I prefer using higher precision when responding like this. I will often say something like: “137.825%”. Mostly, I do this because it makes the other person feel awkward, and I do it because I constantly feel awkward, and so I just want other people to feel a tiny portion of what it’s like being me.

I mean, everything does happen for a reason. It’s just that most of the time, the reason is “because so-and-so is an asshole”. It makes it essentially a useless platitude, but not an untrue one. I definitely take issue with the implication of it, that there’s some supreme, all-knowing authority in the universe who has this complicated, labyrinthine plan for everyone that involves massive amounts of suffering. That whole “mysterious plan of God” thing is a way for Christians to take credit for all of the good stuff that happens, while downplaying all of the bad stuff that happens as just “part of God’s plan!” It’s insidious.

The US is not a member of the ICC. Their arrest warrant on Putin has fuck all to do with the US. And besides, under no circumstances would the US desire the arrest of Putin. We won’t even allow Zelensky to use US-provided munitions to target Russian airfields; you think we’d risk nuclear retaliation by arresting their president??

I get that you didn’t put much thought into this post, but god damn. That space between your ears isn’t just free real estate.

Here’s a good write-up of it. It’s pretty hilarious.

I would 100% watch a YouTube let’s play about this game.

God, imagine living in a retirement community that has a Hot Topic.

Yup. I’m old enough to remember when the selling point of cable TV was that it was ad-free. Then, of course, they started adding ads. And then they sold us premium channels that didn’t have ads. Now those have ads, too. You just can’t get away from them.

I find it fascinating how media companies evolved their usage of ads over time. Used to be that the purpose of showing someone an ad was to get them to buy your product. Now, though, the companies who make the ads are paying to have them put on media networks who use the ads to annoy you into paying for a premium membership so you don’t have to see them. It’s double dipping.

Not sure how I would feel if I made an ad, and YouTube was saying to their users: “Yeah, you like that fucking ad? Super annoying, isn’t it? If you don’t pay me more money, I’m going to cram that annoying bullshit down your throat every time you want to watch a video. I’m going to put ads at the beginning of videos. I’m going to sprinkle them throughout the middle. Hell, I’m even going to make you watch ads after the video ends! You like that, you little bitch??”

From Reddit itself, just the large userbase. It meant that even niche interests had lively and active communities.

From Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES): the ability to resize images just by cliking and dragging, the ability to tag users in custom ways so you can tell at a glance if they’re someone who past-you thought was an idiot, and endless scrolling.

What I don’t miss: everything else. Comparing the two userbases, Reddit is far more right-wing on average than Lemmy is. It’s nice not having to deal with so many garbage takes here.

Man, Ivan. You really suck at your job. You must be new here. You’re way too obvious about it.

Well that’s the thing: nobody’s disparaging them for growing. It’s great that they finally saw trans people as people. Wonderful for them. But they’re LIFE-LONG Republicans. They sat through Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump as president. All the while, their party just got shittier and more full of bigoted people. They watched the rise of right-wing talk radio, with horrendous humans like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck spewing their vitriol in the name of the party, and they remained. They watched the Tea Party hold up signs decrying Obama as a monkey, or a muslim, signs calling for the hanging of Obama, and they remained. They watched Trump try to overthrow democracy as hundreds of terrorists committed violence at his bidding, and they remained.

Now, they’re finally deciding to leave the party because the bigotry they supported all along suddenly became turned their way. Fuck them. I’m not disparaging them for growing. I’m disparaging them for being pieces of shit.

My guess is that they’d rather those grandparents not have been hateful pieces of shit in the first place. But better late than never!

It’d be wasted breath, really. Trump will never step down, because he’s trying to remain out of prison. If he loses, then there goes any chance he had at pardoning himself for his numerous crimes. So he’s not only the far and away favorite Republican candidate, but he’s also highly motivated to stay in the race for personal reasons. No appeal to his sense of patriotism will work to get him to step down because he has no patriotism. He’s in it for himself and himself only.

Biden, on the other hand, is just the default Democrat guy because he’s the incumbent, and the party figured that’d be enough to win, and so haven’t been trying very hard. And that has everybody terrified, because if he loses, then we get another 4 years of Trump, and probably never get to vote again. Basically, people are calling for Biden to step down because the stakes are way too high to fuck around.

I think you’re severely overestimating the average intelligence of the population.

True, the weather was really bad in that area, but he was traveling in a 3-helicopter convoy, and only his helicopter crashed. Now, I’m not saying that it’s impossible, or even improbable that it was an accident, but we can’t really rule out sabotage at this point, especially considering how big of a target he had on his head from both the US and Israel. Personally, I really hope it was an accident. I mean, I shed no tears for that son of a bitch, but the ramifications if this was an assassination are unsettling.

I think you’ve got some very mistaken ideas about who Democrats are if you think that a supermajority of them would be totally up for implementing a slew of progressive policies. They’re way more progressive than the Republican party is, for sure. But that’s such an incredibly low bar that it’s laughable. Democrats will do things like make Cesar Chavez day a holiday, or fly BLM and LGBTQI flags, but expecting them to actually pass legislation that addresses the root inequities in a meaningful way is an uphill battle.

Bro, it ain’t 4/20 anymore.

I occasionally forget mine, too, but I was fortunate in that I was born in 1970, so it’s really easy to calculate it on the fly.

Oh hey - catturd2; isn’t that that sycophantic piece of shit who fawns all over Elon Musk every chance he gets? Maybe it’s a different catturd2 on bluesky.

Edit: Actually, yeah; it does look like it’s a different person entirely:

Unfortunately, it’s often not easy to do. Women have a notoriously difficult time convincing fertility doctors to sterilize them because “well what if you change your mind some time in the future?” or “well what if you eventually meet a man who wants kids?”. Yeah. Basically, your wants and desires take back-seat to some hypothetical future you, or some hypothetical future man’s wants and desires. Unfortunately, even some of my blue state friends have faced major road blocks in this quest. It’s a disease that’s only going to get worse if the Republicans take over the executive. :(