Discussing the 9050 and the low end GPU market again

 So, Hardware Unboxed got their hands on a 9050 and reviewed it, skewering it and labeling it as "ewaste." And idk, I feel like in light of my own discussions on the market, people are missing the point. 

In a normal market, this wouldnt be an acceptable product. It's basically an RX 6600 tier performer (so basically, 7x GT 1030) for $280. For reference, the 9060 XT launched at $300 and was often found for $270. And yeah, this thing kinda had RX 6500 XT vibes, as that was basically a $200 product released during COVID. With that said my biggest fear is that just like the RX 6500 XT marked the end of the sub $200 market in a way, I hope that this doesnt mark the end of the $300 market.

Either way, we discussed what options sub $300 buyers (and even up to $500 or so) buyers have, things aren't great. Quite frankly, given the RX 7600 being $260, this is DOA. It's slightly weaker, and it costs more. However, it's mostly being pushed in third world markets, and I know many of those markets struggle with AMD card availability. Would I recommend it as a product if you live in these regions? Maybe. I dont know enough about pricing in those regions on forums, but I know any time I recommend AMD cards they always say they're more expensive than Nvidia. But all in all, I'm glad SOME budget options still exist. 

I would agree that by rights, this should be a <$200 card. I mean, the 6600 was $200ish FOUR YEARS AGO. And we clearly havent moved since then. We briefly moved price/performance wise in 2025 with the introduction of the 5060 and 9060 XT 8 GB available at $300 or less, but that was....very short lived, and now 2022 is looking good compared to what exists now. 

But yeah, in recent analyses, a huge thing I've lamented is how few options exist for the sub $300 market and well, this is one of them now, at least in some regions of the world. It's not awful. Not great, but again, we're talking 7 GT 1030s for the price of 2.8 GT 1030s. Given the average gamer games on a card that is around 8 GT 1030s these days, give or take, and has 8 GB RAM, give or take, eh......it'll hit that level of performance.

If the RX 7600 were ever to disappear from the market, and we end up dealing with the entire sub $300 market being ewaste, we'd miss this tier of card at that money. Kinda like how I kinda wish RX 6500 XTs and GTX 1650s still existed for people who wanna buy a card for around $150. Again, I know the standards are super low here, but if the goal is to get affordable GPUs into the hands of more gamers in a fundamentally broken market, well, it is what it is. It'll play anything PS5 tier fine, probably at comparable to slightly worse quality settings. It passes my sniff test of the "minimum acceptable GPU" in 2026, at least if you use the 8 GB version. The 4 GB version? Avoid like the plague. If 4 GB cripples a 6500 XT, its gonna cripple this. Not even sure why that even exists. But yeah, the review here was the 8 GB, so I dont understand the hate. 

I mean, I do, but the assumptions behind said hate assume a market that clearly doesnt exist right now and not all of that is just greed by the GPU manufacturers. RAMpocalypse is destroying any positive movement in price/performance. At this point I'm shifting to maintaining the current market, and while a $280 7x GT 1030 GPU isn't great, it aint terrible given options on the market include stuff like a 4x GT 1030 card for $200, and a 5x one for $260 (referring to the RTX 3050 here...). Again, if you dont have access to the RX 7600 or 5050, it's a not awful deal. Maybe a bit overpriced. I'd probably try to keep this under $250 tbqh, but eh....market's gonna market. I guess that would be my biggest complaint. Should be a little cheaper given I'd still recommend a 7600 or 5050 over this, but it's not AWFUL. If the price were lowered to say, $220 or so, I'd say it's a decent value in the current economy. 

Discussing the rift among "democratic socialists"

 So....the reaction to Francesca Hong losing has made me realize that yeah, there's a serious rift among democratic socialists. And it actually makes a lot of sense, given my feelings about the term over the years, and how I've increasingly become a lot more critical of them. 

We see this difference manifest between Bernie and AOC refusing to endorse Fran Hong and leftists blaming them for their loss. I mean, from my viewpoint, the calculus was clear. Hong was a bit crazy, out of touch, and politically toxic. She couldnt win, and Bernie and AOC distanced themselves from her. I did the same thing. I didnt wanna write an article outright blasting her when she was still technically my preferred candidate on policy, so I punted the issue too. I mean, I understood the argument that Crowley was more electable because the data literally said that.

But...a lot of the more left leaning faction of "leftists" clearly dont feel the same way. They look at Hong's statements about thanksgiving and they're like "I dont see the problem." A lot of it is because a lot of them are leftists who themselves are into the "woke 1" stuff. They dont understand that this stuff is cringe and alienating to most normies. 

Speaking of which, let's separate this into "DSA 1" and "DSA 2" in honor of the "woke" distinction.

DSA 1 is Bernie 2016. It's not really socialism, it's social democracy. It was popular, appealed to political normies, probably would've won 2016 in a landslide. It wasn't woke, it wasnt even leftist. it was often criticized for being too white, full of racist sexist white males (not really not). Early supporters of the movement are in this camp. Bernie being the architect of the modern movement, and early people who made it into congress in the late 2010s like AOC being part of that movement too. This is when I felt personally invested in Bernie's movement.

But then you have DSA2, the literal socialists. These guys are more radical. They're not socdems or liberals at all, they're straight up leftists. They're the ones who adopt any far left cringe I complain about, from wokeness and idpol, to support for literal socialism, the "campism" on foreign policy where america is bad, the free palestine psychos are these guys (as in, the real psycho types I criticize on here), sympathy for authoritarian communist regimes, etc. They're the ones who show up at AOC rallies to scream she's a sell out for crossing some weird red line in their own politics like voting for iron dome that one time. Ya know, the nuts. 

DSA1 was pretty based. They were the first guys to actually say "yeah this system is messed up" and proposed changes to it. They're the ones pushing for REAL social democracy in america and while i dont always agree with their exact prescriptions, ya know, I would happily support them.

DSA 2 is one of the reasons I no longer associate with that movement, trying to make my ideological support for human centered capitalism or social libertarianism clear. Because Im not a LITERAL socialist. I think that stuff is crazy, and these people are unhinged. 

And I feel like when we talk about "democratic socialists" and "DSA" we need to separate these two waves of the movement from one another. When I talk about supporting demsocs for office sometimes, it's normally group 1. Because they're actually out there trying to fight for social democracy. And to some degree they succeed, they win elections. They write legislation, they rarely pass it because there arent enough for them, but they're trying to grow the movement and work within the system. They're not a threat to the system. They just wanna tax the rich to fund safety nets and the like. 

But DSA2, the ones associated with the national DSA movement, they're the ones who are being red scared about. Because they're NUTS. Ive dealt with them, they're the reason i got so many screeds about socialism and free palestine kiddies and blah blah blah. They dont compromise, they want radical change that can sometimes be dangerous, and yeah, at some point, the rest of the political spectrum, including DSA1 has to put their foot down with them and put them in their place. I aint saying we need to red scare the whole left because of them, but we do gotta tell them no, and keep things centered around democracy and some form of market economy. 

And yeah. I feel like, when we look at "democratic socialists", we gotta separate #1 from #2. #1 is part of "the tent" of the broader political left, while #2 should be ostracized by the rest of the left IMO for being too extreme, for their ideas being dangerous, and for them being unpopular and cringe outside of their social circles.

As I always say, America wants change I think. We realize our economy isnt working, and we need a second new deal. I dont always agree with DSA1 on what the solutions should be, they want a job guarantee, I want a UBI, but we can agree that that framework of a new new deal or economic bill of rights is a good one. But we dont want RADICAL change. We dont want an end to capitalism and the start of literal socialism or communism. We dont like wokeism. We dont think the free palestine psychos are always reasonable people. We have limits. We want a better liberalism or progressivism at the end of the day, not literal socialism. We clearly can agree that the third way types arent doing enough. Including the pakman types who CALL themselves socdems but then dont deliver on socdem priorities. DSA1 are the REAL socdems in this country. You look at the goals and how to get there, DSA1 are the ones writing legislation to make it happen. And thats the thing. The reason democratic socialism took off was because they were the only people actually DOING ANYTHING. The third way types are literally just weaponized incompetence. They took off because people wanted change. But since then it feels like the movement is being coopted by a more radical element that wants literal socialism and communism, and who are increasingly turning on DSA1 types for failing to meet their purity tests. Which is...again, what we're seeing here.

Hong was DSA2. She was cringe. She wasnt electable. Bernie and AOC understood that. So they didnt endorse. But now DSA2 is mad about that and see nothing wrong with her. They think AOC is a sell out and while they cant hate bernie too hard, they probably would say something if he werent the goldwater of the whole movement. 

El Sayed, he's DSA1, and calls himself a capitalist. But because he's often associated with DSA he's accused of being a communist.

But then you got people like DAC who won in NYC, that's DSA2. Which is why people got so many issues with her. 

And yeah, I just wanted to point that out. My own stance is clear, DSA1 is part of the larger progressive tent. DSA2 are a bunch of crazies I want little to nothing to do with. Literal socialism, are you insane? No. Hell no. Wokeness is cringe. Campism and free palestine is cringe. Praising communist dictators is cringe. It's all cringe, it's all bad. No one wants this but these whackos. 

And yeah. I just wanted to explain my ever evolving stance on this. 

Election Update 8/14/26

 It's that time of month again. Well there are multiple times a month I do this and you should just expect it to continue to ramp up as we get closer to election update, but time to look at where the elections are going! Lots to discuss this week. 

Senate

As you can tell I'm on mobile again. It's currently 87 degrees outside and it feels like that inside outside of the few rooms with air conditioning so I'm coming to you from tablet again. 

Anyway, to discuss a few removed races:

South Carolina- no one seriously expects this to be competitive, right?

Montana- Well, neither Bankhead nor Bodnar will drop to give the other a shot at winning, and the deadline to do so has passed and it's like R+16, so I'm gonna declare that safe R. It's not a Dan Osborn situation, unfortunately. 

Speaking of Dan Osborn, you might notice I shifted Nebraska to D+1. This isn't due to new data. I realize that the data I have is so old, that I went out seeking new data because I didnt wanna just throw in placeholder data that is lean R or something, so I found the NY times site, which had three polls on it, averaging D+1. I feel like this is more representative of the race than D+5, that was always kinda sketchy. Heck, the polls added arent much better, they're all sponsored by Osborn or affiliates themselves, but still, the alternative is to not have data and to just add R+3 or something as a placeholder. Given its not currently disrupting my forecast, I'll leave it at D+1 since I prefer to let the data speak for itself than to offer my "expert commentary" that ends up being entirely wrong anyway. 

On other races, democrats are doing quite well, but sometimes not as well as I'd expect. Texas, Alaska, and Ohio are all tilting/leaning D. Maine is up 2.3 for Jackson, but this is a bit underwhelming to me, I feel like he should be winning by more. I get the impression he's not as charismatic as pre scandal Platner was. Iowa's tilting R, that's to be expected. So is Michigan. 

I wanna discuss Michigan in more detail since my favorite candidate of the cycle, Abdul El Sayed is there. He IS on the losing side of this, according to polling. I'm not gonna mince words. But....it's still relatively close, and to be fair, Haley Stevens was only like 2 points more electable in the first place. When El Sayed won the nomination, he was at 47%, a new Fox News poll that was R+4 hurt his average there, but Stevens only polled around 1.7 at the time giving her a 66% shot. So she was better, but not like, amazingly better. 

Either way, I find this frustrating. El Sayed is an excellent candidate and I feel like people are just believing racist and Islamophobic lies about him. I hate to say it, I hate accusing people of that, but it's true here. It's like:

EL Sayed: "I'm a capitalist!"

Republicans: "HE'S A COMMUNIST!"

El Sayed: "I love Jewish people"

Republicans: "HE'S AN ANTISEMITE!"

El Sayed: "I love America"

Republicans: "ABDULRAHMAN MOHAMED EL SAYED HATES AMERICA AND WANTS TO IMPOSE SHARIA LAW ON EVERYONE!"

I mean, it's not even subtle. They're just flat out fricking lying about the guy! And it's clear it's working because he's a brown guy from a middle eastern background. It's crazy. Like really, the republicans have nothing on this guy so they're just making crap up about him. And sadly, he's struggling to get into the positives polling wise as a result. 

Anyway, we'll see where this goes, but yeah. Still, even with him struggling, we got about a 56% chance of taking the senate, and are probably gonna get 52 seats, 51 if we ignore Nebraska. Republicans will likely get 48-49 seats with a 44% chance of controlling the chamber (including ties). 

House

Like always, I expect democrats to win the house in a landslide with give or take 230 seats or so. It should be noted that this is a fundamentals based model, since so little polling data exists, especially at this point in the cycle, but the few polling points I see seem to paint an even rosier picture. For example, I've seen data suggesting OH-07 should flip, because Max Miller is running there and he's been accused of domestic abuse to put it lightly. We'll see come election day, and I suspect I might run 2 separate house models just to see what works better, but yeah, for now, this is what my model spits out at me. 

Governors

I have yet to prune the governors' data like I did with the senate. Namely because there are still races expected to be competitive that have zero data like Kansas. On the flip side, Maine has data and seems just slightly out of the 12 point range, but still close enough to it that I feel I should include him. 

I'd say the biggest story of the week is David Crowley winning the nomination for Wisconsin governor, and now I can confidently shift the race from lean R (Hong data) to lean D (Crowley data). Really, I know I'm a progressive, I know I tend to like DSA candidates, and I know a lot of leftists are acting like Bernie and AOC failed her by not endorsing, but if you notice, I didn't endorse Hong either. Because she couldn't win. For the most part I had her at a 23% shot at winning, and while a last minute poll bumped it up to like R+1.7 with a 34% shot at winning or so, uh...yeah....Crowley polled better. Barnes when he was in polled much better. I wish Barnes was the nominee as he was more progressive (but not crazy about it) and polled even better, but given my focus this cycle is on winning, and given a governorship in a state that isnt mine isn't likely to advance the progressive agenda I want in a meaningful way, well...I can live with Crowley. I mean, I just really wanna beat the republicans this time, ya know? Kinda important for the future of democracy.

Conclusion

With that said what can we conclude? That a lot has changed, but the overall picture hasn't. Democrats are still expected to take the house. The senate is in play when in a normal election year it shouldn't be, and in the senate a lot of races are more or less tossups, meaning that polling error and the size of the predicted blue wave is gonna matter a lot more than candidate quality for the most party. Democrats could win the senate Democrats could win the senate in a 54-46 sweep, while a republican overperformance could knock it down to 49-51 or even less for democrats. It really depends where the pieces end up lying.

But yeah, that's where stuff is right now. I'll do the next one of these toward the end of the month unless there's a massive shakeup I feel should be reported. 

Why I won't make a CPU buying guide (although this post kinda is one)

 So, I've spent a lot of time on discussing GPUs, what's good to buy, etc. I considered doing the same for CPUs, but won't. There's a big reason for this. When you buy a CPU, you aren't buying one in a vacuum. You need a motherboard to put it in, and RAM to go with it. While CPUs used to be relatively straight forward, varying and volatile platform costs make it hard to plan a build. On the low end, we can put together a Ryzen 5 5500 with 16 GB DDR4 RAM build for $250, on the other extreme, you got a 9800X3D with 32 GB DDR5 for almost $1000. 

Generally speaking, if you live near microcenter, consider their combos. They're generally the best bang for the buck, although significantly less good than they were than I bought (not their fault, it's RAMpocalypse). If anything, their 6 core X3D bundles probably are the best bang for your buck you can get for gaming. On the intel side, the Core Ultra 5 250k+ is solid, but less good for gaming, although you get more CPU power.

That's another thing. CPU power scaling is weird, and the spectrum is a lot flatter than GPUs. As I indicated the difference between a $100 GPU and a top of the line one is a scale of around 37x performance, with an average gamer having a CPU around 8x as powerful as the weakest one.

The difference between a ryzen 5 5500 and a 9800X3D is only going to be on a scale of around 3x performance, going from the worst to the best (use the ryzen 5 3600 to estimate the 5500's performance). And most CPUs fall in the middle between them, with anything less than the 5600x being an outdated architecture, and anything more than the 7800X3D or 14900k being an outlier the other direction. Most games seem to differ only around 60% between say, the 5600x and the 7800X3D, with most modern mid range CPUs performing in between. Cheaper DDR4 compatible CPUs will perform a bit lower, whereas more expensive chips with DDR5 perform a bit higher, but yeah, most CPUs perform pretty close to each other.

This is largely because CPU tech has stagnated, with Ryzen 5000, 7000, 9000 and intel core 12-14th gen and modern core ultra processors all performing similarly to each other. Only AM5 X3Ds and really low end/dated processors stand out from the pack either way. Most just kinda perform similarly. Core counts don't matter as much currently. While higher core count processors MIGHT come in use in the future, odds are at this rate that current architectures will become dated before you see a difference. As it stands, factors like latency, cache, clock speed, and IPC matter a lot more than raw power. X3D proceessors are rather unimpressive on traditional computing tasks, but are phenomenal for gaming. Intel processors loaded up to the gills with cores might be impressive workstation systems but are kinda average at gaming. As such, it's hard to offer straightforward recommendations. 

 If I were to try, at the low end, I'd generally recommend AM4. You can get an Ryzen 5 5500, a motherboard, and 16 GB DDR4 for around $250-300. 

If you stick with the platform, a better CPU generally gets more expensive, with a 5600x, 5700x, or 5800x costing another $100-150, bringing the total up to around $400ish give or take. if you go up to 32 GB DDR4, you can spend $500, and if you get a 5800X3D, you can be spending up to around $600-700. 

Some would say a 5800X3D build in unattractive because you could just buy AM5 at that point. You can spend $200 less on a processor, but spend maybe $200 more on expensive DDR5 RAM instead, and have a viable long term upgrade path. And if you go all out, again, it's like $1k for a 9800X3D style build without sales. 

Where does intel fit into this? Well, sadly, it kinda doesn't. While LGA1700 used to be an attractive option, the CPUs have gotten expensive, it's only worth investing in with DDR4, at which point you can probably save money and go with an AM4 build instead, as they perform about the same. In order to get the most out of a higher end intel processor, you need a Z series board, which is expensive, and even then with DDR4 memory, you're gonna be held back by the RAM itself. I wouldnt recommend going LGA1700 on DDR5 at all at this point. Not cost effective.

For DDR5 intel, you want to go for a core ultra 250k+ or 270k+. But then you're spending $400 on RAM, and while you get a stronger processor in real terms than AMD's, it won't matter in gaming, which are limited to 6-8 core / 12-16 thread processors anyway.  Honestly, I'd only go this route if you really care about productivity more than gaming performance, or you otherwise have a legit bias against AMD (for example, I went intel 3 years ago because AM5 was a notoriously buggy and unstable platform at the time). 

With that said, if you want a budget experience, go for a cheap AM4 processsor with cheap DDR4 RAM. if you want a premium experience, go for an AM5 X3D processor with DDR5, and if you want a middle ground option, you can go either way. Given a choice between a 5800X3D or Ryzen 7600x/9600x/7700x/9700x build, I'd probably go for the latter at a similar price point, but this is where the individual parts you want matters more than the CPU itself. Down below I actually find the 5800X3D to be more affordable. 

And yeah, that's basically it. 

And again, the budget experience is gonna be...well...a budget experience, a premium experience will be 3x as good while costing 4x as much, and a midrange experience will be somewhere in between, while costing something in between the other two.  

If I were to provide a few sample builds, I'd provide the following:

Ryzen 5 5500- $253

Ryzen 5 5600x- $359

Intel Core i5 14400f (equivalent to 5700x/5800x)- $417 

Ryzen 7 5800x- $436

Ryzen 7 5800x 32 GB- $516

Ryzen 7 5800X3D 32 GB- $634

Ryzen 5 7600x- $687

Intel Core Ultra 5 250kf+ (no OC/XMP ability)- $748 

Ryzen 7 7700x- $755

 Ryzen 7 7800X3D- $907

Ryzen 7 9800X3D- $1058

Of course, do your own research, I just threw these together, you might find a better deal, or you might find parts go better with other motherboards, etc. I know AM5 X3D CPUs in particular have problems with certain motherboards (Asrock and Asus seem most affected) so keep that in mind too. 

I did throw a couple intel CPUs in where they made sense. The problem is, they often don't. Higher end ones require expensive Z series boards to get the most out of them. While they perform similarly to the 7000 series CPUs on DDR5, on DDR4, they're more comparable to the 5000 series. The 14400f makes sense here, but otherwise they largely don't.  

And yeah. It's a rough market, but this is the best I can do. And again, to do the whole how many X the lowest end one is:

 Ryzen 5 5600x- ~1.3x  R5 5500

 Ryzen 5 5800x- ~1.3x R5 5500

Ryzen 5 5800X3D- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 5 7600x- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 7700x- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 7800X3D- ~2x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 9800X3D- ~2.2x R5 5500

For that I tried to use techspot/hwunboxed's data to get averages. 

But yeah, as I said, it's a lot flatter than the GPUs are. While I would recommend going at least midrange (5600x-7700x tier performance) if you can afford it, there's no shame in getting the 5500 and it's a great budget CPU for the money. Beats the crap out of the GT 1030 on the GPU side of things that's for sure (seriously, that's like having core 2 quad tier performance still on the market in comparison, it's a joke).  

Anyway i guess this did turn into a CPU buying guide, but it's a brief one and like always, do your own research before buying components, I dont want any responsibility if what i recommend ends up kinda sucking, I'm just throwing builds together on PC part picker with minimal research.  

If you can't vote for Abdul El Sayed, please leave the democratic party part 3

 So....this has become an ongoing series. Part 1 had me blasting centrists who think he's too extreme, part 2 had me blasting communists who think he's too moderate, and now I'm blasting zionists who think he's "anti semitic." 

Yeah...a lot of the time I see people who say they can't vote for El Sayed these days, it always seems to come from zionist types who scream he's "anti semitic." I've also noticed post primary everyone seemed to come around to supporting him, except for some Jewish organizations. Apparently his israel position is enough to piss them off. Well, here's how I see it.

America is a secular democracy. We have freedom of religion, along with constitutional prohibitions on establishing religion in government. What qualifies as 'establishing religion' has been debated over the years, but I tend to go with the interpretation that we should have a separation of church and state, with criteria resembling the Lemon test from lemon v kurtzman. This means laws should have a secular purpose, neither advance nor prohibit religion, and try to keep religion and politics as unentangled as possible. 

With that said, Jews have every right to practice their religion, given they don't violate secular laws or harm other people. However, when they do harm other people, or entangle church and state, then that's a problem, and that seems to be what's expected from our government here. It seems like people want us to cater to their religion and its doctrines, to be super pro Israel and show sympathy to their religion, and someone who simply says "no" and that they're not gonna fund a genocide in the middle east is considered "hateful" of their religion.

We're not. If you're an American Jew, I wish you all of the happiness in the world. Go to synagogue, practice shabbat, do your holidays, I don't care. Whatever makes you happy and doesn't harm other people. But that doesn't mean that the government has to have  explicit sympathy toward your religion, to the point that we just unquestioningly fund a genocidal apartheid state that is doing harm to others in the middle east on a moral basis that seems straight out of the book of Joshua. Muslims have rights too, and deserve their own happiness too. And while yes, Israel has a right to defend itself...within reason....their current policies do not align with that qualifier. Which is why many on the left have taken harsh stances against Israel. 

People need to learn that not enabling a religion's worst impulse to harm others does not equal religious persecution. And honestly, if you can't get behind that, go join the republican party. They're full of Christian nationalists who also have persecution complexes and a weird reverence toward the state of Israel on the basis of their religion that I find creepy as hell. We are the party that wants religious pluralism for all. Not religious domination against all other religions. We do this to protect minority rights, including the rights of Jews. Because everyone deserves to practice their religion without being harmed or persecuted by others.

And btw, that includes Muslims too. I know a lot of the hate toward El Sayed is because he's muslim. It's weird. We seem to expect everyone to default to this judeo-Christian worldview while deeming muslims as "the other.' Meanwhile, Muslims are just people too, and the same rules apply to them. Since El Sayed is following those rules, i have no quarrel with him. I have a quarrel with the people who explicitly wanna inject religion into governmental policy, whether it be domestic policy or foreign policy.  

Really, how can you not vote for this man? This is why I have no sympathy here. If you cant vote for him, you should probably join the party of religious extremism and authoritarianism. This is my candidate. These are my values. I apologize for nothing. Listen to what a candidate SAYS, not what other people acting in bad faith SAY about a candidate. It would solve so many problems. 

Having a brutally honest discussion on "Woke 1"

 Ok, so...I notice some leftists on my youtube feed are attempting to defend "Woke 1" and blasting Bernie and AOC for distancing themselves from Francesca Hong. And...I find it cringe. I admit, I sub to different people for a variety of perspecives. But yeah, these takes, I hate disagree with. 

Look, NO ONE LIKED THE WOKE 1 CRAP. It was a weird hugbox of leftists and virtue signallers that came off as cringe to anyone with any normie instincts. Some people dislike the attempts to laugh it off by saying it makes people look insincere and how it "throws people under the bus", but I'm going to be honest, I believe that this stuff WAS insincere among a lot of people. Maybe not DSA types, but liberals? hell yeah. A lot of it was weaponized cynically to attack economic progressives and distract them from focusing on economic issues. Like, my big critique as a "non woke" leftie has always been that it sucks the air out of the room and stops us from having political discussions about anything else. It also came off as extremely pharasaic. Ya know, like the pharisees? And the bible? And the whole virtue signalling moral gestures that are superficial and fake. A lot of people did that stuff for the social approval. the SJW cult was to liberals and leftists what church is for conservatives, an overt display of external moral superiority followed by a lot of internal social games and hierarchies among the participants. And yeah, the second that stuff became radioactive, a lot of people started distancing themselves from it. 

Of course, this alienated the true believers and the like. YOURE GONNA THROW US UNDER THE BUS! Oh boo hoo. Like really, I'm tired of this. It's the same guilt trip I've heard since 2015 and I've been immune to it. I swear that's another thing. A lot of people in these communities who benefit from this stuff end up being mentally unstable narcissists who use their underprivileged status to get a lot of free internet affection, and if you DARE break their little hugbox, they'll attempt to mod you, punish you, etc. I had this happen last year when the first signs of it ending were happening and I basically told someone that they need to stop making politics all about them. Again, you see where I'm coming from? I HATE this stuff, I've ALWAYS hated this stuff. It's always been fake, it's always been a distraction, it's always been enforced by a lot of weird social hugboxing and heavy internet moderation. And again, normally, I wouldn't mind sharing a coalition with people with other interests, but when the hug box literally sucks the energy out of the room to focus on anything else, it gets old. 

And you know what? I'm not alone. Most normies hate this stuff. A vast majority of people hate it. Not just the right, but also the center and even more blunt and honest members of the social "center left" like me. It appeals to like 1/6 of the population, it turns off about 2/3 of them (1/6 being neutral arguably). And here's the thing. We need to win elections. So....if you went off and went on some online screed about how thanksgiving sucks because colonialism, and the people look at you and think you're a whacko, well....yeah. I get it, inside those hugboxes there's heavy social enforcement where a lot of people were goaded into saying some straight up insane crap at the time, but that's always why I've tried to be that dude in the asch experiment who is like "no, you guys are choosing the wrong line, are you blind?" Social hugboxing will make people blind, socially, where they dont understand how crazy they come off to people outside of their little clique. 

And for people who are true believers who say that they shouldnt have to give that stuff up to run for office...well...DON'T. You can be an influencer trying to change the moral landscape, I am myself. But let's be blunt, do you think me, the autistic unemployed anti work guy would make for a good political candidate? I'd be Doreen Forded and I know it. And I dont wanna give up my perspective ever, so I dont run for office. I just say what I wanna say and try to inspire the world to change. And maybe, someone like Andrew Yang will run for office on views similar to mine. And you know what? Despite having similar views on UBI and even work to SOME degree (more so than most others in society at least), yang can at least sell those ideas to moderates. He's far more electable than say, I am in that regard. Even if I do think he has a lot of shortcomings. But that's the thing, I'm trying to push things where I wanna see them. Im not looking to run for office myself as I know I'd be unpopular to some degree, as Id have lots of baggage in the form of this blog, reddit comments, etc. Rather, I'm trying to win the battle for ideas.

When you run for office, you gotta try to be electable. When you have unpopular opinions, you gotta "hide your power level" as some say on the left, or otherwise do the equivalent of dog whistle politics. You know how the right wing did that? They couldnt just show how racist they were so they hid behind terms like forced bussing, or welfare queens, blah blah blah, Reaganism actually formed as a form of this politics, where small government was actually originally a dog whistle to screwing black people but they had plausible deniability.

Now we're getting to the point we need that on the LEFT. If you wanna do the "anti racist" stuff, you need to distance yourself from woke 1 rhetoric, which was what AOC was trying to do with the "woke 1 was crazy" comment. It's smart politics, and if anything she was trying to cover for Hong with that. She read the room and adjusted her rhetoric to meet the moment. As much as those of us on the left would love to move the overton window to be more blunt (I mean, I'm like this on economics), sometimes you gotta be a little more opaque. Graham Platner understood this trying to distance himself from his reddit history. "Oh I was in a dark place, I dont think like that any more." Maybe he does, maybe he doesnt. People grow and change, but sometimes it is just hiding one's power level. Idk. But yeah, you gotta play that game sometimes. And if you cant do it, well, dont run for office. I sure as fudge aint running. We gotta understand, elections are popularity contests. Leaning into your ideology can help you...if your ideology is popular. But if it's not, well...youre gonna lose. And Hong just had that SJW cringe all over her where she couldnt win elections, and where even Bernie and AOC rightly read the room and refused to endorse. Sorry, not sorry. 

Discussing last night's primaries

 So...last night had some rather contentious primaries, one of which went to 2:30 AM in terms of counting and much like michigan's last week, came down to the wire when it was supposed to be close. Unlike last week though, the moderate won, and the progressive lost. Now, a lot of centrists are rubbing it in our faces, but quite frankly, I'm okay with this one. If we were gonna lose one, I would hope it would be this one. This one wasn't the one I'd wanna win. Now, I didn't formally endorse anyone on this one, and I didn't for a reason. Because I understood that the progressive running was a terrible candidate, and if she won, she'd probably blow the general. We're talking about Francesca Hong and David Crowley here. 

I'm gonna be honest. While I like Hong and her policies on a personal level, she....couldn't win the general. The thing is, she ended up being one of those twitter brained SJWs who couldnt keep her mouth shut (like I'm one to talk, right?) and has a history of posting awkward screeds about proximity of whiteness and how she hated holidays like thanksgiving because native american genocide. And....that stuff comes off as unpalatable with a significant portion of the electorate. As AOC said, "Woke 1 was crazy', and she's who she was referring to. Btw, you notice Bernie and AOC didn't endorse this lady? That's why. The writing was on the wall. She was politically toxic and would have likely cost the democrats a governorship during a blue wave year. RCP had her down by 3 (the 1.7 accounts for a new poll i didn't see) and my election prediction model had her at a 23% chance of winning. Admittedly, that last D+1 poll would've improved her to 34%, but still, not looking great in a year where democrats are supposed to be dominating. Mandela Barnes, when he was in the race, was AHEAD by 3, and that would have given him a 77% chance in my model. Kind of Hong but in reverse. Id rather be on the 77% side of things than the 23%.

Still, I didn't endorse David Crowley either. While Barnes was a decent candidate in the "McMorrow progressive" lane, David Crowley is more a "Haley Stevens" centrist. And he kinda has his own cringe moments, like saying "establishment is a slur". Still, I don't like Crowley as a candidate. I dont like establishment moderates. And I dont care if hes offended by the term. Still, while I have zero polling data on Crowley, I'm guessing he would perform more similarly to barnes so in my election model, I'm going to just use Barnes' data as a placeholder until I actually get some decent data on him. Which means I'll tentatively shift the race to lean D from lean R. 

Speaking of polling, wasn't Hong supposed to win in a literal landslide? How did this end up getting so close in what should've been like a Hong+18 race? Well, look at the data carefully. Hong performed about exactly where she was supposed to, it was everything else that was off. See, Mandela Barnes was the original candidate running against Hong, but he kinda crapped the bed and couldnt get the base behind him. So last minute, Barnes dropped out, and Crowley jumped in instead. And the polling never really picked up for Crowley. The other 60% of the base was deeply divided between Crowley, Barnes, and other candidates. There were LOTS of undecideds, and everyone just ended up coalescing around Crowley. Hong got around the 39% or so she was supposed to, Crowley just ended up ALSO getting around 39% and won by like 3000 votes. This is a problem with these primary polls with 3+ candidates, you can see a lot of movement between candidates between the polls and election day as the race shifts and polling just didn't account for that. The result was a normally unthinkable result suddenly becoming possible. This is why both Michigan and Wisconsin were so far off, we had 3 person races turn into 2 person races and then the polling didn't pick up how people actually were gonna vote leading to margins that were MASSIVELY off. 

And again....I might not like Crowley, but uh...I also was reluctant to support Hong, for all the obvious reasons. Quite frankly I'm low key relieved Hong lost. Here's the thing. We shouldnt mourn this loss. If she won, she'd go onto the general, lose, and we'd never hear the end of it and how progressives arent electable. As smug as centrists are today, they'd be 10x worse if she choked on the general with a more moderate candidate having a 6 point electability gap here. SO yeah, let them have this one. We got a lot of wins this cycle, we dont need this one and this one would have been bad for our movement long term. 

At least Flannigan won in Minnesota. I didnt pay much attention to that race, but apparently she was the more progressive candidate and people are happy about that. 

Seriously though, we REALLY didn't need Hong winning here. Take the L, support crowley in the general, and we support our progressives in other races where we CAN win. 

Explaining GPU power scaling in GT 1030 terms

 So, just a dumb idea, but given all the GPU talk, it might be good to contextualize how powerful GPUs I'm talking about are. I'll use the GT 1030 as a baseline given its roughly on par with modern integrated and given it's the cheapest card I recommended. Should give you an idea of how powerful the cards are relative to each other. 

Steam deck- 2x GT 1030

Arc A380- 3x GT 1030 ($140)

RX 6400- 3x GT 1030

GTX 1650- 3x GT 1030 

RX 480/580- 4x GT 1030 

RX 5500/6500 XT- 4x GT 1030

GTX 1060- 4x GT 1030 

GTX 1650 Super- 4x GT 1030 

RTX 3050 6 GB- 4x GT 1030 ($210)

GTX 1660 Ti/Super- 5x GT 1030 

RTX 3050 8 GB- 5x GT 1030 ($260)

RTX 2060- 6x GT 1030

RX 5600 XT- 6x GT 1030 

Arc A580- 7x GT 1030 ($200) 

RX 6600- 7x GT 1030

GTX 1080 ti- 8x GT 1030 

RTX 3060 12 GB- 8x GT 1030 

RX 6600/6650 XT- 8x GT 1030 

RX 7600- 8x GT 1030 ($260) 

RTX 5050- 9x GT 1030 ($310)

RTX 4060- 9x GT 1030 

RX 6700 XT- 10x GT 1030 

RTX 5060- 11x GT 1030 ($360)

RTX 2080 ti- 11x GT 1030 

RX 6800- 12x GT 1030 

RX 9060 XT- 12x GT 1030 ($370/470)

RX 7700 XT- 13x GT 1030 ($410)

RTX 5060 ti- 13x GT 1030 ($430/600)

RX 6800 XT- 14x GT 1030 

RX 6900/6950 XT- 15x GT 1030 

RTX 5070- 16x GT 1030 ($700)

RX 9070 GRE- 16x GT 1030 ($530) 

RTX 3090 ti- 16x GT 1030

RX 9070- 18x GT 1030 ($650)

RX 9070 XT- 20x GT 1030 ($710)

RTX 5070 ti- 21x GT 1030 ($1000)

RTX 5080- 24x GT 1030 ($1280)

RTX 4090- 28x GT 1030

RTX 5090- 37x GT 1030 ($4100)

It's kinda like measuring in raditzes in DBZ abridged. And while I'd say, your typical gamer is around a 3060 or 7600 tier card, so around 7-8, yeah, it scales up as you pay more. This is why I said that yeah, even an A380 can be a huge boost. All things considered 5x GT 1030 is around the minimum acceptable performance for modern games, although I'd still recommend getting 7-8x for the same price. 

Anyway just a dumb thought experiment i thought of before bed. 

EDIT: Added more GPUs and bolded relevant GPUs  that are available today for clarity. Jesus christ no wonder I'm biased toward AMD these days. Outside of the 5060, most nvidia offerings arent worth the money tbqh. 

Discussing HWunboxed's RX 6500 XT video in light of my GPU recommendations and praising of the RX 6000 series

 So, Hardware Unboxed did a video on the RX 6500 XT 4 GB in light of AMD bringing back 4 GB cards with a RX 9050 OEM model, and uh...I wanna discuss it. This has been kind of controversial.

Some think that it's unfair to criticize the new card given the 6500 XT is...well...as weak as it is. No, not really. Here's the reality here. I know I low key gave it SOME praise recently, but that requires A LOT of context.

Right now, the sub $200 GPU market is more or less nonexistent. You buy anything less than that RX 7600 I recommended basically and youre getting a paperweight for NEW games. You can play older ones, or even lower spec newer ones on SOME cards I suggested, but really, there's a reason I emphasize the RX 7600. It's because if you want a decent gaming experience, you need a RX 6000 or RTX 2000 card with at least 8 GB RAM and decent horsepower. Period. While the RX 7600 isn't as low as you can theoretically go and meet that, given the RX 6600, RTX 3050 8 GB, and RTX 2060 super exist, it's the cheapest card on the market worth the money. RX 6600 and 2060S arent sold new at decent prices any more, and the 3050 costs as much as the 7600 while being around 33% weaker. 

When you go below those cards, you get a compromised experience. The RX 6500 XT is anemic. It's only like half as powerful as a RX 6600 XT, and maybe around 60% of a RX 6600. It comes with 4 PCIE lanes, which with older PCIE 3.0 systems (ie, the kinds of old systems you'd put this card in to begin with), it loses a lot of performance. And it has 4 GB VRAM. 

The reason most games dont run well AT ALL in HW Unboxed video IS the VRAM. If you have enough VRAM, your card should scale down to SOME playable experience. However, if youre stuck at 30 FPS with horrible lows even at like 720p with FSR enabled, yeah, that's VRAM. You're not gonna run games on that. And even a newer card like a theoretical 9050 4 GB will get crap frame rates due to the VRAM bottleneck. RAM in general is all or nothing with gaming. If you have enough, the experience is smooth. If you don't, it's miserable. While I cant say theres NO in between, the amount of in between that exists is minimal. 

8 GB is a hard requirement for new games. I am die hard on saying "you need 8 GB" for new games for a reason. You do. If you have less, they're gonna run like crap. Even 6 GB is too borderline in some situations. And honestly, the GTX 1060 6 GB will probably outperform the 6500 XT  4 GB in most games for a reason, despite having similar amounts of power. 4 GB is just crap for new games. it reached its limit in 2022, and starting in 2023, we got past the PS4-PS5 "cross gen" phase and started seeing the first true "next gen" games not compatible with the older hardware. At that point, 8 GB started being a hard requirement, and playing on a 4 GB card in 2026 is gonna be a bad time in most games.

Some games, they showed that if you scaled the game down enough you can get 60-80 FPS. Those are the games where you DONT get VRAM bottlenecks. And yeah, some still work...and the RX 6500 XT is just an anemic card for those.

Like really, the only reason I gave the RX 6400 and 6500 XT any praise was because they're better than nothing. My praise was conditioned by "in a sea of GT 1030 tier ewaste, these are actually compelling options by comparison." I mean, compared to THAT card, which has 1/4 the horsepower and 2 GB VRAM, the 6500 XT actually is a relatively decent offering. It's on par with an old RX 580 4 GB or like a GTX 1060 in theory. It's just that...those cards are a decade old now, they're not good for modern games, the 4 GB VRAM no longer cuts it since it's not the mid 2010s any more, and the 4x PCIE lanes are just....wtf, why? Like, seriously, you just lose 1/3 of your performance on old systems for no reason with it. 

Again, better than GT 1030s, GT 740s, and similar cards, but....yeah, basically crap too. There's a reason I'm like "yeah dont go below the RX 7600" these days if you wanna play new games. Even that 3050 6 GB is gonna have compromises due to VRAM and not a ton of power. Not to mention Arc and their drivers, bleh. The entire low end of the market below $200 is just literal ewaste at this point, the 3050 6 GB is like...just short of what I'd say the reasonable minimum is, and you need to pay $260 for a 7600 or 3050 8 GB to hit it, and given the 3050 8 GB is pointless next to the 7600, yeah...again, see why I keep saying it?

I mean, these cards were the worst the 6000 series had to offer. They were cut down borderline ewaste at the time, they're basically ewaste now, and the only reason i say maybe we judged them too harshly is because the only modern equivalent card that exists is an intel card that has its own host of issues. The market is just crap and if youre forced to choose between bad options, my goal here is to navigate to the absolute least of the evils. Generally speaking the 6000 series was only good with the 6600 and above, and while I will glaze the 6600, 6650 XT, and 6700 XT until the end of their lifespans and possibly beyond at this point, that doesn't mean everything is a winner. The 6500 XT is just better than what exists now on the market at that price point.  My attitude is that if you can't afford a GOOD GPU capable of playing modern games, you should still buy the best you can get your hands on. Something like a 6500 XT, or 1650 super or something would at least get you up to 2022 era games or so. And isnt that better than literally nothing? Beats integrated...or a 1030 at least. Even if it is crap. In theory, it's 2x steam deck performance. 

And that's something to think about too. The RX 6500 XT is...2x as powerful as the steam deck. ya know, that handheld that everyone glazes for being able to barely run AAA games at 30 FPS on minimum with FSR on? If it can even do it? Yeah. Well...the 6500 XT is 2x that performance wise. Just to put things in context. Is 2x the steam deck a good experience these days? Hell no. Again, you want at minimum like a 3050 8 GB if you wanna do modern gaming at all. Which is...40-50% better than a 6500 XT, even ignoring the VRAM. And ideally, you probably want more than that, like a RX 6600 or 7600 or something to COMFORTABLY run games. Yeah...

That's also why i dont find the steam deck compelling fyi. It's basically ewaste thrown into a game gear type form factor. Sure, it'll run the old stuff decent, but it's not really good for AAA games. But yeah. Again, this is why i dont do PC handhelds. Too much money for too little performance. Id rather have a PC and an android device dedicated to low end android games and retro gaming.  Ya know, but I digress. Just wanted to contextualize things a bit. 

Discussing "woke 2.0"

 So...AOC made a strange comment talking about Francesca Hong's old posts, and her response was basically "woke 1 was crazy." The comment seems to have invoked a firestorm from those who still adhere to "woke 1", but looking into it, "woke 1" was the kind of idpol politics that I despised, where everything is super sanitized and tone policey. A lot of Hong's brainrot comments were "woke 1" stuff, like her going on about indiginous people and Thanksgiving being of the devil. 

Woke 2, on the other hand, seems more up my alley. It's the "dark woke" politics of people like Kyle Kulinski (who often refers to himself as "dark woke"), and even myself. It's more the politics of provocation, "when they go low, we hit them in the nuts" and triggering the cons. basically, it means fighting back. Dont do the whole "ERMAHGERD HOW DARE YOU" type crap that quite frankly makes us look like a bunch of losers. It's more "shut the #### up you dumb ####" when dealing with morons on the right. And now THEY get all ERMAHGERD HOW DARE YOU! while we just continue triggering them. 

If you notice the energy shifting since 2024 on that, yeah, you're not the only one. Even people like Nick Fuentes pointed it out. Republicans were the cool ones and now they're the offended snowflakes and we're pushing THEM around. And quite frankly, that's how it always should have been. We won during the Obama era with that strategy, and quite frankly, woke 1 was a mistake and source of much of what has been wrong with the modern left. Note how we barely backed away from any policy positions on marginalized people either. Because we dont have to. We just need to change up our rhetorical strategy and meet people where they're at, and meet the right where THEY are at. Rather than getting offended, we seek to offend.

Honestly I'm 90% for this. The only thing I will say in opposition to it is we gotta be careful with the most extreme stuff though. We live in an era of NSPM7, trump declaring left wingers terrorists, and directing law enforcement to investigate prominent progressives and the like. Honestly? I'd be careful about getting TOO spicy and doing stuff like sharing those luigi memes, or gullotine memes, or quite frankly, anything that advocates for or celebrates violence. Ya know? Youre just gonna get yourself potentially in trouble with that stuff. And that aint gonna age any better than woke 1. 

Also, I wanna avoid the escalation trap that the alt right got into. They started out with dark and edgy humor, but then they kept taking it seriously until we ended up with an outright fascist, and its hard to tell if people actually support fascism or if they're just joking, or both. Ya know? Remember, I'm for a left wing TEA PARTY, not a left wing MAGA movement. One is about getting back to our roots, and the other is about escalating authoritarianism that threatens the fabric of our society.  

It's fine if we add a little spice to our politics, but too much is problematic, ya know? Just saying that because it seems like part of the thrust of these politics does seem to be going in the whole "let's joke about violent actions" direction and uh...yeah. That's too spicy even for me. Being offensive without threats of violence can be funny, but yeah, we shouldnt cross THAT line.

And, let's face it, I don't want a literal communist revolution either. I know some on the socialist left seem to be edging that way, but I wanna make it clear, I'm a reformist. The point of criticizing capitalism isnt to abolish it, it's to implement the correct reforms that solve the problem. Ya know? Just because I feel like we gotta clear THAT too, and some of the ones most likely to lean into the extremist stuff are...well...extremists. We shouldnt celebrate or give cover for those guys. Yeah, again, we need a little spice to our politics, but we gotta be careful who we enable here. It's about balance. 

So yeah...just wanted to discuss this. It seems like woke 1 died with 2024, and good riddance. The one silver lining of that mess. And while woke 2 is better, again, we should avoid the extreme impulses that some have with that stuff.  

Trying to decipher El Sayed's "medicare for all" plan

 So...unlike Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in 2020, El Sayed does NOT have a set in stone healthcare plan. However, after watching a Secular Talk video today, El Sayed said that he doesn't plan on banning all private insurance. This brings him closer to my own stance on paper. At this point I support a public option due to costs, specifically the medicare extra for all framework, although my moderation is driven by my support for UBI and its costs not being affordable along side full blown single payer. So I decided to delve into what his plan actually seems to be. 

So it seems like he doesn't support full on single payer, he emphasizes he doesnt wanna ban all private insurance. Mainly because unions get pissy about it. "I EARNED my private insurance benefits blah blah blah." Not gonna lie, love unions, but unions do stupid stuff like this all the time. Their ideology is ruined by jobism and fixation on work and jobs, when we should be trying to break that obsession. M4A is a step in that direction. 

Still...given my own compromises, I can get behind it. THere are downsides to not having ANY private options. Not just high costs but what if republicans wanna ban access to say, abortion? They could do it through the healthcare system. Having a multi payer system could mean we dont put all of our eggs in one basket. It also makes things cheaper, which is my angle.

Which brings me to other aspects of this. What exactly IS his plan? Well, it seems like he wants to eliminate all out of pocket costs. This goes further than I would. medicare extra for all does maintain a system of premiums, copays, and deductibles. However, it reduces them to managable levels. I'm willing to accept this because those things will scale with income, meaning those on the poor end of things still get free healthcare, while those who are higher income pay increasingly more as their incomes go up. Of course, given this exists along side UBI, most people would benefit in net under this plan vs just M4A. The extra income your typical family would get would offset higher out of pocket healthcare costs and then some. 

Honestly, people will pay for healthcare under either system. Premiums and taxes start looking kind of similar when discussing the ins and outs of universal healthcare plans. Just different ways of paying. The right screams about higher taxes, the left screams about out of pocket costs. The real key is, who pays what? The right wants a market based system tied to employment that doesnt guaranteed access. The left wants a socialized system that guarantees access and offloads some costs onto the wealthy while guaranteeing free/cheap access to others. All in all, universal healthcare systems are generally better in my view, but this is very much ideological. Which is why I took a jab at the union guys too. They want to preserve market based employment linked healthcare because of their jobist tendencies. I want a more universalist system in theory, but I'm willing to accept some compromises so I can fund other projects. 

Speaking of which, how much will El Sayed's plan cost? Without any solid plans, it's hard to tell. The general gist is probably "more than medicare extra for all, less than single payer." Single payer would cost an additional $3 trillion a year at this point, with a total healthcare bill to the government being $5 trillion. Its why I backed off of it. Im already supporting a $4.6 trillion UBI plan, so I went with a cheaper medicare extra for all idea, which would cost $300-600 billion give or take. Maybe a bit more with inflation. Honestly, and this is the rub. The more you cover, the more expensive it gets for the government. The reason medicare extra for all has so many variables is different structures of coverage for different income groups. Medicare extra for all covers 80-100% costs depending on the plan and the income bracket. THe more that's covered, the pricier it gets. The more people you cover, the pricier it gets. And the better the public plan is vs private plans, the more people go on the public plan, and the pricier it gets. Due to these variables, it's hard to get an idea on costs. I'm imagining it would expand healthcare costs by over a trillion, assuming it covers all healthcare for roughly 2/3 of the country though. 

Maybe this guy doesnt wanna put anything in stone because of political backlash, or the uncertainty of whatever plan would end up making it through congress. THere are a lot of possible plans out there, and the details of which would have to be hashed out in congress.

Either way, if theres anyone who knows more about this issue than me, its this guy, he literally wrote the book on the subject, and having read it, yeah, he's well familiar with all of the stuff im talking about and the options we have. Still, being a bit of a policy wonk myself, I would like to have some concrete ideas here. 

I just wanted to discuss this since he seems a bit more moderate than full blown medicare for all, but still more radical than I am on the subject, given my preferred plan accepts some level of out of pocket costs. 

Has the RX 6000 reached "GOAT" status for me?

 So...I did a tier left of GPU generations a while back, and perhaps the most controversial pick for me was the RX 6000 series. It was borderline S (GOAT) tier, but I knocked it down to A because it wasn't all roses. However, after looking at the current GPU market, the loss of cheap RX series cards is being felt, and I feel like we've regressed. The market was literally better 3-4 years ago when I bought my last GPU, and people today are getting a rawer deal than they were back then. I shouldnt have to recommend Arc cards for entire price ranges because nothing else was available, and that RX 6600 series sweet spot is just...gone. The closest thing is the 7600, which is still sitting above its MSRP, and for a while there was hovering around $300. I just can't help but feel like people really had a much better deal just a few years ago, and that maybe it's time to consider the RX 6000 series as "GOAT" status.

History

So, one of the reasons I didn't make RX 6000 GOAT status was because of its history. It didn't start out as a series of cheap cards that revolutionized the market, but a series of overly expensive ones that tried to compete directly with Nvidia but totally failed. The series launched in 2020-2021 to compete with the RTX 3000 series. Unlike the 5000 series that came before, it had modern features like ray tracing, newer API support, etc., which makes a big deal with compatibility. It didn't quite reach feature parity with nvidia as they had better ray tracing/upscaling, but it was still new enough to "just work" and not have the issues of the previous series. But yeah, price was, it literally wasnt any better than the RX 5000 series, which were an okay value for their time, but lacked the modern features the 6000 series had. It also started out where the 6600/6600 XT were the lowest end cards priced at $330 and $380 respectively, trying to compete directly with the RTX 3060/3060 Ti, despite being inferior. Not that prices mattered because YAY! COVID AND CRYPTO SCAMS! So for much of its early life, it was always sold out, always at an insanely high price, and not available. 

The real magic, and why I love the series so much, is because in late 2022, as the market finally returned to "normal" the price of this particular series of cards crashed faster and harder than the others, leading to a renaissance in PC gaming. The market had been stagnant and even regressed since the 1000/1600/400/500/5000 series of cards in the late 2010s, and us old 2016-2017 era buyers had ZERO upgrade options for the same price since then. While that is part of what makes the Nvidia 1000 series GOAT status for me, having a huge price/performance bump and not being challenged in price/performance significantly after that, it also has been terrible for the market as the value structure did not move either, trapping people on those older cards as they aged. But with these cards reaching as low as 55-60% of their original MSRPs, they ended up defining the market in the post COVID era, with the subsequent RX 7000 series and RTX 4000 series following the general price structure that the 6000 series set. 

The series was sold well into 2025 until the release of the RX 9000 series finally obsoleted it. Those $200-220 RX 6600s stopped looking as good when the RX 9060 XT 8 GB was $270 and offered significantly more performance, not to mention nvidia options like the RTX 5050 and 5060 being available at $250-300. Since then, the supply of 6000 series cards has dried up, and then RAMpocalypse has made things unaffordable again, with the current value of cards being similar or worse than what the RX 6000 series offered in its hey day. If anything, doing my "what card should people buy now", the loss of the 6000 series is acutely felt, with many of the deals being equivalent at best and often worse than the RX 6000 series offered. 

Given that, if I bought now to replace my nearly 4 year old card, I'd be replacing the RX 6650 XT which I paid $230 for, with a 7600 for $260 or a 5050 for $300, it's time to consider elevating the  RX 6000 series to GOAT status, since this is getting ridiculous. 4 years with barely any price/performance boosts in the market and the card still going strong? I expected to replace this thing by the end of 2027, but it looks like there's no point until the RAMpocalypse ends. With that said, this card is on track to last longer than my venerated GTX 1060, or other GOATed beasts like the 8800 GT in its day. 

Discussing the RX 6000 product stack and why it offered better value than today's offerings

Looking at the offerings today, it's pretty obvious why I feel nostalgic for this series now. It really has "you dont know you're in the good times until you've left them" energy. While not all cards were winners and some were flat out stinkers, given the  state of the current market, even the bad ones are getting rehabilitated to some degree.

RX 6400- $130

So...the RX 6400 sucked. Everyone knew it sucked. It was a cut down 6500 XT and that sucked too. It was severely cut down vs the RX 6600 series, only being around 1/3 as powerful, offering 4 GB VRAM, and having 4 PCIE lanes, which severely crippled performance in older systems. BUT....would I have recommended it over an Arc A380? Of course I would have. Honestly, while it was kind of a crap card and a crap value, well....in a sea of GTX 1030 tier ewaste, it still stood out. And it was a serviceable bare minimum graphics card at the time. 

RX 6500 XT- $160

Once again, this was always a bad product. It launched at the height of COVID price gouging for $200 and was the 5th coming of the RX 480...a card from 2016 that had 8 GB VRAM for $250. This one came with 4, said to be good because "crypto people wouldnt want it, only gamers", but yeah, basically, this was an RDNA2 version of a 480/580/590/RX 5500 XT. And it was worse actually because again, only 4 GB, and 4 PCI lanes, which crippled it. At the time, I probably would've said go for a 1650 or 1650 super, but....in the modern era, NONE of these cards are sold at the appropriate price point, so again, you cant even get a card new like this at a decent price any more. I've seen these being sold at $200+, which is ridiculous. Speaking of ridiculous...

RX 6600- $190-210

So...for years after the Pascal/Polaris era of 2016-2017, I've long castigated the market for lacking a $200 "every man's card". Everyone wants to pursue the high end market, but we need a card for mainstream gamers, stuff that costs $200-300. I always respected the 480/580 cards, and even though I went 1060 instead, I always felt like cards like this were good for gamers. We need cheap, available cards. Well, post COVID, this became "it". The RX 6600 was a blistering 75% or so faster than the RX 6500 XT, and came with 8 GB VRAM. It became THE affordable budget card for years to come, with its value not really being beaten by anything. While gamers still flocked to nvidia and paid out the butt for it, I considered the 6600 to be the new 480 of our time at the time. Only reason I didn't buy one was because I bought the next one on the list.

Currently if you wanna pay this much, you get an Arc A580, which is roughly as powerful while having way more drawbacks, or the RTX 3050 6 GB which is...well....kinda pathetic for the money. 

RX 6600/6650 XT- $230-250

This is MY card. A bit faster than the RX 6600, but still mostly the same thing. About 20% better, costs about 20% more. Similar performance to the newer RX 7600, which is currently going for $260. But yeah, same level of power, lower price. Imagine telling myself that 4 years later you'd get worse price/performance. I cant say I wouldnt believe it, given I just lived through the COVID pandemic and crypto boom, but it would be an OH GOD I BETTER BUY NOW moment. I might've even upgraded up to a 6700 XT to make sure I got something more futureproof. 

RX 6700- $310

The RX 6700 was an awkward card and not widely loved by the community. The big thing is that it was barely faster than a 6650 XT.....but cost like $60-80 more. You get 10 GB VRAM with this one, but oh wow big deal. Really, it wasn't a huge huge deal. And it was always awkwardly priced and an awkward value.

RX 6700/6750 XT- $350

This was the one to get if you wanted a more premium but still budget friendly card. At $350, it competed favorably against the RTX 3060 at the time, and had 12 GB VRAM. It was kind of the big step up from the 6600 or 6650 XT style cards. But it was also a bit of an awkward value too IMO. It was only 25-33% better give or take than the 6650 XT, while costing upward of 50% more, and the big draw was the VRAM. As it has aged, it feels like it falls in a weird place. RDNA2 is showing its age a bit and outside of VRAM constrained situations it really doesnt come off as significantly better than the 8 GB cards below it, but when VRAM does become an issue, it can shoot up to 50% better. I feel like the architecture is aging faster than the actual VRAM or lack thereof, especially with 8 GB still being mainstream and probably remaining mainstream until we're finally done with RAMpocalypse. 

Vs the 5060 today....well the 5060 is a little more powerful in terms of raw power but the 8 GB VRAM is oof. So not really a significantly better card than this. 

RX 6800- $480

So....at this point we're out of the "low end" like full stop IMO, but the RX 6800 was a pretty decent value too for the money. It had 16 GB RAM and offers similar price/performance to a 16 GB RX 9060 XT today. Which is actually kinda sad, and another reason why I'm writing this. We really havent moved from late 2022 pricing here. 

For a while this was available down around the $400 mark, competing directly with the 7700 XT, with the 7700 XT having a newer architecture, but the 6800 having more VRAM. Again, I actually wonder if the way things are going if RDNA2 will actually fully need to utilize its VRAM in its effective life time. It seems like with RAMpocalypse that's gonna become a major constraint where other issues like driver support and an aging architecture AMD is not enthusiastic about supporting (they tried to cut support for it, only for the community to lose their crap because hey, it's still perfectly modern and these things were being sold well into 2025...) are going to become issues first. Still, the price/performance is there.

RX 6800 XT- $600

So this is where the RX 6000 series falls off vs modern cards. Modern $600 cards like the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 are a bit more powerful than this, but it did provide a decent value in the day. Most 6000 series cards kicked nvidia in the rear enough to force them to compete better.

RX 6900/6950 XT- $700

Same here. By the time 6000 series became affordable, Nvidia was already rolling out the 7000 series, with the 7900 XT/XTX variants being the top tier premium option, but the 6900/6950 XT were made cheaper in response. While the 9070 XT offers a full 35% more performance for the same money today, for 4 years ago...not fricking bad at all. And again, we're out of the more budgety price range.

RX 6000 vs GTX 1000 series

All thing considered, the pricing structure is very reminiscient of the venerated GTX 1000 series of GPUs. You had the "50" series (RX 6400/6500 XT) for like $150ish, and while not a good value and very anemic for their time, hey, beats a 1030, and probably a better product than an Arc A380. The RX 6600 and 6650 XT were the GTX 1060 equivalents at the $200-250 price range and they are the GOATs of the modern era for affordable GPUs. The RX 6600 is sorely missed from the market, although if it still existed it would probably be closer to what the 6650 XT used to be price wise. 

The RX 6700 was an awkward product, but the 6700 XT was priced a bit lower than a 1070, and offered a similar value arguably, being a bit more futureproof but probably going to hit architectural limits the way pascal did before it's fully required for modern gaming. Might last a bit longer than the "60" cards but it arguably shouldnt matter much. 

The 6800 cards are similar to a 1070 ti/1080 price wise and offer similar value arguably. Once again, probably will hit architectural or driver related limits rather than be flat out obsoleted. 

The 6900 XT/6950 XT were like the modern 1080 ti price wise and are aging similarly well.

However, there is one thing that holds me back from just flat out GOATing the 6000 series in the same way, and that is AMD's software support. Assuming AMD supports these cards, they can be considered GOAT status, equalling or even surpassing the likes of the GTX 8000 series or 1000 series respectively. Those cards were viable for a solid 6-8 years in part due to them aging well and in part due to drivers. The 6000 series is aging similarly well, BUT, the driver support remains a possible issue. AMD is not nvidia. While for a while, through the GCN (HD 7000 series - RX 500 series) era, AMD did have a level of "fine wine" driven by long driver support, AMD seems a lot less willing to offer similar longevity to RDNA2, despite them selling along side RDNA3 cards for most of their lifespans. Theyve already attempted to move RDNA2 (6000 series) to the legacy driver branch and are slow to release new features for the series like FSR 4, because they dont have the same fancy AI architecture that is driving up the price of modern cards. As a result, performance is starting to lag in some newer titles, although it will at least RUN them. Still, if AMD drops support for RDNA2 sooner than later, we could get a situation where these cards die not because the specs are actually obsolete, but because the software is just not supported. 

It's hard to say. Assuming AMD offers at least basic driver support, they should work. To my knowledge the only real benefit of the newer architectures is newer versions of upscaling that look better than older ones, but as long as games support FSR 2/3, things should be fine. 

In all fairness, Nvidia 1000 had a similar issue. While AMD's FSR greatly expanded these cards' lifespans by giving it some basic form of upscaling, Nvidia largely abandoned new features like ray tracing and DLSS on them. And ultimately, while the GTX 1000 series still had driver support until 2025, AMD support is already winding down with AMD focusing their primary improvements toward the 7000 and 9000 series, while putting the 6000 series in a legacy branch. While new games will still run on the 6000 series, as I see it, it's only a matter of time before AMD pulls the plug entirely. 

It's kind of sad because literally the only thing newer architectures offer to my knowledge is on board AI capabilities that allow better upscaling, but if I'm fine playing with older upscaling (I mean, I hate upscaling but as a card ages I'd rather have it than not have it), then I'd rather get at least basic support there. So the future of the 6000 series and how it continues to age is in question. In raw specs, the power is there, and the architecture is powerful enough to run newer games, again, the real question is whether AMD will offer extended software support to maintain compatibility over the long term. Right now it promised to do so, but it's AMD and they dont have the best track record at doing this. I've seen AMD users get burned over time as well. Heck, my last AMD card, the HD 5850, suffered a similar issue as AMD just dropped support for the 5000/6000 series in 2015 despite the higher end models still being capable. The GTX 400 series, on the other hand, was supported until 2018. 

So....GOAT or not?

Honestly? I think it's the only thing in the modern era that qualifies. Here's the options. 

RTX 2000 series- prohibitively expensive, cheaper models aged poorly, but expensive ones are still viable today.

RTX 3000 series- Also expensive. Became cheaper like the 6000 series did, but not to the same extent and didn't offer similar value IMO. 

RTX 4000 series- At least it had the 4060. That one was decent. But honestly, at this point, I might as well consider the RX 7000 series, which has aged similarly well.

RTX 5000 series- Between 8 GB VRAM on the low end, and RAMpocalypse, not counting on it, if we eventually get a $200 16 GB card if RAM prices crash, I'll consider it, otherwise I consider it mid at best. 

RX 5000 series- It had value, but lacked long term support due to poor drivers and a poor feature set, also topped out at the 5700 XT.

RX 6000 series- started out poorly as indicated but is borderline GOAT at this point due to affordable cards that, in theory, have the power to have long life spans. Being the prime AMD series between the crypto boom and RAMpocalypse and the fact that 8 GB cards are going to have their lifespans expanded makes me hopeful it will become GOAT status, but it could easily be sabotaged by AMD's competence.

RX 7000 series- Also theoretically in the running, similar price/performance as 6000 series and longer driver support, but it being newer automatically means less overall lifespan. I expect this to be a strong series, but an average one. 

RX 9000 series- Started out strong but RAMpocalypse has reduced its price/performance to not a whole lot better than the 6000 series, despite being several years newer. 

All in all, the 6000 series is probably the best series of the modern generation. Not only are the cards seemingly aging relatively well so far, still offering awesome value years later, but honestly, they also power a lot of interesting devices that also contribute to their longevity. They're the technology behind the PS5 and Xbox Series X. They power the steam deck with a IGP 2/3 as powerful as the entry level RX 6400. It's in everything. Idk, again, if anything is "GOAT" in the modern era, it's this. But yeah, it's still like borderline A/S tier for me. Ultimately it depends on software support and how long 8 GB VRAM is supported, if the 6600 can still run new titles in 2028, on low, with a decent level of performance, I think it's time to say, yeah, it's officially GOAT. But it's kinda early to tell, and it's kind of tenuous. 

The cheap GPU list version 2

 So....I went over the cheapest GPUs that are worth buying last week, but I do want to offer a newer, more consolidated list. Some of the deals offered were temporary deals. Sometimes I want to consolidate to offer a cleaner list of choices, and yeah. So, condensed version!

$100- GT 1030 (DDR5)

The bare minimum. Basically an integrated graphics tier card. It'll run games up to 2015ish reasonably well but be iffy beyond that. I mean, if you really REALLY wanna play newer stuff it can probably work due to 2 GB VRAM, but keep in mind it's not intended for anything MODERN and it is weak.

$140- Arc A380

Yeah the 1650 super was a temporary deal. So, the Arc a380 is 3x the power of the GT 1030, giving it A LOT more power. It also has 6 GB VRAM. But it's intel, and intel cards have had issues with drivers and other issues due to the immaturity of the architecture. It might ironically have compatibility issues with some games, or poor performance with some games, so something to keep in mind. But let's face it, it's about the best youre gonna get. There's a lot of ewaste and junk the lower you go, and if $140 is all you can afford, well, this is what's available. Basically it should run games up to around 2022ish based on power alone, but keep in mind compatibility issues

 EDIT: After reviewing this more, yeah, I really want to emphasize that the experience on Arc GPUs are VERY rough. Literally the only reason this is still being recommended is because nvidia and amd have just decided not to even compete at this price point any more, with older GPUs like 1050 tis, 1650s, and RX 6400s/6500 XTs no longer being available at this price range. While the experience will likely still be several times better than what can be had out of the 1030, this is going to be a very rough gaming experience and I'd highly recommend paying more for something better. 

$200- RTX 3050 6 GB

So, after reviewing the intel GPUs a bit more, I decided to remove the A580 recommendation and just recommend this. yes, the Arc A580 is more powerful, but just like with the A380, the experience is VERY rough, and I'd just recommend the 3050 instead. 

As for the 3050 6 GB, it's not great, but again, the market is what it is. It's not a ton faster than the A380, but it is going to be a whole lot more stable. It'll play most games on SOME level, although some VRAM intensive ones may not run well due to the 6 GB. But yeah, it's what the market offers right now, and it's probably the best card you're gonna get at this price. 

$260- RX 7600

The REAL bare minimum gaming card for modern games. You want something that "just works" and gets you in the door, you want this thing. It's on par with my 6650 XT, having used THAT extensively, I can say that this will run everything you throw at it. It might not be a GREAT experience but hey, low settings, possibly with FSR? 60+ FPS? It'll do it. Probably not very futureproof, but in this market, what can you do?

$360- RTX 5060

About 30% better than the 7600, still 8 GB VRAM. Probably not futureproof but it'll run games a bit better at least. I don't even consider $300+ "low end", but at this point, it seems to be extending up to $450-500, so....yeah.

$410- RX 7700 XT

Honestly, wouldnt even bother with the 9060 XT 16 GB at this point. Yeah you get 12 GB instead, but its just as powerful and $60 cheaper. And let's face it, vs the 5060, you're paying for VRAM. $50 more for 12 GB, $110 more for 16 GB. Maybe 16 GB will be more futureproof, but yeah, you're paying a bit more for it.

What would I get?

Of these options I'd probably opt for the RX 7600, putting me at the same level of performance as the 6650 XT I already own. But here's how I look at it. Anything less has compromises. if you feel adventurous, the A580 might be worth it for $200, but I would just want something that works without compromise. The 3050 6 GB is also too weak and lacks VRAM for modern games (you really want 8). And beyond that, if youre gonna an 8 GB card, uh....yeah. Just get the cheapest one that does the job. The 7600 is the best one in terms of value. The 3050 8 GB looks like its being phased out and its ALSO $260...and it's A LOT weaker than the 7600. The 5050 is on par but for $300, why pay $40 more just for nvidia? 5060 is $350, but uh....it's still 8 GB. Like if youre thinking long term, I'd imagine all current 8 GB cards will go obsolete at the same time, since the VRAM is expected to eventually be the bottleneck. And to avoid the 8 GB trap, youre paying prohibitively more. Theres a 12 GB B580 for $310, but its on par with the 7600 otherwise and keep in mind, intel cards.... So youre paying $410 for a 12 GB 7700 XT, and then $470 for a 9060 XT. As you can see, you're getting stuck in an escalation trap at this point. Sure, you can get 30-50% more power with such a GPU, but yeah youre also paying a lot more, especially to get that power WITH more VRAM. 

So yeah. Like always, do your own research, but yeah. I just wanted a more clearly written and definitive article on this. 

EDIT: I changed some recommendations based on the intel GPU experience being even rougher than I anticipated. Seriously, just save up and buy intel or AMD instead if you can. There's no reason to buy one unless you LITERALLY can't save up for something better.  

Ya know, the more I think about this, the more I think, we're gonna do fine

 So....the GOP...they have nothing. They literally have nothing to campaign on but racism, islamophobia, and red scare tactics. Trump's calling El Sayed a communist. Mike Rogers is talking about helping hunt down Bin Laden and how El Sayed said we deserved 9/11. Like...what the actual fudge? Let's face it, we've known for a while that the GOP is intellectually bankrupt, but it's like they can't go 12 hours without showing their butts here. Seriously, we're not even 24 hours after the race was called and they're already going THIS unhinged. This is gonna be a fun election season if this is the best the GOP has. I thought they mightve actually been a threat. After all, Mike Rogers was relatively silent through the primary. He was sitting there with a poker face hiding his hand and now he's coming at us with a 7 high. It's like...wtf even is this?

Really, I'm tired of acting like the two sides are somehow equal to each other in terms of validity. The GOP has NOTHING. Like, they're barely stringing sentences together over there. And I aint saying you have to like El Sayed's politics, but holy fudge, if this is the best they got, we got this in the bag. The only thing we gotta worry about is the American people themselves being stupid here. Which...is...admittedly....a concern.  But....again, I'm just here like....really? That's all you got? I thought the republicans were actually gonna be scary. I swear, high school me could've come up with a better offense against El Sayed. Or maybe not. Idk. College me maybe? This is embarrassing. I'm embarrassed FOR you guys on the right. Holy crap. It's like your whole strategy is to scream about crap and lie and hope it works. To be fair, that's all they really got...

This is why I spend so much more of my time discussing the party infighting amongst democrats. I might not like the third way, but at least they have an intellectual framework for their ideas and it's worth engaging with. These guys, it's like that "why cant you just be normal" meme I saw recently. 

Mom: "I just want you to have food and healthcare!"

Kid: "Screams racial slurs"

That's where American discourse is honestly at right now...seriously... 

Republican infiltrators in the democratic primary?

 So....I have a friend from Michigan who explained to me that Michigan apparently has an open primary system, and given Mike Rogers was uncontested, there was apparently an effort by republicans to vote for Haley Stevens, and then abandon her for Mike Rogers in the general. Im not sure how reliable this is. It might not be reliable at all. But it would explain some things. Things like why the polls were off by like...9. Seriously, we're OUTSIDE of the margin of error now. El Sayed was expected to win by 10, won by 1. Like something is off there. But what if the pollsters measured actual democrats' responses and republicans showed up and skewed the results? That would explain some things. Like why the polls were off so much. As for the general, does this mean we're screwed? THe reason I was freaking out is if El Sayed was supposed to win by 10 and MASSIVELY underperformed, if he does the same in the general, that could be devastating to his numbers. Like he needs to OVERperform as it stands just to win. He has no comfortable buffer to underperform, and 8-9 points isnt an insignificant underperformance. That could be a sign of general election weakness. At the same time, if this is what happens after the GOP AND democrats AND AIPAC throw everything they have at him, well, there's hope. 

Anyway we're already seeing how the republican general election campaign is shaping up and it's just screaming about him being an Islamist and a communist so far. This party has no valid arguments so all they can do is the same fear mongering they've already been doing. If this was their best shot....we'll be fine. See you guys in November on this one. 

Abdul El Sayed wins; thoughts

 So....at around 2 AM they FINALLY called the race for Abdul El Sayed. What was supposed to be a roughly 10 point margin of victory was turned into a 2 point one, with lots of people saying polls were wrong. Well...yes and no. 

Again, polls have ERROR. In my own forecaosts, I assume a 4 point margin of error. Given that this applies to BOTH candidate, this gives a massive 8 point range the polls can be off in either direction. So we can expect the margin of victory for El Sayed to be between 2 and 18 with a 95% degree of confidence. When I said that I gave him around a 99% shot at winning, that's because the probability of the polls being off by 10 is about 1%. And as it turned out...that didn't happen. We just ended up at the extreme end of the 95% range roughly speaking. This was like a 2nd-3rd percentile margin of victory for Abdul El Sayed, a small margin of victory, but a victory nevertheless.  

Now, my big concern is where this leaves us with the general. As things stand, Haley Stevens was leading Mike Rogers by around 1.7%, giving her around a 66-67% chance of victory. El Sayed trails Rogers by 0.3%, this gives him a 47% chance of victory. This is not fatal to El Sayed in and of itself. Stevens is not super strong here, but El Sayed is not super weak either. Still, Stevens WAS the better candidate for the general, despite my own preference for El Sayed, and if El Sayed is gonna underperform by 8 in the primary, does that mean he stands a chance in the general? Hard to say. Quite frankly, the general looks very competitive, and once again, error will determine who wins in all likelihood. If democrats overperform, El Sayed wins. If they underperform, Rogers wins. It's that simple. But El Sayed's underperformance was significant here. We had a very comfortable margin and El Sayed only won BECAUSE he had that much of a buffer. If it were within the margin of error, El Sayed would have lost here. Because again, we got just about the worst possible outcome in that 2-18 point possibility range. We ended up only winning by 2. 

Now, to be fair, polling was funky here. After McMorrow dropped out, polling was all over the place, but then consensus polling in the weekend leading up to the election seemed to coalesce around El Sayed in a way that gave him a double digit lead. It was sudden. But with multiple polls showing similar outcomes, plausible. Well....again, while he won...it was close. It is possible that the error happened because lots of people had to make up their mind last minute and they went in favor of stevens. Maybe the sampling was off. Who knows. But yeah. Again, this just shows how funky polling can be and how imprecise these forecasts really are. Still, the model TECHNICALLY held up. El Sayed won, so...yeah. 

Anyway, I just hope this doesnt mean anything for the general. Michigan is strangely in play for how blue of a year 2026 is shaping up to be, and El Sayed is admittedly the weaker general election candidate. If we get a similar underperformance in the general, we're screwed. of course, given Haley stevens was only 2 points better here, she'd be screwed too. D+1.7 actually means R+6.3 to D+9.7. R+0.3 means D+7.7 to R+8.3. Ya know? Again, this is why i didnt sweat El Sayed's electability in the primary, but if he underperforms like this, I got a bad feeling about the general. I guess we'll have to see though. El Sayed was my favored candidate so I'm glad he won, but yeah. This was nerve wracking and the general is too. Not only could this race decide the control of the senate, but also is a test balloon for the viability of progressive left candidates in a swing state. if El Sayed screws this up, centrists will just hold this over us to push electability arguments and we might end up with more moderate candidates in the future. So yeah, let's see where this goes. Challenge 1 over, but challenge 2 is about to begin. 

Still, I feel better about El Sayed than I do Hong in Wisconsin. If you notice I didn't endorse her. Yeah, it's her electability or lack thereof. Nothing against her, but uh...YIKES, her numbers are bad. Even I dont wanna touch THAT. El Sayed though? As you can tell, it will only matter if the race is super close. If El Sayed loses by less than 2 points in November, Stevens probably would've won. otherwise it wouldnt have mattered. 

Navigating the divide between centrists and leftists...again....

 *sigh*, it's a big topic these days, idk what to say, but Kyle Kulinski is kinda having it with Bill Maher and I wanted to give my thoughts. 

On the one hand, Kyle has a point. If you're willing to vote for the republican party in this day and age, you're on the right, period. Even more so, for all the talk of how illiberal the left is, the right is basically fascist. I don't care if you think the left is too far left, holy crap, the right is a bigger problem NOW. 

The problem with the left is if socialists and communists take over the democratic party 10-20 years ago, THAT'S a threat. And LONG TERM, maybe it is. I certainly am leery of DSA for that reason these days. A little bit of them is good, and will give us social democratic goals. Most DSA candidates are running on social democratic priorities, and even if further left, yeah, we're gonna see good results short term, even if a few of them are far left.

The problem comes as they gain more power. What if they become a majority of the democratic party? or a majority of the government? Well, then we literally got blue MAGA. yeah, Again, if this is our tea party moment, we do gotta worry that maybe in 10-20 years from now, we'll have a MAGA moment if these guys gain TOO much power, and start throwing out ALL moderates. We need SOME. I mean, keep in mind my overall philosophy. Conservatives (as in, conserve the status quo, not the whackjob "regressives" we call "conservatives), progressives. The two need to operate in harmony against each other. Progressives try to change things, but conservatives stop it from being too much too fast. Right now, we got conservative democrats and regressive republicans. That's a HUGE problem. We want the democrats to be progressive again. We just can't afford for them to be TOO progressive where they start changing too much, too fast, and too irresponsibly. It's a balance. And ideally, we get it right. But right now, we need more progressive politicians. If some of them are DSA, well, a little DSA won't kill us. It's when they start becoming more than 50% of the government that we begin having problems. 

And, keep in mind, unlike what Bill Maher says, many progressives, even DSA ones, aren't full on seize the means of production.  Most of them want goals aligned with social democracy, at least in the short term. Higher wages, medicare for all, free college, public housing, a green new deal. hell, Darializa Avila Chevalier, for for all of her faults, is pro UBI of all things. Bill Maher is freaking out about Zohran Mamdani and his socialist grocery stores. it's just wild. There's red scaring over literal communism, but then there's crapping on good things.

I ain't saying we all have to agree with every left wing proposal. Im not big on a green new deal. I thought Biden's BBB framework was better on that. I ain't even die hard on medicare for all these days. I'm actually for an aggressive public option instead. On the flip side, a lot of other people don't like my UBI ideas. We're not gonna all agree. But we should agree that things are fundamentally fudged and we need the biggest recalibration of the economy since the original new deal, and we should pass a suite of progressive legislation to get that done. If you wanna be on the team, we at least need to agree that broadly. I dont want centrist liberalism. Nor do I want communism. I want social democracy. But, at this point, it seems like to get that, we need a broad tent, with some to my right, and some to my left. That I can accept. 

In this moment, if you freak out over the mere thought of social democracy, like people like Bill maher are doing, feel free to leave the democrats and never come back. Really. I'm done with centrists who oppose even social democracy. If youre concerned about literal communism that's one thing, but if you just hate the idea of all progress, you're not on the team, get out. Likewise, if you're so far to the left nothing but literal communism will satisfy you, well....go have fun voting for a third party that gets <1% of the vote, you're not on the team either. 

If we can agree on social democratic goals now, you're on the team. We need to move left of where we are. That doesnt mean we need to go FAR FAR left, and again, we need to restrain the coalition from doing that long term. But that doesnt mean we moral panic over people who want socdem priorities. Seriously, this is MY beef. If you look at mere SOCDEM priorities, and you cant agree on THAT? Feel free and vote republican, you're not on the team. Like seriously, if trump's fascism is more acceptable than you than say, zohran mamdani's leadership in new york, or abdul el sayed in michigan, or troy jackson in maine, well....idk what to tell you, you're tastes suck and youre pretty much a republican to me. So go have fun with that. 

And for people who wonder what the hell I'm thinking calling people republicans and telling them to vote that way, thinking that that's a suicidal strategy, no, it's not. It's actually genius. Here's the thing. Centrist democrats demotivate the base. For all the talk of how we need swing voters, we bring them in by giving them something to vote for. The answer isnt to always moderate to the point we get this bland flavorless politics made in a lab (which is what mainstream democratic politics is). It's to enthuse people to get them to vote for you. And to basically reverse uno chuck schumer, for every moderate republican we alienate, maybe we'll bring in 2 working class voters who would otherwise sit it out or vote republican. Seriously, elections are won by enthusiasm. over the course of my life, the side that panders to annoying centrist types almost always loses. The only election in the past 30 or so years I've seen a plainly uncharismatic candidate win was 2020, and that's because trump governed so badly anyone could win. Even then, he only barely won. In 2008, I was part of that centrist demographic, and you know what? The democrats didnt need me, they needed millions of enthused young people who wanted change. And they lost subsequent elections because they couldnt maintain their momentum, because centrism is a massive momentum killer in politics. No one LIKES centrists. They tolerate centrists. And centrists create low energy coalitions that lose elections.

Hell, if we throw those centrists out and they vote republican and republicans pander to them, it kills two birds with one stone. First of all, it moderates them and their priorities, which neutralizes the fascism threat. Second of all, it shrinks their coalition because more conservative values voters will stay home if they dont elect crazies. And that's what we want. A more moderate republican party and a more progressive democratic party is exactly what we need. If we neutralize MAGA by demotivating them and flooding them with centrists who moderate everything they do, then that's a win. If we move the overton window to the left with a progressive populist coaliton, that's a win. So no, it's not stupid to tell these guys to leave the democrats. I'm fully convinced whatever side gets stuck with these losers won't win elections, and that voters will vote for progressive candidates, at least in the short term.

I do think voters will eventually tire of populism and change, but only after the first big wave of change, which fixes many of the issues. The coalition that was fired up for change in the 1930s and 1940s was significantly more divided by the 1960s when Kennedy and Johnson were in office. The reagan coalition that was fired up in the 80s and 90s became divided by the 2000s and was becoming anemic in the 2010s until trump came around. And even then, I'm convinced trump is the final hurrah of that coalition unless they can radically change our democracy to run by permanent minority. Which is why it's so openly fascist. This is the last gasp of the reagan coalition fighting for its life. If we can form a new coalition around social democracy, that will hold for a while, and then eventually fall apart as well, while politics returns to "normal" for a time. But we gotta get through this change wave first. 

And yeah, that's my strategy. Have a huge wave of change. Maybe a second smaller wave 20 years from now. And have some normalcy in between. Keep the leftists from fully taking over the democrats, but keep it progressive at the same time. Really. The threat of DSA and their illiberal tendencies are a problem in the long term. But right now, the big threat is trump. I aint concerned about DSA taking over government and doing anything radical any time soon. And if we get to that point, well, it means we succeeded with social democracy, and the rest of the overton window will hopefully be hard against them. Even I'll become conservative by that point, pulling us back to sanity. 

But yeah. It's like worrying that the heat will cook us alive one day when we're currently freezing to death. That's what all of this feels like. It's stupid. Let's raise the thermostat to a comfortable level before we worry about whether it will eventually get TOO hot.