WTF is happening right now?
I'm not usually very political here. Not that I've never been, there have been times when I've dropped into some discussion or opinion. I'm going to do so here, so let it be known that this is me talking. I don't necessarily speak for everyone. And don't worry, we're gonna talk about game stuff too.
When did you ever wake up in your life and fear that the US capitol would be assaulted? And not just assaulted, mind you. Assaulted by it's own citizens. Successfully.
I never would have seen that happening. I never would have thought that a sitting US president would blatantly, purposefully incite a straight up riot in his or her own name. Remember, that's the cause behind this whole fiasco. 'I lost the election. I don't like that. I've exhausted every angle I could think of to change the fact that I lost. You guys go tell them I won. I'll be there with you.'
A sitting US president told thousands of people at a rally that he wanted them to go and fight against democracy in their own country, in his name. And they did it. And he didn't go with them. He went home and watched it on TV. He watched as thousands of people who have been borderline radicalized by his way of thinking just walked up to Capitol Hill and forced their way inside. He watched as they broke windows, screamed threats and violated not only myriad federal laws but the very rooms and offices of the people that work to uphold American freedoms and values. Whether you agree with those freedoms and values or not, that's what happened.
Where the hell was the security? Businesses all over DC saw this coming days before. They boarded up windows and closed up shop because they could foresee potential rioting. You can't tell me that the DC intelligence was worse than the coffee shop six blocks away that said, hey we need to make sure we're safe during what could come. DC National Guard was requested by the mayor pretty early on when she saw things start to get out of hand. But hey, guess who DC National Guard reports directly to. The president. The way I understand it is that the request was first denied, but shortly after was accepted. It still took something like three hours for the DC National Guard to show up and defend the Capitol Building... in DC. There are nearly two thousand members of the capitol police. Where were they? Well, some were going door to door locally to help get people to safety. Some were doing what they could outside to enforce barricades. But those inside were so quickly overwhelmed by the angry mob that they had no choice but to retreat further into the building and get those deliberating on the senate floor to some place safe. They had to make a stand from the interior until reinforcements arrived. Once that happened it was possible to push their way out and secure the building. Then they could get the mob backed down the steps. Then back behind the barricades. Then they could hold a perimeter. During the unrest, five people were killed and many others were injured. People who were sent to die in our current president's name, and people who were sent to defend our nation's capitol from domestic terrorists. But ask yourself this: What would have happened if those people had gone into that building shooting? It would have been an unmitigated disaster.
Let's be fair to those who were there to legitimately form a peaceful protest, though. Those people, whether you agree with them or not, were there to speak their voice in a legal and peaceful manner. Their numbers were significant and they should be given credit for walking away when they saw that things were getting out of hand. And let's be fair to the law enforcement who kept their cool and largely escorted people away rather than just firing tear gas or rubber bullets and pepper spray irritants into crowds unheeded. Some of that was an over correction. The police taking selfies with rioters, letting them into the building. No. You do not get a pass. You are part of the problem.
And to the people reading this and saying -Well what's the difference in this and BLM? Why were the police so "nice" to these protesters and not them? I'm going to say something controversial. What do you want? Do you want excessive police violence? Or do you want them to do what they can to resolve things peacefully? I agree in the thinking that if were largely black or Muslim protesters, there would have been more violence than there was. But the BLM movement does not get a pass for burning down streets. What they do get sympathy for is being attacked by police or National Guard while being peaceful and legally protesting. That happened a lot and it's not excusable. As to a couple of major differences in the BLM protests and this Capitol Hill riot, the fact is that BLM is protesting for a real cause. And not one single time was the BLM movement incited by the damn president to attack the capitol of the United States in no more cause than his own name because he can't stand that he lost a fair, legal election. Again, there were over corrections in the lack of force used by law enforcement in some cases here in the last week. But I for one am happy to see that things ended in relative calm. I say that knowing full well that people died. I'm not diminishing the importance of that. Rather I'm bringing up the importance that not more people died. The importance that there was a situation that could have been multitudes worse than it was and it was successfully de-escalated.
Donald Trump is responsible for sending an angry mob to attack Capitol Hill. He is responsible for sending a full blown insurrection against members of the senate, including his own Vice President. He should be held accountable for every crime committed that day up to and including the wrongful deaths and injuries of everyone involved.
Okay that's enough of me on my soap box. Let's talk about something else
Expect your tech prices to increase very soon. The rule that stopped things like GPU's and CPU's etc from being affected by tariffs has ended. That means the extra cost is being handed off to consumers in the form of price hikes in the general range of $50.00 to $200.00 per unit.
I'm personally affected by this price hike as the Radeon 6800 XT I have on order has suddenly risen in price by nearly $200.00. I'm currently weighing whether it's even worth keeping on order any longer. But here's the thing. If I, or anyone, wants a new GPU any time in the next year (I'm guessing at this time frame), we will have to pay that extra cost. MSRP is no longer a thing we can hope for. On top of that, crypto mining is making a come back and we still have to compete with bots and scalpers scooping up entire pallets of stock. So we can expect rarity and cost to just keep rising for the foreseeable future. As much as I don't want to spend a thousand dollars on a single upgrade for my PC, I think I'm probably going to have to unless I want to wait a year or longer. And frankly, I don't.
In better news, CDP Red is handing out their trade-in copies of Cyberpunk 2077. They don't get a pass for the crunch time, but they do get points for honoring their deals. CP 2077 seems to have fostered some love-hate with fans. People are quitting in droves on Steam, unhappy with the title for whatever reason they've decided. I'm one person who really enjoyed their play through. I encountered very few bugs and I found a lot more to like than to dislike while I played. I plan on going through it again once I get my new GPU and I can run it on it's highest settings. Or maybe not because holy balls that's a lot of money to spend on a GPU. I'm torn.
Well, what are we playing this weekend?
Scrooloose: Deep Rock Galactic is going strong and will be adding 2 more biomes soon. SnowRunner has stolen my attention again and the Yukon is proving quite the challenge. And slowly I'm finishing up AC Valhalla.
Greywolfe: magic and also earthlock. i hit a wall of a boss last week, so i'm making plans to beat him this week. i also bought among us. PLEASE SEND HELP.
Tru: Well, CD Projekt Red finally got me a refund on my PS4 copy of Cyberpunk 2077 and in turn sent me a GoG copy of the game. So I've been enjoying that. I also started to replay Remedy's Quantum Break, I forgot how fun it is and you can see how that game evolved into Control. So I'm not sure which of the two I'll be focusing on. Also been playing more Warframe with a pal and that's been fun. I still love Warframe quite a bit so it's always nice to go back to it.Playstation Plus also had the ps5 copy of Manhunter, which is a fun shark game. Controls are a bit wonky but it's stupid fun so I may finish playing that. But it does get repetitive.