His surname was Balashnikov before it was changed to Galil to sound more Hebrew.

Crazy how the people who believe the government planned the pandemic are also on the side of the guy who ran the government at the time.

Well, there’s a few aspects of it. If they push it, it could make my experience worse (This tends to happen with any service that’s pushing AI). I also consider it to be highly unethical, so it lowers my opinion of their ethics (not that it’s high to begin with) and makes me more likely to protest them on ethical grounds. After all, I’m here now instead of Reddit for similar reasons.

That seems like a quick way to get me to cancel my Spotify subscription.

Their worst sin in my opinion is actually how they split off the end of the Smaug storyline to be resolved in, like, the first five minutes of the third movie (literally before the title) rather than resolving it in the second movie. Huge pacing mistake.

I agree that both genocides are bad, but I disagree on a few points:

1. The genocide of Palestinians has been going on since long before October 7. Hamas didn’t initiate it, they just performed a relatively minor act of retaliation which Israel used as an excuse to escalate the genocide.

2. For those of us in the west, our own governments are supporting the latter genocide. So of course we’re more outraged about the blood that’s on our own hands (in some sense). I think that Russia should be stopped as well, but not sending weapons in support of a genocide seems like a pretty clear first step we should be taking.

Under plurality voting, third parties are objectively bad for the winning chances of whatever party they pull more voters from (and/or bad for whatever major party you personally would vote for, if you personally vote third party). That might be what some people meant by them being “bad”, even though they prefer one of those major parties to win (and cheer on anything that makes the other party less likely to win). Although it’s certainly possible that some people just think they are bad in general. People do have different opinions, after all.

It’s only hypocrisy if they do things that disagree with their own views, and their own views are internally conistent in this case. Their view is not that all third parties are bad, their view is that third parties that have a negative impact are bad. So it doesn’t make it hypocrisy just because it disagrees with your straw man of their views.

If the democrats lose the election, I fully expect them to roll over and let Trump take power. In that case, Trump would have the institutions on his side, even as he seeks to dismantle those same institutions going forward. Democrats constantly show themselves to be willing to play by the rules, even as Republicans show themselves to be willing to bend those rules.

If he loses the election, I expect there will be an attempt to take power anyways (again), but I think that attempt is likely to fail (again) when he doesn’t have the institutions on his side.

The degree of difference between the two potential outcomes is quite pronounced. You can say “Both sides bad” and you’d be right, but bad vs good is not a binary, it’s a spectrum, and there’s a huge degree of difference in how bad the two sides are.

We don’t live in those “generally” times, currently. One of our candidates is running on a fascist platform, tried to do a fascist coup (and got away with no consequences for it), and has both promised and planned to overthrow democracy if he’s elected.

Maybe he would be prevented from doing all that stuff even if he won, but I’m definitely not counting on that. I’m gonna be fleeing like a jew from Nazi Germany because quite frankly that’s what I see it potentially becoming, and they’ve definitely painted a target on the backs of trans people in particular.

I am under no illusions that the democrats will be fully on our side, but when the other side is specifically trying to wipe out people like my partner, they’re a very clear choice. I’d much rather live under a government that’s not actively trying to wipe us out.

We’re absolutely planning to live in a blue state. But the ability to be safe even in blue states is in question if Trump gets elected again. If he does, then we’re probably gonna try to get out of the country as quickly as possible rather than waiting around to find out.

I wrote in “Gaza” on the primary, but come november I am 100% sure that I’m gonna be voting D as hard as I can because my partner is trans and I’d rather not be driven from the country by transphobia, thanks.

Criticising the democrats for when they’re not good is absolutely valid, but at the same time, get out and vote for them and mobilize as many voters for them as you can, because the difference in outcome between the two parties with legitimate chances of winning is too great to throw away your votes protesting the lesser of two evils. By all means, keep protesting (In other ways, besides the ballot box), but also do your part to make sure that we get the lesser of two evils, not the greater.

I’m pretty sure this is not the type of mirage you linked (which would be above the real horizon) but rather one that is below the real horizon. That is, the ship is seen above the real horizon, but the water near the horizon is hidden by a mirage of the sky. You can faintly make out the real horizon, as well.