I voted to enable downvotes due to an increase in bad faith comments and posts in some communities, and removing downvotes allows trolls and sealions to artificially appear neutral when in fact they are rightfully buried. It also discourages commenters when those bad-faith debates eat up comment sections.

That said, I completely understand the rationale above and it convinced me that I voted the wrong way. Makes total sense that most people misuse downvotes, and I agree with disabling for now.

Good job - we picked the candidate favored by the KKK, Nazis, the Taliban and Putin.

Where even am I anymore.

Sure, we didn't save democracy, but at this point, I'll take it.

I would have posted this as a post if not violative of Rule 1, but Jon Stewart's The Weekly Show posted a great episode yesterday with a very thoughtful political theorist guest. It focuses on why the disinformation campaigns are responsible for this election.

In short: We have already reached a point where real policy and positions is no match for propaganda. Political power was decisively proven this election to derive from creating and exploiting a false reality, with multiple groups in Trump's coalition directly and decisively voting against their interests because they simply believed Trump more than reality. In Russia this is called "political technology" and Trump followed that playbook exactly.

Is it even possible to learn that lesson in time? I don't think so - I think we missed our last chance. Because Trump's campaign so effectively recognized this, we can also expect them to recognize that media cannot be allowed to be independent and control of the media is how they maintain that false reality. Like Hitler, like Putin, like Xi, expect that Trump's team - given free rein by his sycophantic House, Senate and Supreme court - will ruthlessly crack down on free press. I'd be shocked if it doesn't happen in the first few months.

We're about to enter a very dark time, and by the midterms, it's likely that even with a "free and fair" election, it will be so tainted by state-sponsored misinformation there is no hope of the public voting out the right.

This is infuriating.

Nothing has changed re: Trump's status as a regular citizen, and the DOJ's memo only applies to sitting presidents. The DOJ and Jack Smith were prosecuting criminal conduct. In winding down these cases now, they are voluntarily refusing to prosecute someone they believe is a criminal when their role was to do so on behalf of the people. Likewise, the judge is voluntarily abandoning his duty to expediently seek justice on behalf of the people.

The proper course here would be to continue to treat him as a regular criminal, not delay anything, and on January 20th, decide then if you want to quit.

This preemptive compliance is doing 90% of Trump's work in creating an authoritarian state where he is above the law. Don't just roll over, you hacks, do your jobs.

It's Russia. It was always going to be Russia.

Musk repeated the DDOS claim when the Space finally began around 8:40PM ET. “As this massive attack illustrates, there’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say,” he said.

So not only is he fabricating the DDOS out of thin air, but he just assumes out of nowhere that it's politically motivated by the "opposition" to silence Trump - when Trump is vomiting nonsense that blankets the media 24/7 and this would do absolutely nothing to prevent Trump from exposing himself to the unwilling public. Galaxy brain genius logic right there.

I'm confused, isn't this a better spot for the drain hole? When you sit facing the wall? So you have a shelf for your comic books and chocolate milk?

Yeah, I carefully read the description of its distinguishing features, studied the photo, and concluded I have no idea what I'm looking at and how to tell them apart.

The latest cuts come as the company enjoys its fastest growth rate since early 2022, alongside improving profit margins. Last week, Alphabet reported a 15% jump in first-quarter revenue from a year earlier and announced its first-ever dividend and a $70 billion buyback.

Repulsive.

Graphic designer Constantine Konovalov calculated the number of characters changed between Wikipedia RU and Ruviki articles on the same topics, and found that there were 205,000 changes in articles about freedom of speech; 158,000 changes in articles about human rights; 96,000 changes in articles about political prisoners; and 71,000 changes in articles about censorship in Russia. He wrote in a post on X that the censorship was “straight out of a 1984 novel.”

Interestingly, the Ruviki article about George Orwell’s 1984 entirely omits the Ministry of Truth, which is the novel’s main propaganda outlet concerned with governing “truth” in the country.

That last detail...wow. They really don't want to leave any doubt about what they're doing, do they?

So, just a general message to all the commenters who are eye-rolling this:

Viruses mutate, and COVID has mutated continuously since it has been in the wild. All those shots did serve a purpose to continue to provide protection, and that this one will too.

You're tired? Viruses don't get tired. It's not only a good thing, it's a miracle that we even are able to keep up with these mutations and almost completely mitigate the risk of, oh, just death and life-long debilitating symptoms with a 15 minute visit to the doctor to get a shot every so often.