I think something that contributes to people talking past each other here is a difference in belief in how necessary/desirable revolution/overthrow of the U.S government is. Like many of the people who I’ve talked to online, who advocate not voting and are also highly engaged, believe in revolution as the necessary alternative. Which does make sense. It’s hard to believe that the system is fundamentally genocidal and not worth working within (by voting for the lesser evil) without also believing that the solution is to overthrow that system.
And in that case, we’re discussing the wrong thing. Like the question isn’t whether you should vote or not . it’s whether the system is worth preserving (and of course what do you do to change it. How much violence in a revolution is necessary/acceptable). Like if you believe it is worth preserving, then clearly you should vote. And if you believe it isn’t, there’s stronger case for not voting and instead working on a revolution.
Does anyone here believe that revolution isn’t necessary and also that voting for the lesser isn’t necessary?
The opposite is more plausible to me: believing in the necessity of revolution while also voting
Personally I believe that revolution or its attempt is unlikely to effective and voting+activism is more effective, and also requires agreement from fewer people in order to progress on its goals. Tragically, this likely means that thousands more people will be murdered, but I don’t know what can actually be effective at stopping that.
Since games don’t have to run with more than user privileges and steam runs in flatpak, you could run them as a different user account with very limited permissions.
That said, flatpak should be pretty secure as far as I’m aware if you make sure that permissions for the apps running are restricted appropriately. I’m not sure how restricted you can make steam and still have it work though
You can use offline mode for steam if you’re okay with steam having internet but not games. But there’s no way to use steam entirely offline. Internet access is a fundamental part of the system they have.
There’s also a question of what your threat model is. Like are you trying to prevent causal access of your files by games, or like a sophisticated attempt to compromise the system conveyed through a game. For the former flatpak seems sufficient. For the latter you probably need a dedicated machine. And there’s varying levels in between