Social Murder

 

I guess I'll go die then.

Where do I begin? A CEO was shot and half the population celebrated it while the conservatives grabbed at their pearls in horror. 

Why? 

Social murder, when the owning class create the conditions under which working class people die, and do nothing to prevent these deaths because it would cost them money. When you look into our modern healthcare system, the more you will find that profits are being put before people at the expense of people.

How did we get here?

Apathy and corporate consolidation.

The privatization of American Health Insurance through the Affordable Care Act has made the cost of healthcare all but unreachable for most Americans. These plans have out of pocket costs as high as $10,000 for their government funded base plans. I would know, I had a plan like this when I lived in the state of Florida. I could not use the insurance to go see a doctor because all of the hospitals that would take my insurance were over 100 miles from where I lived. Millions of Americans have these shitty policies, and our taxes are subsidizing these plans. 

When healthcare is provided for profit, guess who ends up paying more in the end? Us. 

How do we change this system?

We can end the profit motive for healthcare and enshrine price controls into law like most other countries and nationalize hospitals. When you remove private profits from the hands of people who receive public money like hospital executives, you can take that money and reinvest into programs that help low income people who are most effected by higher prices.

I think a lack of imagination and a lack of leadership on this issue is why our country has become such a capitalist hellscape. When the "free market," decides that you have to work three jobs a day for more than 80 hours a week in order to make ends meet, then maybe the "free market," ain't too "free."

The only way forward for our society is to decommodify essential services like housing and healthcare. Until then the Capitalists that run our society will continue to gaslight and manipulate us to vote against our own interests until nothing is left of our planet but a dried out husk exploited at their bequest.

Brian Thompson after being shot

Fuck CEOs.

Dockside Finally Banned...

 

   

 ... Good thing I sold my copies right before the ban. Honestly kind of glad it got banned, card created some really problematic play patterns, along with all the other cards that were banned alongside it. So what other cards were banned along Dockside?

Nadu, Winged Wisdom:

Nadu got the hammer, for obvious reasons. He gets out of hand because his trigger happens so easily and can lead to some feelsbadman moments when it just explodes ahead of everyone else. My experience with this card is playing against on Arena, and while it's not as optimized as the paper version, the deck is still kind of toxic to play against and causes me to groan anytime I see it.

Mana Crypt:

Mana crypt got the ax too, and well, I'm kind of glad it did too. I've had more than a few games I just gave up on winning when I saw someone play this card because I would just be so far behind I had no chance of catching up. I find this ban to be a bit ironic giving WOTC added it to the Ixialan set as a chase rare, so RIP to everyone who bought those packs in hopes of opening one. Another reason to just stop buying sealed product.

Jeweled Lotus:

Another day, another zero cost artifact banned. Sure this card is restricted to just making only one type of mana specifically for casting only your commander, I guess this card was also becoming a problem in more casual games. Who knew something that has no cost and goes mana positive despite its restrictions would be a problem?

TL;DR:

A bunch of stupid toxic cards got printed in the last few years as chase rares, expect for Dockside, that card was only printed to make the worst deck in the whole set somewhat playable and was mostly seen as a "fine on paper, broken in gameplay," kind of card. Most of these cards were printed to encourage people to buy packs, and now they're banned, for obvious reasons. This announcement just further justifies my position of not buying any more sealed product for the foreseeable future. 

Stop Buying Sealed Magic

 Seriously, just stop it. The quality of the product is shit and it's not going to get better because WOTC does not care so long as people keep buying the slop they put out. I've been playing Magic for over a decade now and in that time I've watched this game slip increasingly into the scalpers hands because there's so much money to be made on the secondary market especially when it comes to commander. 

I sold out and I recommend you do too, it's only going to get worse. As for me, I'll stick to playing Arena and it's janky historic format. It's cheaper and easier than going out and interacting with adult children. Call me an "old fuck," if you want, I'm also super burnt out by all the product that they've been releasing the last couple of years because even when something interesting is released WOTC manages to either restrict distribution of the product, or side load it with a bunch of bulk while including playable cards.

Next time you want to buy sealed magic, instead take that money and either set it on fire or maybe invest in bitcoin/altcoins or something normies do because those things are more productive than giving money to a corporation more interested in exploiting their existing customers than actually making a quality product. INB4 someone says, "Well that's just Capitalism for you," that's the fucking problem you dolt. Capitalism exploits us all and turns the things we love into soulless cash grabs because we're all broken monkey's living on a rock hurling through space trying to find meaning in meaningless things.

Anyone else... Fatigued?

 I find myself increasingly unenthused about playing magic and have largely stopped playing both in paper and online via Arena. I buy packs occasionally, sure. The rush of opening good stuff helps, but for the most part I just don't have the energy to go and play in person any more, and since the release of OTJ I stopped playing historic brawl, and haven't opened the client despite MH3 releasing a week ago, I just don't feel like it any more. All the passion and love I have for the game has largely faded due to the rise of scalping and the FOMO that pervades the hobby. 

Between work and raising a baby my energies are centered else where, I mostly just stay home and Diablo IV now. Diablo is a whole other can of worms though, I bought it on sale back in March and only now hit level 100 playing a Barbarian with the jankiest build ever conceived. 

A snap shot of my character.

So am I alone in feeling this way, or has anyone else felt the same? Not that anyone will read this article other than the robot that crawls this page, but should an actual human read this I would encourage you to comment on this post and let me know your experiences. What games are you playing to numb the existential dread of existence under capitalism? Let me know.

I'm a Dad Now.

That's right, I'm a daddy. 

She's almost three months old and she is everything.

Look at her

In other news, my brother gave me a PC, so I've been using it to play FFXV and Magic Arena. I recently upgraded the RAM and I plan on using this PC to make some new content not just for this blog but also my youtube channel, so look forward to it!

The Galleria of Shit...

 

Alright, so I started streaming again, so I'm going to post those streams here if you want to check them out, and I'll also get around to posting a deck list that I'm running. I also had a kid too, so now I'm a Dad... Horray.

This is my latest video, it's probably got the best audio of the three videos. It's also a single match that I did not expect to win.

This video is me playing against a rat deck and a couple other decks, the audio's not great though.

In this video I play against a sliver's deck that had the game, but instead of going to combat and killing me, they decided to concede the game by drawing five cards while I had Sheoldred on the board while they had eight life.

Not like anyone actually reads this blog, but thanks for reading and watching.

I Read the Comment Section...

So I recently went on a podcast and discussed my time on the subreddit r/antiwork. I think I did pretty good all things considered discussing leftist ideas and holding my own as far as explaining why people may be against work. Anyway, I read the comments and they almost made me loose heart, but now that I've done it, I feel a lot more confident about my positions.

Anyway, here's the video I was on, go ahead and laugh at me making an ass out of myself: