Month: November 2025

Filed under: Accidental Tech Purchases, Parenting Decisions Made at 11PM

A few weeks ago, I was ready to make the respectable, adult upgrade from my trusty Raspberry Pi 400 to the Pi 500. A modest jump. A “treat yourself, because you answered at least three emails this week” kind of moment.

But in classic Raspberry Pi fashion, right as my wallet began to open they quietly dropped the Pi 500 Plus. It has an SSD. It has a mechanical keyboard. It lights up like a Vegas buffet sign. It can probably summon spirits if you press the F-keys in the wrong order.

Naturally, I needed it immediately.

The Great Pi Chase

If you’ve ever tried to buy anything Raspberry Pi makes, you know the rule:

If you’re not there at launch, with your browser refreshed to the point of medical concern, the thing is gone. Gone like your New Year’s resolutions. Gone like your hopes, dreams, and that missing Tupperware lid.

Still, I tossed a hopeful backorder to CanaKit.

They replied: “It’ll be a few weeks.”

And then, Immediately after that email came the shipping notification.

Two days later? The Pi 500 Plus was sitting on my porch like it had hitchhiked across state lines to find me.

The Keyboard That Exposed My Weaknesses

The first thing I noticed: the mechanical keyboard.

This thing clicks. It clacks. It reminds you that membrane keyboards have been coddling your weak little fingers for years.

Do I personally enjoy typing on a keyboard that sounds like a 1980s newsroom reporting on Watergate?

No.

But I didn’t buy it for me.

Enter: Young Viking Destroyer

This machine’s true destiny is serving Young Viking Destroyer, who needs a real computer but does not need me dropping a grand on a MacBook so she can watch YouTube, play browser games, and type one paragraph about the water cycle.

And let me tell you:

The lights?

The effects?

The keyboard that bursts into rainbow fireworks every time she hits Enter?

Tween catnip.

She loves it.

Which means she uses it.

Which means: victory.

Tech Specs? Sure. It Has Some.

Look, if you’re reading Deathjuice, you know the truth:

Specs only matter when you’re arguing with strangers in comment sections.

The Pi 500 Plus:

• Has memory.

• Has an SSD.

• Turns on.

• Does stuff.

• Makes numbers appear on a screen.

• Doesn’t scream in pain.

What actually matters:

• It plays the exact games tweens will spend three hours on while eating cereal out of a mug.

• It opens Google Docs without collapsing.

• It runs YouTube flawlessly, which is 98% of computing for the younger generation.

• It streams everything your household already pays for.

• It works with iCloud and all the office-y software adults pretend to care about.

Do you need more?

No.

Unless you’re one of those people who believes you must own a $6,000 basement gaming rig cooled by liquid nitrogen to check email.

In which case, Godspeed. May your lights and fans guide you to peace.

Final Thoughts Before the Keyboard Clicks Again

The Raspberry Pi 500 Plus is a fantastic all-in-one machine.

Not “I mine crypto while flying a drone” powerful.

Not “my PC needs its own HVAC system” powerful.

But powerful enough for actual humans doing actual things.

It’s affordable.

It’s fun.

It’s reliable.

It doesn’t require a degree in wizardry.

And it keeps your tween delighted without you needing to remortgage your house for a laptop.

10/10 would buy again…

Though my fingers might unionize over the keyboard.

By DeathJuice Editorial | Retro-Futurist Dispatch | 1789 meets 2025

👑 The Land of the Crowned and the Hungry

Somewhere between the golden glow of power and the flickering fluorescent of a closed government office, the kingdom sleeps.

Millions of Americans face empty cupboards, missed paychecks, and the bitter comedy of “budget negotiations”  while the self-appointed royals debate over dessert.

If the government reopened today, the starving might get fed.

But not healed.

Because “affordable medical care” remains the punchline to a joke that no one’s laughing at.

Affordable to who?

That remains another topic or, more precisely, another lie.

🍰 Should They Eat Cake?

Our queen, who once looked like she could have been a Miss Universe 1999 judge, now rules in pearls and faux fur. Her Communist red baseball crown reads: “Should They Eat Cake?”

Beside her stands the King Of Felons a man whose hue is said to recall a well done citrus fruit, crowned in Chinese velvet in the color of communism with the bold lettering: “Make America Starve Again.”

Their subjects? You. Me. The unpaid. The uninsured. The unseen.

And as the airports close, the king’s great wall that monument to imagined threats, becomes a cruel twist of irony. It no longer keeps anyone out.

It keeps us in.

🚫 The Wall Isn’t About Safety Anymore

It’s a gilded cage.

A patriotic panic room where the elite sip cocktails and mutter about “the optics.”

Flights are grounded. Workers furloughed. Farmers unpaid.

But the private jets still hum like lullabies over the quiet streets.

The wall stands tall, not as protection, but as punctuation a full stop in the story of progress.

🍅 The Ketchup Club

But don’t despair!

While the poor ration canned beans, the rich are still finding new hobbies.

In private clubs lit like Martian ballrooms, the privileged let your children lick ketchup from their ears. But only if they are naked.

It’s a new kind of communion, the body and blood of capitalism itself.

It’s grotesque. It’s decadent. It’s America, baby.

Where the taste of excess covers the smell of hunger.

💉 The Price of “Affordable”

Meanwhile, those on the outside scroll through medical portals and debt collectors’ texts.

The “Affordable Care” page loads slowly, but not as slowly as the realization that “affordable” never meant you.

If you can’t pay the premium, pray.

If you can’t see a doctor, don’t cough in public.

If you can’t feed your kid, tell them it’s a national fast. 

How long before their Churches have call for daily fasting?

The king calls it “resilience.”

The queen calls it “patriotism.”

We call it malice dressed as management.

Or simply the retribution you voted for.

🏛️ The Royal We

Here’s the final joke:

The shutdown isn’t a pause.

It’s the plan.

The suffering isn’t collateral, it’s currency.

Every delay, every closure, every excuse is a dividend paid to the powerful for your endurance.

Because when the government shuts down, the system doesn’t stop.

It just decides who counts.

🔻 The DeathJuice Takeaway

The government could reopen today.

The starving could eat.

The sick could heal.

The people could move.

But the caps stay on, the walls stay high, and the message stays the same:

“Make America Starve Again.”

Because in this royal shutdown, the crown’s made of his communist financiers fabric and the kingdom’s built on fumes

The Refrigeration Engineer As the New God

Somewhere between the pews of patriotism and the pulpit of paranoia, America crowned its newest savior, a refrigeration engineer. A man who fixes the ICE machine, not the “illegal immigrant” problem. But hey, details are hard when you’re too busy saluting your own reflection.

The confusion is poetic, really. A nation that mistakes cruelty for conviction would, of course, mistake a repairman for redemption. “He makes ICE!” they cry. “He must be one of us!”

Bless their chilled, irony-proof hearts.

It’s not that the engineer wanted worship. He just wanted the compressor to stop rattling. But next thing you know, someone’s kneeling in the Home Depot parking lot, asking him to baptize their AR-15.

This is America in 4K absurdity. A place where faith means “my side,” freedom means “my rules,” and Christianity is just the dress code for nationalism’s Sunday best. We’ve canonized commentators and crowned conspiracy preachers as prophets. The Book of Matthew never mentioned Facebook Lives, but that didn’t stop anyone from rewriting the gospel in red, white, and algorithm.

So, if you hear the whir of an ice machine tonight, breath and relax. It’s not divine intervention. It’s just someone doing their job.

The real miracle would be if America could tell the difference.