I understand your frustration, but if you stick to this, you will be abstaining entirely from the electoral process.

Once again, there are only three choices:

1. Party that can win.

2. Other party that can win.

3. Shooting yourself in the dick.

You seem to be a #3 voter. Is feeling good about shooting yourself in the dick really better than effecting real change? Nah.

Check out some Doom Eternal speedruns. (I guess 100% speedruns so you aren't seeing people glitching through the game.) That game is actually extremely fast-paced. Good players are swapping through all fifty of their weapons every 4 seconds. Come to think of it, I wonder if the need for gore kills is a consequence of me sucking. (I think the chainsaw for ammo is unavoidable, though.)

As you said, it doesn't matter because you don't live in anything resembling a swing state, but for those of us who do: please vote strategically. Vote for whomever you like in the primary. (And DO vote in the primary, for fuck's sake!) Vote for Bernie Sanders. (I did!) Vote for the DSA candidate. (I often do.) Vote for the green party, or libertarians, or write in your cool uncle. Whatever! The primary is your time to vote for who you really want. But when it comes to the general election, please vote for the left-most nominee of the party that has a realistic shot at winning. It doesn't always feel good, but there are exactly three options in a first past the post general election:

1. Voting for the party that can win.

2. Voting for the other party that can win.

3. Not participating. You might think your write-in or third party is distinct from Option #3. I regret to inform you that it isn't.

If we were to do this for a decade or so, the GOP would evaporate and the Dems would eventually split into a neoliberal pro-business party and a progressive pro-labor party. Do I want Newsom to be the nominee? Fuck no. I hate that prick. But if he's the one running against Marco Rubio or whoever? Yeah, I can hold my nose and fill in that bubble.

If we fail to do this, we only empower fascists. Look around.

(And BTW, the party more likely to give us Ranked Choice so we don't need to do this is, you guessed it, the Democrats...)

I didn't like the mandatory finishing moves either, and to be honest, I didn't finish the game, but I got a lot further than DOOM 2016 and I thought the gunplay felt really snappy and satisfying in the way the OG games did. The levels were diverse and I actually liked the platforming puzzles, but I'm also the kind of guy who played surf maps in CounterStrike and strafejump races in Quake, so I'm predisposed to that sort of thing.

Oh well. They made a thing and it's not for everyone. I wonder if you'd like The Dark Age. I haven't played it yet.

it's easy to just completely avoid interacting with LLMs.

I wish that were true. Have you seen reddit lately? Lemmy isn't immune but I haven't encountered any obvious bot posts here yet.

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

It seems like we're plunging into fascism, but maybe this upcoming midterms will (not be rigged and) prove to be an effective backlash to the US' reactionary coup. What do you figure the odds are we pull out of this and say, "huh actually let's try that FDR thing instead of this Nazi shit"?

Not to "My generation good other generations bad," but Millennials and Gen X really grew up with technology as it was becoming impressively capable, but required a lot of technical know-how to use. It's really apparent in the workplace: our fresh-out-of-college guys and ready-for-retirement guys alike come to people around my age when stuff isn't working. Everything's too easy now, and it's hard to look under the hood. (Of course, there are still exceptions for enthusiasts, but you're never forced to tinker with a raspberry pi.)

And here I thought I was done with penis inspection day after I graduated high school.

Renting can be a good option, especially when you consider the way equity vs interest are structured in the first few years of a mortgage. It's 99% interest at first, and then it slowly inverts year-over-year, which sure feels like renting my house from the bank for the first ten years... but I can't call up the bank and make them fix my electrical, plumbing, or appliances.

It would be nice to see a ban on renters snapping up existing properties, and a limit on how long single family newly constructed homes can be kept as rental properties.

Safe space? I'm an OG internet troll. You suck at this.

I can't wait for Trump's name to be on a memorial. I say we build the most gilded latrine evar! It can be a granite mausoleum that empties directly onto his carcass.

It's a long series of mistakes. Not finishing off the Confederacy, not putting Nixon in prison for Watergate and sabotaging peace talks with the Vietcong, not putting Reagan in prison for sabotaging negotiations during the Iran Hostage Crisis. They've been crooks for a century and there's only one solution.