This is the funniest Steam Deck accessory I’ve ever seen!
Don’t get me wrong. I understand why this keyboard/stand exists. It has a practical function.
But imagine sitting down at Starbucks. The room is full of normal laptops. Clean lines. Thin aluminum. Civilized.
You unzip a case that looks like it contains military hardware. Out comes a handheld gaming console.
Then a keyboard.
Then a clamp.
You assemble it in stages like you’re preparing to launch a small satellite.
Click. Lock. Adjust angle. Tighten mount.
The joysticks loom over your Word document like twin anti-aircraft turrets. The ABXY buttons shimmer with the promise of violence.
You begin typing your gentle coming-of-age novel.
Every paragraph is written beneath a D-pad.
Someone glances over, expecting Elden Ring. Instead they see you carefully crafting a metaphor about autumn leaves.
You nod solemnly and continue Chapter 3.
When the barista calls your name, you detach the entire contraption in reverse order like a NASA rollb
... Show more...This is the funniest Steam Deck accessory I’ve ever seen!
Don’t get me wrong. I understand why this keyboard/stand exists. It has a practical function.
But imagine sitting down at Starbucks. The room is full of normal laptops. Clean lines. Thin aluminum. Civilized.
You unzip a case that looks like it contains military hardware. Out comes a handheld gaming console.
Then a keyboard.
Then a clamp.
You assemble it in stages like you’re preparing to launch a small satellite.
Click. Lock. Adjust angle. Tighten mount.
The joysticks loom over your Word document like twin anti-aircraft turrets. The ABXY buttons shimmer with the promise of violence.
You begin typing your gentle coming-of-age novel.
Every paragraph is written beneath a D-pad.
Someone glances over, expecting Elden Ring. Instead they see you carefully crafting a metaphor about autumn leaves.
You nod solemnly and continue Chapter 3.
When the barista calls your name, you detach the entire contraption in reverse order like a NASA rollback procedure.
You pack away the clamp. You holster the console. You slide the keyboard into its sheath.
You leave behind only confusion.
No one knows if you were coding, gaming, or coordinating a drone strike.
You were writing poetry.
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to Erik McClure • • •Sensitive content
Erik McClure
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Sensitive content
@hsza a decentralized authority is just an authority with extra steps, which is not relevant to my post. I don't care if the authority in question is a company, a dictatorship, your local HSA, the club leadership, or some anarchist utopian council, it still applies. I will not be told my private fantasies are problematic by the court of public opinion, or the court of a bunch of anarchists, or any other court you could theoretically assemble in any conceivable form of governance.
I also fundamentally disagree that decentralizing the decision making can solve anything you just said, but it's off-topic anyway.
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to Erik McClure • • •how come
Erik McClure
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Sensitive content
@hsza because I don't think it scales.
I am under no obligation to write yet another 5 page essay on why i think this is fundamentally flawed only for the other person to fail their reading comprehension check. Either what you described doesn't work, or it's just a slightly different way of implementing the same thing we already do, which is hierarchical representative governments, since that's the only possible way to scale a government.
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to Erik McClure • • •riiiiiight okay good call
my reading comprehension is not calibrated for statism advocacy
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Erik McClure
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Sensitive content
@hsza this is the exact fundamental disagreement I have with literally all anarchists: I want humanity to be capable of *long-term* large scale projects. Anarchists argue that this is literally not possible and/or somehow not desirable. There's no point saying that we should just have "temporary" governments when I want us to be capable of building jovian colonization projects that take decades to make happen. In order for those kinds of large scale projects to succeed, you need an organization that is large and can last a long time anyway.
So far, all anarchists have proposed are magic fairy dust solutions, or they have scolded me for wanting such things in the first place, because god forbid I want nice things in the future.
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to Erik McClure • • •temporary can mean decades
no matter how long the project takes, the point is that a given organization does not aim to persist indefinitely, nor consolidate more influence than it strictly requires, and that people know better than to attempt that
Erik McClure
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Sensitive content
@hsza This can backfire by creating a perverse incentive to create excuses to make the organization last as long as possible by delaying or expanding the project indefinitely.
Simply making the organization temporary only shifts the negative incentives around, it doesn't solve the core problem, because nothing can. You can only mitigate it in various ways. Hence why I view the temporary nature of an organization as a largely meaningless gesture. Any sufficiently long project will run into the same problem as a perpetual political entity, so you might as well try to make a perpetual political entity that's better equipped to fight corruption inside itself, because you'll need these tools in any sufficiently long "temporary" organization.
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to Erik McClure • • •you are fallaciously assuming society’s mindset towards authority cannot change. it can. the mindset change of recognizing and rejecting any attempt at wide-reaching control is possible and nessesary, people would know better than to try or tolerate that
statism is not an inherent and inevitable trait of humanity
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Erik McClure
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Sensitive content
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to Erik McClure • • •gotta be trying to miss so badly no no no a local community is no more than a couple hundred, ideally less. there is then no need for representatives because it is viable for every member to directly participate in coordinating decisions. if you need a “representative” system, you’ve already failed to some degree
“If it’s purely a “mindset” difference then that’s just another kind of representative government” feels like it has a massive logical leap in the middle that my comprehension is unable to intuit
Erik McClure
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Sensitive content
@hsza Okay so a local community is at most 200 people.
how does this scale to a project involving 300 million people that lasts for 50 years in your system
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to Erik McClure • • •Erik McClure
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Sensitive content
@hsza building an O'Neill cylinder. We can reduce the headcount to just 10 million though, which is close to the amount employed to build the US national highway network (8.5 million).
You are also allowed to segment the work between different kinds or sections, though.
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to Erik McClure • • •that’s literally fiction, and not that of anything practical at that. by the point technology advances enough for that to be possible and worth considering over making better use of the space on Earth and planetary colonies, we’ll have significantly more physical automation at our disposal
the research and organizational work can be done by a few thousand individuals at the very most, and i doubt oh so much manual labor would be nessesary. take a less pessimistic estimate of 1 million, divide it by 1000 segments, bam, 1000 people per segment. build the segments separately with a loose oversight committee ensuring they’re all compatible, then put them together
then again, this is very impractical as compared to just building 1000 self-sufficent stations. you don’t need a single station equivalent to a whole planet in population capacity to have real estate in space
Erik McClure
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Sensitive content
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to Erik McClure • • •not one that aims to regulate people’s entire lives and desperately cling on to power for as long as it can
and anyhow only really nessesary for a very impractical edge case scenario. easier and better not to attempt building such a single massive structure. and of course chances are a better world would not serve as a breeding ground for elons and zucks who’d push for it regardless
Erik McClure
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Sensitive content
@hsza
1) I never implied that I supported a government that aims to regulate people's lives, only that I believed the concept of representative governance is necessary. You assumed the rest on your own.
2) There are non-edge-case scenarios, like maintaining a large colony either on the moon, on mars, in orbit around jupiter, or in another star system, all of which will necessitate the involvement of more than 200 people and thus require some form of representative governance, even if just to coordinate trade between smaller sub-sections.
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to Erik McClure • • •Sensitive content
you do appear to be in support of regulating people’s lives if the two points in the OP are used as justification for it
keyword large. why large
why does trade between moon colonies have to work any different to trade on earth
Li ~ Crystal System
in reply to Erik McClure • • •Sensitive content
@hsza you could setup a anarchist communes on the moon or mars; where everyone goes and does stuff that actually works for them instead of trying to force them all to live under the same system for some reason; you could also just have a flat system where no one explicitly has power over anyone can can do things how they want,
also i dont think you can go on about 'social contracts' that i never signed and 'enforcement & policing' of them; and not have it 'regulate peoples lives' but sure ..
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Erik McClure
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Sensitive content
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to Erik McClure • • •Erik McClure
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Sensitive content
@hsza I oppose cops but not the concept of some form of enforcement and/or ability to respond to a violent person. I oppose current implementation of prisons and the military but my view on those is more complicated (e.g. I prefer rehabilitation but a small percentage of the populace is just insane beyond saving, and the way we do military right now is bad but a group of people should be able to defend themselves with violence if necessary).
My point is that i'm a lot closer to the anarchist side of the spectrum than the statist side even if i'm not all the way on the other end.
zivirkari (just moved)
in reply to zivirkari (just moved) • • •Li ~ Crystal System
in reply to Erik McClure • • •Sensitive content
@hsza i love how any means of structuring society that isn't hierarchical just magically 'doesnt work' for some reason (but of course having hierarchies 'works' .. .. except it doesn't;)
also lol wtf you mean decentralization scales really well, centralized environments scale terribly and result in a single points of failure that when they break down or are overloaded or whatever, causes everything to break down, decentralized systems are also more resistant to authoritarian control and such;
Steffie 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Li ~ Crystal System • • •Li ~ Crystal System
in reply to Steffie 🏳️⚧️ • • •Sensitive content
@steff @hsza
no no, dont you see?
a better world is impossible!
..
what i think is funny is that hierachical social structures literally decentralize in order to stay even remotely afloat; otherwise thered be one single hospital, one single food store, and one single library, we decentralize everything; they largely operate independantly from all the others too; but when it comes to structuring people and de(structuring) power, now suddenly it cant possibly work
--
meanwhile in centralization land you get half the internet going down whenever google/amazon/etc's servers break;
decentralization scales; the people in power just want to stay in power-