I dunno. I’d be a lot more apt to go seek a job if the market for my desired career and skills wasn’t currently being recklessly trashed. No point in taking a job offer knowing I’ll be the new guy and the first to get let go when the inevitable cuts come due to government cutbacks, tariff damage, and a recession leading to more reductions. It’s way easier to stay home and let the government, who carelessly took away my job, pay for me to play video games all day.

To be honest, I don’t get a lot of time to game as an adult. For the past several years, my gaming is mostly restricted to fall/winter, like November through early March and even then, it’s primarily around the holidays when I have extra time off work. Even during my “gaming season”, I’m usually only able to get in a 45 minute session a few times a week. The rest of the year, I’m lucky to have the down time more than a couple times a month.

So, the big thing is: I have to really consider my time limitations and that restricts the types of games I play. No point in trying to play games with super complicated control schemes, complex story lines, or which require a lot of time dedication to “get gud” because I’m going to forget how to play, what I need to do to advance, and I’m just going to suck compared to kids who play 18 hours a day 7 days a week.

The Steam Deck actually did help me do a bit more gaming. Like you, I sit in front of a computer all day for work, so being able to game elsewhere and in a variety of locations is nice. Plus, I can fire it up when traveling.

I also stick to games that I feel like there’s a good chance I can “beat” over the course of my gaming season or games with simple mechanics and limited stories. Like this past winter I played Doom. The year before it was Cult of the Lamb. The year before that it was Hades. Short enough games (at least the main story line) and simple enough controls. Then there are games like Vampire Survivors that offer short, simple, self-contained and satisfying mini gaming sessions if and when I have a random bit of down time and feel like playing something.

JD VANCE has now entered the chat.

Earlier this year one of my relatives came for an extended visit. We were discussing what we might have for dinner that week and both of us were on board for the same ingredients, such as asparagus. My relative was also happy with the video services I’m currently subscribed to because I have a couple options they don’t have at home, so they were telling me about how they were rewatching some older Harrison Ford movies. And then there’s the age-old (or old age) conversations about our current health issues.

In the following days, my relative kept bringing up the fact that their phone and tablet are listening to our conversations. Proof? After we had the food conversation, their news feed was suddenly filled with asparagus recipes. They were also getting ads for more Harrison Ford content on the service that they don’t subscribe to. And to top it off, they were seeing ads for a prescription my dog takes but that they had never even heard of before our conversation the day or two before. Isn’t it obvious? They’re listening to our conversations.

To me this was easily explainable by Occam’s Razor. All our devices are on the same IP address. After we discussed the asparagus I went online that night and did a search for asparagus recipes. And when we were talking about my dog’s health condition, I used my phone to look up the active ingredient because I couldn’t recall off the top of my head. Plus, when Hulu or whatever random service sees you’re watching a lot of Harrison Ford movies, it makes sense they’d advertise others you might like.

That makes a lot more sense and is a lot less complicated of an explanation than “our devices are always recording our conversations and uploading them to the internet as a basis to send us advertisements”.

Sure it’s technically feasible, but if it were happening, surely they would be a lot more incontrovertible proof than a questionable and likely misinterpreted news source that seems to be more of a “sly” advertisement for a tech solution that the big players aren’t actually using.