Democratic primaries do have issues, yeah, particularly in the presidential race. But I wouldn’t say theyre meaningless in local elections. Still, definitely a lot of issues, but voting in primaries still does far more than refusing to vote in the main election ever would.

First off, the donbas is not majority russian. While it has the largest group of Russians in the country it is still majority Ukrainian.

Second, the ICJ and international association of genocide scholars investigated Russia’s claim of massacre and genocide and found them to be entirely baseless and fabricated to justify invasion.

Third, if this was about liberating the donbas, then Russia wouldn’t have gone all the way to Kyiv at the beginning of the invasion. Even still Russia occupies far more than the donbas.

I swear the way some of yall rush to defend Russia. You guys realize it’s not socialist anymore, right? That the country is ruled and controlled by capitalists? That capital interests like the oil in ukraine are what drive them?

No, I’m pointing out your hypocrisy in recognizing that Iraqi nukes and the war on terror were largely overplayed to justify the invasion of the middle east for oil but not recognizing when Russia does the same shit in Ukraine. But it seems like you’re the type to decide who to support based on a vague tribalist conception of “east vs west” rather than actually having any moral principles to rely on, so I apologize if my criticism of certain eastern and western actions simultaneously is too much for you to handle.

Every year the DNC says “we got less votes this year! Must be the centrists voting for republicans, we gotta be more moderate!” and then somehow those folks turn around and say “the democrats are too moderate, if enough of us don’t vote, the DNC will see they are losing support and realize they need to come back left!”

I will always understand having grievances for the democratic party because all they do is defend the status quo - I do too - but not voting over that is just fucking stupid. You want to change that? Go to protests, vote in primaries, support local initiatives for ranked choice voting, donate to causes you find actually beneficial, support local politicians that dont just support the status quo, support movements you believe in. If its about Gaza, speak up about that, donate to humanitarian funds, etc. There are ao many things you can do that can impact these things. But refusing to vote does actually fucking nothing for that cause.

There is no world in which more people refusing to vote for Kamala would have gotten us a better president or stopped genocide in gaza. Or really had any impact in any way that wasn’t making trump more likely to win. IMO the folks that did that were doing it more for themselves so they could feel morally superior because they didnt vote for the candidate that supported genocide or the “status quo” even though it literally never would have had any impact on either of those things.

(And let’s be real - trump is way worse for Gaza than Kamala would have been. I’m sure she wouldn’t have done enough, just like Biden, but at least there are voices in that party calling out Israel. Those voices fall far more deaf on this administration’s ears)

Right, and the oil is just a coincidence, that just so happened to be there. And the US invaded Iraq because of terrorists and nukes that weren’t there, the oil was just a coincidence.

You’re really gonna say the attempts to distance themselves from the culture of their previous colonizers and current invaders is genocide?

Right, because drawing an allegory to the actions of the United States in the middle east as an example of doing something bad is the best way to praise the states

“No guys, it’s ok when Russia unapologetically invades a foreign country for oil, because you see that country is part of the west and west = bad”

Free speech has returned guys!!! Comedy is legal again!!! You can say whatever you want as long as it aligns with the vision of the glorious leader!

Yeah this is a weird selection of companies. What about Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, even 4chan?

At the very least the social media sites that use algorithmic recommendations heavily. The recent shooting in Colorado got me thinking about how social media algorithms that repeatedly pushes content thats found to engage can easily cause people to fall into a spiral of radicalization. Even just the slightest interest in something, or even shock, can trigger their algorithms to get to work recommending similar stuff. News sites mentioned the kid in Colorado that shot up the school had social media accounts full of shit that glorified school shootings. How’d that start? Maybe something popped up that made a joke about school shootings and he thought it was funny cause its “edgy” or something? And then it remembers that, and pushes another similar post, and another, and on and on until this kid’s feed is supposedly full of this kind of content. I don’t know if that happened but it seems likely.

But nah, its valve that they’re going after. Cause I guess its always the video games that are to blame, right?

And discord? That’s just a fancy chat board. What’s next, should we question IRC? Email?

FSR4 has been great for me. Performance seems slightly worse than FSR3 but the increase in visual quality is well worth it, particularly because IMO FSR4 on balanced both looks and performs better than FSR3 on quality.

I still avoid it when I can because native rendering will always look best, but this is definitely really nice for steam deck where the hardware is much more limited.

I’d argue they do make strategic decisions, its just that the strategy is always increasing quarterly earnings and their own assets.

Experiencing certain forms of violence and harassment and having low-moderate social support from any source was associated with higher prevalence of suicidal ideation. Social support from family moderated the association between experiencing certain forms of violence and harassment and suicidal ideation (p interaction = 0.01); however, even in the presence of high family social support, experiencing certain forms of violence and harassment was associated with higher prevalence of suicidal ideation.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7301a7.htm

n = 1608 on this one.

Every study I’ve ever seen that looks at the link between social support and depression/suicidal thoughts in trans people shows a very clear link. Given the prevalence of transphobia in our society, this can entirely explain the increase in suicidal thoughts in trans people.

thats actually kinda crazy how much more readable that makes it

…still not super easy tho lol

Yeah I’ve felt similarly before. I agree with the other though, drinking more water helps.

A game made for kids should not allow sexually explicit material on their platform. And, in fact, they don’t, this kind of content is very clearly and explicitly against roblox’s content policy but they fail to enforce it.

Lower self-reported transphobia was associated with a 66 % reduction in ideation, and an additional 76 % reduction in attempts among those with ideation

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12889-015-1867-2.pdf

An increase by one context in which a chosen name could be used predicted a 5.37-unit decrease in depressive symptoms, a 29% decrease in suicidal ideation, and a 56% decrease in suicidal behavior.

https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(18)30085-5/fulltext#intraref0010a

Socially transitioned transgender children who are supported in their gender identity have developmentally normative levels of depression and only minimal elevations in anxiety, suggesting that psychopathology is not inevitable within this group.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26921285/

So yes. Increased depression and suicide among trans people is, according to the research, entirely correlated with social factors like how much they are accepted by friends/family and chosen name use.

This isn’t an age verification problem, its a moderation problem. A massive one. There’s hundreds of games that exist almost entirely for the purpose of grooming ppl (a common one is so called “bathroom simulators” iirc) and roblox frequently doesnt do anything about them until there’s public outcry about ine particular game, no matter how many reports come in or how obvious it is.

I mean I could almost see that? Helldivers is kinda a satire on the american brand of fascism so it could be argued its an anti-fascist peace of media. But that’s a stretch to say the least.

But my real issue with this is that federal investigators saw something they had absolutely no clue what it is and called it a transgender symbol. Its an incredible amount of bias in a particularly very bigoted way.

Reminds me of a lyric from The Clash - “taking off his turban, they said, ‘is this man a jew?’” They see something unknown to them and just assign it to the marginalized group they have a preconceived notion of being bad.