I technically have both since I’m a developer but my daily driver is my iPhone because when I have an android phone, I constantly want to put different roms on it so it ends up unstable. So, Apple’s walled garden saves me from myself making my phone unstable when I need a phone for calls/messages and not tinkering.

I don’t notice much of a difference these days, though. Sometimes, I charge my iPhone and grab my Pixel and I don’t even notice. Back in the day, iOS was generally more polished and Android was either slightly behind or ahead on specific features but I find that both are pretty much mature at this point. Flagship cameras are both excellent. Accessory ecosystems exist. There’s really not an overwhelming reason to switch, (especially if the Android phone is also a walled garden, which seems more common now).

It’s going to be an awkward conversation but she is officially off the trivia team. If she thinks I’m switching trains to get to Capital Hill just to lose, she’s got another fact to learn.

It probably means the prime minister will be a more moderate figure from the left that can work with centrists. They’ll horsetrade with the centrists over cabinet positions and policy priorities. You could imagine a deal where Macronists get foreign affairs posts (like Minister for Armed Forces and Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs) and the left gets domestic ones (like Minister of Labor, Minister for Health, etc.)

In reality, that’s way simpler than it likely will be. Realistically, given France’s history, it probably means some gridlock and grandstanding. Every Prime Minister wants to be president next so there’s probably going to be some positioning for the next presidential election (in 2027) involved. Maybe they’ll get along for a year and then have new elections.

We don’t host the Olympics in an election year until 2028. We have plenty of time to prepare. Plus, fascists famously suck at using the Olympics for propaganda. Hitler’s 1936 Berlin games was supposed to be a showcase of German superiority and then Jesse Owens dominated the marquee event.

BONUS FUN FACT: Until the 1936 Olympics, somehow no one had realized that Haiti and Liechtenstein had the same flag. So, Liechtenstein added a crown to theirs and then made that their new national flag.

Well, it didn’t seem to work for the election.

In the U.S., “Neck” by Cameo has become a college marching band standard. I wonder if that will help. Not that it would come from U.S. college sports but maybe a song like “Sweet Caroline” or “Seven Nation Army” that’s played at professional sporting events in multiple countries.

I don’t know. It was awhile ago. I assumed they were all turn-based but if they’re not, I’ll definitely check them out.

Which progressive government, specifically, made normal people’s lives hard? Was it the recent long-ruling center-right governments in France, Germany, and the UK? Are Italy and Poland too “politically correct” for whoever “normal people” are? Italy is famous for short-lived governments but Silvio Burlusconi was Prime Minister the longest and you could use just clips of him and make a solid training video called “Identifying sexual harassment.”

And maybe cite some statistics on crime. Europe might be the safest place in the world.

I think my all time favorite is the N64. Some aspects haven’t aged all that well — the controller is obviously weird by modern standards — but it was such a huge jump from 2D gaming. It was new and exciting in ways that are almost impossible now.

And I still like how weird it was. There was tons of experimentation by developers while figuring out how this new era would work on top of the usual fun, Nintendo quirkiness in the first party games. The PS2 and Xbox ended up setting the standard for modern gaming controls, optical discs, and all the rest but the N64 lived in a weird, fun transition space between retro and modern.

I’ve never really found turn-based games to be all that fun. A few have had a good enough story or some other mechanic to make them interesting but it’s just not really my thing, for some reason. (It’s not just a video game thing. A bunch of my friends play poker or complex board games and I’d usually rather watch than play.)

So, something like the Final Fantasy series or Pokémon games would be my answer. Everyone loves Final Fantasy and Pokémon. I’m clearly the weird one. And I probably would love them if they were more action-oriented.

I’ve been to Paris several times now and I found it way better after I did all the touristy stuff. Just walking around old neighborhoods and doing less iconic activities. I kind of had to run out of “must do” tourist checklist things before I really appreciated Paris.

It’s good for marketing, though. “Ah, our software is so powerful, it could destroy humanity! Please pass a bill saying so while we market friendly chatbots to the public while actually making money by selling our products to despots and warmongers that might actually end humanity.”

I wonder if Lemmy could easily do content warnings like on Mastodon. I don’t know if it’s part of the ActivityPub spec but it’s definitely a thing that’s been implemented elsewhere.

Tomorrow is the year 1446 on the Islamic Calendar. But it’s 1445 until then. (I’m using the Moroccan calendar.)

I’ve just been saying what the world most needs now is a bunch of fucking morons with lots of money. Things aren’t nearly ignorant enough.

Yep. The best part of the U.S. constitution is the amendments. We should probably all spend some time thinking about that. Is our constitution good? The edits and polite suggestions are. The main bits are outdated, though, and were written by eloquent people who had the same knowledge of 2024 as we have for the year 2350.

As a leftist in Louisiana, it’s sometimes important to remind people that there were more Trump voters in California than Texas.

Obligatory: when he was at Princeton, there was a tradition where during the first snowfall of the year, the sophomores would make a lap around their dorm naked. Somehow, Ted Cruz took a wrong turn and instead of waiting for him, everyone locked him out of the dorm.

The Roberts court is arguably the worst since The Taney court (before the Civil War). It’s Calvinball and whole textbooks probably have to be rewritten after this term. Several justices are openly corrupt. Half their decisions just cause chaos for lower courts because they’re too chickenshit to even be bad in a clear way and define a simple test. (What is an “official act”? Only the Supreme Court knows for sure but they’ve decided to let lower courts try to decide so they get a menu of options.)

Just open hostility to the rule of law. There’s been worse decisions but bribed judges deciding “gratuities” aren’t bribes is top 5 for most shameless.