Ok, I’ll open another thread, then.

REMOVED, DUPLICATE.

So you’re now posting images of people being mocked for having mental illnesses. Yeah, sure dude, you’re an exemplary pillar of morality. Perhaps hold on from having these discussions until you grow up.

We may be talking about someone who handled logistics, or cooking, or maintenance; they might have been punished by life enough in the 30 years have followed; they may be someone who didn’t know what they were getting into, but once they were on the ground, tried to minimize the harm they brought upon others; they may be someone who realized what the army was doing was wrong too late, and was branded a traitor for refusing orders or revealing evil shit that was going on behind the curtains.

All in all, you’re either defending that once a person does one bad thing, regardless of their context, they have become essentially tarnished forever, and no matter their growth or already suffered punishment they should continue to suffer forever; or else you’re just rationalizing the fact that you want to throw fireworks no matter the harm you bring upon others. Think about this all for two minutes before you say something stupid.

If you join the army because you’re fucking stupid in your 20s, and by your 50s you’ve become a wise, anti-war person who still has PTSD, you don’t deserve to get your PTSD triggered because you were dumb 30 years ago.

If you have any kind of anxiety disorder, sensory hypersensitivity or heart issues, the sudden noise of fireworks will at least startle you. The constant barrage of noise that takes place in some places through some celebrations or through the year provoke people to develop even more serious health issues. Ah, but don’t you dare to suggest that the health of vulnerable people should take priority over some brief dumbfuck fun, or that there exist less harmful ways to celebrate, or that constant fireworks in places with certain population density means annoying a lot of people for the sake of very few, because then it turns out that you just “hate freedom”.

My point is that plenty of high-information Democrat voters ultimately fall in line, but the party fails to reach further beyond, while Republicans don’t actually have to “fall in line”, because they like what they’re voting for. Is this not the opposite of the quote?

On top of that, it’s an issue that will easily change the leanings of a lot of low-information voters. Republicans know that the 2025 agenda isn’t popular with moderates, and while most of Biden’s policies have been short-reaching, they’re generally considered a positive (save for Gaza), so they attack at the very obvious and glaring weak point that isn’t actually policy-related.

I actually disagree with this sentiment.

There’s clearly a split in the Democratic Party regarding the candidates and leanings of the old guard, vs a very large portion of their voter base that wants structural reforms in the country (universal public healthcare VS increased access to insurance, for instance), and I bet a large portion of the latter feel whipped into having to vote for a lesser evil rather than for a political project they actually have passion for.

Meanwhile, Trump was an outsider of the Republican party who managed to get their voters in love with him, to the point that he managed to hijack the party and leave it ripe open for a transformation from neoconservative to proto-fascist, despite the Republican old guard initially being hostile towards him.

The Republican party has managed to stay competitive, despite their political goals being less popular overall in the US than the Dems’, precisely because they allowed themselves to mutate and stay responsive to the changes in the electorate, the obvious tragedy being that democratic institutions (mostly referring to both political parties) have been far more willing to incorporate far right nutjobs who want to end democracy than they have for left-wing populism that wants to make housing affordable.

I’ll have you know, I have pretty high standards to consider someone an expert.

I’ve been there on tour once, and I just looked at an online map to make sure I didn’t misremember. I also follow a guy on YouTube that talks about geology and has been focused on Iceland lately, so I think that makes me a complete expert.

Oh, no! You’re meeting all of them!

To anyone acquantinced with Iceland: What kind of logistical issues does this actually provoke? What measures do you typically (or exceptionally) take to make sure that no location runs unsupplied for too long?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thích_Quảng_Đức

Thích Quảng Đức was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who died by self-immolation (…) protesting against the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government of Ngô Đình Diệm, a staunch Roman Catholic. Photographs of his self-immolation circulated around the world, drawing attention to the policies of the Diệm government. John F. Kennedy said of one photograph, "No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.

Calling them brainwashed is disrespectul and ignorant of similar acts that, while they haven’t been enough to change policy, have invigorated social movements that sometimes resulted in the goals they were aiming for. The fact that you use “brainwashed” specifically almost makes me think that you can’t even understand how people could see the murders of tens of thousands of children as something worth taking radical action for.

Not really? Bruxism is heavily linked with stress and anxiety, which we have too much of in our contemporary society (meaning: a drop of water in our whole evolutionary history), and it’s very rarely going to incapacitate anyone, so evolution doesn’t care, and has cared even less before civilization.

Is that causation or correlation?

I’m not the person you were replying to, either.

The purpose of the comment is clearly: “Cloudfare didn’t kick out the casinos because of a compromise with good ethics, but because it was making them lose money”. Please read it again.

I’m sure all this nonsense waste of energy is exactly what we needed just to stop climate change.

By “high school math competitions” I mean provincial or regional competitions where different schools send their best students. The average Spaniard has as much trouble in math as people from all other places, and high school math is very much the same.

I don’t know how it is in other countries, but Spanish high school math competitions are designed to test both logic and creativity. They’ll require you to use the material from your current year, but the way in which you have to apply that math isn’t obvious if your only competency in math is specifically passing high school tests. You don’t get a good score by being a proficient human calculator, but by applying good abstract analysis, which you should be able to apply in other areas of your life.

The Simpsons started as a parody of the (back then) dominant family sitcom that reinforced traditional values, where the family is led by a wise man who maintains the family and everyone else follows along in a traditional patriarchal hierarchy. Once that era got buried and they swallowed the thing they were mocking, The Simpsons slowly became self-referential, which made it a much harder show to write.

Yes, Ukraine had a dangerous drift towards exclutionary Ukrainian nationalism for many years, which Russia promoted by igniting the conflict through their use of paramilitary forces in Donetsk and Lugansk, which made it great for Ukrainian supremacists and Russian supremacists to fester in both sides.

Despite that, Ukraine elected Zelensky, a Russian speaking president who spoke both Ukrainian and Russian during his inaugural speech as symbolism that it was time for their country to reconcile itself with its minorities.

But this fact is usually omitted in Russian propaganda, since it’s so devastating to their narrative.