Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]

Don’t pretend to have empathy for me, shithead

This is such a shitty “joke”. Fucking hell. I hope you experience even half of the suffering a dairy cow experiences during their life. You won’t, because the world isn’t fair, but if I could imprison you and exploit your reproductive system until you’re too old and worn out to be worthwhile and then kill you, I would do so.

You are a disgusting human. I’m actually appalled reading the shit you’re writing. It’s not often that I read such concentrated evil. You don’t think death and servitude cause suffering? You think domesticated animals choose to stay in factory farms? You’re a fucking ghoul.

You’ll find that it’s not possible for the US to completely pull out of supporting them with military aid.

Why not? The US has supported Israel since its formation, no arguments there, but so what? Why couldn’t that change?

Am I reading the article right? My understanding of what I just read is that in 2016 some social media accounts with ties to Russia put out some pro-Stein statements and then a year or two later Stein was photographed sitting at the same table as Putin.

Neither of those two facts suggest to me that she is, as you put it, “another Russian tool”. Especially since the article itself says that there’s no evidence she knew about the Russian social media accounts boosting her and there wasn’t an interpreter sitting at the table with her and Putin.

Can you please tell me what I’ve missed? Is there more evidence that she’s a “Russian tool”? Because the evidence in the article you linked seems extremely weak.

Oh my, I literally read the comment you’re replying to backwards! I thought they said that carnists hate vegans. I’m glad you’re here to read properly and give a great response!

Yeah, good point! In a world without intellectual property rights, of course there would still be large projects, they’d just be, well, actually good and not shitty focus-grouped sequels.

Oh my, I literally read the comment you’re replying to backwards! I thought they said that carnists hate vegans. I’m glad you’re here to read properly and give a great response!

I agree we probably wouldn’t get any more Assassin’s Creed or Deadpool and Wolverine. Very likely those kinds of media would die out in a world where no one pays for media. I have a hard time saying that’s a bad thing. We’d instead have more weird little indie projects, which are so, so much better in every way. But sure, if you feel morally queasy about “stealing” (it’s not stealing, it’s copying) from giant corporations who make artistically bankrupt crap, I’m not going to convince you otherwise, and it would be a waste of my time to try and do so.

Maybe I should point out here that sometimes I do go out of my way to pay for media (especially games) when I don’t have to. I bought Dwarf Fortress on Steam, even though the devs give it away for free and I donated to them a couple times before they released it on Steam. They are living off the money people pay for Dwarf Fortress and I’m so glad they’re able to do so. I also bought my sister a copy of Pathologic 2 she has never (and probably will never) play because I bought my copy on sale and loved it and felt bad that I hadn’t paid full price to a dev team that put their heart and soul into the game and had it sell abysmally for some reason. (Side note, play Pathologic 2, it’s good!) I bought the Celeste soundtrack from Lena Raine’s bandcamp because I love it so much, even though it’s extremely easy to find and I’ve actually lost access to my bandcamp account.

I guess I’m saying there’s nuance here and I like it when actual artists who make good art are paid. It’s just that in our current society, buying a DVD or paying for Netflix or paying for Xbox gamepass or anything like that doesn’t benefit the artists, the vast majority of any money you spend to acquire media goes straight to wealthy executives and I just don’t see anything wrong with not giving them more money than they’re already getting.

That’s a common misconception. But it’s not true. Artists will keep making art whether they’re paid or not. Anti-piracy rhetoric tends to come from large corporations (AAA game studios, movie studios, publishing houses, record labels) who demand ever-increasing profits, not from the artists themselves. The people who actually do the work to make games, movies, songs, books, whatever are basically never well-paid, instead their corporate overlords make all the profit and pay the people who actually make the art you enjoy as little as they can possibly get away with, just as with every other job under capitalism.

Pirating media does absolutely no harm unless you’re pirating from a small indie creator. But if you just want to play the latest Ubisoft slop or watch the latest Marvel movie, go ahead and pirate. The money you’d spend on them go straight into the pockets of wealthy executives, not to the artists who do the work.

Why do you think piracy is immoral?

I hate to tell you this, but that’s not mustard, that’s cheese. (I’m actually mostly grossed out by it because . I actually really like a (vegan) shitty cheese sauce.)

Sure, that’s extremely fair! Those qt dependencies are no joke! How do you feel about Evince (apparently now called gnome document viewer)? It seems to be the standard gtk pdf viewer, but I’ve never used it, so I actually don’t know what it’s features are like. It’s a heavier application than mupdf (of course), but at least you don’t need to install qt to use it!

When zathura (my beloved) isn’t feature-rich enough for my needs I usually turn to okular. Sure, it’s kde, so if you’re on a pure gnome system you’re going to have to install a bunch of dependencies, but if that’s not a problem for you, okular is quite good in my experience!

Ok. Doesn’t sound like great world-building to me. There’s a reason I don’t like capeshit. But enjoy your crappy stories about a shitty billionaire and the unrealistic impossibly broken city he beats people up in.

Like, actually “good” billionaires

Hahaha, no such thing. How did they get their billions? Where did the billions come from?

First of all, your comment is pretty ableist.

Second of all, these two distinct meanings you’re seeing aren’t so distinct, so I don’t at all think it’s a misunderstanding.

For an example that sits right between the two meanings you see as distinct, we can look at my struggle to finish my PhD. I should have quit 4 years ago with a master’s. I’d be in a much better spot economically, mentally, emotionally, basically in every way that matters. Sure, finishing my PhD was not as bad as staying in an abusive relationship or smoking a ton or partying way too hard way too often, but it’s closer to that than someone who believes “quitters never win” would like to admit. There are lots of times when it’s a way better idea to just quit while you’re ahead and do something more worthwhile that will actually make your life better rather than stick with something awful just because you don’t want to be a loser and quit.

Oh shit, is this supposed to be a response to me asking about ranked choice voting? Assuming that’s the case:

That’s cool for Arizona. I hope it passes. But I don’t live in Arizona. Most americans don’t. What should those of us not in Arizona do to bring about ranked choice voting?

support some form of ranked voting in your state next time

Serious question: how do you suggest I do this? The “vote for Biden” people say this a lot, and like, I agree, ranked choice voting would be far preferable to our current electoral system. I’d like this change to happen. So how can we make it happen? What is the plan for after the election to get ranked voting before the next one? So far as I can tell, none of the politicians in my state (or any state, really) have tried to implement ranked choice and there aren’t any ballot initiatives that aim towards it. So what do you see as the way forward here? How do we get ranked choice voting to become a reality before the next time we’re faced with a choice between two absolutely unacceptable presidential candidates?