There’s am awful lot of medium size companies staffed by regular every day people for every fat cat evil corporate overlord.

The only reason that medium sized company exists is because it hasn’t yet had the opportunity to grow into a behemoth, or it hasn’t yet been taken over by one. But that’s the goal of every firm, small, medium, or large: ever increasing profits, over all else, even over human well being. Some firms are just better at achieving that goal, often because they were first into an industry. These massive corporations didn’t start out massive, they grew from much smaller firms. The executives at giant corporations aren’t exceptionally evil, they’ve just demonstrated enough acumen for increasing profits to catch the eye of some giant corporation’s board chair (that and maybe they both went to the same business school and play golf together). And since ever increasing profits is the goal of every firm, every firm has to try and capture as many markets as possible, and that means the small and medium sized firms will be captured eventually, unless they are able to grow into a massive corporation themselves.

Women can have it all: all the responsibilities, all the obligations, and all the stress.

I’ve played a ton of NMS for the same reason I’ve played a ton of Minecraft: you can build and be creative, and you can acquire and upgrade stuff until it’s maxed out. But, once I’ve built my base and maxed out all my stuff, I lose interest. Fallout 4 also has base building and item customization and upgrades, but there are also story missions and objectives.

at some point some country will weigh the risks of climate change and take matters into its own hands.

Yeah, I could see that happening. Maybe even the US. Maybe Elon Musk reads a Twitter thread about geoengineering, decides it’s the solution to warming, starts a company called GeoX and convinces Trump and the Republicans to give him and GeoX $5 billion a year, he buys a bunch of jets, fills them with sulfur dioxide and has them fart out a bunch of it around the Arctic every year. GeoX stocks soar, Musk becomes the first trillionaire, and the US federal government has added only a trivial amount to its already vast debt total. It almost doesn’t matter if it works or not.

Yes, it was sarcasm. But, I think the push for solar geoengineering, or as some people are calling it “solar radiation management” is coming.

So, what does this all mean for us? It means we have even less time to get our act together. Reducing emissions isn’t just a good idea — it’s crucial.

I don’t think this will motivate countries to dramatically increase emissions reduction efforts, but I think it will motivate countries to begin geoengineering. Geoengineering is cheaper and easier than rapid emissions reduction, and the results are more immediate. Yes, it doesn’t solve the core problem, which is the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere, but it treats the symptom, albeit temporarily. Why put a lot of time, money, and effort into fixing the core problem when you can spend comparatively less time, money, and effort just treating the symptom? Then you can just pretend the core problem doesn’t exist and go about business as usual.

Edit: sorry, I should have added the /s.

The switch and the steam deck have really changed the game.

I used to think like this and if you’re genuinely interested there are tons of resources online

Alright, well if you’re not willing to explain how or why you changed your thinking on this topic, at least link me to even one of these “resources.”

Help me understand. Help me overcome my narrow, “fundamentalist” thinking. If net positive, net negative, and net neutral are not the only logical possibility, then what other possibilities are there?

If you’re arguing that determining the net of something like globalization is complex and challenging, I agree, but I don’t see how that proves that there are more logical possibilities than the three I’ve identified. Modern global civilization is extraordinarily complex, and yet we try to find ways to measure the effects or outcomes of modern civilization to determine if it has been a net positive or net negative for humanity. This is at the heart of the concept of “progress.” Now, maybe you don’t subscribe to this concept, maybe you reject the grand narrative of human progress, and if that’s the case, well, fair enough, but I can tell you that most of the proponents of globalization absolutely do subscribe to the concept of human progress, and they have advocated for globalization because they believe it will further said progress.

If you’re arguing that “positive” and “negative” in this context are inherently subjective, and thus there’s no way to determine if globalization is objectively positive or negative, that’s fair, but if that’s your argument then it’s just as valid for someone to say globalization is bad as it is for someone to say globalization is good.

But free trade only among the “good” countries is not global free trade. So the idea of global free trade has already disappeared.

Globalisation and free trade are a good thing as long as everyone involved is doing it with good intentions.

And as you’ve pointed out, not everyone involved is doing with good intentions, therefore it’s not a good thing.

Sure, if you wanna do absolutes, you could probably calculate whether the bad effect of China fucking up the world by giving their companies an infinite money cheat code is worse than the benefits. And you’d arrive at some result.

And clearly liberals have arrived at the conclusion that the bad effects outweigh the benefits, since they are abandoning their previous commitment to open borders and free trade, and moving more toward protectionist policies and reshoring industries.

That doesn’t make any sense. Certainly they thought free trade and globalization would be a net positive for someone. Otherwise, why do it?

The only options I can see are: net negative, net positive, or net neutral. Either good exceeds the bad, the bad exceeds the good, or the good and bad cancel each other out. But, my point was not necessarily about the number of options, but that it is logically impossible for free trade and globalization to be both a net positive and a net negative simultaneously. It must necessarily be one or the other, just like you can’t be both dead and alive at the same time. So, which is it?

At very least, liberals made a miscalculation. They assumed that free trade and globalization would be a net positive, but recent history had made them rethink that position. I think that is because they assumed it would lead to the world embracing liberalism - liberal democracy and neoliberal capitalism, specifically - essentially becoming the only sociopolitical/socioeconomic system in the world. This did not happen. China became a major economic force, despite not being a liberal democracy or neoliberal capitalist, and they show no signs of becoming a liberal nation. It turns out, free trade and globalization can be used by non-liberals to increase their power and influence too. Whoops.

All These things can be true at the same time.

So, you’re saying that free trade and globalization can be both good and bad simultaneously? Certainly free trade and globalization can have both positive and negative aspects simultaneously, but it can’t be both a net positive and a net negative simultaneously.

Liberals: free trade and globalization are good

China becomes a major force in production and global trade

Liberals: free trade and globalization are bad

Consumption of world’s wealthiest people also making it increasingly difficult to limit global heating to 1.5C

We’re not going to achieve the 1.5C target. It’s just not going to happen. Yes, it might (might!) still be physically possible to limit warming to 1.5C, but it’s not economically, politically, or socially possible. The only way we could achieve 1.5C at this point would be if there was some major economic collapse or some other major crisis. There’s no real way we can reduce GHG emissions at the rate necessary to achieve 1.5C while the global population, global economy, and average per person consumption rates continue to grow at their current pace. Some might say it is theoretically possible, but I don’t really care if it is. We’re not looking for theoretical solutions, we’re looking for actual solutions, and I think the actual solutions get us somewhere between 2.5C and 3C.

We live in a society that generally looks down on working class people. Not all working class people, equally, though, as not everyone who sells their labor is culturally or socially in the same class. A professional athlete making tens of millions of dollars a year can’t really be counted in the same social class as a factory worker making $50K a year. That being said, very, very few people get rich by earning a wage. Generally speaking, if you want to get rich you have to have access to capital.

And getting rich is the goal. One’s position in the social hierarchy is closely tied to their wealth and income. For this reason, there’s a strong incentive to NOT do work that doesn’t pay a lot. Unfortunately for all of us, much of that work is absolutely essential for the functioning of any modern society. So, there’s a disconnect. The incentives are skewed, away from some of the most essential work and toward some of the least essential work. I think the long term effects of this could be disastrous, as we see more and more shortages of workers in essential fields.

But fear not, the capitalists have anticipated this and they have a solution: immigrants. Just bring people in from other countries to do the essential yet low wage, low status work. I don’t really think that’s a solution at all, and is more or less just delaying the inevitable.

US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller later stated the US believes this step is “not productive at all” due to the UN’s role in the region.

Wow, we are really taking a firm stance here. Israel better be careful or we might become slightly miffed, or maybe even peeved.

Nintendo doesn’t want you to play their games if you’re not willing to follow their rules. Ok, that’s their prerogative, but that means I will not be playing their games…at least not their new ones.

I prefer playing on my Steam Deck these days, and I really don’t want to buy another handheld just to play Nintendo first party titles. I’m going to play some of my favorite classic Nintendo titles on my Deck using emulators and just not play the new stuff. I’m sure they’re great games, but so what? There are lots of great games. I’ve got a huge backlog of great games already in my Steam library, and 20 more on my wishlist. If Nintendo some day decides to make their titles available for Steam Deck or PC, I’d consider buying them, but since that’s extremely unlikely to happen, I think I’m just done with Nintendo.

Nintendo has burned through all the good will they developed with me when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s. I doubt I’ll ever buy another Nintendo product again. Not that it matters to Nintendo, though. I’m many years removed from their target demographic. They make products for young people and that ain’t me. I’m sure those younger Nintendo fans will keep supporting the company, but, as for me, I’ve got the classic Nintendo games I want and I’ll keep playing them on whatever device I want. If Nintendo doesn’t like that, they can kiss my whole ass.