EnsignRedshirt [he/him]

Critical support for the commendable work the Trump administration is doing in undermining US legitimacy on so many fronts.

This isn’t about supporting or opposing anything, I’m stating the current conditions. US foreign policy is the same now as it was before Trump’s inauguration. The difference is that Trump is bad at his job, and that’s good for opponents of US imperialism. I’m confident that a Harris administration would be much more competent at achieving the goal of Palestinian genocide, and less likely to experience problems of internal cohesion.

Trump’s actions should be opposed, but that’s a given. A Harris administration would also require similar opposition, because the policy is the same.

I’m not siding with anyone, just pointing out that incoherent and incompetent US foreign policy is preferable for Palestinian liberation than coherent and competent US foreign policy, because US foreign policy supports Palestinian genocide.

Trump was always going to be the better hope for Palestinians for that reason. Biden/Harris would have continued the status quo. Trump might destroy it out of incompetence.

He’s also much more likely to change course on it if it becomes unpopular enough. He’s a Zionist insofar as he publicly supports Israel, but he genuinely does not care about what happens over there other than how it reflects on him. His ego would never allow him to get publicly dogwalked by Netanyahu like Biden did.

I mean, it’s only real insofar as Trump is allowing it to be real. It would evaporate instantly if Trump played golf with someone who said it made him look like a loser. Musk isn’t actually doing anything, he’s just taking credit for things that are being done. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Musk was being set up as the scapegoat for when all of this quickly and inevitably falls apart.

While I do believe that there’s a real possibility that the tariffs will stick, I think it’s still the most reasonable position to assume that they won’t, or at least that it’s not worth panic-selling over the prospect that they might.

There’s definitely a lot of vibes, but more specifically I think there’s a sort of brinksmanship going on between investors and the government. Government doesn’t want to get blamed for deflating a bubble, so they keep propping up the market at every opportunity and basically saying explicitly that they will continue to do so indefinitely. Investors then price equities as if there’s a built-in backstop for downside risk, knowing that the government will do bailouts and incentives and tax cuts if there’s a chance that line might go down too much. Public equities are essentially government-backed securities with equity-like returns and credit-like risk.

It’s basically the same thing as all the housing bubbles. So many people need their home equity to retire, and so the government can’t take the risk of trying to deflate the bubble, but that just means that homes are a zero-risk investment and open to speculation with no downside, so the prices will just go up forever (or until the music stops, at least).

It’s not sustainable, but as the saying goes, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

I gotta say, after decades of making fun of people for blaming high gas prices on the president, it would be really funny if the president was actually directly responsible for higher gas prices this time.

“Get that bag, king!”

It would take minimum 20 years of consistent, focused investment and industrial, education, and training policy to create an at-scale domestic supply of high-performance microchips. It’s simply not something that can be bought with money. The workforce isn’t there, the supply chain isn’t there, and the optimization of all of the above isn’t there. That stuff takes decades. Taiwan started building their semiconductor industry as soon as there was such a thing as a semiconductor industry and have stayed on top of it for decades. There’s no recreating that overnight or even in a few years. Progress can be made, but it;s going to take a degree of foresight that I doubt anyone in the US is capable of mustering.

During the 2018 Florida gubernatorial debate with DeSantis, Andrew Gillum said “I’m not calling DeSantis a racist. I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.” Gillum is a useless grifter, but I like that framing a lot. Nazis think Musk did a Nazi salute, and that’s the only story that matters here.

(He did do a Nazi salute)

That’s mostly true of trademark rights, which do need to be actively enforced to some degree to maintain, but only to the extent that it prevents trademarks from becoming genericized. The extent to which Nintendo enforces its trademarks is arguably above and beyond the requirements for preventing genericization of a trademark. Independent fan-art intended for free distribution, for example, isn’t going to make Mario a public domain character.

Copyrights have no such requirement for enforcement, and companies can exercise as much discretion as they choose in enforcing copyright, including none at all (the concept of abandonware sort of falls in this category where things become de facto public domain by virtue of no one caring enough to enforce the copyright). Further, lots of companies have proactive policies that cover things like fan-made content, review content, streaming, etc. in order to establish what will be enforced and what won’t. Nintendo’s policy is to stop any unauthorized use or manipulation of any Nintendo IP, even if that use might meet legal standards, and they often overreach in their enforcement.

So yeah, they do have an obligation to enforce their trademarks in order to maintain them, but not necessarily to the degree that they do. They have no obligation to enforce copyright. In practice, it makes sense to put barriers in place to make it difficult for people to easily pirate or try to make money from your IP, but Nintendo’s approach is pretty much unique. As I said, I’m not sure if it benefits them, or if it’s just how they’ve always done things. I think there’s an interesting argument to be made that their brand strength and quality is allowing them to get away with being so litigious, rather than their litigiousness being a major factor in their success. If other game companies were as hostile as Nintendo, they would likely do more harm to their brand than would be worthwhile for whatever benefit they’d get on the other end, otherwise they’d all be doing what Nintendo is doing.

I often wonder if Nintendo’s uncompromising stance on IP rights is actually a net benefit to their bottom line. It could be a factor in their commercial success and brand strength, but it’s also entirely possible that they’re successful despite it, and they’re just dragging their brand equity down by being needlessly hostile to their own customers. I get not wanting someone to make money off your IP, but they send lawyers over the most petty bullshit.

The worst is that none of their efforts stop actual piracy. People are 100% going to emulate their games no matter what they do. Their weird litigation fetish just shuts down interesting fan-made projects that only appeal to people who are already paying customers. Maybe it does have the net-effect of increasing their margins or creating more scarcity or whatever, but it seems petty and nonsensical.

All property rights are stupid, but intellectual property is the stupidest.

Not that this isn’t a bad sign, but I’m extremely skeptical that any of the DEI efforts to-date have been effective or genuine. This strikes me as more of a change in messaging than policy.

Go watch Eddy Burback’s Rainforest Cafe, Margaritaville, Olive Garden vs Italy trilogy.

That does make me more sympathetic to the person who died.

They’re not the worst people in the world, but Cybertruck owners have to be among the most broadly unsympathetic.

She’s got a lot more name recognition now. Her next primary campaign might actually make it to the voting part this time.

The games seem to be well-received, but I don’t get the appeal. 4 years between games in a fully-planned trilogy feels indulgent. I assume Square-Enix is using these games as tentpoles to stretch out the franchise as much as they can so they can sell mobile games and merch and other nonsense.

As I said:

The right is always going to lie and obfuscate and misdirect to get what they want, and if you’re going to let their messaging stop you from making efforts to change things then you’ll never accomplish anything.

My point is that of course the deficit myth is going to be selectively applied, but if that’s going to stop you from organizing around an issue then good luck finding any issues to organize around. The economic case for healthcare makes itself. If you can’t make a convincing argument around people getting better care for less money then I don’t know what politics is even supposed to be for, or if it can be said to exist at all.