That, plus I think its to get you more invested. Like if you have the app on your phone you might want to use it again, or youll forget about it and then see it later and think about their product/service/whatever.

In the modern age so many things that should just be websites are apps and many things that should be apps/programs are websites

Democratic primaries do have issues, yeah, particularly in the presidential race. But I wouldn’t say theyre meaningless in local elections. Still, definitely a lot of issues, but voting in primaries still does far more than refusing to vote in the main election ever would.

Every year the DNC says “we got less votes this year! Must be the centrists voting for republicans, we gotta be more moderate!” and then somehow those folks turn around and say “the democrats are too moderate, if enough of us don’t vote, the DNC will see they are losing support and realize they need to come back left!”

I will always understand having grievances for the democratic party because all they do is defend the status quo - I do too - but not voting over that is just fucking stupid. You want to change that? Go to protests, vote in primaries, support local initiatives for ranked choice voting, donate to causes you find actually beneficial, support local politicians that dont just support the status quo, support movements you believe in. If its about Gaza, speak up about that, donate to humanitarian funds, etc. There are ao many things you can do that can impact these things. But refusing to vote does actually fucking nothing for that cause.

There is no world in which more people refusing to vote for Kamala would have gotten us a better president or stopped genocide in gaza. Or really had any impact in any way that wasn’t making trump more likely to win. IMO the folks that did that were doing it more for themselves so they could feel morally superior because they didnt vote for the candidate that supported genocide or the “status quo” even though it literally never would have had any impact on either of those things.

(And let’s be real - trump is way worse for Gaza than Kamala would have been. I’m sure she wouldn’t have done enough, just like Biden, but at least there are voices in that party calling out Israel. Those voices fall far more deaf on this administration’s ears)

Free speech has returned guys!!! Comedy is legal again!!! You can say whatever you want as long as it aligns with the vision of the glorious leader!

Yeah this is a weird selection of companies. What about Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, even 4chan?

At the very least the social media sites that use algorithmic recommendations heavily. The recent shooting in Colorado got me thinking about how social media algorithms that repeatedly pushes content thats found to engage can easily cause people to fall into a spiral of radicalization. Even just the slightest interest in something, or even shock, can trigger their algorithms to get to work recommending similar stuff. News sites mentioned the kid in Colorado that shot up the school had social media accounts full of shit that glorified school shootings. How’d that start? Maybe something popped up that made a joke about school shootings and he thought it was funny cause its “edgy” or something? And then it remembers that, and pushes another similar post, and another, and on and on until this kid’s feed is supposedly full of this kind of content. I don’t know if that happened but it seems likely.

But nah, its valve that they’re going after. Cause I guess its always the video games that are to blame, right?

And discord? That’s just a fancy chat board. What’s next, should we question IRC? Email?

I’d argue they do make strategic decisions, its just that the strategy is always increasing quarterly earnings and their own assets.

Experiencing certain forms of violence and harassment and having low-moderate social support from any source was associated with higher prevalence of suicidal ideation. Social support from family moderated the association between experiencing certain forms of violence and harassment and suicidal ideation (p interaction = 0.01); however, even in the presence of high family social support, experiencing certain forms of violence and harassment was associated with higher prevalence of suicidal ideation.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7301a7.htm

n = 1608 on this one.

Every study I’ve ever seen that looks at the link between social support and depression/suicidal thoughts in trans people shows a very clear link. Given the prevalence of transphobia in our society, this can entirely explain the increase in suicidal thoughts in trans people.

thats actually kinda crazy how much more readable that makes it

…still not super easy tho lol

Lower self-reported transphobia was associated with a 66 % reduction in ideation, and an additional 76 % reduction in attempts among those with ideation

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12889-015-1867-2.pdf

An increase by one context in which a chosen name could be used predicted a 5.37-unit decrease in depressive symptoms, a 29% decrease in suicidal ideation, and a 56% decrease in suicidal behavior.

https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(18)30085-5/fulltext#intraref0010a

Socially transitioned transgender children who are supported in their gender identity have developmentally normative levels of depression and only minimal elevations in anxiety, suggesting that psychopathology is not inevitable within this group.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26921285/

So yes. Increased depression and suicide among trans people is, according to the research, entirely correlated with social factors like how much they are accepted by friends/family and chosen name use.

I mean I could almost see that? Helldivers is kinda a satire on the american brand of fascism so it could be argued its an anti-fascist peace of media. But that’s a stretch to say the least.

But my real issue with this is that federal investigators saw something they had absolutely no clue what it is and called it a transgender symbol. Its an incredible amount of bias in a particularly very bigoted way.

Reminds me of a lyric from The Clash - “taking off his turban, they said, ‘is this man a jew?’” They see something unknown to them and just assign it to the marginalized group they have a preconceived notion of being bad.

At least is it 2 games bundled together?

Inb4 they say “its two games, so this will be $140!”

Ok but these are meant to be in bike lanes, sharing space with regular bikes. Part of the point of bike lanes was because it was dangerous for bikes to be sharing space with vehicles that can go so much faster than them.

Edit: imo if it has a throttle which can be used to keep up with motor vehicles then it is a motor vehicle. It should be classed with motorcycles.

If its gonna be considered a bicycle, it should have at the very least a speed limit on the throttle, or maybe no throttle allowed at all and pedal assist only.

This says that the “sequence of arrows” was interpreted as a transgender symbol.

Now we know that the sequence of arrows was “up, right, down, down, down”

…that’s the strategem code for the 500kg bomb in helldivers 2.

The ATF interpreted a video game reference as a transgender symbol…

Edit: another claim I’m seeing, quote from snopes:

Some users online claimed officials had misinterpreted “TRN,” an engraving found on ammunition produced by Turan Ammunition, a Turkish company, as “transgender ideology.”

This is a more logical mistake to make but is also an embarrassing and irresponsible mistake from the ATF if true.

Power brick, power adapter, or USB charger are what come to mind for me.

I gotta say I disagree heavily with your fiancee on dongles. IMO dongles are adapters for data of some kind, not just power from the wall. But to each their own I guess.

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So let’s look at these requirements:

• violence: not really. Vandalism and destruction of equipment aren’t violence, to my knowledge PA has not harmed or attacked anyone.

• non combatants: they targeted weapon shipments and military equipment. While I suppose you could argue the UK military aren’t combatants as they aren’t part of the war directly, but honestly that point is entirely moot given that they didn’t target people.

• political and ideological aims: sure, they are a political activist organization. Obviously that alone doesn’t make them terrorists.

So, even by what Wikipedia defines as the “broadest” definition, not terrorists.

I mean, at an absolute minimum, terrorism requires violence against people, which they did not do. They targeted planes and other military equipment. That’s not terrorism no matter how much damage they caused.

Im not saying what they did isn’t illegal. I’m saying it’s not terrorism. This is like if someone was charged with murder and punished for it only to turn out all they did was rob a store and you’re like “well akshually ☝️🤓 they’re a criminal so it’s fine”

Then the UK’s legal definition is fucking stupid. Terrorism is when a group attempts to strike fear and terror into a populace to coerce them. It definitionally requires violence and fear.