Signtist

You shouldn’t have to, but you do have to. The world isn’t going to fix itself - these things are happening because our country and its people have been slowly influenced over the course of decades specifically not to put up a fuss about it. We need to fight against that conditioning that tells us we deserve to be able to step away and ignore it. We do deserve that, but to allow ourselves that out is to continue allowing these atrocities to happen. We’ve been pushed into such stressful, overstimulating lives that putting up a fight seems impossible, but we need to fight it even if it means putting our lives on the line.

Not even your own money, you’re killing people for more money in the pockets of weapons dealers, oil barons, and the politicians they employ - I mean “lobby.”

Guilty in the legal sense means you’ve been found to be guilty in the court of law. Until you’ve been tried, you’re not guilty. Otherwise anyone could just say “that guy committed a crime” and it’d be their word against yours.

Videos that pushed this rhetoric were the first step in turning my mom from a normal shitty person into a full-blown conspiracy theorist. This is definitely going to be a problem.

Ugh, the “both sides” argument again… /s

I used to have a 1.5" leg length difference, so I had to wear a big lift in one of my shoes throughout middle and part of high school as I had a few surgeries to slowly fix the difference. It was a major pain, and I often rolled my ankle in gym class and sports.

True. Think of how many you’d be able to inspect from up there!

Forbidden PEZ

Fuddruckers still exists, but they’ve downsized significantly since the mid 2000’s when my friends and I used to go there a lot in high school. There aren’t any locations left in my state anymore.

…those are all corporations. Nationalization would make it a public service, rather than a corporate profit-driven service like how it is now.

You can bet that if libraries, for example, became privatized, we’d quickly see several different library companies pop up, each with their own paid book subscription service with exclusive partnerships with various popular authors, much like we have today with streaming platforms. Conversely, if we were to nationalize those streaming platforms, we’d likely see the service transformed to be more akin to our current library service.

It’s why the rightmost parties generally want to defund many public services and move them to the private sector - it transforms services that we spend money on to benefit the people into services that the people spend money on to benefit corporations.

Except in the US the moderate left generally chooses to cater to the right when they need to bolster their numbers, rather than the far left. It makes sense given that our current Democratic party is far closer to the moderate right than the far left. We’d need to elect new incoming lefter-leaning democratic leaders across all levels of government over the course of decades to get the party as a whole to tilt leftward rather than rightward when a clean majority is needed. It’s still the most viable option, but it’ll be a lot of work to achieve.

I wish the US had a system like that. It’s unfortunate that even a more inclusive voting system suffers from a surplus of voters fueled by hate and selfishness, but here in the US even protest votes for the far left play into the far right’s hands since all 3rd party votes together wouldn’t even come close to rivaling the 2 established parties.

Ah, man. Usually I can talk myself out of purchases like these, but this was my very first video game console, and I got it with those specific games…

Runescape made a lot of changes that people didn’t really like, but they mostly just kept pushing forward with everything, and it eventually became modern Runescape 3, which is the non-old-school Runescape. Then, because a lot of people were lamenting how different the game had become compared to the classic experience of the mid-2000’s, the developers opened up old school runescape, based on an old copy of the game from 2007 they happened to find.

Over the years new content was added to the old-school version that separates it from Runescape 3, making it a completely different experience, and that new content can only be added if enough of the playerbase agrees to it, making the changes generally positive in the eyes of the players. Old school really feels like a game from the mid 2000’s, where pay-to-win mechanics and the like are few and far between, while modern Runescape 3 feels like any other modern game where you either pay your way through or slog through content that seems tailor-made to make you just want to open your wallet to avoid it.

Technically those trees generally became coal, while oil is generally from marine life.

Yeah, I’ve never liked them in a carrot cake. Most older recipes will call for both raisins and some kind of nut, but I’ve never had a problem leaving the raisins out.

To what extent do they have to talk about it, though? Can they address it, come to the conclusion that it’s infeasible (while subtly tucking millions of dollars from game companies into their pockets), and consider the matter settled? I understand that governments are meant to keep corporations in check to benefit the people, but functionally they keep the people in check to benefit corporations and their “lobbyists” (bribes).

It really is good advice, and you do get more and more energy to do it after you get started. The thing I did was DnD, and I just found people in the area advertising in-person campaigns and went to some. I only wanted to do a social day once every week or two, so I started with that. That didn’t last long, though, since after finding the one campaign to be really fun, I ended up joining 2 more and having multiple sessions every week! I wouldn’t have had the energy to start with that, but now I’ve got plenty. It’s a bit of a balancing act to both acknowledge the height of the mountain you’re about to climb, but also keep in mind that all you need to do right now is take a single step.

I loved the original Rayman game so much as a kid that I’d specifically look for that old rainbow logo on other games to figure out which ones I might like.

Yeah, she had just broken up with her boyfriend and found a bunch of “self-help” youtube videos that basically just said everyone who disagrees with you is a narcissist, then the algorithm started recommending her videos that said everyone who disagrees with you is actually an “energy vampire” literally and maliciously draining you of your life force. From there she got into all the crazy health conspiracies - which of course happened right as she was diagnosed with DCIS, which is easily treatable, but if left untreated becomes breast cancer. She dove head-first into all of the conspiracies after that, throwing money at anyone claiming to cure cancer so long as the method wasn’t backed by “big science,” and died of breast cancer a few years later.