12/30/2021 15:18:13

I'll be honest: it's been tough deciding what to write for my last blog post of 2021. Not because this year hasn't been eventful, but rather because in true douche bag writer style, I couldn't come up with any kind of theme to tie all the things I wanted to say together. So after musing over this for awhile, I decided to just give y'all a good old fashioned brain dump.

For starters, I continued last years trend of playing and loving weird ass games from 2019. Now while I didn't mention Death Stranding on this blog, I did start playing it at the end of 2020 and finished it in early 2021. It was an awesome experience. One of the most creative, interesting and perplexing games I have ever played. Sad to say that its not my favorite game made in 2019 / played in 2021 anymore and that's because about a week ago I discovered and absolutely devoured Disco Elysium.

Both of these games are fucking amazing. If you have any interest in gaming as an art form, I strongly suggest that you play both. However, you'll need to go into both with an open mind as to what constitutes game play as neither game is particularly keen on indulging the typical run and gun / kill-em-all antics that so many games emphasize nowadays. These games are so great that they cannot be described in terms of other games. They stand up entirely on their own in categories of their own.

Okay next topic. Let's spend a few paragraphs talking about Linux. More specifically, I have decided to include a mini-rant on the amorphous and never-ending slur-like term "The Year Of The Linux Desktop". Prior to this moment, I have made great efforts to avoid using this term on this blog. The reasoning behind this choice is simple: It is a lie which is constantly used to belittle and demean Linux Desktop users.

Now before you say, "Oh this is about Linus Tech Tips", let me assure you that it's not. I have never liked this term because it essentially implies that unless it can (as defined by whom?) capture the lions share of the mass market, the Linux Desktop is essentially worthless. Of course by this definition the MacOS desktop is also worthless. And the ChromeOS desktop. And the iPadOS desktop. You get the general idea, right?

Needless to say the Linux Desktop is a tool. It is a tool that some choose to use, some choose to not use and one that the vast majority of people out there are not even aware of. The cold truth of the matter is that the rate or state of Linux Desktop adoption is hardly relevant to users like myself who are getting real work done along with being genuinely entertained on Linux Desktops each and every day.

Finally lets have ourselves a quick chat about the Biden Administration and the Democratic party. Lets start off with a bit of praise: Biden isn't Trump and I am insanely grateful for that. Watching the news in awestruck horror each day from the beginning of 2016 through January of 2021 was something that I honestly couldn't have taken much more of. If Trump had been re-elected, I probably would've stopped watching the news entirely in some futile attempt to preserve my own mental health.

However with that having been said, let's be clear: The Biden Administration and the Democratic Party by extension are utterly fucking terrible especially when it comes to competently wielding power in a Machivellian-esque manner. For starters there were a wide variety of Trump era decisions that Biden should've kicked off the rollback process in the very first week, yet that didn't happen. We still have Trumps idiotic tariffs against China. We still have their family separation policy (not for a lack of trying though, just a lack of competence). We still have Loius Fucking DeJoy as the Postmaster General despite his blatant and ongoing attempts to destroy the Postal Service. I could list more here, but I'll spare you. The takeaway is, "Fuck Joe Biden".

As for the larger Democratic Party, the fact it includes the pieces of human feces known as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema is probably damning enough. But watching the Democrat party literally face fuck themselves Les Grossman style with Voting Rights and Build Back Better legislation really just rams the strap on home. They couldn't even get rid of the filibuster for crying out loud. Biden was supposed to be a legislative zen master but he couldn't get President Manchin (also honorable fuck you goes out to Kamala Harris for pretending that term is about election legitimacy rather than the infantile wielding of power on the part of her and Biden) to compromise on a single goddamn thing.

The incompetence here is absolutely stunning. Except it's not. The centrist Democratic party doesn't want to get rid of the filibuster and they absolutely don't want voting rights legislation or Build Back Better despite the fact that these impulses qualify as suicidal by all available objective metrics. This is why Joe Biden was a terrible candidate for a country desperately in need of a real change and an actual leader with the cajones to plot a real path forward. He was never going to measure up in reality and is arguably even worse than Obama was in this respect despite the fact that expectations for Biden were far lower.

..and that about does it for 2021 and I'm fucking glad. Fuck this year and fuck COVID for not going away and fuck the anti-vaxxers and finally fuck all the imbeciles out there saying "Lets Go Brandon". Just man the fuck up and say "Fuck Joe Biden" already you wimps.

In closing please know that I hope to publish something much more shiny and happy at the end of 2022 but I'm not holding my breath. Miracles are always welcomed, but never expected.