Just to respond to the people here resigned to or encouraging the switch to all-digital, I get it. But let me rage against the dying of the light just a bit. There are some still-good reasons for preferring or demanding full-game cards:

• Having a complete release-date-version game on a cartridge, even if it is later (or instantly) patched, is typically 99% percent of the game experience. Yes, there will be fixes and DLC and so on. But in a preservation discussion, looking to 50 years from now, having preserved 99% of the experience versus 0%, the gameplay, the complete original graphics, the original sound, is still functionally the difference between a game being preserved or not.
• Hacking the Switch 2 will be required to independently preserve key-card or digital-only games. Full stop. Hackers have been to some extent been our preservationists since the dawn of DRM, but in the world of game-key-cards that Nintendo has chosen to accelerate, they will be the only preservationists. I have no issue with hacking, but it’s unreliable and eventually may stop being viable when hardware DRM and TPM-style modules are part of the core chip design. Our preservation future is a gamble that hackers will continue to defeat DRM.
• The only preservation alternative is to have era-complete sets of games on physical Switch 2s, which will eventually break down. Repairs will require, again, hacking, because hardware DRM already will never make repairs simple again. The game working on one system, versus 100 million (or whatever Switch 2 will sell) is the difference between it being playable for entire generations of people or not, even if the game is never hacked and dumped.
• Digital-only experiences are not incompatible with game preservation. GOG is the model here. Nintendo is not acting in the only way feasible, they’re acting according to a specific corporate business plan that seeks to enforce scarcity and capitalize on long-term capture of any resale markets.
• Yes, competitors are already doing digital-only, DRM-locked distribution. But resigning to this because of that is an all-or-nothing fallacy. Every bit we can preserve helps.

Closing more philosophically: Games are shared culture. When you grow up with a game, or as an adult have a profound experience, that game becomes a part of you. At a societal level, that game becomes a part of us and of human culture - at that point it doesn’t even “belong” to Nintendo exclusively.

Nintendo (not only, but focusing on them here) is choosing a path where there will be no alternative to re-paying to experience that memory throughout your life. SaaS is capitalism’s most tragic 2000-era “innovation” - tether us to a subscription for our whole lives, if possible, extracting value - and Nintendo already has shown they will lock old games behind their subscription service rather than re-release them. Experiencing these games through museums 50 years from now may only be at corporate behest (if Nintendo still exists, which is less sure than it may feel in this moment).

So this may seem “duh, they’re doing what everyone else is.” But it is actually a bellwether moment. The future we’re pointed, that we enable by treating these key-cards as viable, is re-purchasing or subscribing to access basic parts of ourselves and our culture, even after we’ve paid for it.

And to respond to the “but it’s Nintendo’s property” crowd: That is also actually antithetical to modern copyright law, which is vehemently not an inviolable property grant, but meant (since the Statute of Anne) to only give incentive to make more expression. Broader public good and culture is always the end-game of copyright. These works eventually are supposed to belong to us. These game key-cards are just one step in capturing that long-tail - the long-tail that belonged to preservationists, to museums, and to the public - from us all.

Well, imagine that.

No, I’m serious, please America - imagine that. That’s what we should be doing.

All the elements are there.

He has an order directing his administration to facilitate Abrego’s return. He has an administration who has been openly defiant but up until now could claim that they cannot return him even if they tried. Now Trump openly admits he could do so. All that’s left is for Roberts to either assert the power of the court to hold Trump’s officials or he himself in contempt, but as of today, we have an undeniable open and notorious refusal to follow a Supreme Court order.

But knowing how spineless Roberts is, he probably is waiting for a new lower-court motion to compel adherence to the order to work its way to the Supreme Court.

Don Jr.: What am I good at? Let’s see… Going to clubs. Being around powerful people. Collecting money for doing nothing.

But what if I could combine them all?

Trump’s advisor situation has gone from yes-men to North Korean sycophant fairy tale land. If those around him saw he thought it really said “MS13” then I doubt anyone said a word, and instead probably just fed into it.

-Poetry, 2025 Edition

I read that article and had the passing thought that my tax dollars pay for that person, and got a little sad.

Any prosecutions should fail because there is no mens rea (intent) which is a requirement under criminal law (until the judicial branch is fully captured). The purpose right now is to send a signal that they are above the law and chill anyone attempting to stop them.

From their About page, it’s always fascinating to read how much dogwhistle coded language they put in there to make sure you know this site isn’t run by or for those people:

For far too long, American consumers and business owners who cherish family values

No gays here!

and God-given liberty

This is a Christian country, and if you don’t like it, you can geeeeee-it outt.

have been overlooked by mainstream businesses.

More like “Lamestream,” amirite, guys?? …Guys?

Despite their numbers and purchase power,

We conservatives are the majority, not those coincidentally, definitionally minorities!

they have lacked an economic ecosystem that truly aligns with their priorities.

The globalist economy isn’t hateful enough to the things we hate, this makes us sad because we really want to feel aligned.

It’s time to embrace this community of customers and merchants by providing platforms, products, and services that enrich the way of life they hold dear.

We needed to very carefully adapt “way of life” from David Duke so people know we mostly almost completely don’t 100% mean the white christian way of life. Well, let’s just make sure we add extra photos of only white babies on the site so people get the message. Nailed it.

Attention is invisible until you take the time to acknowledge it. People will never treat it as a resource of the same value as these companies, because they don’t even recognize it as something being taken away from them (despite that it is actually the most precious resource - our literal lives), and that disparity will always be profitable.

90 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans now disapproving of the way the president has managed one of his core policy issues.

89% approval with Republicans is all that matters. As long as his approval is high there and they remain obedient pets, he feels zero pressure. Trump regards the others roughly the same as cockroaches.

This is a clear authoritarian signal and power grab, but trying to think practically since I’m getting exhausted with my own powerless exasperation with nothing to show for it:

To get an arrest warrant, you typically would need a judge to sign off on it. So either (a) another judge signed the warrant to arrest this judge, or (b) they falsely arrested the judge without a proper warrant.

I think (b) is possible with how slipshod Trump officials are, but more likely they followed the letter if not the spirit of the law, so (a). That suggests that there may be a pocket judge signing spurious warrants for Patel. This also makes more sense, since they likely need cover when assisting ICE, so they’d want someone in that role.

So in a healthy system, first would be Congress forcibly removing Patel. Probably every GOP congressperson’s response here will be “I haven’t heard about that, now I’ll walk away down this hall casual-like because frankly nobody is going to hold me accountable.” The other less direct approach would be to identify this judge then there may be a removal process. What other things can be done here short of revolution?

Sure, just a little locker room murder. Boys will be boys.

This was always the plan - the reason it’s happening so fast is that they’re ahead of schedule, because of all the preemptive compliance.

Hitler made other parties illegal within a year of being appointed. Opposition in Russia is nominally allowed but effectively impossible because of this kind of harassment. These are the models Trump is following, so expect the DOJ to act fast.

If they cut off democrats’ money to campaign, with elections as close as they already are, they may not even have to capture the election process to win the next 1-2 elections, and then we’re unsalvageable.

But Trump promised* he wouldn’t!

*Not promised, but strongly implied.^†

^†By strongly implied, meaning “at least left open the possibility.”^††

^††Except for the times he said the opposite thing.^†††

^†††This was every time.

“I came in to negotiate peace between the armed home invader and the homeowner. Yes, the home invader killed a few members of the family, but when I pointed a second gun at the homeowner and demanded the homeowner give up their living room permanently to the invader, and also give me the bathroom, the homeowner wouldn’t even compromise. At this point, I don’t know what more I can do.”

This is entirely the reason for the non-MAGA Republicans to lick boot, this is why they met Trump at those crossroads and sold their souls. They think fascism is a fair price if it means destroying a government that helps people not like them.

I broke this toy just to see if I could, but can you believe this guy hasn’t fixed it yet?

Hey, you ever bribe animal control to get you stray dogs - the kind with no families to ask nosy questions - for cheap? $2998.50 isn’t going to do it.

Yeah, the story should have been, “Trump comes up with another distraction to avoid admitting he’s violating the Constitution,” or at least, “Trump too stupid to understand a picture and says stupid thing.”