More like…

The lever can reduce the speed of the trolley depending on which way you turn it, but regardless the trolley will gradually accelerate either way.

If that’s true… wouldn’t OP know this though? Why would you say this?

There are a couple supervillains.

I dislike personifying landlords just like I dislike personifying greedy corporations. It’s the system which is broken, and entities which act in greedy self-interest are merely a symptom.

I’d say that’s what separates a good landlord from a bad landlord, is if they are intentionally adding knives and grenades.

It seems to me like the media is about the same as it was in 2017, as even in 2017 anyone with an opinion and an internet connection could gain throngs of followers online. The difference I see is that major news organizations have shifted to be moderately more conservative (previously ~centrist organizations are now moderately trump-approving, and previously conservative organizations are now far right, previously democrat-favouring organizations are now hedging their bets). MAGA is pressuring or threatening to pressure social media organizations to shift toward more MAGA content, but I think we’re not even at the inflection point for this yet.

In 2017, it was observed that Trump had ticked all but two boxes. Now that he’s bent on controlling the media, it seems there’s just 1 remaining. But there is still free media, so perhaps it’s more like 1.5.

Some have commented that the elections are already fraudulent, but I remain skeptical of this. I’ll admit that gerrymandering is a problem, but gerrymandering has always been a problem so it’s not a bright-line for me. Still, I can’t shake the idea that the main reason there hasn’t been a fraudulent election under the 47th presidency so far is that there hasn’t been an election at all yet.

Either way, you don’t need every box checked to be alarmed.

No. Under the liberalism → fascism model, this would be late liberalism, early fascism. It’s where we are now.

Did they fix the problem where for some reason, on steam deck you can’t do local multiplayer? You need to provide a command line argument to turn on local multiplayer and I can’t begin to comprehend why they did this.

Dividing the world according to this uniform mathematical system is so stupid. Is this secretly a pro-gerrymandering psyop?

yeah, I agree. But like, pointing fingers at “politicians” broadly speaking is still just pointing fingers.

The oligarchs want that, and the oligarchs have many politicians in their pocket I presume. However, it’s not like non-corrupt non-bought politicians have any reason to be afraid of a unified nation – they’re in politics to effect change in the first place.

if he’s a leftist, then of course he had “evil leftist” influences. The internet exists.

3/4 of these are down, so it seems to me like the etiquette should be to leave it down.

(Conflict of interest disclaimer: am a woman.)

I’m sure OOP works for big AI.

Fair enough, but I think we shouldn’t be basing our inferences about the shooter from his family’s political leanings. My feeling is that somebody who does something so drastic is likely enough to be an outlier from their family that we can’t really know one way or the other.

Is this actually true? There’s too much disinformation about the shooter, his motivations, his identity, his family, his partner going around that I have no clue what to really believe about him.

(Please, nobody respond to this comment telling me “that’s exactly what they want” without providing a credible source for your claims about the shooter. If you do provide sources, then you are welcome to make fun of me for being skeptical.)

You sound like the people in my chemistry class who say things like “don’t describe subatomic particles as happy when they’re in low-energy states.”

why does the existence of larger things have any bearing on our significance?

bigger than I thought, tbh.