Current hardware prices are a bubble

 So...I keep seeing weird doomer rhetoric about the AI bubble, with people going on about how OMG YOU SHOULD BUY NOW IT'S ONLY GONNA GET WORSE, THE PRICES WILL NEVER COME BACK DOWN AND THEY'RE KILLING HARDWARE OWNERSHIP AND BLAH BLAH BLAH!

While I dont deny rich people be rich people and will continually find new ways to screw people, these people dooming like this need to chill. This is another weird hardware bubble, similar to the COVID and crypto booms. Prices are expensive because rich people are in their own little bubble about how great AI is, and how we need to buy up the entire productive capacity of PC hardware years in advance for AI datacenters no one wants, for AI that no one wants, and at some point, the bills are gonna come due. These companies are gonna have to turn a profit somehow, and they're selling a product that most people dont want. Dont get me wrong, there ARE customers, but it's a B2B thing, it's businesses selling to each other. But NORMAL people? They're not on board with AI. And to be fair i dont blame them. it's always been this artificial thing. I am normally pro tech and even I kinda hate AI. it's just a bunch of tech bros telling us that this is "it", and we gotta get "with it" or we're gonna be "left behind", and most people are like F off. 

So...what happens when the bill for all of this current hardware for data centers no one wants for AI no one wants comes due? Well, if these companies cant turn a profit, they're screwed. They're gonna go out of business, the industry is gonna consolidate. I dont think that AI will go away entirely, but I think it will be a painful lesson for many wealthy people heavily investing in it, and suddenly there will be tons of hardware no one wants and more and prices are gonna POP. 

Look at COVID. Look at the RX 6000 series I venerate so hard in recent years. 6650 XT. $400 MSRP. $800+ during COVID. Bought for $230 in 2022. Yeah. That's what's gonna happen here eventually. RX 9000 and RTX 5000 cards will go for 2x+ MSRP, and then....prices will crash and things will return to normal. When? 2028 or later. Not sure. 2026 and 2027 are gonna be bad. We're in that 2021 phase with high demand and prices that are ridiculous. But eventually, it'll crash. Might take a few years, but yeah. The industry is gonna have to crash eventually. What is happening now isnt sustainable. I dont think that this is a new normal or permanent. Ive seen variations of this happen in recent years. Crypto booms in 2017 and 2018, COVID in 2020-2022. And now this. 2025-2027ish? Again, idk when exactly it'll pop, but I'm guessing some time between 2028-2030. 

I just wanted to push back against the doomers since some of them are getting overly dramatic. If this were truly a new normal that's one thing, but again what's driving this is rich people buying up the entire world's supply of computer parts years in advance for a product no one actually wants. This isn't sustainable and if I had to guess, it'll crash eventually. Maybe I'm wrong, but I see the writing on the wall. This is a bubble IMO. 

And yes, I fully recognize that this bubble popping could lead to a massive market correction that will likely throw us into a new great recession style recession. And it will be painful to many. Again, think the housing bubble, again. But yeah, that's really the only thing keeping the US economy going right now. It's like 10 billionaires siphoning trillions in funds to each others companies in a giant circle until the whole thing collapses. It really is that ridiculous in my view. Again, how is this even remotely sustainable? It isn't. 

Again, just pushing back on the doomers. 

Discussing another House forecast I built

 Okay, so, I basically saw a thread on how cook PVI works, and I'm going to try to bring back something I experimented with a while ago. Basically, I'm going to take the cook PVIs directly and compare them to the generic congressional vote. I'm not going to go by individual districts leading to a more compact model. Rather I go by the amount of districts with a certain score and group them in a way where I should be able to get a rough idea of where the house sits. 

The Cook PVI is weird. Basically whatever the score is, the actual margin is double, that's why this model failed previously. i didn't account for that properly. Anyway, this should have resolved it, and without further ado, here's another house model based on this methodology:

 Okay, so let's go over how this differs. First of all, the number of house seats I get is almost exactly what I get in my other model at the moment. I updated the other too today and after adding a few more republican seats, I get 235-200 with that one. So right now, we're projected to get around 234-235 seats depending on what model you use. Pretty close. Definitely better than the first one I used. This is, btw, an improved version of my 2024 one. 

At the same time, let's discuss the differences. The big one is the certainty of the win. Here's the thing. My other model is based on 2024 voting data. However, we've had a lot of gerrymandering since 2024, leading to the median district being R+3 vs R+1, this means we'd literally need a GCV of D+6 rather than D+2 to take the house. Currently, we're at D+8.6, which is good, but still, this level of gerrymandering is gonna hurt us into 2028 and beyond, since this level of gerrymandering means we need a strong margin to actually take the house. The republicans F-ed us on that one, and democrats havent really done enough to gerrymander their own states. 

Anyway, this leads to a more Lean D rather than safe D rating for the house. The house probability only slightly exceeds senate probability under these conditions. 

Another flaw with this design is how....not granular the results are. Im grouping districts by their rating here. If one of a certain rating goes, they all go. So if the GCV dropped below 8, we would suddenly be down to 225 house seats, whereas in my other model, it would literally require a 7 point drop to get down to 225 under current conditions. So....yeah, something is off between the two models here. Which is probably more trustworthy? Well, I trust cook more than I trust converting 2024 voting margins given how many districts have shifted due to gerrymandering. A lot of the results my other model spits out probably will be wrong in the real world. Like, I know I currently have my other model flipping AK-AL, but then when I see polling data for it, it's R+14. So that other model...isn't necessarily great. 

Anyway, this just goes to show that if the democrats want to remain relevant into the future, they HAVE TO use their power in 2028 assuming they get a trifecta and RUN WITH IT. They HAVE to pass reform that attempts to rein in gerrymandering, guarantee voting rights, etc. We can win NOW, but this is a ludacriously liberal voting environment. I mean, texas and alaska are flipping blue in my senate forecast FFS. Even states like Kansas and South Carolina are SWING STATES. So yeah. Democrats better actually use their power to DO SOMETHING to ensure their future political relevance or they're gonna lose it because in a more neutral political environment, the house is gonna go 210-225R. They literally need to overperform somewhere in the ballpark of 4-6 points in the GCV JUST to take the house. It's nuts. Basically, they'd only hold the house in a 2006, 2018, or 2026 style environment here. Gerrymandering is the bane on democracy's existence, but at this point, we either need to get a blue wave big enough to end the practice, or we fight fire with fire. I say we uncap the house and expand it to around 1300 members, reducing each district size to 1/3 of its current residents. That will get rid of the ridiculous built in advantages the GOP seems to have. Either that or do like, proportional representation based on the percentage of how people vote for various candidates. Point is, they cant just keep the house like this. The GOP is attempting to rig it and erode democracy under the principle that they choose their voters before the voters choose them. It's a BS system that has to change. 

Anyway, we'll see how these models pan out. I mean, I'm good with senate and presidential forecasts, but the house has always been something I find iffy. When I forecast the house at all, I generally add a forecast last minute because without adequate polling data, it's just so hard to get the methodology down. I'm literally trying to use metrics other than polling and the best I got is cook PVI ratings and previous voter data. Typically, prior voter data might be adequate, but when you DO got so much gerrymandering going on, yeah that other model is gonna be straight up wrong on stuff. 

Election Update 9/18/26

 Okay, so I decided to start doing these weekly as I'm able. Not sure about next week, might be a bit late, but we're getting to that point in the election season where we're getting CONSTANT data coming in, and the forecasts are changing rapidly. I don't have much to say beyond that, but I do wanna post the stats at least.

Senate 

I don't have a ton to say here other than republicans are screwed. While we still have october, we're getting pretty close to this cycle's end game and it seems to be going even harder blue. We'll see if dems keep the momentum up. if one recalls in 2024, I thought Harris would win at this point in the cycle, but her numbers fell apart going into October. And let's be honest, the senate isn't really like, locked down for democrats. If republicans overperform by say, 3 points, they'll still win the senate. So we don't have a ton ton of certainty here, as blue as this map appears. It's basically a 2/3 chance democrats win the chamber, but there's still about a 1/3 chance republicans overperform enough to hold onto it. Here's an example of what this kind of scenario could look like.

 So yeah, let's not get OVERconfident here. Republicans can still overperform and win, let's not count our chickens before they hatch here.

House

 

On the flip side, I WILL get confident about the house. For me, it's not a matter of whether the democrats win the chamber, it's how much they win it by. And while I am running a rather experimental model this election season that seems to contradict the polling data I occasionally see on individual districts, given how the GOP barely won the chamber when the results were about 11 points redder, the democrats probably WILL sweep, it's really a matter of how much. My model might be a bit overconfident on that fact, I admit that, but yeah. Democratic control? Pretty confident of it. It really is a matter of the margins. Conservatively maybe it'll only be 225 rather than 232 or whatever, but hey, it's still control of the chamber. 

Governors

Map is what it is, I don't think this one changed a whole lot in practice. I know Texas is getting a bit pinker, but still, eh. The dems seem to mostly do good up in the rust belt here, and struggle a bit more down south. Kinda typical for dems in a normal cycle I'd say, and shows a bit of a split between federal and state level politics. People seem to want to send a strong message to trump, but they seem fine with republicans on a local level, where the extremeness of the results is a bit muted. Could indicate that the current blue wave we see in the senate is driven by an undercurrent of being anti trump specifically, rather than anti GOP. 

Conclusion

So yeah, a lot has changed, but a lot has also remained the same. This map got very blue, but we could see it get a bit redder going into October if the trends we saw in 2024 happen again. We'll see. I fully expect the energy to be on the democrats' side, but the current results are SO optimistic for dems I can't help but temper expectations. Maybe polls are overshooting them a bit. Keep in mind it won't take much for the GOP to maintain control of the senate. Just a 2-3% difference could flip the entire chamber the other way in the current environment. The house is stronger for democrats but keep in mind I'm running off of a highly fundamentals based model that's experimental in nature given my severe lack of polling there. I'm just interpolating 2024 results with uniform shifts based on GCV there. Actual results may vary. Governors, well, yeah, look at the map.

Anyway, that's this week's result. Next week might be a little late maybe, I'm not sure. I expect to get it out next friday but if not it'll come out over the weekend some time. That's why I do them on Friday in the first place. Most polls come out during the week, with far fewer polls releasing on weekends. I can post a post and expect it to not be obsolete within a couple hours or a day or two. Best way to do it in the current environment. Anyway, that's this week's, see you next week.  

 

 

Atlantic City needs some freaking Georgism

 So....Georgism, I kinda have a love hate relationship with the ideology. I consider it simplistic, boiling down all problems with capitalism to land ownership, and proposing the LVT as an end all be all to those problems. BUT...I can also be nuanced, recognizing LVT can be useful when implemented on a smaller scale, replacing local property taxes, or being targetted specifically at land speculators. And that's where this comes in handy.

Looking at Atlantic City, the math isn't mathing. I see vacant lots next to the beach that no one does anything with, which is just insane to me. I know NJ is up north and it's not a year round tourist destination, thats one of the reasons it struggles, but seriously after looking at other towns Ive been on vacation at, I've never seen empty land next to a beach. Because that's prime real estate location. It's in demand. Everyone wants it. The price is high, because the earning potential is high. 

But Atlantic City doesnt seem to have that earning potential. Paying more attention to the area, everything with its politics seems to be X is struggling to be profitable, Y is struggling to be profitable. Everything is struggling, and yet, then the price of the land is insane. I know that there's still an empty lot where Trump's Plaza casino used to be (it was demolished like 10 years ago), and I know Ive seen video footage of the areas on the northern part of the island just being...empty. Like wtf. Why is it empty?! And then....when discussion of this stuff goes on the market, it's like...oh yeah, this lot sold for like millions and billions of dollars. And it's like...wait I thought this was a struggling beach town, why tf is this land so valuable. Like you would think between lots being empty for years, and high prices of land, that something isn't adding up here. That the fact that nothing is being done with the land would mean it isn't as valuable as people are saying it is. Like, the land is insanely valuable, but it's so insanely valuable that it cant seem to find a buyer, much less one who can actually pull in a profit. This is why it seems to remain a casino town, the casinos are the only businesses big enough to eat the cost and be able to make any profit at all. Everything else seems to just go out of business. It's weird. 

So...I basically googled the issue, and because google searches are answered by an AI now, I had a discussion with the AI about it. Apparently, there's rampant land speculation there where real estate developers and the like buy up land and just...hoard it. They do it to drive up the price so they can sell it for a profit. Simply by denying it to the market, they can make it artificially scarce, which drives up the price. But this price IS out of sync with the market. And as such, the land doesnt get buyers, no one does anything productive with it, anyone who attempts to is killed economically because the place is of relatively low demand for a beach town, but to the land barons, it doesn't matter. They will sit on it for LITERAL DECADES driving the price up waiting for the right buyer at the right price. They can wait forever, especially because, in NJ, they only do property taxes. 

So....let's discuss property taxes. Land value taxes tax you on the value of the land. it discourages hoarding and incentivizes productive use of land. It would basically solve this problem. but property taxes? Well, that taxes the buildings on the land. So if you build a building on the land, like the former trump plaza site or some random lot on the north side of town near the beach, well, you get taxed out of existence. Only the casinos can afford to really remain profitable because they're big enough to eat the tax burden and remain profitable. Of course, the casinos are incentivized to appeal to relatively affluent people. Theyre the ones who bring in the big bucks. But yeah. We're starting to see why this place has so many contradictions. Why everyone in the real world is struggling, whereas everything seems so insanely overpriced. With property taxes, a land speculator can buy a lot, sit on it forever, barely pay any taxes, and yeah they'll just wait out the market forever. With LVT, they'd be forced to do something with the land, or to sell it. The land tax would make this hoarding behavior unprofitable because you lose money for sitting on the land and doing nothing with it, youre incentivized to DO SOMETHING with it, something profitable. If Atlantic City implemented an LVT, it would probably bring in some much needed market corrections. Maybe it would be harsh to some, but the current environment is stifling to most. You got poor people unable to afford a place to live, homeless people running around the place, you got casinos struggling to be profitable. You got tourists complaining about the homelessness problem. It's a solid solution. So why doesn't AC implement it?

Apparently they cant. According to google AI, unlike PA where you CAN do split rate taxation, taxing land value and property, NJ has these stupid rules where every municipality has to conform to uniform rules where they tell the localities how they can tax. And in order to fix that, youd need to change state level laws. Of course, these same speculators will lobby the crap out of the legislature, ensuring that such a thing never passes, ensuring that people continue to suffer.

Ya know, the older,  and the more I understand, I get the more frustrated I get. There are tons of solutions to our problems, not just this, but also, other ideas. Ya know, like UBI. And it seems like, whenever we want to do something that fixes the economy and makes it work for the people, there's some wealthy special interest that insists society has to suffer because they make money off of it. They hide behind legalese and broken systems that benefit them, and use their massive wealth to ensure that the system doesn't change.

Of course, that's why we're in a populist era of politics. People understand politics as usual has to go. They want to "drain the swamp" so to speak. Sadly, they voted for Trump, the demagogue, the guy who was supposedly the deal maker, the guy who owned casinos right in AC, one of which is now a vacant lot. And he was always a demagogue. So people want change, and the more the system resists changes, the more radical I think people are gonna get. There is a real desire from many to "burn it all down", because they understand the laws are all written by the elites who profit for them, and theyre part of the problem. We just dont understand who the real problem is, and what needs to be done. That's where we on the left come in. We gotta be the ones actually analyzing these problems, correctly identifying them, and offering solutions. Trump and his right wing populism isnt gonna do it. He and his buddies ARE the swamp. And he's not there to destroy them. He's there to enrich them. He's a false messiah. As I keep saying, if you want real change, you want it from the left. Progressives and the like.

Now, I will say this, populism is like fire. A little bit is energizing. We need it in order to push a narrative that yeah, the status quo is the problem and we need relatively radical change not normally accepted to fix it. Locally in AC, it's LVT. Nationally, we need a UBI. But too much populism is a bad thing. Just like too much fire is a bad thing. You dont wanna burn down the place. But as long as elites continue resisting solutions that actually benefit the people, I fear the population will get increasingly extreme until society tears itself apart. We saw this with the evolution of Trump's coalition. 2016, yeah okay they're pissed off at the status quo, i can understand that, now it's like..."hello fascism". 

Same with the left. UBI, social democracy, very well needed. Literal communism a la the more extreme elements in the DSA, NO, HELL NO. 

So...we need more change than we're getting, but not enough to enable the worst possible people in society to attain power and make things worse. 

BUt yeah, in atlantic city, this populism should perhaps take on georgist characteristics. Again, nationally, not HUGE HUGE on the idea. I dont think LVT is the end all be all to the problems of capitalism, I think it's a crappy way to fund a UBI. But insofar as fixing AC's rampant land speculation problem, yeah, it would help the city significantly. I just wanted to mention it since I'm on one of my autistic obsessions with a new vacation destination, and I'm analyzing the problems as I see them. And it is frustrating, understanding how much better society could be, if not for selfish rich people ruining everything. Really, like we dont like to talk about it, but that's why everything is broken. Rich people have corrupted the systems and stop us from implementing the changes we need. Doesnt mean we should stop advocating for solutions, but it is frustrating. Especially since most people dont even have the wherewithal to get this far in identifying problems properly or offering real solutions. They end up just simping for the rich people and/or identifying the wrong causes to the problems while then screaming about everything being broken. It's another weird paradox of our society. 

Some people REALLY need to get a grip (AC rant)

 So, I'm still in vacation mode and trying to plan my NEXT trip to AC. And the more I research, the more I seem to come across a certain class of people with...shall we say, "refined tastes" who seem to crap on literally everything. The philosophy difference is astounding. It's like, with hardware, you got, on the one end, the people who are like, anything less than a RTX 5090 and 9800X3D is garbage, and would consider my current gaming rig as unusable. Then you have me, the budget buyer, who is trying to find the cheapest, most efficient way of doing things. Oh, you can gave on a 5050? Just get that. it's not that I settle for crap, quite the opposite. I don't support people buying, say a 1030 for modern gaming. Likewise, for hotels, I wouldn't recommend people stay in a seedy motel 6 with a 2.3 star rating and the hotel having conditions so bad it should probably be closed down for health reasons. I simply support finding the cheapest ways of doing things properly, since I don't have a ton of money. Maybe splurge a little when a little more money gets you a lot more quality, but certainly don't overspend to the point where you get diminishing returns. 

However, both with gaming and with vacations, I seem to run into a lot of online comments from people who approach things from that polar opposite end of the spectrum who can't be satisfied with anything. For example, I'd like to see more middle class options in AC in terms of food. For the most part, the food thing has been my biggest obstacle with making the budget affordable, and while I'm finding my way around thanks to cheap food court options and a few local eateries renowned for good food at an affordable, price, there seem to be people who think there aren't ENOUGH fine dining options in AC. These are the guys who will spends $600 at the borgata on a weekend because it's the borgata and everyone says the borgata is the best thing ever, but will complain there arent enough places to eat late at night and that they resent having to eat in a food court. Meanwhile I look at the food courts in casinos like resorts and hard rock and I'm like "BASED!" To be fair, I would like more than mere food courts. I miss some of the middle of the road dining options I normally get going to other locations. Like on vacations down south, if I wanted steak, I'd just go to outback or texas roadhouse since it's reasonably priced. I know the real steak connoseurs would say that that steak is hot garbage and we should be willing to pay 2x the price or more for some BS fine dining steak out of some upscale steakhouse, but again, I literally dont have the money for that kind of crap. It's nice to have REASONABLY PRICED options, really it is. But it seems like for these guys, it's a sleight against their very existence. They NEED the best, they won't settle for nothing less than the best, they crap on people who want less than them, and they complain about everything.

The complaining is what REALLY gets to me here. Like, okay, you have your tastes, you're entitled to them, but it seems like this class of people really gets pissy over, well, everything. They think AC is a crime ridden dump, but go there any way, they crap on anything but top tier accommodations. One of them even said something like "A Philly 9 is a New York 2", and my attitude is "well if New York is so much greater than Philly then just go stay there, you rich frick". Really....like, that's where a lot of the perspective comes from. It's rich New Yorkers with insanely high standards who complain about anything else. And often times what they're complaining about isn't bad, it's just not what they're used to. They need LUXURY, they have REFINED TASTES. They NEED the best and crap on everything that isnt the best. They are so up their own you know whats that they literally lost perspective. It seems to happen a lot with like...really rich people. They're so rich, and so out of touch, and so used to luxury, that they're just...bored with it. They dont appreciate what they have and complain when everything isn't perfect. And it's like nothing satisfies them. 

And...again, it wouldnt be a problem if this were just a taste thing. But it's not. It rolls downstream. These guys make a big stink until the whole world revolves around them, and then they complain that it doesnt enough. Like, again, I see a lot of travel destinations in the Northeast closer to home as, quite frankly, unreasonably priced. But because these guys will pay enormous sums of money for experiences that they then complain about, we all gotta suffer. If anything, these guys have so much economic pull, that the entire economy stops catering to the rest of us. The same is going on with hardware and gaming. The tastes of the ultra wealthy minority drive up the costs for everyone else, to the point that the rest of us get crowded out because the industry is too busy appealing exclusively to these guys. So while we struggle to cobble together computers through RAMpocalypse, these guys brag about their 5090 builds and act baffled when others cant afford the same privileges they can. The same is true with vacation destinations. One of the reasons I chose AC was it is reasonably affordable by northeastern standards. Normally the south is more affordable, but getting down there is a bit more difficult for me these days. And one of the reasons I chose the casino to stay at that I did is because it has reasonably priced accommodations and food. Again, I'm not looking for glitz and glam. If anything, the experience at resorts is higher class than what I'm used to in a lot of ways. And even food court food is pretty good, on par with eating in like a diner or casual pizzaria down south. If anything, I'll give new yorkers this, the quality of a pizza tends to be inversely proportional with its distance from NYC. Food court AC pizza is still better than most southern pizzas I've eaten. The furthest south you really get decent pizza is like virginia, once you get into the carolinas, it starts tasting like crap. But yeah. Outside of like, steak, which is associated with fine dining, I'm mostly fine with my budget options. And for that stuff, I just wish we had more mid range options that didn't involve driving 10-20 miles out of town. Ya know? It would be nice to have a middle ground between a $65-100 steak and like, a $10-20 hamburger, ya know? But again, I digress.

I just felt a need to complain about the super high class people, because it is a socioeconomic topic very related to this blog. I feel like income inequality in america is a huge problem, and that the problem isn't just like that 0.1% that everyone talks about, it's often the top 10-20%. As I said, America feels like a playground for this relatively small upper class consumer class that partakes in the majority of ALL consumer spending. And it is starting to feel like the true middle class doesnt really exist any more, and that the rest of us are just hired help. I kinda resent the fact that the people of AC are forced by the threat of poverty to get jobs just to serve these rich ###holes who complain about everything, and I resent how this increased economic inequality is diminishing the purchasing power of everyone else, as the businesses go where the money is and try to appeal more and more to the wealthy and their refined tastes, to the exclusion of everyone else. Really, I kinda think we should be taxing the everloving fudge out of these guys and redistributing the money to everyone else and making their lives easier. End poverty and wage slavery, and redistribute the money in such a way that businesses have to appeal to more people for the economy to work.

Again, Fordism, ie, the idea that we should pay workers so they can actually consume products is a large factor in what made the 20th century economy work for people. Businesses needed to appeal to a diverse clientele all over the socioeconomic spectrum to maximize profits. But as the economy has shifted where most money seems to pool among the top 10-20% of Americans, it seems like everyone else's lives are getting crappier while these guys just come off as out of touch entitled jerks who don't even seem to appreciate what they have. It's kind of insane. And yeah, that's me political/economic rant for the day. Tax the wealthy. And not just the ultra wealthy, but the normal wealthy people too. And use the money to give everyone a UBI. 

Discussing Atlantic City sociologically, and the problems with capitalism and the "big casino"

 So....this time I want to discuss AC at large sociologically, and why it's basically screwed economically. Again, I did a lot of research into the topic, and in a thread where people were complaining about an issue in the city, someone said "why are you focused on this and not on how the city has a 40% poverty rate?" Well, you can complain about issues with certain establishments and also keep a sociological perspective in mind. heck, I have A LOT to say about Atlantic City sociologically, and being a UBI supporter, I also have a lot of solutions. While these comments weren't addressed at me, and I was just lurking the thread, I figured I would discuss AC sociologically a bit, why it's so screwed economically (TLDR: capitalism), and what would solve it (TLDR: UBI and other second new deal proposals). 

Discussing AC's history, climate, and setting the stage for failure

So....AC didn't always exist. If anything, as a touristy town, it's a relatively new invention. For most of European American history, it mostly didn't exist. It's in the marshes of south Jersey. There was little point for it to do so. Too remote to be useful economically. I know watching videos on it, some doctor used to set up a practice there for unhealthy individuals, since the relatively moderate climate was good for them in an age before modern air conditioning. 

Going into the 20th century, the Mafia turned it into a sort of black market paradise, where it was "the place" to go if you wanted a good time that couldn't be met legitimately (so, gambling, booze, prostitution, etc). The expansion of rail and later road and air travel made it more accessible where it never used to be. This made it a booming town for that sort of tourist activity. And the mob realized if AC wasn't the only place that you could do that sort of stuff, it would just be "a beach with cold water." 

After all, beaches are normally awesome tourist spots when they're warm, people will travel from all over the world for a good beach spot where it's warm year round. Of course, New Jersey isnt that, with the midatlantic having hot summers, cold winters, and also cold springs/falls for beach weather. So its primary tourism season basically lasts from memorial day to labor day, and while it is viable a bit before/after that, it's not PRIME for beach goers. That makes it a seasonal tourist destination, doing well in the summer but poor in the winter. Really, what made the place appealing early on WAS that illegal activity. 

And then, gambling was legalized in the 1970s, but only there. And we got tons of casinos being built into the 1980s, with even our current president getting in on the fun. Ya know, because he was a real estate developer and all. Yeah, he built several casinos there, and then because they all competed with each other given the limited demand, he bankrupted them and struggled to make money off of them. Because the casino industry has always been iffy and relied primarily on being a black market monopoly, and then a legal monopoly in the area to be profitable.

And then over time, places like Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York legalized gambling, leading to the loss of reasons to go there. I even wrote an article on this back in 2016.  So yeah, AC has fallen on hard times. It's always been in hard times. Even at its best it was shady AF and now it's basically a glittering resort next to a ghetto that's only popular for non gambling reasons for 3-5 months out of the year. 

And let's not even get into the harshness of capitalism

 Capitalism is successful as an economic model because it's a lot like Darwinistic evolution. The "invisible hand" that keeps things efficient is basically natural selection. Life is a constant struggle for survival. Capitalism institutionalizes that struggle. Firms struggle to maintain profit margins. People struggle to maintain an income to survive. Everyone works and struggles all of the time, and the system basically forces everyone to be profitable, or to fall into destitution, where the system basically punishes you. I'd argue on the firm side of the equation, capitalism's harshness is justified. If an idea struggles to be profitable, then maybe it shouldn't continue to exist. Then people are instead pushed toward economic activity that is actually useful. This is one reason I'm not super big on being a luddite and preserving jobs. I get the idea of preserving some level of stability and income in peoples' lives, but if they're not doing useful things, what's the point? Give them a check and let the jobs go.

But that is the other side of the equation. In my own envisioning of capitalism, a UBI is almost a necessity to be built on the system. Take monopoly for instance, it needs a basic income to keep the game playable. Fun fact, monopoly is based on AC. The more you know... But I digress. Point is, if you allow this system to operate naturally, it will replicate the horrors of the state of nature, except in institutionalized form. 

And that's why AC has the issues it has. In a system where people are expected to constantly turn a profit or be punished, a lot of people are punished. There simply isn't enough demand to keep AC financially successful. The place exists purely to serve tourists who want to go there and dump discretionary income there, and without that constant influx of demand that you dont get in a seasonal beach town, you don't get a lot of economic stability. 

And let's discuss the wage slavery aspect

While Widerquist's "Big Casino" essay was a play on Nevada and places like Reno and Las Vegas, Atlantic City is the east coast's version of that. It basically IS the very embodiment of "the big casino." The place exists as a casino resort first, a beach town second, and falls on hard times because of that. Let's think of this place in terms of trickle down economics. The wealthy people who own the casinos get the money. They "create jobs" where you serve rich tourists for the privilege of them coming here, and your choices are to either get a job and work for them, for minimal pay and benefits of course, or you're poor. Sometimes AND you're poor but if you're not employed, you're especially screwed. Because much of the city is privatized, it's owned by the wealthy, you either pay for the privilege of being there, or you work there. You're not allowed to just exist there. As discussed in the previous article, a lot of casinos have strict policies that are sometimes even inconvenient for customers to discourage homeless from existing in their casinos. And while they will exist outside mere blocks away, that makes the areas away from the tourist spots hellish, causing them to devolve into crime that makes the tourists uncomfortable, and further disincentivizes a lot from coming here. Like I really had to work hard convincing my mom that going there was a good idea. She had last been there in the 1980s and was familiar with the more seedy aspects of it. I had to actually explain how the casino areas are safe and there's more there than gambling, they're actually full blown resorts with other stuff to do, because they had to diversify to get people in. 

But, again, that's the thing. Where do normal people exist in this hyper capitalized world? Either you own a casino and make the money, you're a consumer, many of whom are wealthy, or you work there. You're not really allowed to be anything else. Such is the nature of capitalism as a "big casino." Every individual casino has their policies that reinforce this behavior, but none of them really take responsibility for it, and people act like it's just a fact of life, rather than a system we set up that operates certain rules that can be changed at any time. 

So...we got a system where poor people are forced to take jobs serving much wealthier people, or they become part of that homeless class that causes problems in its own right. I'm arguing if capitalism wasn't so harsh, and did give people a more basic option to just...exist, that these problems would be alleviated. The poor wouldnt be so desperate. But that's the thing, the wealthy classes rely on this poor, desperate working class in order to perpetuate their lifestyle. While I find some of the serving others aspect of employment in capitalism distasteful, these guys freak out if their servants don't wanna serve any more, we saw a tiny taste of that in 2021 and half the country (led by these guys) threw a fit over it. 

But that's what capitalism really is. The top 0.1% are the ownership class who own everything and make most of the money. The top 10-20% in general are the primary consumer class, whose fine tastes drive the system and the rest of us are just...the hired help. Yeah, the middle class exists, but the actual middle class has been in decline. For many of us in the younger generations, we're just servants in this crappy system. And the actual class that benefits from this is constantly shrinking. Most of the time, the issue is framed as a problem with joblessness and not enough work. Which is ridiculous. I'd argue we shouldnt make people work in the first place. but now, it's one of inflation and income inequality in the 2020s. The spending habits of the top 10-20% of people are now the main drivers of the economy, while the actual middle is getting squeezed out, and people are struggling to get into the top class, with many failing and falling into the masses of the servant class, where this system affords us the options to serve or to starve.

 Putting it all together 

Basically, atlantic city is the perfect encapsulation of american capitalism and its problems in general. They're just more exaggerated here. You got the luxurious casinos owned by a minority, constantly struggling to turn profits. You got the wealthy upper class that benefits from this system as consumers. And then you got the rest of us who are just the hired help. That's capitalism in general. A system designed to trick most of the world's population into being servants of the wealthy, while we act like it's fair, just, and has to be this way.

I ain't saying there arent benefits to capitalism. I certainly dont encourage the big casino to be what karl widerquist called "the big collective", an authoritarian collectivist state where the government tells you what to do instead and you have no choice to refuse. Rather, I encourage freedom. What we need is a better form of capitalism, a more humanistic form of capitalism. One where, if you wanna go to the big casino and operate by their rules, fine, but you can also exist elsewhere, without having to do anything for the privilege. A system where, if you wanna work to earn extra money in a casino to have a more luxurious lifestyle for yourself, fine, that's your choice, but you're not coerced by poverty, propertylessness, and a system that gives you no place to reasonably go and "just exist" if you dont.

I envision a form of society where rather than pay to play, it's free to play, with a robust store full of voluntary micro transactions for those who want it. The base experience is free, but if you wanna contribute, you earn higher standards of living, and more luxurious conditions. I feel like, we dont do this. We claim to be built on principles of voluntaryism, but when you look more closely, how voluntary is this system? Not really. And everyone knows it, they just do philosophical cartwheels about how poverty is natural and no one is entitled to anything to justify things being this way. But those attitudes are the problem. Yes, assuming society can afford it, everyone should get a UBI. Everyone should be able to secure healthcare, housing, and a decent education on top of that UBI. And we should have robust labor protections, including limits on hours worked, to avoid overwork, in order to fill in any gaps.

If we did that, Atlantic city would be a lot better for the actual residents of it. They'd be able to afford to exist, they'd be able to reject forced servitude, and while that might have economic impacts that drive casinos to either accommodate more labor demands or go out of business, and that might make entitled wealthy people unhappy, I'm fine with it. I support a vision of capitalism based on actual freedom over one that basically amounts to the forced servitude of the majority of the population just to serve a bunch of wealthy people with nothing better to do with their money but to gamble it away and spend it on luxury accommodations. Some might say those wealthy people "create jobs", but i don't want your stinking jobs. That's the point. I dont think that a place like atlantic city should exist, until every legal resident in the country has enough food, a place to live, decent healthcare, and a decent standard of living in general. Id rather raise the bottom and have a world where everyone a bit more the same in terms of the wealth they have access to, than a society of such ridiculous extremes, where you got rich fricks dropping upward of $600+ a night on hotel rooms over the weekend, eating $100 steaks, and then dropping several grand into the casino. Seriously. The idea of forcing people to work maybe made sense in an era where the alternative was not enough to go around and material shortages leading to actual starvation, but it doesnt make sense in the modern era.

Anyway, that's my take on it. Just some thoughts I had as I used this vacation to think about how my ideas would work in practice.  

The racism and classism of peoples' casino/hotel preferences

 So...one of the reasons I stopped posting this past week as much is I went to Atlantic City. I did a metric crapton of research before this and i decided Resorts was the best place to go for me. Normally, I go on vacation down south, but my parents are older now and don't want to travel as far. We normally go to places like Myrtle Beach, Pigeon Forge, or Savannah, so I figured, okay, let's go to the hotel with a Margaritaville in it! We like Margaritaville, right? Also, it was affordable AF. Like, we've always been the scroungers and savers, where we tend to find the cheapest way to do something. It's not that we really cut on actual quality of life when we go. I mean, if we wanted we could sleep in like a Motel 6 with like a 2 star rating and have a horrible experience, but we try to find the best way to do things that's still reasonably affordable. Resorts ticked those boxes between it being clean, affordable, and having reasonably priced food. 

But if you go online, a lot of people HATE resorts for some reason. It baffles me. If the hotel is clean and reasonably priced, what's the problem? Most people seem to push staying in like Borgata, Ocean, or Hard Rock instead. But...those places are a lot more money, and while if you are a high roller, they're a bit nicer, they're just not what we're looking for. Researching what people say about resorts i get complaints like not liking the people who go there, there being "thugs" hanging around the entrance to the casino, the services being limited, and it feeling like living in a shopping mall. Now, as I'll get to later, maybe in this article or the next, AC does have a homeless problem. The city is half resort and half...ghetto, let me put it that way. I'll do a sociological analysis on it later and give my thoughts on it from that perspective. But still, I did my due diligence and researched further, even watching a guy walk through the casino, stay in the rooms, and it's a pretty decent casino. Maybe not the best or flashiest, but definitely not bad either. I mean, I won't name names but I've watched the guy go through other casinos that flat out have a "dead mall" vibe and feel more like a casino from the fallout universe. This doesn't for the most part. I guess the art deco style can fit that retro style fallout has at times, but it's not like run down. It's just not super fancy. 

Funny thing is, my parents also talked about staying where we're staying and their friends were like OH YOU DONT WANNA STAY THERE, WHY DONT YOU STAY IN THE BORGATA? Because 1) it's more money, 2) the room is smaller, 3) its isolated from the boardwalk, and 4), it doesn't have anything that we actually want that we can't get elsewhere?

Anyway, we stayed there, mostly had a good experience. A few minor gripes, but I'm under the impression I could or would run into any of the issues I had in ANY other casino. No, there were no "thugs" hanging by the boardwalk, if anything, after sitting there drinking a drink while watching people come in, I noticed something. A lot of black people go on vacation here. Why? Probably the same reasons, it's affordable. You dont wanna waste a lot of money for minimal gain and you wanna stretch the cash you have as far as it will go, so you go to the affordable place. Are these people who are apparent Borgata/Ocean/Hard Rock fanboys just racist against black people? You decide, but I get the impression some of what they're saying is code for "we want to go somewhere that keeps out the riffraff", ya know, like they're oh so superior. Ya know how when a black dude goes into a mostly white neighborhood people start screaming the neighborhood is going downhill and start moving out, creating a self fulfilling loop that causes the place to start going downhill as all the money and jobs disappear and things become increasingly ghetto? Yeah, that seems to be how these guys sound to me. When these guys start saying the casino is "ghetto", that seems to be what people are saying. 

Also, a lot of it just seems to be putting on airs. Like, Ive never been in the economic class where we've gone to fancy places where we overspent and then we basically brag and virtue signal about how wealthy we are and how we can afford it. But a lot of people DO do that stuff. And I never went for it. I look at resorts and compared to other hotel experiences I've had over the years, it WAS relatively upscale. I mean, when I was down south, we used to talk about wishing about how we could afford to stay IN like, the margaritaville hotel, and here...we basically did that. And it was NICE. Again, we didn't do anything too crazy, and I guess if you want upscale, resorts isn't for you, but hey, it was a solid experience coming from my lower middle class background and the accommodations I'm used to. And honestly? I'll be blunt, it didnt cost much more than staying in a ratty motel 6 style hotel honestly. That's the real kicker. Like...any place that's affordable and clean...this was like...what, $20 more a night? And sure I could stay cheaper but then we'd be cutting WAY down on quality to the point that we'd have roaches and bedbugs in the room and we...dont...want...that...

 Idk. It's just amusing watching how this pans out and what people say about this stuff, and what THEY seem to accustomed to. Yes yes yes, if you wanna spend 2x the money I did to stay in the fanciest places with the fanciest food, go for it, but I don't want that. I'm basic. And some people hate basic, but given my tastes, basic is FINE. As we'll get to in the next article, I'm not really that hardcore on vacationing anyway given some of my political views, since I don't like the idea of people being forced to serve me and me having to pay them for the "privilege" of doing so. You can kinda get that impression from previous articles I've written, like that one I did on food service a while back. I just go because my parents like going, and I'll go with them. 

And yeah, just a few other topics worth mentioning:

The hotel has a very strict policy against actual "thugs" and homeless. They dont let people stay or sleep in their cars in the garages. They dont let people use the bathrooms to change. There's no place to sit unless you're actively gambling or eating anything. ALL of these casinos in atlantic city are strict about that sort of thing to keep the actual riffraff out. If anything, the strictness actually works against legitimate consumers. Just a few examples:

 1) Due to all of the walking I did carrying in my own stuff (which was made needlessly difficult because they wanna incentivize us to pay people to do it for us, because that's what upper class people normally do), and then walking around the boardwalk all day on my first day, my feet were KILLING ME the rest of the trip. Like, I was in pain walking. And these casinos, while nice to walk through and look at, have no place to sit unless you go to the food court to eat something, or to a spot where youre gambling. Unlike places down south, there's no place to actually sit, because they dont want people to just sit and exist. The place exists for you to spend money. If you're not actively consuming, they dont want you there. This had a negative impact of making whatever issues with my feet WORSE during my stay, even though I was a legit consumer with a hotel room. 

2) So...the bathrooms dont want you changing clothes. Okay, dont want homeless people washing up or changing in there, i get it. But let's take this example. On the way out, when we were about to go home, a family member messed up their clothes and had to change. We were literally minutes from checking out. We couldnt use any casino floor bathroom to do this due to the policies against it, we had to go back up to the room to do so. And if we checked out, well then, we ARE screwed aren't we? You mean, we, legit consumers who just spent the past several nights in your rooms and ate every day in your dining establishments, couldnt just go to the bathroom to change our clothes to make sure that we were driving home in clean clothes? I understand why the policies exist, but you understand how this can sometimes make things harder for actual paying customers, right?

3) I know others who have gone to AC where one person goes there because they like to gamble and their spouses, boyfriends, what have you, prefer to stay in the car. Of course, security doesnt want people staying in the car...because that's what homeless people do. Some of them live in their car, park in the garages, and then sleep there. So...again, if youre not actively gambling, they dont want you there, even if you or someone else in your party is a legitimate paying consumer. 

Again, for all of the talk about how resorts is lax because "thugs" hang out around it, it seems to me like they're so strict with anti homeless policies that I actually kinda found it alienating as a paying consumer who had a reason to be there. but I digress. It really is a matter of perspective. Upper class people complain about this crap because omg i dont wanna share a casino with those poors! And here I am being more lower class and if anything I'm like, yeah this is too strict. Dont get me wrong, I understand homeless people in the casino could pose a possible security threat to actual customers, but yeah. It's just a pretty hostile way to go about solving the problem. As always nuance exists, and sometimes blanket policies aren't the best ways to address it. 

Another final topic I wanna talk about in regard to this is the food court. I LOVED the food court. Because one thing I realized in helping to budget for this trip was the biggest, most egregious expense is the food. Most casinos push for upscale dining experiences where you're paying $30 for pasta dishes that should cost $15, or $65-100 for steaks that should cost like $30, etc. And again, it just seems pretentious and has the whole putting in airs thing. like oh, WE'RE the ELITE dining experience. We are pushing LUXURY. Meanwhile all I see it paying twice as much for something I could get elsewhere. Solution? Resorts has an excellent food court full of cheap, affordable dining options. We could get a cheese pizza for like $20, so not much worse than home, burger meals for like $18 that puts fast food to shame, etc. Sure, you arent getting the "luxury" experience, but meh...you can get that upstairs in the fancy places. We dont want fancy, we want affordable. Maybe this is where the "shopping mall" comparisons come from. I know all AC casinos have food courts, but checking out hard rock, it did seem a bit more expensive, and looking online, other casinos had places closer to like, that hard rock style experience with theirs. Like fancier, flashier, but a bit more money. With me, food is food, as long as it tastes good I aint gonna complain. And the food tasted plenty good. The pizza (assuming you get whole pies) was fresh and stringy. The burgers were fresh and of good texture, definitely beats burger king or mcdonalds while costing about the same as them these days. I seriously dont think those places realize they were so successful because they put out mediocre food for cheap. Even I won't settle for THAT stuff on vacation. I guess I had to settle for dunkin for doughnuts in the morning, but that's like a northern thing. For some reason us northerners REALLY like dunkin, even though I find them mediocre as hell. I'm on team krispy kreme all the way but it's hard to find those north of the mason dixon line (yeah i know philly has a couple places with them but most dont). And sure I could go to a luxury establishment like over in hard rock for better doughnuts but it kinda lacked the convenience. Cant win them all but I cant complain. Anyway, we saved tons of money due to the food court, and I think that's why people dislike it so much. "Omg its like a shopping mall", you mean...affordable food court dining options? because that was the only thing mall like to me. That and the stores being in there, and all of them have that. I mean, tropicana reminds me MORE like a mall from what I've seen, just a fancier one. 

And again, I guess, if you want fancy and like fancy, there are better options there. But if I had to go elsewhere I'd probably go to like tropicana or something, not to the big three everyone brags about. Also affordable, and seems to have a lot of interesting stuff on their premises like arcades, movie theaters, stores, places to eat, etc. Why didnt I go there? Well, for what we were going for, resorts seemed to be a better fit. I was thinking more about emulating the southern vacations I go on with places like margaritaville on the premises, getting a better room for less money, and also being in a more central location. Tropicana is on the far end of the boardwalk away from everything, resorts is more in the middle with lots of other casinos with other accommodations nearby like Hard Rock, and even showboat and ocean. So...yeah....

Either way, we werent really there long enough to fully take in what options we did have. I feel like we barely scratched the surface of what was offered and yeah while we plan to go back, it was interesting.

Anyway, I just wanted to write this due to how it intersects with more political topics I normally engage with. I got that "sociological imagination" thing going on and understand how social sciences and trends intersect with daily life to a point that I just cant turn it off and see it everywhere I go. And I just wanted to write this given how much racism and classism I see in regards to people crapping on my own preferences. Really, I'm not gonna trash anyone who likes a bigger fancier casino, but if those types start crapping on MY preferences with really ridiculous criticisms, well....now I'm gonna actually dissect what's actually being said.  

I'm sorry, but if you don't like Zohran Mamdani or Abdul El Sayed speaking about 9/11, you're racist

 Seriously, given my relatively anti woke policy stances, I hate pulling the racism card, but people keep insisting on showing their ### on this issue. 9/11 was perpetuated by Osama Bin Laden, a militant islamic extremist. However, that's not to say all Muslims are responsible for 9/11, similar to how not all Christians are responsible when some whack job Christian blows something up. It seems like we get that nuance with Christianity, but not Islam, and that is basically racist. And really, when I'm the one defending religion, you know you're F-ing up given my "New Atheist" political roots. 

But yeah. A lot of people, especially on the right, are giving those two crap for what they're saying. Rudy Guiliani, who was the mayor during 9/11 and actually came off looking like a hero for it at the time, was bashing Zohran for speaking at the 9/11 ceremony yesterday. While they apparently shared an awkward handshake, Guiliani was talking a lot of crap about Zohran before hand. And it's ridiculous. He's the mayor now, IT'S LITERALLY HIS JOB! Like wtf? Oh he's muslim so he shouldnt be mayor, DAE remember 9/11? Yeah, on this topic, my parents came into my room that night warning me not to blame 9/11 on ALL muslims or to give muslim kids in my school crap for it because they had nothing to do with it. I was really wondering at the time like....wtf, who would do that? But now I look at it 25 years later and I'm like, Oh, YOU ###holes! If anyone is an embarrassment to NYC, its guiliani. If not for 9/11, he'd be a wash out. And any clout he gained from his handling of 9/11, he's destroyed by aligning himself with trump and then going on about THIS crap.

And then you have people online bashing Abdul El Sayed for saying something like on 9/11 he mourns the 3000 lives lost, on 9/12, he mourns the millions lost from our subsequent actions.

...he's not wrong. And I've been critical of our actions post 9/11 as well over the years. I honestly think the drunken rampage we went on since then has done far more damage than the event itself. Between service members lost, the tax dollars spend, the blow to our international credibility Bush caused, the national security state that he built, and, of course, the thousands and millions of civilian casualties our interventions have cost since then, both directly and indirectly, YIKES. The event was bad, dont get me wrong, but theres a reason a lot of us younger people are more critical of interventionism and this weird faux patriotism the GOP puts on. As I've been telling conservatives I've been arguing with, we've seen the results of their preferred policies, they suck, yeah, let's not do that again. 2020s conservatives? Let's do that again but worse! Their boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes them cheer.

Anyway, 9/11 sucked, it was a horrible event, shouldnt have happened, we should mourn the dead. However, it was also a learning experience, and uh...some of us have learned the real lessons, and others of us still haven't. And the latter kinda disturbs me. I can forgive people who thought like this (minus the actual islamophobia) in like 2003....but if you're still sounding like a neocon in 2026, YIKES. And if you let your whole ### hang out with the racism, double yikes. Seriously, seeing so many people melt down over zohran mamdani and abdul el sayed existing is, itself, an eye opening experience. Yeah, we still got some really racist MFers in this country, and the fact that these attitudes are so common disturbs me. For as much as I'd like to imagine america as being post racial animous, the more republicans put their ### out there since Trump started running for office just continues to amaze and disturb me. 

Election Update 9/11/26

 "Sir, another democrat favorable poll has hit the averages..." *Bush face*

  Yeah. That's what it feels like these days. So...I got a lot to talk about with this one. Let's get to it.

Senate

So....we finally got some good data out of South Carolina and Kansas, which mostly corroborated those crazy polling averages that made me revert my Nebraska data, since it actually does seem reasonable to believe Osborn may be winning or at least within a reasonable range of doing so. 

This makes the map look REALLY bad for republicans. Not only are they losing states that were previously unthinkable like Alaska and Texas, but now Kansas and South Carolina are showing up as swing states. Like, what the actual fudge? Yeah, this is NUTS. Trump is REALLY unpopular and he's losing badly. 

House

This I don't have as much to talk about. Average lurched back toward the democrats a bit more, making the forecast more favorable. 

 Governors

 

Here, a few more dem leaning governors got added to this. I dont expect Minnesota or New York to flip any time soon, but I like to track everything within around 12 points or so, so those got added. Maine is technically out of range but I'll keep it for now since it's being tracked pretty regularly and it's already there. 

Conclusion

This week's forecast is really bullish on democrats, even more than normal. I really have to be wondering, is this real? or are republicans REALLY doing this bad? I kinda gotta believe the numbers because I look at trump and I honestly wonder how anyone, even someone who is conservative, can support this guy. Seriously. So maybe he really is doing this bad? Either way, happy to see it, and hope this holds out come election time. Like always though i would advise anyone reading this to use a bit of caution here. If republicans have a reasonable overperformance, all of these crazy gains can be reversed and they'll still hold onto the senate, as I've discussed before. I really do think the republicans taking the house is highly unlikely though.  

Dont fall for Trump's $5000 stimulus checks

 In a desperate ploy to save the republicans in the mid terms, Trump is promising to give every American $5000 if republicans win both the house and the senate. As the UBI guy, I'm just going to warn you guys NOT to do it. There's more at stake this election than UBI. The republicans are a proto fascist party that's a threat to democracy itself. They're toying with AI that could eventually kill us all as I just discussed in the previous article. Yeah, let's not do this.

Even more so, as the UBI guy, let's discuss why this proposal actually sucks. Remember COVID? Remember how he gave everyone $600 checks and then Biden gave them $1400 checks, and then republicans turned around and blamed those checks on inflation and making people lazy? Yeah...I remember too. And here's the thing. UBI, done properly, is supposed to be funded with taxation and spending cuts. We do that to stop inflation. If you fund it without doing that, you increase the money supply, which, without proportionally increased production, devalues the currency. More money for the same amount of stuff means money is worth less. 

This ploy will likely cost $1.25 trillion, assuming we give $5000 to 250 million adults. That will be added to the deficit. Rich people wont pay for it. They probably wont be able to cut anything to fund it without screwing over a lot of people (this is why a lot of people on the left are skeptical of UBI). And for a one time check, the money will be spent and then it's gone, and then everything will cost more. It's a terrible policy.

And then UBI will be toxic for a generation, because the worst possible person did it in the worst possible way. "Oh remember when that guy gave everyone $5000 and it caused inflation?" They already pulled this with Biden over $1400 checks, and those barely contributed to inflation in the grand scheme of things given the complexities of the global economy at the time.

But yeah. Say no to Trump's $5000 checks. If we're gonna do UBI, we should do it right. We do it poorly and we hurt the cause more than we help it. And we dont want Trump to win anyway. Again, there's far more at stake here than a single use $5000 check. 

AI is going to kill us all

 So, this isn't good. People are quitting anthropic and claiming that AI has a >10% chance to kill us all by the end of the decade. That....isn't good. I feel like, we're in a science fiction movie. We got the scientists warning main plot point is a bad idea, a bunch of morons in charge who are like "I DONT CARE DO IT ANYWAY", they do it anyway, and that's the movie. Terminator, Frankenstein, any B sci fi or horror movie that I used to think was too stupid to ever happen in real life, and yet, here we are. 

Regulate this crap. I mean Im under the impression AI intelligence isnt real intelligence, but viruses arent really alive and yet they replicate in ways that kill humans anyway. It's like that. Even if it's simulating intelligence, it can still simulate doomsday scenarios and enact them in real life. It doesnt have to be superintelligent. It just has to mimic it in ways that are dangerous enough to cause the problems. 

You'd think that we'd have smart people in charge who are like "this is a bad idea" but because billionaires who care more about short term profit than the longevity of the species and the Trump administration who is very much in bed with those types, yeah, we're screwed. Keep in mind climate change will eventually screw us over too if not kill us all and they've been ignoring THAT for 50 years. These people dont care as long as they continue to make money short term. It's highly idiotic. Ugh...

So what should be done about Nebraska?

 So...I came across a post online with Nate Silver's polling averages and it had Kansas at like R+3 for the senate. i know the governor's race is expected to be in play, but is Kansas REALLY in play? Well, looking at the polls, it's mostly a lot of dem aligned internal polls. Low quality. But wait, Nebraska is the same thing. No polls on realclearpolitics, and the polls reported by other sites are low quality internal polls that don't pass muster on more reputable outlets. I also checked out south carolina, same thing. Annie Andrews floods the averages with internal polls suggesting she's winning even though South Carolina is basically safe R. 

So...this is making me rethink including Nebraska in my model. The reason I've been so interested in this race is because Dan Osborn got within 7 points in 2024. If we actually have shifted 8 points since then, it's plausible he can win. At the same time, it's also possible the 2024 matchup was more favorable to him. After all, the state went by 20 for Trump in 2024, Osborn overperformed by 13 points. But if we're seeing R+13 states like Ohio, Iowa, and Texas performing close to 50-50 as we have been, that means under NORMAL conditions, we should still see Nebraska go like R+12 or something. Osborn is an overperformer here. And he could overperform again. I don't know. 

The problem is, if I include it in my model as is, I should also add kansas and south carolina and their junk data. Seriously, the polls on Nebraska are just as bad. All Osborn sponsored polls, low reliability. Probably way too D optimistic. 

So...what should be done with Nebraska? Well, I could revert to some placeholder data and just throw a number in there that may be realistic or not realistic, but I dont know what that number should be. I'm seeing anything from D+1 to R+12 as realistic in the current environment, and if I split the difference it would be somewhere in the ballpark of R+5.5. Osborn last time performed around R+6.6. He could perform better than that, but I don't know where.

If I were to rate the race in terms of general probability, I'd be inclined to say either lean R or likely R. Lean R is the range between R+1 and R+4 in my model. Likely R is R+4 to R+8. 

If I did a kneejerk probability rating, I'd probably be inclined toward the upper part of lean, giving the possibility of a flip somewhere around 1 out of 6. That's 83% which is just short of the 84% of an R+4. So I'm leaning toward either an R+4 or an R+6. Maybe an R+5 to split the difference. If I were to estimate a range of performance I'd say it'll likely go between like R+11 or so to D+1. Once again, R+5. 

So....with that said, I'll axe the polling data which is partisan, low quality, and unreliable, and assume an R+5 rating. I mean, all of the factors I'm considering like the range of possible performance, to relative position of Nebraska vs other states, to Osborn's past performance, seem to converge around R+5. So until I get reliable data, as in, reputable data that RCP actually reports, I'll consider it R+5. 

So with that said, here's my updated senate prediction:

Yeah, that looks a bit more realistic. Anyway, that's my updated senate prediction. 

They're building 1984

 Okay, so this is gonna sound a bit conspiracy theoryish, but I think it's worth grappling with. So...I talked about fascism, techno fascists, and how the trump administration is openly authoritarian, supporting people like the dark enlightenment people who don't believe in democracy, and that Trump might make a pass at going full on authoritarian. But one thing I do want to emphasize is the surveillance state aspect of it. What do flock cameras, data centers, and smart devices all have in common? They create a surveillance dragnet to watch everything you do. Gamer's nexus talked about it today and this has been going around in my head for a while.

Flock cameras 

So...flock cameras, they're everywhere now. And people keep pointing out that they're creepy and dystopian. I have mixed opinions on them quite frankly. I live in a high crime area and some have wanted cameras for years in high crime intersections to track criminals and get them arrested. While there's nothing wrong with this, if they're placed there through democratic consensus, they have a clear purpose, and clear guardrails, these cameras are popping up everywhere, often against the will of the people, they dont have a clear purpose, and they are ripe for abuse. They can track people wherever they go, giving them no privacy outside of their homes. And even if we're okay with THAT, well...buckle up.

Smart devices

So gamer's nexus mentioned smart tvs, but this applies to phones, tablets, laptops, etc. It's possible, in theory, for these things to listen to what you say and record everything you say or do in your own home. It's also possible for them to be used without a warrant if corporations just hand your data over to the government on demand. Which they are probably doing. So not only are you being tracked outside of your home, but in them as well. That heated political discussion at dinner where someone said something they shouldnt have said, its probably in a data base somewhere. Speaking of which.

Data centers

 So we all know AI data centers are being built like crazy. But there's a clear financial problem with them. It's a product/service with no real demand. The whole bubble is artificial. But....what if the real client is the government? All that stuff being recorded, the data needs to go somewhere, right? So...why not tons of data centers? And how are they gonna sift through all that data? AI, of course! So....yeah. Really crappy dystopian spy crap. 

Discussion 

And all of this seems to bypass normal 4th and 14th amendment protections. You have no right to privacy outside of your home, they hide behind terms and conditions and corpo speak no one reads to justify you giving your data to corporations, and the corporations partner with the government and give it to them. 

Now, under a normal administration,  this would be concerning as is. There were concerns about, for example, spying on people during the Bush administration due to the patriot act and its provisions. But during the Trump years? When this administration has explicit anti democratic tendencies and seems to be aligned with some really dark mofos who not just share those tendencies but are the same tech bros pushing this crap? Yeah....scary to think about. They're literally building 1984. They were just 40 years off. 

if our country goes to crap, this data will be used against us in significant ways. They'll find whatever crimes or infractions they can and charge you for them. They'll use directives like NSPM7 to justify spying on the political opposition. They'll try to go after dissenters and jail them. Oh, and they already are putting the apparatus in place to handle that, what with the militarization of the police, the use of troops on US soil, ICE being trump's personal army, etc. Oh, and those camps for migrants. They can quickly be converted into makeshift prisons for dissenters. Kinda like what Hitler did in the 1930s. That's how we got concentration camps btw, they started as places to send dissenters and they ramped it up to genocide in the later years. Fun fact. 

But yeah. This crap is CREEPY. Like....really creepy, and I've been thinking about it for the past few days, and I just wanted to discuss it a bit. We're heading toward a world where the government records everything you do, and if they dont like you, they can theoretically start jailing and disappearing you. This is America in the 2020s. Scary to think about. Vote democrat while you still have the liberty to and hope we can remove trump and the republicans without them going full fascist here. There's still time to reverse course, hopefully....

Election Update 9/4/26

 I figured I'm probably gonna be busy so I'm gonna push the election update out now. I still might do another one in a week or two if I feel like it/if I have time, but yeah. I gotta create one for a contest anyway so I might as well post it here. I won't really comment on it though, so it will be kind of abridged.

Senate

 

House

Governors

 Conclusion

 I don't have much to say on this that hasn't already been said. I just wanted to post the latest numbers since idk if I'll get to do my normal next week one or not. Not much has changed since the last one. House narrowed a little. Dems are doing well in the senate. The odds are what the odds are. Seriously, you guys know how to read my charts by now I hope.

Dear nvidia, can we NOT?

 So....I've mostly been ignoring the talk of DLSS 5, because I dont care about DLSS 5. As I see it, DLSS was created to solve a problem that we didn't need to have in the first place. Ray tracing had an enormous performance cost, and in order to make it run, we needed DLSS to upscale images to higher resolutions.

Now, upscaling is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I like the fact that I can upscale a game from a lower resolution to a higher resolution. In theory it can extend the life of aging systems. But then developers RELY on it as a crutch, where games expect you to use it and it makes games a blurry mess. 

Now, to be fair, I cant use DLSS< because I bought AMD. Why? Because nvidia thinks charging a 50% premium for a better upscaler and ray tracing I dont want is a justifiable business practice. I just see it as predatory. nvidia wants to be greedy, I'll buy AMD. Anyway, now they made DLSS 5. And the internet hates it. Basically, it takes AI and makes games look better with it. Now, it has mixed results, with some saying AI ruins the art direction of games by making everything realistic. I kind of agree. And quite frankly, I dont really care that much about it. Games look good enough already and I havent seen anything from DLSS 5 that makes me go "wow, I totally want this RIGHT NOW."

But heres the thing. This new tech, much like upscaling, which STILL isnt really worth using on most mainstream systems (keep in mind mainstream gamers game on 3060s/4060s, so basically those "8x 1030" cards that are generally the sweet spot in price/performance for the past 4-6 years), has INSANE performance costs. Like truly, insane, performance costs. Like you're losing 60-75% of your FPS using it. Now, let's be real, is it worth it? I mean, I could see some idiot who goes out and buys a $5000 RTX 5090 act like it totally changes the game and they cant live without it, but let's face it, they're just rich ###holes trying to justify a ridiculously expensive purchase. For mainstream gamers who actually care about getting good value for the money...well....NO.

Like, again. Do we need graphics to keep getting better? It would be one thing if we could just keep pumping out $250 cards that double in performance every 3 years like we used to, I mean, sure, if we do that, and PC gaming was still affordable and things kept getting better, that's one thing. But when we're hitting a performance wall like we are, it's not worth it. And now with rampocalypse making GPUs start appreciating in value like the COVID pandemic all over again, honestly? Who wants this?! No one can afford a GPU that can actually run this stuff at decent settings. Why the heck should I wanna play a game at like 30 FPS when I can play it at 120 FPS? Seriously. And that's if you have a newer nvidia card that can handle it. I mean, Im on AMD but when someone tested a 5050 today with it, it was like...13 FPS with DLSS5 on. On low. At 720p. Again, who wants this?!

I feel like these billionaires are just massively out of touch with the normal person. They have their little visions for the future, and they insist on telling us that their vision is the future, and we gotta get with it, and eventually the devs of major gaming companies start making their games around tech like this, and it forces us to upgrade to expensive GPUs we dont really need outside of the artificial obsolescence, and yeah, it's bullcrap. Idk why we cant just focus on optimizing games better. I dont want this crap. I've been fine with how games looked since around 2016ish. And I still insist most progress since then aint really progress. It's just a bunch of tech bros forcing fancy tech on us no one wants or cares about. Like yeah yeah yeah it looks a little better. Who cares? Games look good enough, theyve looked good enough since BF1. Just give me better frame rates and more longevity for hardware if we can't actually get more raster performance. And no, I dont mean frame gen. That tech is iffy as all fudge too. Fake frames introduce latency which makes games harder to play. it's not free performance and it only works properly ABOVE 60 FPS anyway. And given I run a 60 hz monitor for longevity purposes...yeah. What is this actually doing for us? 

Like again, I really hate all this crap. Everything's expensive, we cant afford new hardware any more, and OH HOW ABOUT A TOOL THAT KILLS YOUR FPS BY 2/3 THAT NO ONE BUY 5090 USERS WILL WANNA USE? Uh...HOW ABOUT NO! *puts pinky to mouth* 

Anyway, end rant.  

Discussing Amazon's sketchy cheap GPUs...

 So....another GPU related article. Sorry for my political audiences, but hey, fired up on this subject, and after seeing another topic about how expensive GPUs were, I decided to check amazon, only to be met with tons of listings for VERY cheap GPUs. Like too good to be true cheap. We're talking R7 350 or GT 740 (~0.8x 1030) for $60-80 cheap. We're talking RX 580s (4x 1030) as low as $120 cheap. Why dont these  show up on PC part picker? What's going on?

Well, it looks like a lot of these GPUs come from china. Googling them, most of them seem to be refurbished cards from china, or ex mining cards. With that said, many of these listings are very sketchy, and are they worth it? Eh....in this market, MAYBE? I mean, the market is pretty dismal for the sub $200 range. Obviously, if you have the money, just buy like an RX 5050 at $300 or a 9060 XT 8 GB for $360. If you really have money, the 16 GB of the 9060 XT for $470 is probably the best "budget" deal. But since when is $500ish "budget?" I mean, that's the problem with this market, it's insane. And given I dont like to pay more than $300 for a GPU if I dont have to, I believe in cheaper options for gamers. Even if they come with compromises. It's just good to know what the compromises are and what youre getting. 

So yeah, should you buy these? Eh...it depends. For the most part, I'm gonna say no. I will make one exception though. ONE of these brands isn't terrible to my knowledge and is a reputable brand partner to Nvidia and other major brands. It just doesnt actually primarily appeal to the US market, but rather, the chinese market. And that's Maxsun. Again, they're chinese, they primarily appeal to chinese consumers. And if you ever wanna do a warranty with these guys youre gonna be sending the card all the way to China, but that might be a risk you gotta take in this economy. The US market for older cards has dried up, and given my current $140ish recommendation is the Arc A380....well.....their 580s for the same price are arguably a better value. 

I mean, the RX 580 is one of the most legendary cards of all time. It's on par with the 1060 (4x GT 1030), it has 8 GB VRAM. It doesnt do ray tracing or have modern APIs, but it'll run most games through 2022 or so adequately and will at least start and maybe get 30 FPS in many made after that. It also is probably better with older games and less finnicky with older systems than an arc card would be. I imagine most people buying a 580 in 2026 are also using dated components like early ryzen or maybe some quad core intel 14nm CPU. Not all of those have resizeable bar, for example. So....again, if we wanna whip out old reliable for an old system, this might be the play. 

Other than that, I'd probably stick to my go to recommendations. GT 1030 for $100, but this would be a massive step up for $140 (4x the performance) and is not only faster than intel arc, but again, less finnicky with the aging systems that people will probably throw this kind of card into. 

In the $200-300 range, you got the RTX 2060 6 GB, I just noticed they're selling those again for $210 from reputable brands like ASUS. Id recommend that over the 3050 6 GB at the same price (4x 1030 vs 6x 1030). 

The 3050 8 GB has more VRAM at $260 but is less powerful than that.

And then beyond that it's the 5050 for $300 (my go to recommendation for a decent minimum gaming experience). 7600 is $320, which isnt great.

And again, Arc always has options. A380 for $140, A580 for $200, B570 for $260, and B580 for $310. They sometimes offer more value for the money, but again, spotty driver compatibility with older games and finnicky with older systems. 

Idk. I just wanted to throw out a few more options. 

Anyway to give you a low down:

R7 350 (sketchy brand)- $60 (0.8x 1030)

GT 740 (sketchy brand)- $80 (0.8x 1030)

GT 1030 (reputable) - $100

Arc A380- $140 (3x 1030)

RX 580 8 GB (semi reputable)- $140 (4x 1030)

Arc A580- $200 (7x 1030)

RTX 2060 6 GB- $210 (6x 1030)

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

Arc B570- $260 (8x 1030)

RTX 5050- $300 (9x 1030)

Arc B580- $310 (9x 1030)

And yeah, that's the market right now. It's not great. The sub $200 options wont run new games). Most sub $300 options have compromises. My go to recommendation would be just get a 5050, if not a 9060 XT (either 8 or 16 GB depending on budget) if you can afford it. I just understand not everyone can, and I want to keep budget gaming open here. ANd yeah.

As always, do your own research, don't blame me if you end up with crap, especially if you do go for like, a sketchy chinese card. I mean, they ARE sketchy for the most part. But yeah. Again, trying to find ways to get affordable GPUs into the hands of gamers who need them, even if they do have compromises....