For real. Academics are some of the most prolific pirates I’ve ever met. Usually out of necessity because we don’t pay them reasonably or value their work.

Have you played Dragon Age Inquisition? I hadn’t until someone here recommended it, so I grabbed it for $3 and am deep into it. As a mage, it’s full-throated magical glory. You can use lightning, fire, and ice magic, get badass staffs, and have a good combination of AoE and normal spells. I definitely feel OP after crafting some custom armor and weapons. Lots of fun.

That’s my cat’s “um, kindly get this the fuck off of me, who do you think you are?” face.

Thank you, this framing makes sense to me. I still disagree with the ultimate decision, but I understand and appreciate your tone.

I hear you, and agree it's unlikely that Lemmy will change the world. But frankly I'm surprised how little faith you have in the platform you help moderate. Why are you doing this if you don't think what happens here matters?

For an example how I would have handled it, the Ten Forward Star Trek community did it right, in my opinion.

As I said in the next sentence, "it’s highly unlikely, but you know we’re real people here, with real thoughts and ideas." Lemmy is the only social media I use, period. I don't contribute to any other social media, so it's perhaps more likely than you're thinking, but still, like I said, highly unlikely. Why take the chance?

This comes across as an extremely heavy-handed way of controlling the conversation. I get wanting to keep things civil, but taking a massive world-changing subject completely off the table, a subject that many many many of us clearly want to talk through, is not a reasonable response in my opinion.

Who's to say some random comment in a random post on the presidential election doesn't come up with some incredible idea or solution? It's highly unlikely, but you know we're real people here, with real thoughts and ideas. You never know where that one good idea will come from, but it definitely won't be coming from here if you shut down the whole conversation. I understand this is your instance, and you can do what you want with it, but this is a disappointing response to a very live issue.

I think she’s partly right, but also, if she was the one who ultimately succeeded in getting Biden to drop out when he did, then isn’t it reasonable to expect that he would have dropped out earlier if she had pushed him out earlier? Which would make it her fault. Fuck, I don’t even know anymore. I don’t have a lot of confidence that the Democratic party will learn the right lessons from this loss.

Wow, this is some serious chutzpah:

“Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials,” Bezos wrote. “You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other.”

Firstly, Trump is not a government official. He’s a private citizen, who is also a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist.

Secondly, don’t tell us that your principles are the only thing standing in the way of your corrupt conflicting business interests, without telling us what your principles are. Oh right, we can plainly see that you have no principles from your actions over decades of running an exploitative monopoly, and from the fact that you hijacked your own newspaper’s editorial page to tell us that ‘no no it’s still a legit newspaper I swear’ as you undermine its credibility with your own words.

What a disgrace.

To add to the pile of evidence that this is all just hateful bigotry and has nothing to do with children's safety, cisgender children can still legally access these drugs, but not for the purpose of transitioning genders. The same drugs can still be used to delay aggressive puberty, which is a standard and relatively common usage, as well as other conditions that might affect a cisgender child. But a trans child who needs the same drugs for a different reason, will be told too bad, you're out of luck. So two children could walk into the same doctor's office and one will be turned away and forced to suffer through their gender dysphoria, with permanent repercussions for their mental health and body, and the other child will be treated with the drugs they need to be treated with. It's absurdly unfair, unequal, and purposefully harmful to a vulnerable population.

For those who don’t know (there are probably a few) Bernie is Jewish, and his opinions better reflect the rest of us Jews than the crazies on the right (and left) and in Israel. I don’t have stats, but every American Jew I’ve talked to about this has been morally outraged and frankly mortified by Israel’s actions. We understand how it looks to the rest of the world. Don’t let the antisemitism arguments (usually pushed by Christians btw) fool you. Bernie is on the right side of this issue, as usual.

This would be genuinely hilarious if it wasn’t so goddamn serious for so many indoctrinated folks.

So let me get this straight: she’s black, she’s south Asian, she’s a woman, she’s married to a Jew, and she’s a witch? I think I like her even more now…