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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: August 17th, 2024

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  • Republicans were (in theory) on the losing side in 2022 - there was supposed to be a “red wave” that never materialized. They won (again) this time around by fully embracing being exclusionary. Seems to me Dems need to stop trying to attract those people (I think I read that Harris managed to get less than 5% of them, while losing something approaching 15% in Democrat voters), and instead focus on being an exclusionary antithesis to them. If we’re going to be a two party system, then make them polar opposites rather than just a lite version of the same side (within practical limits, of course).


  • Funny you say that, because I’m definitely not a radical leftist - except maybe somewhat for social justice. While I mostly agree with progressive ideals, I’m also pragmatic enough to accept that such drastic change can’t realistically happen overnight - or, in many cases, even vaguely quickly. At least not without some rather significant, yet unnecessary upheavals in much of the general population’s lives.

    While I wouldn’t stop supporting unions, I would most certainly be less sympathetic to those who expect sympathy, but aren’t willing to give it. That’s just being selfish, IMO, and I really don’t care to deal with overly/unjustifiably selfish people. The Golden Rule is my primary guide to life, whereas it seems to me that most people preach it without truly following it themselves. It frustrates the fuck outta me.






  • Replying to my own post in case anyone’s following this (still too new to Lemmy to know if that’s a thing - guess I’ll look into it after this).

    Apparently, Moto may be working on something that fills this need. The promo video in this article only demonstrates things I think Google Assistant might already be capable of (or maybe slightly more), but the article states what they’re working on involves using apps on your phone to do things rather than just being a microphone and speaker for stuff that actually happens mostly on Google’s servers. Crossing my fingers that includes doing what I want rather than just being focused on buying things as demonstrated in the teaser video.

    In the meantime, I’ve stumbled across the fact that Google’s built-in TalkBack feature has support for keyboard shortcuts. This likely means I can use a small handheld Bluetooth game controller along with an app to map the buttons to the appropriate key presses in order to move around the screen, and thus control the Android device without looking at or touching it. That means using Google Assistant to launch the apps, and the controller to actually use it via TalkBack. I’ll likely test this next weekend & report back if anyone’s interested.

    ETA: Forgot to mention: remembered that my kid has an iPad required by his school some years ago, but so far as we can see the capabilities are roughly on par with Android so switching platforms doesn’t seem to be the answer.