I mean, you kid, but in most democracies that’s literally how it works. If the government can’t pass something essential like a funding bill you get to elect a new government.

I mean, the main failsafes we have in Canada are pretty simple.

First, there is no debt calling. Once a budget is passed it remains in effect until a new budget is passed. Government departments are funded until specific actions are taken to make them not be funded.

Second, and this is the main one; budgets are considered confidence votes. That means if you ever fail to pass one, you’re done. Hand over the keys to country, you don’t get to drive it anymore. Either the opposition forms a government if they’re united enough to do so, or we go to the polls and elect a new one.

The first part means that during this process the basic mechanisms of state all continue to function. No one misses a paycheck. It can be annoying having to go to the polls again, maybe a few times in a row even if political deadlock is particularly bad, but ultimately its the voters who get to decide the outcome, not the politicians.

Anyway, thanks for the detailed answer.

Now that’s useful context that I didn’t know. Thank you.

But that’s not a built in feature of the political system, is it? Like, you do see the difference, right?

Fuck ups happen everywhere. Canada has plenty of them. But what’s happening in the US is apparently just how the system is designed. Hence the question; why design it that way?

Yes, the $250 million is all private funding. Completely above board.

Also, totally coincidentally and not at all related, Trump wants the DOJ to pay him $230 million of tax payers money. Totally unrelated. Don’t know why I brought it up.

Man, my country burned the White House down and this still hurts to watch.

Can any Americans explain to me, a Canadian, how it makes sense for essential services like food benefits to be suspended just because your government can’t get their shit together?

Like, genuine question here; how is this is a good system? How does your country benefit from things being designed this way? I’m not saying we don’t ever have political deadlock in Canada, we most certainly do, but even as someone who gets half my household income from the military, I’ve never had to worry about a missed paycheck just because politicians are being stupid. We have failsafes for that. Why don’t you?

Best sanity system ever. Plenty of games have simulated characters going insane, but only Eternal Darkness had the sheer fuck you energy needed to simulate the player going insane.

If you dig that vibe, give Signalis a go. Incredible love letter to the horror classics, and an incredible game in it’s own right.

Riven is a significantly better game. It places you in a cohesive, well thought out world where everything feels like it has a structure and a logic to it, it makes exploring that world hugely rewarding, and it weaves the puzzles into the diagetic logic of the world in a way that feels seamless.

One of the very few genuine flaws in Outer Wilds is that it does a really, really bad job of ensuring players find the rumor map / discovery board. It’s such an essential feature, one that so often makes or breaks people’s experience of the game, and I’ve seen so many players express this exact same sentiment of “I had no idea what it was doing” only for someone to point out that they’d missed the rumor map.

And every horror movie should be ten minutes long and end with the kids taking one look at the spooky cabin, getting back in the car and driving back to their dorm.

I switched to Tidal. It’s missing a few features, but the music library is basically the same (the only songs that didn’t transfer over from my Spotify library were very obscure anime soundtrack stuff) and the audio quality is superb.

Why isn’t Trump going after these people? Because the first door the feds would have to kick in is his own, obviously.

The correct answer to this question is always Outer Wilds.

It’s a game that can be beaten in five minutes if you already know the solution. But the process of discovering that solution, and unearthing the incredible story around it, is one of the most unbelievable gaming experiences you will ever have.

It’s an absolute masterpiece and if you haven’t played it yet, you really, really need to.

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People sometimes ask me why I, as a Canadian, care so much about what happens in US politics.

This is why. Because you mouth-breathing, knuckle dragging neolithic reprobates have been handed the keys to an economy and military so powerful that you can bully the rest of the world into doing whatever the fuck you like and rather than treat that as the awe inspiring responsibility that it is, you low-life ignorant pieces of shit get drunk and go joy-riding.

Sure, but they’ve already got plenty of made up reasons to arrest people, all of which were harder to disprove than “Cartel hitman”, a claim that would need serious fucking evidence.

Don’t let them fool you. This isn’t an escalation, it’s a retreat. A small one, sure, but it signals that things aren’t going their way.

So, obviously this is a lie, but I think it’s interesting that they’re having to resort to this particular lie. Until now the argument has basically been “Ooooh, spooky scary antifa protesters!” as justification for their extreme tactics, unwarranted use of force, concealed identities, and all of the other bullshit. The fact that they’re now having to raise the spectre of evil scary cartels going after them tells you that the public isn’t buying the “scary protesters” line at all. Portland, in particular, have demolished that idea with their dancing frogs, street parties and naked bike rides.

“I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

No argument on any of those points, I think you nailed it. My concern however is that we’re seeing a lot of stuff in the media talking about Russia’s readiness for another conventional war, and while that assessment is accurate, it needs much better framing than it’s currently getting. When Zelensky is running around saying that Russia is gearing up for another invasion, that’s just blatant bullshit. I get it, he needs to fearmonger to keep the weapons to Ukraine flowing, and I respect the hustle, but I worry that people are being worked up into this fear of Russian “escalation” that’s going to actually lead to more people pushing for appeasement out of fear of what Russia can do.

Yes, they’re not a paper tiger, and if pushed into a conflict with NATO, they could certainly make that conflict a brutal and bloody one (especially if the US sat it out), but that’s not the same thing as “Putin will nuke the world if we so much as look at him funny”, which is the message that people are getting from the current discussions around Russia’s military capabilities. There needs to a better, more informed, more nuanced conversation about the realities of Russia’s ability to prosecute a wider scale war.

And I think it is important to discuss the fact that Russia is currently losing this war, despite what their gradual battlefield progress would suggest. That matters because we need the average member of the public to understand that an end is in sight. Our continued support can see Ukraine through this, and there is a version of events where Russia is forced to capitulate and agree to at least somewhat neutral terms for an armistice. No, Ukraine is never going to be rolling tanks into Moscow, but that’s not the only version of victory possible. We need people to understand that in order to justify the resources we’re supplying to Ukraine (resources that are, it must be emphasised, currently allowing us to tie up and potentially defeat a major threat at a fraction of the cost of a conventional war).