappear and the republican-democrats and whigs arise in their place. Eventually the republican-democrats just became democrats and the republicans replaced the whigs. The two party system existed in party alignments, which were generational, and eventually broke down. We had periods like the 1824 and 1856 elections where we had four way elections as the coalitions broke down. And while things have settled among the republicans and democrats from 1860 onward, what drove those parties were coalitions of voters, with periods of relative stability and instability. Ultimately, voter patterns drove those coalitions, and once in a generation, those coalitions break down and reform. We've had this happen six times, and arguably we're undergoing a transition to a seventh party system, if this has not already happened yet. 

What happens during these periods of realignment is voters end up dealigning from the parties in question, and then realigning along different lines. Party loyalty declines as the existing alignment no longer serves voter interests, and then rises again as the electorate aligns itself around a new set of issues. But ultimately, it's the voters that decide. If a party is no longer serving their interests, the voters have every right to walk away and even vote for a third party. We like to act like voting third party is a waste and you cant win, but if enough people get fed up with the existing coalition, and the coalitions break down, the republicans and democrats gotta scramble to get those voters back. 

Often times, third party campaigns can be quite influential when the two parties arent doing enough. Abolitionist parties arose when neither main party would address slavery properly. We had socialist parties during the gilded age and fourth party system when capitalism's excesses were at their worst point. George Wallace's 1968 campaign represented a dealignment as white southerners upset over segregation left the democratic party, only to be picked up by Nixon and Reagan. In 2024 just this past election, RFK's third party candidacy was a threat to trump winning, and trump brought him in and made him secretary of health in order to satisfy him and bring his fan base into trump's coalition. Even if RFK Jr is a batcrap insane health secretary, bringing a competitor into one's administration and giving him a powerful position is smart politics and arguably helped tipped the scales in Trump's favor. had he not done that, Harris very well might've won, given how close the margins were. 

So dont let anyone tell you the threat of voting third party is empty. Sure, it might seem like a wasted vote, but if neither party is serving your interest, and the party youre closer to is taking you for granted and quite literally bullying you into remaining in their coalition, you generally have every right to leave. And ultimately, the third party people, at least on the left, end up being right eventually. It might take a few decades or even half a century for the rest of the country to catch up, but eventually, the country will be forced to act on those issues to maintain itself. And the party that finally gives them attention, like Lincoln's republicans, or FDR's democrats, end up being very electorally successful.

Where I evolved with Kyle

 So, I wanna make it clear, the people screaming blue no matter who in 2016 weren't wise beyond their years when they were making threats in 2016 about how bad republicans would be. They just got lucky. Ultimately, they had no idea who would be the nominee. They actually helped elevate trump, thinking it would weaken the republicans by driving more people toward hillary (because that's how pathetic her campaign was), and the whole campaign was just an attempt to scare people into voting for the chosen one. 

The problem was...it backfired. Trump wasnt supposed to win in 2016. He was not favored for most of the campaign cycle. The 2016 election was always the democrats' to win and the republicans' to lose, and it really took some work on the part of democrats to F things up so bad that Trump actually won. 

Even if the republicans won, while the republicans would be bad regardless, we didn't know HOW bad, or how stubborn the democrats would be in refusing to learn from a defeat. The democrats learned nothing, tried the same thing in 2020 with Biden, and just happened to win due to the republicans' having election fatigue. Keep in mind the party in power tends to do worse in reelection most of the time, only performing around their first performance at best, and actively underperforming it in many situations. That's why Biden won in 2020. People wanted trump out. It wasnt an endorsement for Biden. Which is why the democrats entered 2024 in such a sorry state. 

But yeah. A lot of us...expected normal republican screwery from Trump. And in his first term, we got normal screwery. The democrats clearly had "trump derangement syndrome", going on about how OMG LOOK AT HOW BAD HE IS, but again, it was all just normal bad republican things. And that's kind of what i expected. Trump was an idiot but he was surrounded by republican experts who could help guide him and keep his worst impulses under wraps. 

The real problem happened after he lost 2020. He went NUTS, did the whole "it was rigged" thing, had his people storm the capitol, and i didnt know wtf to think at first, but after seeing the evidence put together during the biden administration. Yeah, that was a failed coup. He went for it. And Trump went in a DANGEROUSLY authoritarian direction after that. 

And in 2024, he came back with a new agenda, new people (yes people), and this whole plan to take over the government and establish a maximalist interpretation of executive power. Basically, he wanted to be a dictator this time. And by this point, the democrats just cried wolf so many times over this guy no one listened. 

But...even I saw the threat. And this is how I see blue no matter who. Look, if we're dealing with normal republicans doing normal republican things, have at it. No one is owed your vote. You dont have to vote for democrats blah blah blah. BUT...when the actual fate of the country is at stake, and the stakes get this high and the consequences of failure this severe....we kinds HAVE to vote for the democrats to keep the GOP out of power. It isn't about blue no matter who being good. It's the fact that if we wanna affect change in the long term, we need the continuation of our democracy to happen, and that can no longer be treated as a given. Not in this environment, with this administration. 

Did the democrats predict this in 2016? Eh...they did but not for the right reasons. you see, they were fear mongering. They were envisioning the absolute worst case scenario that should never happen to pressure you to vote for them. They didnt believe it. They just wanted you to. because they want a bunch of desperate people who will crawl over broken glass to vote for them even if they do nothing for you. They fundamentally believe they just have to be less bad than the GOP and you should just for joy at the opportunity to vote for them. They dont wanna be good, they dont wanna try. The fact that trump ended up this bad just happened to come true. They dont deserve credit for being right in this "see I told you so" way, as if it props up the validity of their theory of politics. They just got lucky. 

I wanna make that clear. They just got lucky, they would've been acting the same way if this dude was just a normal republican doing normal republican things. He could've been george bush III and they'd still act exactly as hyperbolic.

The same is true of SCOTUS. They had no way of knowing so many SCOTUS justices would die or retire and trump would get to replace THREE people. And even if he did, we had no way of knowing the court would become this corrupt and this activist. SCOTUS is supposed to position themselves above politics and rule independently of the other branches. They're not supposed to just greenlight whatever insane theories trump wants. And to be fair, sometimes they DO mildly push back against trump, but at the same time, they're also a flagrantly partisan institution that does do a lot of judicially activist things. But again, we couldnt realistically predict it would be THIS bad. THe dems fear mongering over the worst case scenario doesnt make them right, it makes them lucky. I wanna make that doubly clear.

So what do we do now?

For 2026 and 2028, we vote blue no matter who. Remember the realignment I told you about? It's happening, the republicans are winning. The dems F-ed up big time, and at this point, we might be lucky just to keep our democracy. But if we ever make it out of this...at some point, we ARE gonna have to stand up to the dems again. We cant just allow them to keep power over us forever. But for now, yeah, just vote for these guys as if our democracy depends on it, because it does.

So what of their refusal to back platner?

 Establishment dems are being really crappy in recent years. Like...they're at risk of losing power. because post 2024, people are tired of their crap. They're tired of the same do nothing lukewarm centrist politicians. But the fact that they're making such a big stink over zohran mamdani, graham platner, abdul el sayed, etc., shows their true colors. It was never about blue no matter who and party loyalty. if they dont get THEIR way, well, they might try to tank the coalition. And if they do that, well, that shows how crappy they are. it shows how little they believe in their own crap, and honestly, I hope we can have more honest talks about the centrist wing as time goes on. Because they were NEVER acting in good faith. it was always a cudgel, it was always a smokescreen. 

As I see it, until the threat of trump and his immediate illiberal coalition passes, we do have to blue no matter who. but that doesnt mean we should be stupid and ignore the obvious. The democrats use that stuff in bad faith to pressure us to vote for centrists, with no expectations of reciprocity when the shoe is on the other foot. Normally, I'd take their behavior as a sign of "fine, let's have this fight", but for now, i am focused on winning 2026 and 2028. Still, in the future, I am fine with throwing these centrists out of the party. Hell. I hope they join the republicans. Let them get all the stuffy elitists, let us get a working class coalition. So far the dems have been angling for the opposite. This whole mess happened because they've been trying to on board the neocons and moderate wing of the republicans, while keeping the progressive base captive. But it's been failing as they're losing more working class voters than theyre getting moderate republicans. Honestly, i think it's best for the country if these guys F off to the republicans because that's where they belong. And it is better for the country if they get these people. It leads to a weaker, less ideologically cohesive, and moderate republican party, and a more progressive and populist democratic party. 

Honestly. I dont even think losing these guys will do much for us in terms of making us lose elections, because they're what's been holding the country back. So if they wanna join the republicans, join their coalition, and water it down, making the fascist threat less threatening, make my fricking day. That's the outcome i wanted all along. 

Conclusion

Idk its tricky right now. We do gotta focus on winning, but at the same time, we cant let these guys keep pushing us around. We are undergoing a realignment. It can go two ways. Either we're stuck dealing with a centrist democratic party that keeps progressive captive while the GOP continues to rush toward fascism, or....we get a working class democratic party and the elitists jump ship to the republicans, which will probably do us a favor if anything. 

As far as im concerned, as long as the fascist threat is neutralized, i dont care what happens to the democrats. I have no loyalty to them. if anything I hate the ruling class that runs the party. I wish they'd F off to the republicans. We'd probably gain more voters than lose them if that happened honestly. But yeah. Continue to fight these guys from within in primaries, vote blue in the general, and if the centrists dont, well....shows how serious they were with this blue no matter who crap, doesn't it? Make my fricking day. I just want trump out, with my long term secondary goal of making the democrats a more working class party.  

Remember, just because the switch 2 is cheaper than alternatives doesn't mean it's a "good deal"

 So...the steam deck just jumped in price $200-300, where they now cost like $789-949, which is insane. And of course the nintendo fanboys are coming out of the woodwork going on about how the $500 switch is a great deal. Like, man, STFU. The fact that nintendo priced their switch at $450 is why i was so intent on criticizing them, because it just opened up a pathway for the other companies to charge ridiculous amounts for their own products. I DONT wanna see a $1k next gen console, or anything close to it, really. I kinda find the $500 price point most acceptable. And I get it, the AI crisis is driving these insane prices at this point, but these increasing costs were an issue before that. Let's not enable ANY of this.

I mean, I saw a video recently, well, part of it.  Gamers nexus did a video called "the collapse of personal computing" which is talking about how this AI crap is KILLING the PC industry. Basically, ever since RAMpocalypse, sales of DIY parts is falling off a cliff and no one wants to upgrade any more. Can you blame them? It's INSANELY expensive. And GN seems to think that the tech billionaires are reshaping the industry in their image and killing personal computing so they can have us rent AI powered terminals and the like to us instead. You know, "you will own nothing and be happy." I wouldnt doubt it. This crisis is driving the price sky high, demand is collapsing, that's making small time suppliers crash out too, and yeah, we're going in a corporate direction where the tech bros who run everything will basically force their crappy business models on us saying (after they killed the industry) that oh, you cant afford new computers? Why dont you rent some stupid cloud based chromebook or some crap? Ya know?

It's insane. No one should be cheering this on. And no, I'm not gonna give nintendo credit for ONLY keeping their overpriced $450 console at $500. They can do that because they overpriced it in the first place. And the other companies are raising their prices and no one can afford crap, and no one wants to buy stuff. Acting like $500 is "a good deal" because it's the new bottom isnt a good outcome. It's the last thing we should want. Even then, it aint truly the bottom. A lot of retro handhelds can still be $300 or often a lot less. You can buy a retroid pocket 5 from Amazon for $250 and maybe even something like a 6 directly from retroid for less than that. So there are options. None are as potent as these oversized, overpriced handheld PCs, but thats the point. The market is demanding too much. Software should be made for the hardware available. You target software for hardware that most cant afford, and either you fail because most people go lol no F this because they cant afford it, or gaming becomes a niche hobby for the upper class like it was in the 80s and even 90s to some degree. We're seeing the reverse of the personal computing revolution that happened throughout my life where devices regularly became cheaper and more ubiquitous over time where you can buy like a $200 smartphone or tablet and still have a decent experience, to now going in a direction of things becoming more expensive, and the industries being brought to the verge of collapse. 

And again, I wanna point out a big focal point of GN Steve's video, PEOPLE ARENT BUYING CRAP! WE CANT AFFORD CRAP. like, I go on tech subs on reddit and the people there are just so stupid and out of touch, my god. They're all a bunch of upper middle class hobbyists who arent very price sensitive, and who seem to justify every corporate decision ever even though its pricing out most consumers. But it doesnt price THEM out so they dont care.

You take me, someone who already found the steam deck a dubious value at $400-550 for reasons I've stated before, and you raise it up to like $800-950, and I'll look at you like you're fricking insane. But for some reason people are so quick to point out "but but they HAD to do this". Maybe so. I'm not actually gonna completely trash valve for the price increases, if anything they're the one company I kinda give the benefit of the doubt to here. BUT...that doesnt mean I find the price acceptable. And that doesnt mean Im gonna look at nintendo charging $500 and be like "lol, I wanna buy that now.' NO! I dont wanna buy anything from ANY of these companies at this point. I cant afford to. it's that simple. It's the law of demand. You raise the price, you lower demand. People drop out of the market because they'll say F this. Or they'll buy something else completely. Id rather put money into my PC, and as long as I can run games on my PC as is, I'm probably sitting out this crisis. not gonna lie. My GPU is going on 4 years old this year, I'd LIKE an upgrade, but given an RX 9060 XT 16 GB was $350 BEFORE this crisis,  and now it's $450...fat chance on that. As long as I can run the games I wanna play, I'll stand pat.

I mean, the idea of running AAA games on a handheld is kinda stupid. Given the target specs developers aim for being...closer to my desktop PC than those things, youre always gonna get an underpowered borderline experience anyway if they run at all (it should be noted the steam deck is indeed incapable of running many games properly, partially for software compatibility reasons but also raw power related reasons). And then on top of that, the compromises to make it happen, the large size, the low battery life, the high price. I mean it's the same reason we PCMR types have always said gaming laptops are a bad deal. Youre paying for form factor, and the compromises involve paying more for something that has less longevity and staying power. And the steam deck is just more of that. 

So no. Again, the idea of a steam deck even at $400 was always a questionable deal to me. At $800+....F that. And no, I wont buy a switch 2. I wont buy anything. I built my computer in that 2022-2023 golden period and I plan on sitting out the next few years hoping the market adjusts where things go back to normal. It's possible they never will. At which case I guess I'll just become a perpetual retro gamer. It's the law of demand. You raise prices so much, people drop out of the market. I feel like the rich ###holes on reddit love to quote basic economics at us when it benefits the supply side, but the simple demand based reality is that. You make stuff more expensive, less people buy, and steve made it clear that yeah, less people ARE buying. A LOT less people are buying. Because we cant afford this crap. Period. Take THAT economic reality and smoke it. 

Discussing Texas primary results

 So, Paxton officially beat Cornyn, and it wasn't even close. It was a 28 point swing. This is surprising, but also unsurprising. The race was pretty close until Trump endorsed paxton, and then the last crop of polls had Paxton up 10-20 points. Trump's endorsement really did a lot of heavy lifting here. Still, I didn't think it would be this extreme. Still, when an endorsement swings a race shortly before it happens to such a degree, there's no way for polls to properly measure the shift. Polls are, after all, a lagging indicator. They'e a snapshot in time, and if the race drastically changes at the last minute, ANYTHING can happen. 

Still, I suspect Trump's endorsement here is also the kiss of death for the republicans' chances at holding the seat. While the polling favored Talarico either way, the polls generally favor a matchup vs Paxton, with a 1.5% lead for Talarico. IN TEXAS! This is why my senate map is so wonky. I got blue texas, blue iowa, blue (well, purple...) nebraska, blue alaska, it's crazy. This crap shouldn't be happening according to conventional knowledge and how people voted in 2024. But...it is, because Trump is crapping the bed on the economy so hard. You really don't wanna mess with the Americans on the economy. They will eat you alive if you can't deliver for them. And when you got $4.50 gas and Trump going on about how he doesn't care about how the American peoples' plight, you start getting maps like this: 

 When in a sane year, the map would look like this:

 

Maybe a little bluer than that, I mean, NC and ME were pretty flippable even in a normal year, But yeah, anything beyond that should be a tough nut to crack. But here we are with it wide open because polling has shifted ten whole points in favor of democrats. 

And honestly, let this be a lesson to anyone who considers republicans. I know this is a tough lesson for us to learn, but as I see it, as an ex republican myself, what did we learn? That voting republican is NEVER the answer. Seriously. It's not. Even if you dont see eye to eye with democrats, for the love of god, dont vote for the comic book villains that are republicans. It never works out well for the American people. Especially given how crazy the modern GOP is. I get it, glados sucks, I dont like glados either, but you know who you dont vote for to spite glados? Freaking wheatley. Stay home, vote third party, wirte in mickey mouse, just for the love of god, don't vote for republicans. They will always screw you. Stove hot. Dont touch stove. It's a lesson we should only need to learn once, but yeah, let it change you like it changed me back in the day.  

Discussing the pace at which 3D graphics have advanced (subjectively)

 So....I had this thought experiment after having another discussion with someone else. I wanted to actually quantify (somewhat) the rate of advancement in gaming over the years. So, I'm gonna take the list from my previous article, go back, and attempt to quantify how much better games look on a scale of 0-10. 0 means the same/worse (necessary some years), 10 means a mindblowing difference. 5 means a relatively moderate but substantial difference. I'll give two ratings. One for the best games and the other for the industry as a whole, because there really was uneven growth there overall. With that said, let's begin.  

1993

So 1992 is gonna serve as my baseline. 2D games are in fall swing, and wolfenstein is the best looking game of the year. 1993 gave us doom, which was a MASSIVE step up in retrospect. I won't say it's as massive as some jumps later on, but it was still substantial. 

Still, most of the industry remained unchanged, most games were 2D, and consoles generally lacked the hardware to run stuff like wolfenstein and doom. They'd later try, but yeah, the ports were rather compromised to make work at all. Still, you had SOME advancement. I'd say star fox looked better than super mario kart. But all in all? 16 bit era was in full swing. 

Best games: 8

Industry as a whole: 2

1994

1994 was a relatively unremarkable year. We got doom II, which graphically didnt look a ton better than doom 1. We did get the launch of the PS1 in Japan, which started bringing 3D games to home console, but we wouldnt officially get into gen 5 until 1995 in the US. All in all, 16 bit was still the staple, and yeah. We had some advancements, but it would take a few years for the public as a whole to make the shift.

Best games: 1

Industry as a whole: 3

1995

1995 would bring us Hexen at the high end, which was a mild jump over Doom/Doom 2, but nothing too special. Still, we started having the proliferation of the first gen 5 consoles with the PA1 and saturn, as well as ports of stuff like Doom on older consoles. So we started making the transition to 3D. 2D would still be dominant I think, but the tides were turning.

Best games: 3

Industry as a whole: 5

1996

 1996 brought us quake, another pretty strong title that had a decent uplift in graphics over what existed previously. I'd be inclined to say it was a decent jump, but given hexen bridging the gap, not a huge one. Still, we continued the transition to gen 5 with the N64. Super Mario 64 was pretty mindblowing at the time and it did look better than saturn/playstation games, even at 240p/20-30 FPS. 

Best games: 5

Industry as a whole: 6

1997

1997 brought quake at the high end. It wasnt a huge jump over quake 1, but still worth noting. The industry as a whole was really spitting out 3D games. This was the year I'd say 3D became truly normalized, with the industry being fully centered around putting out graphically impressive titles that seemed impossible just a few years ago.

Best games: 3

Industry as a whole: 8

Heck, let's start doing 5 year shifts too here so we can really see how much improvement we had over 5 years, because it seems like we lose sight of the big picture here due to how many incremental changes happen.

1992-1997 best games: 10

1992-1997 industry as a whole: 8

1998

1998 is actually the start of Gen 6. You get half life on PC, which was mind blowing. You get the sega dreamcast in Japan, with sonic adventure, also mindblowing. Perhaps one of the most substantial improvements ever, although it would take a few years for these graphics to become proliferated throughout the industry. For the most part we just enjoyed our PS1s and N64s. 

Best games: 10

Industry as a whole: 2

1999

 Sega dreamcast released in North America. So those fancy gen 6 graphics started becoming proliferated. We also got quake 3 and Unreal Tournament on PC, which kinda had that dreamcast aesthetic, so not mindblowing over say, half life. But yeah. More proliferation in the industry as a whole. 

Best games: 1

Industry as a whole: 5

2000

We got Deus Ex at the high end, which is still very...earlyish gen 6. It featured expansive levels and cityscapes so it deserves points for scale, but still. Not a HUGE jump. Still, this is where the PS2 was released and given that was THE console everyone flocked to in overwhelming numbers (dwarfing the dreamcast, gamecube, and xbox), yeah. This was the year those half life grapgics became normalized.

Best games: 3

Industry as a whole: 5

2001

2001

We got gamecube and Xbox which made the transition to gen 6 complete. Halo CE was crazy impressive, but given what existed between 1998 and 2000, still not a huge jump. Substantial though. Still, this is where the industry transitioned to gen 6.

At the high end, wolfenstein kinda looked a bit more like quake 3 in practice, but with rather crazy lighting. It was a decent jump.

Best games: 6 

Industry as a whole: 5

2002

At the high end, battlefield 1942 came out. Graphically it looked worse than return to castle wolfenstein, BUT, it deserves points for scale. And that's a tradeoff games often had to made in the 2000s and even 2010s. Do we go with a really insane looking corridor shooter, or a large scale open environment with more mediocre graphics? You could go either way, and I'll recognize progress either way. 

And by this point, yeah, everyone and their mother had gen 6 consoles, game developers were targetting them nearly exclusively, and if you didnt get one by this point, you were being left behind.  The games didnt look any better on the consoles, but the fact that more and more titles were released was big. This was like the "1997" type year for gen 6. 

Best games: 3

Industry as a whole: 4

And now we do another 5 year average. Here, we can compare 1997 to 2002. And the difference is pretty substantial. I don't think it's AS massive as 1992-1997, almost nothing matches that, but yeah, going from 240p to 480p and up from 32/64 bit games to 128 bit ones did grand us a rather massive jump. Basically those 1998 half life graphics were EVERYWHERE by this point. And some titles were even looking a little dated. Given Quake 2 was 1997's best...yeah. Pretty massive jump.

1997-2002 best games: 9

1997-2002 industry as a whole: 7

2003

 At the high end, we got UT2003, which was somewhat of a jump from say the 1999 one, but it's really just going from like dreamcast style graphics up to something thats a looks like a good gen 6 game. Not an insanely huge jump from RTCW or Battlefield 1942, but still deserves some credit. 

For the industry as a whole, we're in the middle of gen 6. Not a ton of improvements, although they did have some graphically decent games here and there. 

Best games: 4

Industry as a whole: 2

2004

2004 was the informal start of gen 7 IMO on PC. We had so many bangers with crazy graphics. Half Life 2, Doom 3 topped them showing that you can have scale and impressively modern graphics, and doom 3 was more corridor-y with insane graphics. Of course, this would take a whole to proliferate to the rest of the industry. We had stuff like Halo 2 which looked impressive on console, but really it still paled in comparison to say, UT2003. Looked better than CE though.

Best games: 8

Industry as a whole: 2

2005

Xbox 360 launched in 2005, but I dont think it really took off until 2006-2007. Still, it was there for early adopters. We had games like COD2 and Quake 4 on it which looked amazing. PC had FEAR, which would be ported to PS3 and 360 in a year. Still, at the top end, 2004 really stole it. Most 2005 titles just looked like 2004 ones but a bit better. FEAR showed a decent amount of improvement, but yeah. Things were moving, but like all these generational shifts, it actually happened over a period of a few years, not an all at once thing. Most gamers were too busy enjoying last gen titles like resident evil 4 and god of war on their PS2s. 

Best games: 5

Industry as a whole: 5

2006

 Gen 7 continued to trickle in. PS3 launched. Wii launched. Of course, both had missteps, PS3 was expensive and was a year behind Xbox. Wii had gamecube+ graphics, more akin to say, UT2003. At the top end, Gears looked amazing but nothing substantially better than 2004-2005. Still, we had more proliferation of good looking games in this time frame, so it deserves some industry points. 

Best games: 2

Industry as a whole: 5

2007

2007 is widely considered one of the best years for gaming. It was the year it really felt like gen 7 was in full swing, similar to 2002 for the gen 6 era, and 1997 for gen 5. We had SO MANY good games release in 2007, and yeah, this was peak gen 7. At the top end, we had Crysis, a game so advanced that as we'll see, it still kept pace with games 4-5 years later. If anything, this is the inflection point of where these massive increases kinda came to an end, and things became more incremental. Things stagnated in gen 7 for a while after this, and it would take a good 5 years for the industry to really move forward. 

Best games: 10

Industry as a whole: 6

2002-2007 best games: 10

2002-2007 industry as a whole: 8

2008

 2007 was so good 2008 felt kinda mid. I guess fallout 3 deserves scale points, and it did feel like a big improvement over say, oblivion just 2 years before, but still, looked pretty average for the time. Far Cry 2 and Haze looked good, but nothing touched Crysis. Really, this is where graphics started stagnating. Things were SO GOOD in 2007 that it would take a few years to top them.

Best games: 0

Industry as a whole: 1

2009

 More of the same. Btw, I never liked how fear 2 looked. yeah it had more detail but it just looked worse. Kinda like how modern games often look worse than previous counterparts. Killzone was somewhat impressive, but still, it was a console game. Nothing we hadnt seen before by this point. I think by this point, we can just celebrate reaching such a high standard of gaming and just ride the wave for a few years.

Best games: 0

Industry as a whole: 0

2010

 2010 really had some bangers on PC that kinda raised the bar, but nothing really exceeded Crysis. Yes, BF Bad Company 2 looked amazing, much better than 2/2142 but not crysis level. Metro 2033 was close to crysis level, but yeah, it didnt surpass it. A decent year for the industry, but Crysis remained the winner.

Best games: 0

Industry as a whole: 3

2011

 2011 is where I feel like the world finally started catching up with Crysis. Crysis 2 arguably had similar levels of graphics as Crysis 1, leading some to say Crysis 2 kept the crown. Battlefield 3 was amazing...but again did it really beat Crysis? Im inclined to say no. But it's very close though. This was the year the world started catching up with Crysis.

Best games: 0

Industry as a whole: 4

2012

2012, if anything, felt like a bit of a downgrade. We had Far Cry 3, which showed that we had not in fact kept up with Crysis. Dont get me wrong, it looked great, but Crysis...man. What a game. I mean, FC3 was more fun, Crysis was boring AF but it LOOKED good. Still between 2011 and 2012 we started seeing what Gen 8 would normalize. 

Oh, and planetside 2, mediocre game graphically, but OMFG THAT SCALE. It mightve been unoptimized and crushed CPUs, but yeah, you try sticking 2000 people on a single map and having them fight it out. So that deserves points for scale.

Best games: 0

Industry as a whole: 2 

So...where do we stand?

Well...Crysis still remains top dog by this point. The industry stagnated...BUT....we did see a proliferation of games that provided an outline of what gen 8 would become in the 2010-2012 era. Console gamers didnt see it because they had scaled down versions, but on PC...yeah, a lot of those titles were looking amazing toward the end, and 2007 standards were becoming dated. 

2007-2012 best games: 0

2007-2012 industry as a whole: 3

2013

 Like with every generation, we start creeping up to it with a few years of late last gen bangers. PC really got to enjoy the good version of the above games. The consoles had their versions, but they were getting sub-low graphics at 30 FPS. But here, we had the PS4 and the Xbox One really take the level of graphics we started seeing on PC and normalized it. By this point, every game looked like Crysis 1. Every game ran at 720P+ and up 30-60 FPS. However, unlike with previous gens, we had a "cross gen" period where a lot of games came to both the 360/PS3 and also the XB1/PS4. So you'd still get scaled down ports followed by the good versions for next gen. Rather than just drop the last gen and expect an upgrade, it became a phase in period. 

Still, we had substantial movement.

And here, we finally say Crysis dethroned with...Crysis 3. While I dont think Crysis 3 had the same staying power as crysis 1, it still represented the year where without a doubt, Crysis was finally dethroned. 

Best games: 5

Industry as a whole: 4

2014

 Actually I take it back, 2014 did have a lot of next gen exclusives. Metro last night, wolfenstein the new order, far cry 4, titanfall. I'd argue metro looked better than crysis 3, but in the way doom 3 looked better than half life 2 the decade before. Corridor shooter vs open world. Still, we did have beautiful game play from far cry 4. Wolfenstein looked solid, titanfall too. Really, this yeah really set the bar for Gen 8. Kind of the "1997/2002/2007 moment" looking back at it. 

Best games: 2

Industry as a whole: 5

2015

 Star Wars Battlefront mightve been a mid game but looked amazing. Witcher 3 looked beautiful, and Fallout 4 really was a step up from Fallout 3/New Vegas. Better than Crysis 3 though? Eh...yes and no. Crysis 3 had a lot more going on with it I think, although battlefront was a bit more cinematic. Like, it's looking a little better, but it's also a lot more "dead" if that makes sense. I mean, the 2015 games might look a little better, but it's not a clear win. Still, once again, decent movement within the industry.

Best games: 2

Industry as a whole: 2

2016

So this is the year the cross gen period ended and we got the PS4 pro and Xbox One X. These improved graphics even more, while staying compatible with the base consoles. Considering the transition period from gen 7 to gen 8, I feel like early adopters kinda got burned as the pro versions were a lot faster, equivalent to modern gaming PCs at the time, packing GTX 1060 level graphics. 

We got Doom 2016, which looked amazing for its time. Obviously best on PC and those new console refreshes. Battlefield 1 improved on battlefront's graphics and looked super gritty and detailed. And yeah, this is one of the last years I was TRULY impressed by graphical improvements. 

Best games: 5

Industry as a whole: 2

 2017

 Battlefront II brought BF1 level graphics to battlefront. Wolfenstein 2 brought doom 2016 level visuals to wolfenstein. It was somewhat of an improvement, but by this point we're clearly seeing diminishing returns. Like, the early gen period and then 2016 set the bar so much that once again it felt like the industry was stagnating again. 

Best games: 2

Industry as a whole: 3 

Looking at the 5 year, I think we really saw some decent advances as gen 8 showed how good games can really look. While the effects happen at the high end somewhat (where Crysis still arguably held the throne in 2012), the real gains were in the industry as a whole, where we fully transitioned to gen 8, and got to what we can consider "modern gaming" IMO (in a good way). 

Your typical 2017 game blew Crysis out of the water, and yeah, gen 8 really did wonders for the industry. At the high end, games began looking like fricking movies to me. It was crazy the level of detail they had by this point.

2012-2017 best games: 7

2012-2017 industry as a whole: 8

2018

2018 brought RTX to the world...which did F all for gaming for the most part early on. Represented the end of affordable GPUs, but yeah. 

Games like BF5 looked amazing, RTX or not, although we're clearly getting to a point of diminishing returns.  Other games looked decent too, but again, diminishing returns.

Best games: 3

Industry as a whole: 2

2019

 Metro exodus looked great, but once again, otherwise diminishing returns. 

Best games: 2

Industry as a whole: 0

2020

2020 was the start of gen 9 and with it we got cyberpunk. The game looked amazing and is the one case of ray tracing actually shown to be worth it, but it still looked next gen even without it. Still..it didnt look AMAZING AMAZING. Like, again, diminishing returns. I had become accustomed to fancy next gen graphics where these just became....more of the same. And honestly, it was COVID, no one could afford a next gen system despite series X and PS6 coming out, and early gen seemed to mostly be remasters of previous gen games to bring them up to the level PC gamers had been playing them for years.

Best games: 4

Industry as a whole: 1

 2021

 2021 seemed like a rather mid year. It had some decent titles, but let's face it, stuff like BF2042 arguably looked WORSE than BF5 and even BF1. Halo infinite looked decent but not cyberpunk level. Far Cry 6 looked decent but not worlds better than 5. Again, gen 9 seemed to mostly be like, late gen 8 but upscaled and with better lighting. Nothing in the industry was particularly amazing.

Best games: 0

Industry as a whole: 1

2022

 2022 did have some decent releases like callisto protocol but all in all I also found this year to be kind of mid graphically. Callisto protocol looked great but it never really blew cyberpunk out of the water. And the industry as a whole...again, it just felt like gen 8+. 

 Best games: 0

Industry as a whole: 1 

2017-2022 best games: 3

2017-2022 industry as a whole: 1 

Yeah this is where we start seeing a problem of diminishing returns. Games DO look better, but outside of a handful like cyberpunk RDR2 and BF5, they dont look amazing. And honestly, it just feels like a continuation of that late gen 8 vibe. To be fair, we were still in the cross gen era, but yeah. It kind of reminds me of that 2007-2012 era where we reached a level of graphics it would take years to surpass. And by this point, these graphics are so proliferated through the industry that I can no longer say we really got the massive gains we did in previous eras. I mean, this has been a bit of a struggle for a while by this point. We would hit a plateau, stick there for a while, and then get another jump, followed by a plateau. Some of it is caused by console generations and the loss of the true "crysis" style game, but even then, the shift from late gen 8 to gen 9 just wasn't that significant. Like, it was very gradual and not super noticeable. 

2023

 So this is where gen 9 REALLY kicked off. I mean, we were finally in the post COVID era, the cross gen era was functionally ending. And gen 9 is officially in full swing by this point. And we did get some pretty titles this year. Avatar frontiers of pandora, alan wake 2, but did it really beat cyberpunk? I mean cyberpunk is the new "crysis." I guess alan wake 2 looks cinematically better, but cyberpunk still has the scale. I'll give it to alan wake 2, but still. I think 2023 is better known for the proliferation of gen 9 graphics in the game industry, rather than it being a truly breakthrough moment. Definitely better than 2022 graphically. Again, crossgen is officially over by this point, you need the fancy new hardware, you need the new console. Your 1060 or PS4 pro aint doing it any more. But still. I dont think it really hits as hard as previous gens did. Impressive year, but not amazingly impressive, especially at the top end.

Best games: 3

Industry as a whole: 3

2024

 Another "full swing" year, with some graphically impressive titles, but nothing that really broke barriers on an insane amount. We get ray tracing mandatory titles for the first time (indiana jones and the great circle) but not gonna lie, is this a huge improvement over say, BF1/BF5/metro exodus? Eh, I'm inclined to disagree. Again, for all the hype ray tracing gets, I feel like outside of cyberpunk it's not really helping gaming all too much. I mean, that's the reality of it. Ray tracing is hyped as the new big thing, but it's not massively improving visuals of games. It's more making things easier for devs...who then dont optimize and expect people to just power through poorly optimized games. 

I think the big problem is when games already look like movies, and we've had movie level graphics since around 2016-2019 or so, being like "yeah but let's do that BETTER" tends to just lead to diminishing returns. Dont get me wrong, we're still getting progress, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as substantial as before. 

Best games: 0

Industry as a whole: 2

2025

Doom the dark ages and BF6 are the current new graphically insane titles in my book. BF6 finally looks better than BF5, but it does have some unwanted compromises like blur when you zoom in. Doom the dark ages looks marginally better than 2016 as previously discussed, but let's be honest, the 5 year averages aren't amazing at this point, and the 10 year ones aren't much better honestly. Again, 2016 is the tipping point where the best hit that "good enough" level and now everything looks that good or a bit better. If anything, I hate how poorly optimized games are, how ray tracing is forced while it doesnt seem to add much, and how now to compensate we need to upscale leading to blurry experiences. When accounting for price, it just feels like gaming is one step forward, 2 steps back. And now we're talking a new console is 2027-2028? Are you kidding me? Just...no....

Best games: 0

Industry as a whole: 2

With that said, let's do a 2 year average from 2022-2025. 

2022-2025 best games: 3

2022-2025 industry as a whole: 3

This era gets saved somewhat from the ending of the cross gen era, but still, gains over time are becoming marginal. I mean, you could go back to any year back in the 1990s, and outside of the most mediocre ones (like 1994-1995), you would probably get more progress than in any 5 year period from around 2016-2017 onward. 

Seriously, if I went back to 2017 and compared to 2025, we're talking like....

Best games: 5

Industry as a whole: 5

I mean, there is a difference, but that used to be like a very good single year back in the day like 2004 or 2014. not even like 1997, I mean, the shift to 3D was just an insane level of progress you cant possibly replicate. But yeah. From 2016-2017 onward, it's all been incremental, and it feels like that awkward 2007 -2013 era where everything felt mostly samey. heck, at least on PC we saw significant improvements year on year for much of that, even if crysis wasnt dethroned. It's like 2007-2013...as a console user. Yeah...

Again, this is why I feel jaded about the future of gaming. We're reaching a point where graphics are a matter of diminishing returns, most gains come from technologies that are one step forward and two steps back, and we're facing a very obvious affordability crisis as inflationary pressures are driving up the cost of new hardware while games only look maybe moderately better than they did 7-10 years ago. It feels like we're reaching "peak gaming", the end of history, where we have better tech than ever, but because the industry is so driven by creating new wants and needs for no reason it feels like we're being coerced into super expensive upgrades that barely offer anything to the average gamer. Rather than consumer electronics being reasonably affordable, the cost is going up, while we're not seeing clear gains, and the upgrade cycle feels driven more by planned/forced obsolescence through imposed software limitations than by an actual need for more raw power. 

THe last thing we need are fancier consoles with prettier graphics. This is just rampant consumerism driven by the wealthy and their insatiable profit drive than by an actual need for consumers. Meanwhile gaming suffers from these late stage capitalist impulses. Again, capitalism just gets to a point eventually where it's just creating artificial needs to keep the money flowing, than actually providing value to consumers. The system can't accept a world where consumers are happy with what they have because then they wont spend as much, so again, just gonna keep an artificial cycle of consumption going forever even though it clearly doesnt make sense.

This is why gaming sucks in the 2020s. Everything is monetized, everything is expensive, and the end user experience is no longer improving a lot. Back in the day, the rapid upgrade cycles were needed because graphics really would advance at a pace where every 5 years, the landscape would be unrecognizeable compared to the previous 5. This continued until around 2007. Then we started hitting stagnation, we saw the expansion of the console life cycle and a levelling of system requirements, but eventually we did move on again, we got some periods of rapid improvement in the mid 2010s as we finally got over the crysis hump, but again, now we're on the cyberpunk hump and tech is once again, at a relative standstill. This doesnt mean games dont look beautiful. But that's the thing. They've looked beautiful since around 2016. Everything has been diminishing returns since then, especially once we got past cyberpunk, which is the new de facto crysis. I honestly think things will continue like this until 2030 and we wont see massive improvements until some time past that. Maybe gen 10 will bring a new proliferation of better graphics. I doubt it though. It looks like it's gonna be prohibitively expensive, we're gonna be weighed down by yet another cross generational period, and we wont see major gains from what we have until probably 2030-2031. And who knows what it will cost? And will it even look THAT good? Again, it all remains to be seen. 

But yeah.  If we visualize these improvements over time, we get this. I admit I adjusted a lot of the scores for the cumulative to hit 100 after the best games just hit 100 naturally, but it really does serve as a metric of relative improvement over time. If 100 is the standard for 2025, we saw pretty strong growth among the best until 2007, where things just stagnated for a while. We hit 72% of 2025 graphics levels then by this quantification. The industry is at 64%, but it matches 2007 levels by 2011 which checks out roughly. We see more growth through the 2010s, but by 2017-2018,we're hitting 90% of 2025 levels. Which is why things are diminishing returns since. Growth in graphics has been relatively subjective since, despite hardware and software requirements still going up. To be fair, those requirements dont go up as linearly as before either, but still. 

 

 

But yeah the fact that by the mid 2000s we had games look arguably 60% as good as today is wild. We had as much progress in about 10-12 years as we did in the subsequent 20 or so.  

I mean let's really think about this. 

1992-1997:  20% best games gain, 24% cumulative gain

1997-2002: 23% best games gain, 20% cumulative gain

2002-2007:  30% best games gain, 20% cumulative gain

2007-2012: 0% best games gain, 10% cumulative gain

2012-2017: 16% best games gain, 16% cumulative gain

2017-2022: 9% best games gain, 5% cumulative gain

2022-present: 3% best games gain, 5% cumulative gain

Yeah, that puts it even more clearly than the chart does. We had pretty strong, linear gains until 2007ish....and then from there things drop off. We see a decent jump from 2012-2017 as we finally get over the crysis hump and into gen 8, but yeah. Once we hit that peak gen 8 graphics wise, things seem to drop off again. 

Put another way:

25% mark: 1998 (6 years)

50% mark: 2004-2005 (6-7 years)

75% mark: 2013 (8-9 years)

100% mark: 2025 (12 years) 

Again, we dont need better graphics, we need to make gaming cheaper, or at least keep it affordable. if that means stagnation, so be it, we're stagnating anyway.  At this rate, for us to hit 125%, we'll need to probably go another 15 years or so until 2040. With us hitting 150% by around 2060ish. Yikes. And that would represent a general jump from Crysis 1 graphics level until NOW. It will take 35 years to do what we've done in 18 qualitatively if things continue slowing down like this. We dont need better graphics. We need more affordable hardware and games.

 Put yet another way, let's look at console generations going by the peak years, given the breaks between them aren't common. By this, I mean we go by what I defined as the big defining years, which may be a couple years after they start. Basically by this point, the phase in period is mostly over and games are being designed primarily for those consoles.

Gen 4-5 (1992-1997): 24%

Gen 5-6 (1997-2002): 20%

Gen 6-7 (2002-2007): 20%

Gen 7-8 (2007-2014): 19%

Gen 8-9 (2014-2023): 14%

Remainder (2023-2025): 3%

Here things look a LITTLE more distributed over time, but keep in mind, gen 8 kinda had 2 waves of improvement. The early gen gains were substantial, yes, but the second half of the generation felt like a mini generation in itself. 

If I went by 2016 instead of 2014:

Gen 7-8 (2007-2016): 23%

Gen 8-9 (2016-2023): 10%

But yeah, it varies either way. Yeah yeah, we get it, incremental gains since 2016, I made my point, yada yada. I just wanted to define it by console generation, to really explain the magnitude in difference between previous ones and the current one. Again, this can be hard to define since what defines the console generation? is it launch? but the launch year, not everyone goes out to buy them right away and there is typically a bit of a slow transition over time. The best games could be another metric, but honestly, that has its own issues. Because I'd consider Crysis a de facto gen 8 game, and half life a de facto gen 6. So yeah. I went by 1997 because gen 5 was in full swing by then, 2002, because same to gen 6, 2007 because same to gen 7, gen 8 could go by either 2014 or 2016, as I said, there seem to be two jumps there. Gen 9 didnt seem real until 2023 I'd say, given the generation's weak start and how early gen 9 and late gen 8 kinda blend together. Honestly, that whole 2016-2022 period feels like a distinct gen in itself honestly. But I digress. Rambling. 

No leftists, Gaza was likely not a deciding factor in the dems' loss

 So....I see a lot of leftists grilling the dem autopsy for "not once mentioning gaza." I know it's common for leftists to try to make everything about their pet causes (and im arguably guilty of this myself, although i have a lot more sensibility and awareness on this topic),  but I honestly dont think gaza had a huge impact. i know that OTHER autopsy mentioned gaza, but i thought that WAS the dems' autopsy at the time. Anyway, my own take on gaza was this. It was a factor that may have depressed turnout, but to the best of my knowledge....I dont think it was a deciding factor. 

Most voters were pissed off about the economy/inflation above all else. And Harris just didnt seem like she offered anything differently from Biden. Not saying trump was the right option, we're seeing THAT play out right now, BUT...people tend to vote against the party in power, remember? We discussed that recently? And that was the democrats. So people blamed the democrats for rising inflation and harris didnt offer any convincing policies to fix the issue. And to be fair, navigating inflation is tricky. This is why i was willing to give biden/harris a lot of grace on the subject, despite not being enthused for them myself. I kinda realized that if the GOP gains power and then the inflation doesnt continue (which, under a competent administration, it wouldn't), we could very well have a carter/reagan type situation on our hands. But yeah.  Dems really were  in a tough spot and both biden and harris didnt navigate that with grace.  

Past inflation/the economy, the next set of issues were immigration and crime that really doomed harris. The republicans did a good job convincing the public that under the democrats we were experiencing an immigration/crime wave like we've never experienced before, and that this was a huge problem. With crime, crime did go up under biden, but only because it went down in 2020 during covid lockdowns and 2021 was a return to normal. Immigration had similar issues, but we also had a lot of refugees come over looking for asylum, and border patrol caught a lot of people, and despite us being legally required by international law to respond to asylum claims properly, a lot of ignorant people were just all SEND THEM BACK! and seem to want all that cruel  deterrence stuff trump is doing. Even now, trump's strongest issue is arguably his immigration policy. Dont get me wrong, he's negative on it, but a disturbing amount of people seem to approve of the psychopathy he's engaging in and he's still among his best issues. 

Honestly, I'm not sure what we could do here. People just were living in an alternative reality here, and idk how we are supposed to convince people something isnt an issue when they perceive it that way. This is a fundamental education problem driven by things like anecdotal experience and news telling them its an issue rather than it actually being an issue. It takes an educated mind to see past that stuff and sadly we have an education problem in this country. It's a huge reason the left is at such a disadvantage.

Democrats had some issues going for them. Democracy being a big one, SCOTUS being a big one too apparently, and of course abortion rights, but those didnt draw the necessary levels of support to the polls. 

Gaza was at best a mid level issue and if anything conservatives seemed more fired up on foreign policy, and their foreign policy is that Harris wasnt pro israel ENOUGH. So....the impact of a more strongly pro palestine position helping is questionable. Even if some leftists sat out the election because of it, between the dismal primary results of the write in campaign (which helped kill support for actual candidates like marianne williamson, not that it would've mattered since like 90% of dem voters voted for Biden anyway) progressives were shown to be a minor, if not nonexistent factor this election cycle. Really, Im not saying they  werent a factor at all, but they werent a statistically significant one IMO. They did not swing the election by themselves.

And oh, because centrists love to trot out this one, neither were trans issues. A lot of centrists are acting like those "kamala harris is for they/them" ads were a huge deal, they werent, the first link above showed that trans issues  were literally at the bottom and probably one of the least motivating factors of all factors. I aint saying we shouldnt avoid cringey unpopular stances that the overwhelming majority of voters are against, but....let's face it, anyone calling to throw trans people under the bus wholesale needs to shut up as well. 

I mean, I aint saying my takes are authoritative, I mean, this is primarily an opinion blog, but the fact that I can put together a better autopsy in like half an hour than the dems did really shows how bad the dems are at their job. And yes, while palestine deserves a mention, as it is A factor, and one often cited, it was a relatively minor one overshadowd by several far more significant ones. Dems had an enthusiasm problem. That much is obvious. But independents also voted against us, primarily because they were pissed off everything was so expensive and they cant afford to live properly. And if anything is the lesson to be learned from 2024, it's that 1) the dems need to do a better job appealing to people on the economy, and 2) a lot of the voter base lives in an alternative reality constructed by conservatives where brown people are an everpresent threat to normie americans' lives...even if they aren't. 

If we wanna go beyond that, I'd talk about the dems foisting an 80+ year old nominee on us that no one actually wanted, despite high dem primary support (alternatives werent well known and most just fell in line....dems manufactured consent around him arguably), and then when it was shown he was lacking the baseline competence to do the job properly due to his advanced age (still better than the other guy too old to do his job, as evidenced now), we got his vice president, who was more of the same and voters didnt want that.

Elections are won by enthusiasm, and the deciding factors of election cycles primarily work against the party in charge. While it's not uncommon for incumbents to pull it off and win a second term despite these factors, Biden barely won in 2020 and the dems lacked the sufficient enthusiasm and independent support to clear that hurdle the second time as republican enthusiasm remained high, while democratic enthusiasm dropped off a cliff. While 2024 couldve been much worse had Biden remained the nominee, harris still failed to secure enough votes to win it for democrats. Some of this was due to factors beyond her control, but some of it was just...being another moderate who didnt offer much in a time where voters wanted change. 

That's the true lesson of 2024. If we wanna be relatively objective about it, that's how I view it. 

And then there's climate change...

 *sigh*, sorry to continue being a bummer tonight, but I've seen several streamers I follow talking about the so called "Super El Nino" happening this year. I've heard all kinds of apocalyptic crap about this, how this could trigger a global famine, to how it could cause the southwest to run out of water, and while I asked a weather obsessed friend about it they didn't seem to have strong opinions on any of that happening, he did mention the 1877 one where a famine did happen. 

Either way, it did lead to a larger discussion on climate change on vaush's stream tonight. And uh...yeah...dystopian future. Look, I'm not gonna say the worst of the worst outcomes is gonna happen, it could, I'm not an expert and aint gonna be inclined to give into hysteria, but vaush has a point here. We humans are so fixated on our consumerism and just trying to work to survive, that we're not thinking about the big picture. We are messing with climate patterns that quite literally sustain the very economies we revere so deeply. And we have a choice, we can either do things sustainably and live the way that ends up being perpetually, or we can push our environment to the point of collapse, and then end up living far worse in the future. We are doing the latter. And idk where exactly all the big tipping points are....some suggest they could be in the next 15 years or so, which is really really bad. but we are playing with fire.

Really, we should have been on this. Some knew about this fifty years ago. Like people were sounding the alarms back in the 1970s. And what did we do? Ignore all warnings and just keep charging ahead. If anything, remember the scarcity thing? We REALLY dont wanna give up oil. Even though we should. Reagan went drill baby drill, republicans ignored the issue due to religious fundamentalism and big oil money, and yeah, we let it fester. Democrats refused to act on it. Bernie wanted a green new deal. Biden wanted build back better, which is IMO more sensible given the 30 year timeline we had at the time, but then we only got the inflation reduction act and Trump rolled that back. So now we're way behind again. Because republicans just won't fricking let progress happen. And then they'll attribute the extreme weather conditions to god punishing us for letting gay people get married or something. 

But yeah, this is bad. We are destroying our environment with our economic model, and because it isnt a destruction that causes backlash all at once, we just keep acting like it's normal. Well, as this century progresses, the conditions are gonna get progressively worse until we DO get pushback. And again, this process might start in the next 15 years or so. Hell if super el nino is that bad, it could start this year even. We could see mass famine or displacements in the worst case scenario. Idk if that will happen, but given the fertilizer situation with iran compounding things...eh....maybe? 

That's the thing about capitalism. Without it, the modern world isnt possible at all, BUT...unless you practice it with a sane level of moderation, and clearly control for the worst aspects of it, well...it sucks. it enslaves the populace, and yeah, it's literally destroying the planet for us. We might look back at our world 100 years from now like wtf were we thinking. We had it all and we blew it. If only we decided to embrace a more sustainable version of the model rather than going in with growth at all costs, we could've had a utopia. But scarcity might continue to exist and be WORSE in the future BECAUSE we didnt conserve now. Seriously, if we like...stopped working so much now, we could have a reasonable living standard with a short work week. 100 years from now, we might not be able to grow enough food to feed everyone because the climate changed so much. We might have water refugees fleeing the southwest as it dries up. New Orleans might be in the ocean, as will other coastal cities. And because people are stupid, they'll just continue to assume that that's just how the world is because of sin and we gotta get right with god or some crap. Like holy crap, no, you stupid people, you gotta get right with the environment. Sure, we can use resources from nature to enhance our lives. But that stuff is finite, and if we overuse it and abuse it, we're just risking a catastrophe. Think of a fish tank that has too many fish and gets too filled with poop or runs out of oxygen or something. Yeah. We're at risk of doing that to ourselves. This planet is our fish tank. 

And I know elon musk talks about colonizing mars, we aint fricking colonizing mars. We dont have the tech for it, and if we cant even stave off disaster on our own planet, how can be change a planet with a radically incompatible climate to be compatable with us? The idea is nonsensical. This isnt like starfield where humans are adaptable to a wide variety of environments, but earth is destroyed because of slipspace travel or something. The earth is our only home, we evolved to live on it, and we're messing with systems that are changing it. And if we change it too much, we die. Regardless, this altered earth is still going to be massively more compatible with us than the moon, or mars. Like, think of it this way. The earth is the only planet we know of that supports life. And it's the only planet that likely supports OUR life. We're MADE for this earth, and this earth is made for us. We evolved together. Despite this, we've had five mass extinctions are various forms of "climate change' caused a mass die off of life. The last one was the comet that killed the dinosaurs. And we're working on #6. Seriously, thinking beyond mere lifetimes, and thinking in terms of eons, this might be the next mass extinction event. Caused by us, and our stupidity. This warming of the planet we're causing? Yeah, we might be killing ourselves and the ecosystem off! Seriously. You ever see those memes about like the environment with the house of cards? We dont care about the cards, were at the top. But okay, what happens when enough cards get pulled out of the card house? The whole thing collapses. What do you think we're doing now? And even with all that destruction, a post sixth mass extinction earth will STILL likely be more habitable to current humans than any other planet in this solar system. The idea that we can compensate for our own stupidity here by colonizing the stars is insane. Other planets need to have proper levels of oxygen content, water, the ability to grow food, a good climate, an electromagnetic barrier to shield us from the sun, the right amount of gravity, etc. Any of these variables being off means...we cant live there. And what we're doing is shifting our variables by relatively small amounts that STILL might kill us, but we can somehow overcome much larger fundamental incompatibilities by expanding to the stars? Are we crazy? What crazy pills is elon taking here? Wait, hold on, I know, its ketamine. And being an out of touch billionaire. Those two things can make anyone that grossly out of touch.

But yeah. It's all so stupid. Im not saying we gotta give up all capitalism, or never engage in any consumerism at all. Just cut back somewhat, embrace a world with less work, rethink our energy systems, how we transport people around a bit, etc. We still have time to stop the absolute worst outcomes from occurring. I dont think we have a great window in that regard. As I said, it might only be 15-25 years or something by this point, based on some computer models saying that our economies might be screwed by 2040, and by 2050, I know that's the IPCC's timeline for carbon neutrality. But yeah. All I know is what we're doing isn't sustainable, and future generations are gonna HATE us for what we're doing to them now. Well, that's if they're smart enough to realize what we're doing. They might not. Not just because of climate change leading to a dark age, but also the fact that the wealthy and powerful rely on religious indoctrination to ensure most people are too stupid to realize it. 

Which...to future generations who may or may not read this...yeah. That's why we don't. Our economy is run by the ultra wealthy, and most of us are too stupid to do anything about it. Our economy keeps us in a state of constant scarcity where most of us are working too hard and struggling to survive to care. And those wealthy enough to not struggle dont wanna give up their living standards to accommodate changes. Capitalism keeps us from doing anything. And yeah, we literally got all of these crazy religious people who take the bible literally and think climate change cant happen based on that. Just so you know. Because Im sure a lot of you guys will be like "WHAT ARE WE THINKING?!" basically that. Climate change is an issue for "the future" if it happens at all. We just assume we'll fix it and it'll all just go away, or oh well, it wont be us who deals with it. That's future generations' problem. And again, religious fundamentalism ensures that many will just deny it's even a thing. "Why would god make a world we can destroy?" Yeah...

Anyway, enough ranting for tonight. I just wanted to cover that given everyone is freaking out about super el nino possible causing a mass famine next year. And maybe it can happen, maybe it wont. Im not an expert. But yeah. This just...isn't good. Anyone who denies climate change is a fool. Our weather has been erratic AF this year and it's all climate change. Heck, it's been erratic for years now. ANd yes, summers are hotter than they were when I was a kid. And winters are typically less cold and less snowy. This is all happening. But people have their heads in the sand on it. 

Why it's hard to get excited for "the future" these days

 So, I keep getting spammed with these annoying starlink commercials where it's like some old guy talking about "the future" and how "it's hard to predict the future, but I'm sure it's gonna be fantastic" or something like that.

My knee jerk reaction to the commercial is "F U Elon Musk"...but...honestly, it's kind of a frustrating realization to realize that I'm no longer the optimist I used to be about "the future." I was a more OG technofuturist. I've ALWAYS liked the future, and the idea of new technology, like pocketable computers (smartphones), and flying cars, and robots that do all of the work for us, but it seems like unless you're some ###hole tech CEO, the masses have lost their enthusiasm for the future, and so have I in a way.

I mean, this is kind of an expansion of what we were talking about the other day about how college grads are booing tech CEOs going on about how AI is changing everything. I should LOVE AI and LOVE the future. But I also can't blame people for being pissed at this tech for taking their jobs. And it pains me to actually sympathize with literal luddites, but here's the thing. All this "future" stuff is all well and good, but a lot of the time, it's fundamentally incompatible with our existing social institutions. Capitalism is a system based on scarcity. it's based on the perpetuation of scarcity. It's based on manipulating peoples' wants and needs to pressure them to work to produce more stuff, while simultaneously monetizing the crap out of things. And I think that's what kills "futurism" for a lot of us. Capitalism just ruins everything. 

Now, I'm gonna preface this again by saying, I'm NOT a full on leftist. Capitalism is the best system we have at this current stage of our development, and it will need to be necessary well into the future. Even with these futuristic sci fi aesthetics, we're probably gonna need to rely on some level of capitalism for that stuff to work. After all, it is capitalism that spurs technological development. yes, the state can help direct resources, but between a capitalist economy where these ###hole CEOs innovate to make a profit and a state run economy where state bureaucrats have to be the ones to make things happen and often don't, the decentralized structure of capitalism is gonna be better. Obviously we should have some mix of both, and I am for a mix of both, but yeah. Capitalism is necessary. You do socialism and society seems stuck in a perpetual time warp of the era that the socialism was implemented in, which is why most socialist countries (minus modern day china, itself a hybrid economy) end up looking like they're perpetually stuck in the 1950s. Because guess when many of them implemented socialism? Exactly.

But at the same time, capitalism, especially the more purist forms of capitalism we've trended toward since the mid 20th century, well...it seems like no matter how technologically advance things become, they still suck. We talk about robots taking the jobs, but we don't ask "well how will we take care of people when robots take the jobs?" We just talk about "creating new jobs", which itself is dystopian, and output the burden on individuals to sink or swim. Meanwhile systemically, we have a "war on normal people" while main streets are turning into ghost towns, major metropolises do look futuristic but then rent is insane amounts and it's difficult to get anywhere because high population density, car centric infrastructure, and jobism aren't really compatible with each other. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. 

Smartphones give us access to unlimited amounts of information, but then much of it is paywalled, and those phones become "leashes" for our employers to get ahold of us at any time. Despite all the labor saving devices, our lives are as fast and busy as ever and it's stressing us out. We can't afford things. When we can, they break on us because of planned obsolescence, yeah, we literally make stuff designed to break or go obsolete to keep people on a never ending cycle of consumption. Tech CEOs start going on about "the future" but it's never something where we're like "WOW WE WANT THAT" but rather its forced on us. AI has some uses, but it's not THAT amazing of a technology, and yet CEOs talk about "the future" where they sell "intelligence" to us on tap. We build datacenters that spike our electricity costs and suck up our water and create massive levels of pollution for this tech, which many of us dont want, and we're always told we're gonna be "left behind" if we dont embrace it. And while being "left behind" sounds like a blessing given the modern context, because they control the infrastructure and the institutions we depend on, we end up being forced to embrace it or being "left behind" literally means using old deprecated tech that doesnt work any more and not being able to do our jobs and getting fired.  

On the energy thing. We should embrace green energy. We should want "free energy", but the wealthy dont want that. They want us on oil and gas because it's energy they can control us with. If they cant charge us for it, then it's a bad idea, capitalism is designed to create constant dependence on the system, it's not freedom like it's sold as, it's a cycle of dependence sold to us AS freedom.

Btw...that's the core problem. Capitalism can't become too efficient at meeting peoples' needs, or it might obsolete itself. This cycle of dependence was created intentionally. It was created a hundred years ago, ironically by FDR, who I normally see as a hero. But in this case, he was a villain. The wealthy and powerful feared a society in which people didn't have to work, and had no desire to consume. They feared capitalism would automate itself out of existence. So instead they created consumerism to keep us on a cycle of work and consumption. ANd then as all that new deal stuff was rolled back half a century later, we went back to the gilded age more or less. We're in a new gilded age. And that's the problem, and this system was designed to enslave us.

And in this system, what are we getting from "the future?" We're getting mass surveillance as palantir decides to spy on us en masse and create massive blackmail databases on us. We're getting robot dogs that kill people. We're getting the president of the united states declaring people with "anti capitalist" beliefs as potential terrorists and putting us on watch lists. Technology is becoming dystopian, rather than utopian.

Rather than living in like star trek, or the jetsons, or futurama, we're getting something more like say, total recall, where the martian government kept people paying for air to keep them in a state of constant desperation to work for them. It didnt matter if there was tech that would auto terraform the planet into an earth like state, the control and desperation that scarcity created was the point. And they'd kill anyone who actually tried to end their control over people. And that's kinda where our society is. We invade foreign countries, force capitalism and dependence on them, bomb them if they disagree with us, and now we're trying to mass surveil people. Given trump's alliance with big tech, we're heading toward like a form of techno fascism or techno feudalism, than anything star trek like. We're heading toward a future like cyberpunk 2077 where people are in a constant state of poverty and desperation while corporations control everything. Basically, we're not going toward the good futures, we're going toward the bad futures.

Look, i love the aesthetics of futurism and the whole idea of the future being all sci fi technology that makes our lives better, but I'm kind of realizing this is full on incompatible with our social systems. It doesn't matter how great the future is on paper, as long as we dont deal with our underlying social institutions, it's gonna suck, and in some cases, this new tech might make our lives worse. Robots that do all the work dont matter if now we have to figure out how millions of people get paid, because our social institutions are designed around work. And btw, I do have answers on that, at least in the transition, but will we implement them? Lol nope. Because the rich people control everything and they dont wanna give up anything to the peasants. So they're destroying the fabric of society, won't allow the proper changes to make lives better for the masses, and stuff gets worse.

And did I forget to mention how dystopian everything is and how we're on a constant cycle of paying for things that are supposed to make our lives better, but in reality just make things harder and more complicated, and how we're ruining the environment, and how we're creating tools of mass surveillance and oppression? 

Yeah...

Like, again, I wanna believe in "the future", but until we start fixing our social institutions, we're going toward the more dystopian science fiction worlds, not the actual good ones.