Thank you for the detailed response. Clearly there's no right answer, or there is but no one is sure what it is at this point. Since I can't quite afford what I was hoping for anyway now, it looks like the decision is mostly being made for me that I will just have to be a wait and see. Whatever the case, you've given me a lot to consider, I appreciate it.
I really appreciate the citations the author included at the bottom and they're well worth skimming. One of which I'll point out below, though it may be somewhat tangential to reasons for masking, I think most here would agree it's worth highlighting:
- Like bombs and bullets, COVID is used as a tool of genocide. Israel denies Palestinians vaccines and medical treatments, destroys Palestinian COVID research and treatment centers, assassinates Palestinian COVID experts, and creates conditions ideal for COVID spread. Most Palestinians don’t have access to the $1-$2 N95’s that Westerners take for granted.
Nabil, Nada. “They Survived the Bombs, but Not the Virus: Fatal Illness Spreads in Gaza.” Middle East Eye, 2026,
www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-survived-bombs-not-virus-fatal-illness-spreads.
Mahase, Elisabeth. “Gaza: Israeli Airstrikes Kill Doctors and Damage Healthcare Facilities.” BMJ, vol. 373, 20 May 2021, p. n1300,
www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1300, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1300.
This is excellent. It really nails it. Do you mind if I crosspost it to Hexbear's c/COVID com?
TBH a major part of why I wanted a gaming PC was so that I could pirate games. I can't do that on a PS4. Even though I only ever buy games on sale, I still wince at how much I've spent over time especially on some games that I just ended up not liking and never playing, games that would have been free if I had pirated them.
There are also a lot of games that make sense on PC that just don't work with consoles/controllers, like most RTS games. There are a lot of games I would love to play that are on console, but I don't get them because it's the mods that make them worth playing, but I can't install mods on a console. I don't play any multiplayer games because I'd have to pay a monthly fee for PS+ that I'm just not willing to pay, but playing those games multiplayer on PC is free.
I don't really care much about having the greatest bestest graphics ever (although higher frame rate on anything is easier on my headaches which does make a huge difference), and if I can't run the latest AAAA slop, then whatever, that's fine, nbd. But I do care a lot about having some control over the hardware my games run on and thus the games themselves, and there is just none on console.
I feel your pain. I've been saving up for over a year to try to build a gaming PC, my ancient potato laptop already having been on its last legs for a long time. But I guess it would be foolish to try to do that now, which really guts me. For anyone reading this who has a better understanding of these things, should I:
- Try to build what I can now, as quickly as possible before it gets even worse?
- Wait for the bubble to pop when prices on all these things will inevitably drop again?
- Totally scrap my dream of being able to post in c/Games about anything that can't be played on a PS4?
Oh noes! You wouldn't want to have your misconceptions challenged, you had better run along now.
Hank: It feels like the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was tying everything to the stock market. Let's have everyone's retirements and the entire economy be based on 10% of wealthy people feeling like they can spend. If asset prices drop substantially, people get conservative, and that becomes a reinforcing loop.
Kyla: That's a big worry. A lot of people's wealth doesn't come from labor income anymore; it comes from owning stocks or a home. The Federal Reserve's wealth breakdown shows that for the top 10%, most of their wealth is from things they own, not from a job. The "wealth effect" is important for maintaining the economy. If the stock market corrects, there's a concern people would stop spending, causing a big contraction.
I hate it when libs get so close yet somehow always remain so far away from actually getting it.
I don't really know anything about her, but this post hit my nostalgia button so I looked her up on wikipedia. Some cool things found therein:
In February 2012, she and six other Greenpeace activists boarded an oil drilling ship at Port Taranaki, and remained on it for 77 hours to stop it leaving for the Arctic where it was going to take part in oil exploration.[49] She was subsequently arrested and charged with burglary
Xena's ambiguous romantic relationship with travelling companion Gabrielle (Renee O'Connor)[35] led to Lawless becoming a lesbian icon, a role of which she has said she is proud.[35] She has said that during the years she was playing the role, she had been undecided on the nature of the relationship,[36] but in a 2003 interview with Lesbian News magazine, she said that after viewing the series finale, she had come to see Xena and Gabrielle's relationship as definitely gay, adding "they're married, man".
oh, good call. I didn't know about that, thanks.
I feel like Trump operates on the assumption that no one will react to counteract whatever strategy he implements.
Well, when his greatest domestic opposition is the democratic party, it's been a correct and winning assumption. The logic becomes "What's anyone gonna do, impeach me again?" On top of that, when most of the vassals fall immediately in to line when he says so, being good dogs for the US, and the strategy keeps working even with foreign policy, there's not much incentive to do otherwise. Fortunately China is not the Democrats nor are they Europe.
So you appear to be one of those dorks who thinks that all political positions exist only as a binary, falling somewhere on a spectrum between liberal and conservative. This is fucking stupid. It's not entirely your fault, since that's all that's allowed to be officially acknowledged in
, but really you should know better by now. Hell, you should know better simply by virtue of the fact you're posting your ignorance on a communist website. So apparently I'll be the first to inform you that both liberalism and conservatism are very similar rightwing ideologies, with conservatism being essentially another branch of liberalism. This is recognized by most of the rest of the world, even many other "LiBeRaL dEmOcRaCiEs." As communists, anarchists, leftists in general, we wholly reject liberalism and that includes conservatism (conservatism itself still subscribes to almost all liberal doctrine such as worship of private property). See, learn something new every day. :new 
QuietCupcake
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Sorry, somehow I missed this post and essentially posted the same thing again.