You can do way more performance than that for not much more money, if you’re willing to try something unorthodox in a different way:

AOOSTAR Gem 12 Max Mini PC

$580 ($550 for Amazon simps)

CPU: Ryzen 7 8745HS ( 8C / 16T / base 3.8 Ghz / max 5.10 Ghz)

(approximately multi thread performance equivalent to a Ryzen 5 9600 AM5 socket)

RAM: 24 GB DDR5

SSD: 1TB

Power: Max draw 70w (on its own)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GGB5L9P7/?psc=0

XFX RX 9070 OC (16 GB GDDR6)

$640

Power: ~220w

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DXLBTL4B/?psc=1

EG01 OCulink eGPU Dock

$100

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G1STZM7H/?psc=1

ASRock PRO-650 G PSU

$50

Power: 650w (way more than what you need)

Gold Rated

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FSTL4VDZ/?psc=1

Total pretax cost: ~$1370

Cost %: +~17% compared to Playnix

50% more RAM, also its DDR5

100% more SSD capacity

GPU 3DBenchmark = +~60%

OCuLink is at worst gonna knock 5%-10% off of performance/fps, compared to similar hardware just connected directly via PCIe 16.

… should basically crush almost anything at 1440p, if you turn off RT when you want higher fps.

Or you can maybe find a cheaper 9070, or perhaps go with a 500w PSU, which is still more than enough, to lower that total cost a bit.

DREDD (2012)

The more modern Judge Dredd movie.

Mainly features Karl Urban’s chin, as Judge Dredd.

He never takes off the helmet. Before Hollywood had even discovered Pedro Pascal / Mando.

Its essentially a near perfect action movie.

Not really meaningful commentary on society, arguably is copaganda…

… but it is a very competent ‘dumb’ action movie, punctuated with extreme violence and one-liner quips, actually does have decent characters and even some character development!

I so very badly want this to be real.

sigh

Time to retrieve the nozzle.

Oh so we are mass producing punchable faces now eh?

Having just one wasn’t enough, Sam?

Hope the next molotov finds its mark.

A whole bunch of people called out basically all the ‘text messages’ as obviously bullshit, when they were made public.

Because they don’t at all sound like two 20 something dorks talking to each other, they sound like a 45 yo cop, using cop lingo, and extremely overwrought language from baby’s first romance novel, to approximate a conversation that two 20 something dorks might have.

Yeah it was really weird that he said ‘the rumors that we did this are false’… before anyone prominent had actually… said that.

Extremely normal behavior.

It is comparable in the comparisons of the actual mechanics of the the shooting, and the subsequent government actions.

They’re both assasination stories with dubious ‘official stories’ that have tons of problems and holes with them, as well as significant evidence of the government doing a coverup.

And also, while you might not like to hear this, and trust me I don’t like saying it:

Charlie Kirk was really important to a lot of people.

He’s basically a canonized Saint/Martyr of the MAGA religion… millions of people really did, and still do, hold him in high regard.

We can think he was a shitty person who said and did shitty things… that doesn’t negate that a lot of similarly shitty people thought/think very highly of him.

They’re making monuments of him, naming streets after him.

May not be a smooth criminal, but I’m always thrilled to see 'em.

Meanwhile, Kash Patel is perenially drunk and generally missing in action, having psychotic episodes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/kash-patel-fbi-director-drinking-absences/686839/

You know, the head of the FBI, who was in charge of investigating this case, at least according to himself.

My new life motto, upon hitting roughly 30:

Suffer no fools.

Be humble, but show no mercy to a hypocrite.

I’ve been abused by enough narcissists that yeah, I’ve got some rough edges to me, but frankly, I’m fine with that; a whole lot of people just fucking suck, and its a reasonably effective autorepellant for people who are too full of themselves to take a joke or criticism.

A few years back, I may or may not have overtaken a ~202X Mustang who decided to cut off and brake check me, in a 2014 Prius C, and maintained that lead for 10 miles, till I lost sight of him and was at my exit, after switching to Highway Star.

Amusingly, this is a very laid back, slow tempo song, lol.

It’s happening.

Fetch is finally happening.

… In basically the worst and stupidest way possible.

Frog and Toad get Alpine Divorced

The 40s apparently had dad jokes grandfathered into their dad jokes.

… This is so stupid it hurts my brain.

I actually tried to find laws relating to… stowing? carrying? transporting? a gun, in a holster, on a harness, on a dog.

I could not find any.

I very much hope this is completely legally dubious, but given the patchwork insanity of US gun laws… there might concievably be some kind of very specific situation where this would ‘work’ in some kind of legal sense…

I feel like a lot of people on lemmy, a lot of reddit refugees… well basically they seem like 10 year younger versions of me, or something similar.

Thus… well fuck, psychoanalyzing myself a bit: I’m basically trying to be the dad or I guess just any kind of actual postitive mentor I wish I’d had, when I say things like this.

‘Its dangerous to go alone, read this!’

But yeah, laughter can help, and is a good part of any kind of discussion of the insane bullshit in this world… it doesn’t have to be just always jokes all the time, as s coping mechanism… it can be sanity-affirming for a blunt autist such as myself to just wholly explain the nonsense.

That being said: I’m not infallible. Ideally, don’t believe a thing I say, verify it.

We’ve unfortunately built a society, in the US at least, that literally rewards and promotes sociopathy with money.

These people lie and tell you we live in a meritocracy, which itself is gaslighting.

Sociopaths ‘overperform’ in most kinds of careers, because they’re so manipulative.

Yeah, its all an incenstuous club of a class of C Suite people that know all the people on the boards of the regulatory committees, the astroturfed ‘consumer rights’ groups, the industry advocate groups, etc.

They like to play musical chairs, hop around from seat to seat on different boards.

But uh yeah, corruption is the name of the game with regulatory capture, so, any kind of proposal to have an actually transparent, legit, accountable bidding process will of course be decried by basically everyone connected to it.

Remember when software companies used to like, train people, bring them up to speed, kinda like an apprenticeship, develop them as an asset, and then have a stable team?

Yeah, that… worked better.

But then managent essentially was insulted by the existence of people who knew more about how their own companies actually worked than they did, so they turned them all into contractors, and chaos has reigned ever since!