I guess Microsoft really changed the world.

Memes are also not inherently digital. Going back to the definition set by Richard Dawkins (trans-hating bigot he is), a meme is anything that “conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” Perhaps that’s a bit broad of a definition compared to what we conventionally think of as memes, but it’s how we got to where we are.

People in ancient Egypt building pyramids and obelisks because someone before them built pyramids and obelisks is a meme. Cathedrals being built in much the same way throughout Renaissance Europe is a meme.

But those examples aside, there are still a few pre-internet examples that would still resonate more with the idea of memes as we know them today. Kilroy was Here is considered a meme and goes back to World War II. Or a bit before that, this “How you think you look” cartoon which I am not entirely sure was overly meme-like in its day but certainly feels relatable today.

But even slogans or popular sayings could be considered memes; if we consider internet terms/phrases like “pog” or “Are ya winning, son?” or (dating myself) “I can haz cheezburger?” to be memes, what about pre-internet sayings like “Luke, I am your father,” “It’s just a flesh wound,” or “Where’s the beef?” Or going way, way back, what about saying “Break a leg” before a performance, or “All the world’s a stage,” or even “Carpe diem”? I think one could make a case for just about any repeated and widely understood concept, really.

You get to save $10 so Nintendo can later take it off their marketplace, and remove your access to the game.

The shitty part is that I don’t think physical games are even exempt from that problem. Excluding whichever Switch 2 games are use the “key card” option versus “memory card” (key card basically just being a transferrable download code), we see games like Tears of the Kingdom being nearly unplayable without the day 1 patch. Or other games like Splatoon 3 that simply don’t include the full game on the cart and prompt you to download launch-day content after booting it up.

Neither of these games will be very playable even with physical cards once the Switch eShop servers go down for good.

We can only hope the current standard of backwards compatibility lasts indefinitely so all digital stores can basically be like Steam going forward and keep their content available across all future generations. But even that is a stretch when who even knows what the state of CPU architecture will look like in 15-20 years.

We don’t know tariff cost yet

Billionaires successfully dissolved the left into factions of people who all in-fight

I think this goes all the way back. Leftist groups have been competing basically as long as there’s been a right and left. Going back to the OG “Left,” the French Revolutionaries, you see the Jacobins seize power from the monarchists, after which they start to eliminate competing revolutionary groups who have some ideological differences. In Russia, you’ve got the Mensheviks being eliminated by the Bolsheviks, and then the Trotskyists being eliminated by the Stalinists.

Wherever there is a small difference in ideology and people willing to die for it, the left will always be at each other’s throats.

On the other hand, I think the right keeps succeeding precisely because of identity politics: they unify under an identity instead of an ideology, or I guess maybe more specifically they succeed at turning identity into ideology. Identity politics are pushed by the right as a way of forming out-groups so that the majority can remain unified and always have a “them” to distract from what the ruling “us” is doing.

I honestly did like the Magic Mouse as a concept, and the touch features were very nice. But it really needs to be taller in profile to fit the hand comfortably. More of an arch up, and with better right click detection, too.

Yep. Even if you’re buying a product which is by meaningful standards “100% American made,” consider the invisible costs. The cost of the packaging that they use, the cost of the supplies/equipment they use in production and the upkeep required to maintain them, the cost of the infrastructure they use for logistics and operations, etc.

All these less visible dependencies affect the cost of doing business and can still be impacted by tariffs if anything comes from overseas, even if the product itself is just a bottle of maple syrup made in Vermont.

It doesn’t matter who the hell wants to buy TikTok if ByteDance still doesn’t want to sell.

I don’t know why we keep having these sorts of conversations when they’ve signalled they have no intent to give in to the demands of the US.

Fuck Oracle.

If only we knew at the time how prophetic that damn commercial would be…

Definitely not a good thing. I use Proton VPN, but only because I paid for a license before I realized the CEO is a scumbag. A lot of people are moving away from Proton’s platform, so a browser choosing to bundle it in is just privacy-violating bloatware for everyone except for a subset of users who are also still using Proton, and also for some reason don’t just have the standalone app installed.