It depends. Of course it’s fine to have no opinion about, say, which sports team should win the big game, because that doesn’t matter. And even on bigger issues like fiscal policy, it’s okay to just admit you don’t know enough about a complicated subject to have an informed opinion. While I do think it’s important to educate yourself as much as you can, no one can reasonably learn everything about everything in order to have all of the right opinions all of the time.

But some issues are both important and clear cut. Like, if someone says they have “no opinion” on whether LGBTQ people deserve equal rights… no, no I will not accept “no opinion” as an answer here. You don’t need to read mountains of theory to disavow bigotry, and if anyone tries to give an excuse for why they won’t, I’ll consider that complicit.

There’s an entire genre of fantastic arcade/versus puzzle games not named Tetris. And that whole genre lies forgotten in ruins now. The one game that survived the longest was Puyo Puyo, but ironically, you can blame Tetris for killing that IP in the end.

I wish any developer luck in trying to do anything at all with this genre, give me something new and I will be first in line to buy ten copies. But I don’t think Pajitnov, or anyone else for that matter, will ever find even 1% of the success Tetris did. I just don’t think audiences still want this genre anymore, they just want Tetris and only Tetris.

Do you have a point you want to make? We’re both saying that “but primaries!” means nothing to us when we have no voice in the primaries.

Something that happened long before my state’s primary.

What does my vote mean when every candidate has already dropped out anyway?

You and I both know he’s a con artist who won’t fix anything. But when voters don’t feel like the establishment is listening to them, that’s when they become desperate enough to fall for a con artist. Because at least the con artist made them think there was hope.

It means that their vote doesn’t count. I also live in a state that has one of the very last primaries, after the race is already over anyway. By the time I voted for Bernie, he had already dropped out of the race. My vote meant nothing.

If Kamala was a garbage candidate, what does that make Trump?

The guy who told voters what they wanted to hear. “I know you’re upset at the world, and I’m going to make it great again.”

The best Kamala could do was “I won’t do anything differently from the Biden administration.”

This dumbass contacted Nintendo to taunt them about how he’s gonna stream leaked pirated copies. Hard to have sympathy for this idiot for poking the bear.

Puyo Puyo Champions - After the video essay I posted two weeks ago ended up doing so much better than I expected, 11k+ views and 600+ likes, I decided to try streaming some ranked for the first time in 2.5 years. I’m still cracked.

Riichi Mahjong - This really ought to be worth a lot more for how rare it is.

Persona 4 Golden - Finally coming back to this, where’d I leave off again?

Mobile very quickly turned into a race-to-the-bottom. When the market is flooded, any paid title has an incredibly difficult time standing out. So in order to get players in the door, you gotta make it f2p. And in order to maximize profits for a f2p game, you gotta employ all the worst dark patterns, because that’s what all your competitors are doing too.

And this has led to a feedback loop of consumer expectations. People understand that this is just what mobile is now, so people who want anything else have given up on mobile and are instead buying games on other platforms. Releasing a premium title on mobile is basically just trying to sell to the wrong audience.

It’s not enough that the rate of inflation is slowing. The problem is that wages aren’t going up to match inflation. When people are working two jobs and still living paycheck to paycheck, do you think it means anything to them to tell them that “um ackshually, inflation is down 0.4% from last year!”?

This kind of disconnect is exactly why we aren’t reaching voters.

Bring back versus puzzle games. Puyo Puyo is more or less the only surviving IP today, and even that is only barely on life support now that Sega has banished it to Apple Arcade exclusivity.

The whole damn genre lies in ruins now and I miss it so much. Someone, anyone, make a new game please.

Do they though? The biggest and most profitable games right now are all live services. Consumers are very much voting for live services.

Rivals has found its niche, but I don’t think even that is pulling in the kinds of numbers Warner expects for a AAA they sunk this much money into.

What’s a foot long and slippery? A slipper.

What’s red and smells like blue paint? Red paint.

Why did the blind man fall in the well? He couldn’t see that well.

A man goes to the doctor and says “I think I have hearing problems.” “Can you describe the symptoms?” “Sure! Homer’s fat and Marge has blue hair.”

Did you hear about the huge sale at the Lego store? People were lined up for blocks.

I sat down for dinner at a restaurant, and the waiter asked me, “Do you want to hear today’s special?” I said, “Yes please.” “No problem sir. Today is special.”

I’d tell you a time travel joke, but you didn’t get it.

I used to work at a toy factory making plastic Draculas. There were only two of us, so I had to make every second Count.

You don’t have to tell me the other guy is terrible. I know he is.

But did you actually watch the debate? The fact that he came out of that debate arguably looking even worse than Trump - in the eyes of voters, don’t even try to argue this one - was a clear red flag.

There was never any ‘advantage’ here, and Biden stepped down because even he knew it.

If you want to “do everything you can to win”, step one is not running the guy who was borderline incoherent in the debates. Staying by that would’ve been shooting yourself in the leg.

Did we watch the same debate here? There was never any advantage coming out of that one.

I’m basing my analysis on the observable trend that incumbents lose when the economy is poor. As well as, y’know, Biden’s abysmal poll numbers after the debate, the reason he dropped out in the first place.

You’re the one who started insisting incumbent advantage would’ve been a thing here, where’s your crystal ball?

Encumbant advantage? In this economic climate, it’s exactly the opposite. People who are feeling increasingly fed up with a world in which they cannot make ends meet vote against the status quo.

4 years of Trump got people to vote against Trump. 4 years of Biden got people to vote against his VP.

Biden himself would lost even harder than Kamala did.

I feel justified in being pissed off at people whose first reaction to all of this is to blame the left. Because y’all do this after every election we lose, and learning nothing is how we go on to lose the next election.

Blame the people who voted for Trump. Think for a minute about why they did, and then think about what we can do differently next time.

Not learning is what will drag the whole country down.