Computer Component Prices

My youngest has been looking to buy himself a computer more capable than his current Mac Mini, and it’s an effort that I have purposefully tried to stall a number of times.

CPUs, motherboards, cases, power supplies, and other parts are all completely decent, and you’re getting better, more capable options for your money than a few years ago, but storage, memory and GPUs are irrationally expensive. It’s like we’ve lost a decade of progress.

$600 CAD for 32GB of DDR5 RAM is stupid. I’ve been equipping various PCs in the house with 32GB for well over a decade, and it was always chump change so just throw in extra because why not. Go VM wild! A decade ago I was buying 32GB kits for less than $200, and there has been a lot of density and manufacturing improvements in the subsequent time.

To be fair it was DDR4 then, but the benefits of DDR5 aren’t that significant.

And of course the GPU landscape has gotten absurd, and PC gaming is largely millions of people desperately hoping their current card holds on for another year.

My stalling has been some hope that the component bubble will collapse (it is a bubble, just as there is a ridiculous bubble of data centres being built that is going to lead to a lot of vacant properly in five years). At some point we have to return to progress again.

Chairman Trump in China

Trump dragged along various American plutocrats with him to China, and what an absolutely pathetic display. It cannot be overstated how utterly diminished and weak the US looks under Trump’s presidency, in this case essentially begging China for attention and looking like a busted middle power. That China privately leaked “nah, this ain’t it bro” to media at the outset is just…chef’s kiss.

The “great dealmaker” has been humiliated by China time and time again, and this is just the ultimate diminishing. I cannot even begin to fathom how they thought dragging along this cadre of CEOs and plutocrats would look strong, aside from boosting Trump’s ego.

I guess China is now going to cancel the Superbowl or something? Probably the World Series too.

Trump is going to leave empty-handed — the US literally has nothing to offer China at this stage, and China holds all the cards — but will invariably say how much Xi likes him and then detail a lot of pretend deals that exist only in his head. Or he’ll restate existing deals, like the way he keeps celebrating every CHIPS act win as some personal achievement.

What a shocking speed-run to collapse. This self-dealing imbecile should be polling at 0%, but somehow 30%+ of Americans still think this foolish demented clown and his Epstein administration full of criminals and greaseballs is achieving something. All telling him how smart and brilliant and strong and tough he is for his foolish schemes.

Pathetic. The US is reduced to making nuclear threats like a failed Russian state, while Chairman Trump gloats about being an unhinged wildcard like this is something to celebrate. I knew a second Trump presidency would be bad, but I never could have predicted just how shockingly disastrous it would be.

It’s actually interesting how China has been fully freed from any illusion of an American yoke (courtesy of Trump’s grotesque mismanagement of literally everything), which is something that Americans and the disinformation press of the US still fails to understand. China is openly supporting whoever they want, chuckling at American delusions that they set the rules, and laughing at American sanctions. And while China has been freed, much of the rest of the world is rapidly heading down the same path given how this foolish administration has levered every US integration for garbage causes. For instance defending war criminals.

Not only is Trump seemingly acting as a plant for Xi and Putin and removing America from any semblance of power, his destruction is so complete and overwhelming that he’s just too obvious, and even a plant wouldn’t be so blatant. In reality he’s just an incredibly stupid man that has had a lifetime of people telling him how great he is, and now he has an administration stuffed with bootlicking trash that will go along with the delusion.

When Citizenship Means Nothing

In my Dear America piece I detailed some of the legitimate issues that a subset Canadians have with the state of the country, one being that citizenship has repeatedly been devalued to almost worthlessness by members of the bleeding heart class who feel that we need to endlessly flagellate ourselves for the crime of being citizens of a decent country.

Yet again a judge has handed down a light sentence — or in this case, an outright discharge, fully pissing in the face of Canadians — to a non-Canadian found guilty of a criminal offence so severe it led to death. Someone who had barely been in country for three years when their actions led to the death of an innocent person.

This is outrageous, and is the result of a long conditioning that citizenship is worthless if not even something that we should somehow feel guilty about. That it is owed to any and all comers, and there is no need to demonstrate worth or belonging, instead we should feel guilty for withholding it from any who demand it.

Judges like this need to be removed from the bench. We need strict guidelines that immigration status can play absolutely no part in sentencing, as there are an unending series of these situations happening in this country right now where the very people who diminish and worsen this country are coddled and protected from consequences. It is intolerable, and does a massive disservice to Canadians, and to migrants in particular who do not need to be lumped in with the tiny subset of criminals that some pearl clutchers prevent from rightly being punted from this country.

The vast majority of migrants do not commit crime. They do not ply negligence that leads to death. They are model residents and hopeful citizens, and that is something of value and worth that they work towards. When it is rendered worthless, as this judge is trying to do, almost as something owed, it is a grotesque miscarriage of justice and a vile attack on the very notion of citizenship. It cannot continue.

Alberta and their Separation Cause

Make no mistake - Danielle Smith is a traitor and a separatist, and works on behalf of the nutbag evangelical base in the US. She is a MAGA sympathist. This is plainly evident in every word that spills from her mouth and every action she takes.

Recently her government has been trying to engineer every point of antagonism they can conceive of with the federal government. On immigration (after years of demanding more, suddenly she realizes her base wants her to pretend that she was against it), health care, judges (which is why I segued to this), pension plans, police forces, book bans and mirroring every crazy, ignorant far-right American culture war bit of nonsense, and so on. It is so laughably transparent, and is in the cause of fomenting separatism beliefs. She’s running the MAGA playbook.

But let’s be clear — separatism has very limited support in Alberta. It is a minority cause, and you can find more Americans that want their state to join Canada than you can find separatists in Alberta.

Yet they keep electing traitors like Danielle Smith, because their options are always “the traitors” vs “a bunch of left-wingers supported by urbanites”.

Alberta needs a federalist conservative party, and Albertans that aren’t red-hat wearing clowns — the good Albertans that aren’t the roll-coal simpleton loudmouths — need to work to make this happen. Send the UCP to the dustbin of history.

See Also

  • Dear America

    Canada and America are children of a common mother. But we are not the same.