[[2026 Cafe Posts#^172725|2026 Cafe Posts]] The bangers did in fact keep hitting. Had a very nice vacation in Las Vegas, where absolutely nothing illicit happened outside of way too much good food. The US elections actually went *well* for once? Everything's so nice lately that I'm worried about the other shoe dropping. One way things haven't improved is the tech situation, obviously. I still sit here, waiting for the AI bubble to pop and prices to be affordable again. Nvidia and the like are doing their best to effectively kill off the future of videogames, which is pretty fucking annoying. That said, it's made me reconsider my perspective on the concept of "the backlog" even more. Now, I've written about [[Playing and Finishing and Backlogs and Libraries|backlogs]] and how I [[Speedkilling the Deathlog|feel about them]] before. But the paradigm feels like it's shifted as tech becomes more and more inaccessible and pricey. In the past I felt shame for having a backlog. It felt like a growing monument to my lack of discipline. And in some ways that still might be true. But now, as tech oligarchs try to force us into a cloud-based future or some such evil bullshit, I feel differently. Now it feels like I've slowly been building a stockpile of weapons for a war I didn't know I'd enlisted in against said tech oligarchs. I could never buy another game for the rest of my life and still have a lifetime of games to experience. If we're playing chicken with RAM prices, I feel like I can win. Def still babying my tech for the foreseeable future though. Can't have anything break in this economy, lmao.