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Cake day: September 15th, 2024

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  • Political parties are creations of the electoral and governmental systems in the nations they exist in

    “Most European nations” is an imprecise way of saying “dominant parlimentary unicameral legislatures”. To use the UK as an example, all sovereign power is asserted by the lower democratically elected chamber of parliment. Neither the house of lords nor the king counter the assembled majority of parliment,.who from its own members appoint those who direct the government day to day. While there is a sub-national distinction, these are essentially creations of parliment and have no inherent power on their own.

    Since the only thing that matters in national UK politics is parliament, all of the political energy is focused there.

    In the United States this is not at all the case… national power is split as I described before, and a similar pattern repeats at the state level with distinct difectly-elected legislators and executives. The national government was historically a creation of the states, and each state has substantial ability to act in defiance of congress’s preferences.

    Since there are so many different things that matter, the value of a third or fourth party is dramatically reduced. When minor parties start to win elections on their own, the major parties either adapt or die quickly. (I have remarked elsewhere that in American politics “there is no prize for second place”, and a worthwhile collolary here would be “and there are so many games to play.”)

    You are technically correct in that if God came down and reworked all of the USA into distinct european-style nations with separate languages we would likely have similar party arrangements, with both the Democrats and the Republicans splitting into multiple parties. But if God also remade Europe into a single USA-style mega-nation made up of states with similar governments who shared a single first-language, European parties would likely congeal until there are only two.

    As a practical matter, of course, neither is not a useful observations. And simplified observations of the differences between “Europe” and the USA like “the USA is far to the right of Europe” were part of what led the UK to devolve into a place where you can be threatened to silence for accurately describing a rich transphobe.


  • Your analysis completely ignores the impact of the US Senate’s wonky “cloture” rule, which is a compromise from the prior practice of the US Senate filibuster.

    As depicted in way too many movies, the filibuster let any single senator (or small team or senators) essentially veto any piece of legislation by putting the whole thing to a halt. The modern rule instead (in essence) requires any act.of Congress to clear a 60% vote threshold in the Senate.

    There hasn’t been a time in my entire life when the modern democratic party held the presidency, a majority in the house, and 3/5ths of the Senate. (Clinton had a party with segregation-era racists still in power; Obama had “blue dogs” who were nearly Republican, and Biden had a coal baron and a green party scam artist in the Senate )


  • DomeGuy@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldCan someone explain me how GOG works?
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    11 days ago

    GoG actually implements something the rich tool* behind steam once said: “piracy is a customer service issue.”

    Broadly speaking, folk only private games for three reasons: either the DRM limits how they can play their game, they don’t want to make such a purchase sight unseen, or they haven’t the funds to purchase the games they want.

    There’s very little that will turn the third type into paying customers, but the first and second can be converted by some combination of.the straight removal of DRM and a generous return policy.

    It’s also worth noting that pirates of all three groups will on occasion make a game purchase, due to a desire to support an especially liked game or studio or behavior.



  • Jesus was the word of God. As understood by most denominations, Jesus of Nazareth WAS God born as a man, and Jesus rules in Heaven now. (But it gets confusing after that, and agreement drops off.)

    Going just off my memory, Jesus said about five things about money:

    • He chased for-profit money changers out of the temple, who were in effect stealing from the temple and parishioners by insisting a gift of goods or other currencies had to be converted.

    • He answered a question about if His followers should give taxes to Rome by pointing that Ceasar’s face was on the coin,.and that they should “render to God what was God’s, and render to Ceasar what was Ceasar’s”

    • He extolled a poor woman’s gift of a few coins as a greater gift than the numerically larger gift from others,.since it was a larger share of the woman’s wealth.

    • He marked that one cannot “serve two masters” and could either seek wealth for its own sake or serve heaven, but not both.

    • When a rich man asked what it would take for said rich man to enter Heaven, Jesus told him “sell everything you have and follow me,” at which the rich guy went away sad.

    There may well be others, but at no point in the gospels did Jesus forbid commerce or currency, or suggest that it was somehow improper to pool money together to fund a common house of worship.

    Some modern self-described Christians are very money focused, to an extent that I’d argue they’ve abandoned.thr gospels like the rich man in that last bit… But Jesus wasn’t ever explicitly against cash.









  • You presented it as proof that Russia is supporting misinformation on the left. To be that, it has to both include all three parts of the claim – that there is disinformation on the left, that Russia is covertly supporting disinformation, and that some of the disinformation on the left was supported by Russia.

    If your wife sleeps around, and I engage in casual sex, it does not necessarily follow that I slept with your wife.


    A common suspicion in America is that Vladimir Putin believes that Trump as POTUS is good for Russia, and that Putin interferes with US politics with a specific goal of helping Trump.

    If you have some reporting that directly links Russia to left-wing disinformation I’d love to read it. But the BBC article I read after following your link didn’t have any such link.





  • Follow up thought after dinner: AGP is also auto-misandry and a strong example of toxic masculinity.

    For those not familiar with the term, it’s the idea that all trans men are only trans men because they think themselves sexually appealing as women. Which is fairly strongly disproven by “cis women feel that way, too”, but also exposes a wretched opinion about cis men.

    We’re SUPPOSED to think that we’re sexually attractive. If we want to get laid that means we need to find someone who finds us attractive, and that’s damn hard when we can’t even think of ourselves as sexy.


  • “Unsettled science” is putting it far to charitably. From the second paragraph of that wikipedia article:

    Scientific criticisms commonly made against Blanchard’s research include that the typology is unfalsifiable because Blanchard and other supporters regularly dismiss or ignore data that challenges the theory

    You could keep reading that Wikipedia article down to its sections on “Transfeminist critique”, “Transgender men”, and “Societal impact.” I also recommend reading what Julia Serano wrote on the topic. (Which I find it to be a strong case that AGP is just bad science.) https://juliaserano.medium.com/making-sense-of-autogynephilia-debates-73d9051e88d3


    Or, to be brief: AGP is transphobic because it reduces transgenderism to a sexual fetish. There are non-transgender cross-dressers and transgender men and women who are asexual or demisexual, not to mention thousands of definitely-transgender children who haven’t had a sexual thought in their lives.