Be careful, you might start a new birther rumor.

I feel like the flip phone should be an accessory to the screen box. It’s a superior device to chatting and hanging up, just make it Bluetooth and snap into the back of the phone.

Games like Cities: Skylines are perfect for middle-aged and older dads. It fits right into things like fixing up and old car or building some wooden stuff.

But also any games for any people. I’m a 43yo dad who just got my kids interested in hotseat Mass Effect (they don’t enjoy doing the combat so much).

The only problem they ever had was back in the day they overheated easily.

Very easily.

In college (early aughts), I worked as tech support for fellow students. Several times I had to take the case cover off, point a desktop fan into the case, and tell the kid he needed to get thermal paste and a better cooler (services we didn’t offer).

Also, as others have said, AMD CPUs have not always been superior to Intel in performance or even value (though AMDs have almost always been cheaper). It’s been a back-and-forth race for much of their history.

You’re right that I left a crucial element out of my admittedly simplistic two step process. We should pressure Biden to be better and to stop supporting the genocide in Gaza.

I consider myself to be solidly left, maybe not full-on progressive but supportive of many progressive policies. And I think Biden has been a good president when you consider the context he’s been given. I don’t have time to write it all out now, but if I did, I’d be glad to argue that Biden had been a good (not great) president. I think the millions who have had their student debt cancelled, bought OTC birth control, got off unemployment and into a job would agree.

Granted, Biden’s campaign hasn’t done a good job, groceries are still too damned expensive, and he hasn’t stopped the genocide in Gaza. But, save a violent nationwide revolution, the 2024 presidential ballot is Biden vs. Trump. And, on the issue of the genocide, Trump has demonstrated he’d be an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, much more than Biden.

Biden hasn’t been great. He dragged his feet on issues he campaigned on (e.g., student debt relief), he sounds eve older than he is, and perhaps most gallingly, he didn’t unequivocally renounce the genocide in Gaza immediately. Inflation sucks and wages aren’t high enough for most to survive, let alone thrive. I can name a dozen progressives off the top of my head I’d rather have as president.

First past the post voting and the two-party system give us little chance at the national level for meaningful fast change.

But have you seen the shit Trump has promised he will do as president? We all learned an important lesson from the first Trump presidency: take him seriously, not literally. I shouldn’t need to list the things Trump has promised to do, but here’s a highlight reel:

• Enthusiastically support Israel’s “invasion” of Gaza
• Waste billions on a useless border wall
• Deploy the military domestically to “fight crime”, “coincidentally” in blue states
• Slash federal education spending and let states handle their own education
• Repeal background checks, reopen the gun show loophole, roll back federal laws against gun trafficking, and make it easier for kids under 21 to get guns
• Undo Title IX trans rights

And he won’t stand in the way of any of the Project2025 insanity the GOP wants to pursue.

So, on the left, you have an old man who has maybe made things a little better for some too slowly while ignoring a genocide. On the right, you have an old man who endorses that same genocide, promises to make the country an actively worse place for many, and who has empirically proven he will encourage and endorse insurrection and treason to stay in power.

The best play for the future is two-pronged:

1. For the medium/far future: push for electoral reform like IRV/ranked choice voting at the local/state level (to get people used to it), endorse third-party candidates, run for local office, donate time/money to causes that matter to you.
2. For the near term, to allow the first bullet point to take root and thrive: Don’t let Trump get elected, which means, unfortunately, voting for Biden.

I mean, 2011 was 12 years ago.