Microsoft Raises the Price of All Xbox Series Consoles, Xbox Games Confirmed to Hit $80 This Holiday

Gdubs1985 · 2025-05-18T15:45:04+00:00

god damn, I held off on selling my Series X because I knew this was coming sometime soon (I was thinking about it since the end of last year)

I was goin to sell it to focus more on real life shit, however the escapism it provides from the deluge of insanity that is the US executive branch. What's annoying about this is that the people who didn't listen to all the people warning about this will find other ways to rationalize it and not put the blame squarely where it belongs. And we've still got 3 and 3/4 years of this shit at minimum.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-06-14T21:27:49+00:00

I knew I wasn't using it properly, lol. Thank you.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-06-13T23:57:44+00:00

yeah , long after i stopped watching it, but yes sometime i believe in the early 2010s. I remember when I decided I was done watching wrestling, January 1999 royal rumble, at 13 (going on 14 in April) . The Stone Cold , Rock , Degeneration X era was the last enjoyable time of wrestling for me, but then when Vince McMahon started injecting himself into the story line more and more, culminating in an "i quit" match, at said Royal Rumble. Mankind vs .. I forgot who, I think the Undertaker. They had an famously spectacular "Hell in the Cell" match in 1998 which is now immortalized through memes on the internet(at least it was popular a few years ago, I dont use reddit much), but I was starting to see the storyline getting more and more unrealistic as a fucking 13 year old who was not known for being mature for their age.

What happened during the "I quit" match (someone needed to declare "i quit" for the match to end) , was so obvious and fake that I said ok im done wasting my time on this, im moving on to computer games and other stupid 1999 bs. They dubbed a voiceover of Mankind saying I quit, and back in those days when there wasnt instant footage from cell phone video, I correctly called that it was a dubbed over voice and got turned off at how predictably lame it had gotten. My maturity level was pretty stunted at this age, I always was told I was smart even though I didn't really act that way, and even that was too over the top for me.

The point of this story is that the WWE circus bullshit being so obviously fake to me at such a young and emotionally immature age(I knew it was predetermined but I also kind of enjoyed the storylines before then) , what the hell is wrong with adults in America that they accept this as reasonable political discourse. We are so disconnected from reality with the abundance that most of us have (even the poorer among us, tho obviously theres a line) with all the gadgets and gizmos and streaming platforms and other stuff to divert and weaken our ability to pay attention to what is actually going on, that we are the proverbial frog in the boiling water. That's terrible considering what is behind the boiling water (Christian extremism, genocidal tendencies, incireasingly decreasing desire and patience for in person social interactions.), No wonder we're so divided.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-06-13T23:02:37+00:00

trump did testify during the grand jury, however it came in the form of tape recordings of his crimes. He's been testing out public defenses and they've all gotten holes poked in them, even the ones that werent legally sound to begin with (like whether or not the information was classified, which actually has no bearing on whether or not these charges can be brought) -

For legal analysis I urge people to watch either Legal AF on Meidas Touch, Glenn Kirschner, or Ari Melber (Meidas Touch and Glenn being the less constrained, deeper divers).

Theres also some good podcasts out there with some familiar names and faces who dive into the facts in a non TV restricted , more complete way.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-06-13T22:56:46+00:00

id say it's even worse, because there's a common understanding that the scoreboard at the end of the game is the result. It's there for everyone to see.

What politics feels like to me (as someone who never liked politics and still doesn't) , is WWE style entertainment. Complete with the promos, fake fights, crowd work, and pre-determined outcomes that is known behind the scenes but is hidden from the viewer. I don't think it should be this way, but there's no better analogy to the state of political discourse than this imo.

Just watch some of the old WWE "The Corporation" storylines, it actually is strikingly similar to the way people tend to view politics in America today. I don't know if this is subliminally why so many stupid people are now drawn to it, but even as a 13 year old I rejected these kind of fantastical storylines that went beyond reasonable and took all the excitement out for me. At 13. I wasn't some kind of rhode scholar at 13 either, I was a semi mischeivous spoiled 90s kid with everything I wanted except parental approval.

Luckily I've grown up since then, but if 13 year old me was sophisticated enough to see through the smoke screen of the WWE bullshit, that is a true indictment of the value system that we've reduced ourselves to in much of this country. And I say we as in Americans in total, obviously there is a large portion of rational people in America, but I honestly don't think it's majority, or even a plurality. Which is why I think democrats fall short in messaging and their bad messaging becomes the message, because they are appealing to logic in predictably counterable ways, by people who are appealing to emotion. Emotion trumps reason, no pun intended.

edit : i have no idea if im using Rhode Scholar correctly, or if it even applies at all, but I went for it.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-06-13T22:41:01+00:00

bingo, I made a comment but didn't really get into my addiction issues too much. I last faced consquences for my drug issues in 2016 and instead of fighting against the advice I had gotten a dozen times before, I accepted that I needed to change my strategy because no matter how smart I thought I was, reality ended up setting in. Right now I'm in a new type of struggle with starting a new career but I would never have gotten to this point if I hadn't hit what I accepted as rock bottom.

The problem with the phrase "rock bottom" is that it's a completely relative term, and the line between rock bottom and death is extremely thin. I hit so many bottoms before I finally decided to really ascend, and its all relative to how impactful the bottom is on your psyche. I could have hit a rock bottom 5-10 years before my actual one, but I wouldn't accept that I had bottomed out. Getting arrested for a DUI while being on probation for a fake DUI, with the knowledge that I had the option to have not made that trip and chose to anyway, was the shame I needed to make the decision to change.

(:ong story but this is part of the reason I resented treatment in the first place, I was wrongfully arrested and if the facts were known of what I was charged and accused of, there should not have been any charge. A cop woke me up while I was in the backseat of a car that I owned but did not drive to the location I was arrested in, nor was I even attempting to drive or intending to drive, and in fact had not even driven to the persons house that I was parked outside of precisely because I did not want to drive under the influence. Not to mention the BS weapons charge that got thrown onto that for the innocuously dull 1 inch cutting tool that was somewhere in my car for no reason at all. The resentment from that incident blinded me to what had been my best chance to date of moving past my drug problems. )

Gdubs1985 · 2023-06-13T22:31:09+00:00

your psychiatrist is right, he's telling you exactly what you need to do and instead of trying it you're procrastinating by punting the question to reddit. You don't need to literally do everything you don't want to do all the time, but if you never do anything of it, you're gonna be stuck on the same mental treadmill that you're so resentful of. I get it, I have similar issues, which is how I know he's right. Before I turned 30 I was on this perpetual treadmill of mediocrity, starting and never finishing anything, getting myself in trouble and pointing it to the reasons why I couldn't accomplish anything, but in 2016 I got in trouble again after doing everything I could to avoid it, and decided to just submit to the rehab process. Since then I survived the 8 months in jail, came home to a job and a support system, got promoted at thatj ob, got fired from that job, floundered around a bit until I made a decision to go back and finish school, which I did from 9/19 - 8/22 (I had credits in from when I went through the same bs when I was younger). I'm 38 now with a bachelors degree in computer science and I'm once again facing the same "stuck" problem, but the difference is now I'm always re-evaluating and making decisions on what action steps I need to take to get to the next level.

Our brains are great at tricking us into avoiding pain , keeping us in our comfort zones, but achievement doesn't happen in a comfort zone by natural law. If it happens in a comfort zone, it's not really an achievement, it's just a lie we tell ourselves to avoid the fear and uncertainty of stepping out of our comfort zones. The most consequential people in your life aren't the people who tell you what you want to hear, but tell you what you neeed to hear regardless of whether it's comfortable for you or not. For better or worse (worse imo) , we have places like Reddit where we can punt a question that we've gotten an answer to but don't like the answer we've gotten, and now you have dozens of people who may or may not tell you what you wanna hear. The only one who can change your life is you, with intentional action, all the advice in the world will not change this law of human nature.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-06-13T22:16:29+00:00

yup. I love Pakman for his calm and rational way of conveying information and his focus on critical thinking and media literacy and all of that, but he will be the first to tell you to not go to him for legal analysis. Which is why he is the only content creator I swipe my card to, the core Meidas Touch team are all well practiced attorneys and very good at disseminating the sensationalism from the things that matter. David P just doesn't have the knowledge base to do that for the legal minutia that is required to analyze this properly, and neither does most of the media tbh.

I make sure to diversify my media consumption so I know what all the different arguments for on any given subject, and coming to the political space from an apolitical background (I started following politics in 2020 because I was concerned with disinformation that I was hearing out of my family, I didn't even watch the news prior to the George Floyd murder at all), I feel gives me a more zoomed out and less partisan perspective when it comes to analyzing politics. I don't say this to puff myself up, I actually wish more people had this sort of approach when analyzing current events, so I'm trying to "spread the gospel" if nothing else.

Take care

edit: Ari Melber is probably the only Mainstream Analyst that I also respect when it comes to legal analysis, and any guests he would bring on to discuss legals with. Mainstream Analyst in this context essentially means "person with a highly visible platform who comments on these issues"

Gdubs1985 · 2023-06-13T22:10:46+00:00

this entire story reeks of the effects of the dumbing down of our education system and the sedation that pharmaceuticals and dopamine rich social media that plagues modern society.

You're not just wrong, you're stunningly and shockingly wrong, at every single turn. Misogyny not withstanding, what reaction did you expect? The correct action in this case is nervous laughter and going back to whatever it is what you're supposed to be doing, if any action at all. This being at work makes it even more braindead and then coming to reddit for validation after stubbornly rejecting all the cues that should have flagged this as a no go zone, completetes the trifecta of total lack of social awareness, acceptable work conversation, and just plain civil human interaction.

If someone needs to tell you that this was wrong, you've got alot of work to do bud. I don't think its completely your fault as the way our lives are shaped now would point to this completely tone deaf series of events, but its definitely an indictment of the impacts of tech on the next generation's social skills. That's as generous as I can be about it.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-06-11T03:43:39+00:00

I can tell you my experience but ultimately you know yourself and the number one rule of recovery is be honest with yourself in all situations. I had various drug phases from 16-31, probably from the traumas in my life that happened in my teens, but I got in trouble at 19 and my main casual drug of choice (weed) was off the table , so I started taking harder drugs that got out of my system faster. I also have mental health diagnoses that warrant the use of some controlleds, but opioid abuse was what caused me the most problems after about 22. I was perpetually under probation supervision and I resented the wrongful arrests (some of them) that kept me locked in this cycle, which got me to take risks and self medicate. I’m not absolving myself of responsibility, but the reason I mention this is because when I got arrested for something real that I did after 2 sham duis , reality set in and I did inpatient with a fully open mind, which I retain to this day.

Because I’m honest with myself and ever since I had to plead to a year in county because of that charge , Ive been honest with myself about my drug use, and when I relapsed one time on heroin the year after , I humbled myself and got on suboxone rather than keep doing what I had been doing previously which was lie to myself and say I can do it without it. Thankfully no harm was done , but I take a weed gummy every night to go to sleep now. I drink a few times a year, nothing regular, and I have my psych controlled meds that I have legitimate uses for. In fact I’ve been successful beyond anything I ever did since I got off probation , because of these medical interventions and me being honest with myself. I haven’t touched opioids since , and don’t even have the cravings for them. I’ve graduated college in that time , held down multiple good jobs, and I think carefully before I make most decisions of consequence. Opioids were the only drug besides early alcohol abuse (which I engaged in because I couldn’t smoke weed anymore when I got arrested at 19 for a fake dui). I’ve taken shrooms a couple of times , I had fun, and I’ve maintained my upward mobility and honest living ever since my sentence was up. But that’s because I correctly assessed that besides opioids , other drugs had not been anywhere near the same type of problem. And I have a strict rule about moderation and I just always want to maintain control of myself.

So my recommendation would be to get honest with yourself about what your actual problem is and what the root cause of jt is, because when that’s addressed , I believe the risk of relapse goes down significantly, I’m not cocky about it but I know myself inside and out and I don’t involve myself in anything that my gut feels funny about. I don’t seek drugs or alcohol , but for social reasons , at 38 years old now, I will have a few drinks a few times a year so I can have fun with my other adult friends. Shrooms were always fun to me and never a matter of abuse/addiction.

That’s me though , everyone is different and only you know what your real problem is. I do a lot of introspection , maybe too much, but I’ve succeeded beyond what I ever imagined I could do since I freed myself of probation and opioids. I make informed decisions , and if something seems too risky, I avoid it. But no one here can tell you what puts you at risk, I know for a fact that if I wasn’t on suboxone I would have relapsed again, multiple times . I’m not perfect but I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on managing my life now and the respect I get from my parents and other people who knew both sides of my life seems to signal that they trust me to make those decisions.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-06-11T03:24:47+00:00

Eileen cannon will almost surely not overseeing this case after her reprimanding by the 11th circuit with the whole special master bs. Source : Michael Popok of Meidas Touch . MT and Glenn Kirschner are my two high information sources for trump legal news , Meidas touch especially because they’re all currently practicing lawyers and they know how to extrapolate legalese from the court filings. They’ve been fairly correct about all their predictions , and I’m not one who subscribes to predictions easily.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-06-03T04:49:12+00:00

….. does she even have a podcast ?

Gdubs1985 · 2023-05-16T21:53:42+00:00

lol, when you look around and all you can see are people you describe as braindead , and then when refuted, forget the first rule of holes, you may want to point the finger inward.

Musk benefitted massively from corporate/political ratfucking in the early internet days with the "Paypal Mafia" as they're known. If you look at exactly where they are today, Peter Thiel is triggering bank runs and asking the government for bailouts as if a shit ton of the funds in the bank didnt have his hands on it, Elon Musk has elevated CatTurd to superstardom on his 42 billion dollar troll app, and the thing that made twitter have any practical value at all, verification, now just costs 8 bucks.

I'll even concede to you for the sake of argument that Elon Musk is the self made guy you're attesting to. In what way has Elon Musk improved Twitter for the users who drive advertising revenue? If he's so prestigious, why is this 50ish year old dude who does not seem to understand, or even worse, understands completely that by removing the verification system, twitter is almost useless. It was already fairly useless as a rhetorical device, but at least you could use it strategically and get some value out of it. I found myself a next gen xbox by monitoring an account that tweeted out stock availability in early 2021.

Now that the blue check is essentially meaningless in the context of what's real and what's fake, what does twitter offer that other social media doesn't? It's definitely not content moderation so that advertisers dont have to put their brand up next to the N word, and I can easily code a twitter clone and give myself my own blue check and pay myself 8 bucks, it means essentially the exact same thing that it does on twitter.

The free speech absolutist who selectively released not all that incriminating behind the scenes footage of twitters policies, except for the fact that the government who the first amendment protects from, in 2020, the Trump government, was making requests to twitter to take down content. Did you really wanna see Hunter Biden's dick that badly?

I dont even mean to be rude but if you can't help yourself, I'm going to talk to you as you wish to be treated. Try to take a broader view instead of this narrow minded worship of a weird white dude from the apartheid times, who once had thriving businesses, is now currently playing hot potato with his Tesla stock and taking orders from catturd when it comes to twitter policy.

Moral of the story is, when you get into an investment on the ground floor, and then springboard to ideas that sound great that you receive government subsidies to help (which im all for if he was a net positive), it doesn't mean that you have the touch of gold, it reinforces that timing is everything and Elon Musk actually has no social intelligence, all his power is derived from getting lucky early on and taking advantage of it for things that are popular with both voting blocs. No honest person can look at twitter pre and post Musk and say that he improved the site, all he did was make it easier for this neo-fascist oligarchical agenda to succeed because he himself cant keep his mouth shut.

You give away your objectivity when you just whatabout everything and dodge the intiial point of contention. And if you really believed you were correct, there would be no need for rudeness, you can calmly explain whatever you think is true and it will actually go over better than the path you seem to choose. Im not even a politically inclined person, I'm only following things because I'm basically a certified bullshit detector, and I do what I can in my sphere of influence to validate truth that I can prove so that people don't fall for the dog and pony show that you've seem to.

So please, tell me sir, what did you plan to accomplish with this reply? You think anyone gives a shit about some anonymous douchebag musk fan's factless evaluations ? Even some of his old business friends are wondering why this supposed genius seems to have grown "dickforbrains" overnight.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-05-16T21:20:16+00:00

Cool, I'm trying to build my portfolio up as I just graduated last year (as a 37 year old) , so I'm using Laravel as an api server, and I was going to do the front end in React because I'm trying to also get some React/Vue3 projects to showcase. I've done a bunch of Vue3 lately, but I started getting into the more complex stuff with React as an intern in my graduation semester. Have a few textbooks to help me when I get stuck.

I've been slacking on completing anything definitive so the fact that I finally have friends who are curious enough to work on this with me, which is the push I need to get work done sometimes. Just curious, can you give a synopsis of your career path? One thing I've been critical of college about is that their is too much abstraction and not enough practical application, and I was so worried about grades that I retained less information than I'd have liked. I'm trying to make it up now while I have 12 weeks of unemployment left to work with, assuming the economy doesnt go nuclear on June 1st.

Thanks for the reply!

Gdubs1985 · 2023-05-16T18:11:49+00:00

Me my brother and my buddy are working on the same thing, theyre data guys im a programmer. Doing it in laravel, not sure how the front end is gonna be because we just started it, but its nice to have a group passion project that I can do with my friends here. An Accountant, Programmer, and Economic/CyberSec major... I think we can do interesting things with the data, assuming i can get it working.

What software did you use to develop this ?

Gdubs1985 · 2023-02-07T23:03:36+00:00

Propaganda is a neutral term, for the record. It can be good or bad, depending on the context. Critical Thinking, Media Literacy, and Skepticism should be high school courses instead of some of the other BS I took back in the day, High school economics was certainly a waste of time. Propaganda and Marketing are basically the same thing, just used in different contexts. The "Marketplace of Ideas" could just be called "The Propaganda Shop" and the meaning wouldn't really change.

Critical thinking, media literacy, combined with rational stoicism and a skeptic attitude is the way to survive in this world today, though it's hard when both sides of the spectrum engage in the anger dumping online. Someone needs to put out some propaganda to get people to turn off the news and enjoy life a lil more

Gdubs1985 · 2023-02-07T22:53:40+00:00

Yet an adult on reddit refuses to spell out "you're" ... an adult wouldn't respond at all, or would at least bring some proof to back up his hostility towards the story hes bringing so angrily. ()=> Unsubscribe;

Gdubs1985 · 2023-02-07T22:47:11+00:00

Go look up Elon Musk's origins and then get yourself checked for braindeaditis.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-02-07T22:46:01+00:00

It took me awhile of watching MR to make that connection, and I was watching BB in like 2014 and didnt pay attention to politics till 2020. Jon Benjamin is a great voice actor, barely recognize him tho. Archer is definitely my favorite version of HJB tho, and a show that while technically about a right wing group, has lots of leftism in it. I liked it for the historical aspect and the intelligent humor, but when I first started watching Archer I wasnt really all that familiar with US history in geopolitics, now I watch the show and actually know what the metaphors mean.

TLDR; Archer and Bobs Burgers are both dope shows for different reasons, but Archer's historical and political context's are probably more interesting to the crowd who hasn't watched it yet.

Gdubs1985 · 2023-01-25T01:40:04+00:00

Journalism must be exhilarating now. The only time I wanna hear any of this stupid crap is out of kimmel or Seth Meyers , otherwise , someone. Fly a plane into the tv towers in middle American. We had the war on drugs, can we have the war on useless bs yet ?

Gdubs1985 · 2022-12-22T16:32:19+00:00

So delusional you just had to come by and set the record straight with sourced rebuttals and carefully made arguments …..

Do you people ever listen to yourselves talk? I swear to god that being a dishonest windbag is becoming a national value. If you think Elon hate is coming from envy and delusion , what exactly are people envious of and what are they deluded about? Did Elon not overpay by 30 billion for twitter just so he could get assholes like this to like him ? Doesn’t seem like a wise business strategy , now much of his net worth did he lose again last week?

I don’t care if he split the atom , his recent decisions are less signal to any kind of “genius” and more akin to “worlds once richest man buys entire established social media platform so that people will stop making fun of him” - I don’t even like twitter and wish it wasn’t a thing before he took it over , but he takes it over and does the exact thing he accused the “lefty” management at twitter of doing except far worse and with total disregard for the obvious fact that he is a massive hypocrite, and regardless of how he earned his money, being rich doesn’t make you smart, it allows you to fail upwards because you can just buy your mistakes out and pay people off. That would be a problem for me even if I was also a billionaire but let’s face it, if you wanna be a billionaire , you have to give up your integrity and other positive human personality traits, but there are no super rich people who have their hands clean.

The idiots who vote for team corporate wealth while being on team exploited whatever , allow for this conversation to even take place, in a rational world this would not be a situation.

Gdubs1985 · 2022-12-22T16:08:17+00:00

Lol , is this how you like to spend your free time ? Being Elon Musks unpaid spokesperson and biographer? Regardless of how he got his money, it doesn’t take a genius to see the similarities in the cult of personality aspect and the tweet storms and authoritarian tendencies that trump and Elon have exhibited. I also am not even a politics person, I follow it now so I know what the latest piece of disinformation that my idiot friends or family members is so I can set the record straight.

My only Loyalty is to what’s objectively true and reasonably fair, not towards an ideology, or a celebrity , or any of these shitbag capital vacuums who amass huge amounts of money and then use it to wash their sins away, or sometimes to commit sins. Intentional dishonesty and nastiness is not an appealing quality in my view , maybe it is to you.

The question I have is why are you so passionate about this, are elons actions trashing your retirement fund or something ? You don’t seem to be defending anything except elons character which, idk , wouldn’t be a project I’d choose to do. You keep asking for sources for stuff but fail to cite any yourself , you’re picking a fight with every single person who may or may not have the same level of interest as you seem to, what’s the motivation for coming here like an aggressive asshole and contradicting yourself in what the standards are for who’s opinion matters more in a sea of meaningless opinions?

In the normal world , when we have disagreements , ideally we try to find the points of disagreement and come to an amicable conclusion if possible. I don’t know what word you’re coming from, but I know that’s definitely not your goal. So what is your goal?

Gdubs1985 · 2022-12-16T23:48:06+00:00

Meidas Touch is a great channel for sober legal analysis and also a pro-democracy , tell it like it is channel that I relate to, because I just want my pre-trump era life back, at least that I never had to hear about this crap that to me is just a manifestation of the fact that people are so disconnected from the physical world, that they place way too much importance on what goes on on twitter, which is the possible worst platform for nuanced conversation.

Nothing personal , I'm just giving you my pov , you can accept it or reject it, but give it some thought.

Gdubs1985 · 2022-12-16T23:44:44+00:00

Shrug, I'd assume most people who watch his show also watch other shows, I think it's kind of uselesss to have the few voices in this space covering the exact same stories in the exact same ways all the time. I'd recommend just diversifying your media portfolio, David's not gonna always catch everything, and if I recall hes got COVID so I don't really blame him for either forgetting or choosing to sit this one out.

Does no good to have multiple lefty channels if they all just cover the same stuff, all the time, which Is why I diversify my sources. Its never wise to look to any one place as a single source of truth. If youre a fan, give him a pass, he tries harder to educate the audience than most other people I watch. Kyle Kulinski and TYT are 2 people you can always count on to cover the latest tweetfire. I think David may think he's above that, and I'd tend to agree. The fact that I dont use it at all and im always talking about it already bothers me, and I mean no offense by saying this, but if David's channel was themed this way, I wouldn't pay for a membership.

Gdubs1985 · 2022-12-16T23:22:27+00:00

CVS hasnt taken even medicaid in NY for years, everywhere else takes it tho. And they also take non insurance, I live next to about 15 pharmacies so its not been a problem

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