I was 100% with you and thought W. Bush was a worse president than Trump, all the way up until January 6. All the ramifications of it are still playing out so it remains to be seen which is worse.

Dubbya basically set in motion all the problems we face today in his failed response to 9/11 - instability and refugees from the middle east and ‘drill baby drill’ environmental catastrophe. We’re still suffering the consequences.

Trump and anti-democracy and January 6 - the reprocussions are still playing out. His loss on Tuesday could have done a lot to right the wrongs and stop the bleeding. But now they’re going to be supercharged and the most important thing we can do is ensure that a fair vote can happen in 2026 and 2028. If that doesn’t happen we’re lost, and the deck will be heavily stacked against us.

Exactly! They’re putting in the work there and getting some fantastic things done. Lots of other great stuff on that ballot too.

And I’d add - get active the other 364 days of the year.

If we want better options we first need ranked choice voting and we need to get money out of politics. And none of that is going to happen if our only political action each year is voting.

Oh damn didn’t know that. Definitely changes the calculus

Love this game. My buddy and I are waiting for the next full release to start a new campaign. Looks like they’ve added a lot since we played last.

Really looking forward to NPCs though, hope they don’t wait too many decades to complete that.

Wait really?!

I never really thought about it I guess - I’ve got a bunch of stuff I’m archiving locally that I always felt like it’d be a shame if it disappeared. Would be nice to have a real place for it.

No that’s very true, I had it look up leather repair shops not too long ago and it listed six completely fictional shops with fully fleshed out trip-advisor style blurbs for each one. It was hilariously convincing and a complete waste of my time. But it does seem like that happens less and less lately.

I’m extremely wary and nervous about how disruptive LLMs can/will be but one relief is just getting an answer directly for things instead of wading through page after page of SEO optimized BS. Just really nice when you can get a quick answer and get back to the things you want to be doing.

I suppose the AI overlords will screw that up somehow too but IMO it’s at a brief moment of usefulness.

Step 1: defeat Trump Step 2: help reshape Democratic party

Because the fact is, if we don’t do step 1 first, we’ll have our work cut out for us the next four or more years just being back in ‘The Resistance’. Which you know isn’t going to make the Dems more liberal, it’s going to pull them to the right as more dissatisfied Trump voters finally peel off.

On the other hand, the more resounding of a defeat we can dish out to the GQP and MAGA, the easier it will be to send them into the wilderness to regroup politically so we can focus all of our energies on the Democratic party.