This is just standard Democrat strategy.

Their job - the service their rich donors pay them for - is to provide the illusion of opposition to the steady expansion of the wealth and privilege of those same rich donors.

So they posture in order to appear to be opposition, but then they inevitably cave, one way or another, whatever it takes.

There was never any question that the Dems were going to cave - that’s what they always do. The only questions were specifically how and when they were going to do it

And now we know.

History is only written by the winners when the winners benefit their civilization.

When, as has consistently happened in the latter days of past civilizations and as will be the case if Trump and the oligarchs and their fascist tools win, the winners solely benefit themselves and thus ultimately destroy their civilization, history is written by third parties.

It’s sort of amusing that the profound psychological issues that make him the most corrupt POTUS in history, the most self-absorbed POTUS in history, the most dishonest POTUS in history and the most deranged POTUS in history also make him the most tone-deaf POTUS in history.

Less bad is still bad.

Of course they will.

Not to divert attention from Trump’s unprecedented corruption or the utter and complete legal, moral and ethical collapse of this Supreme Court, but it’s near certain that the government would grant the fossil fuel industry some sort of patently undeserved immunity no matter who was in office or on the Supreme Court.

Interfering to protect corporations from the consequences of their negligence and fraud is a long-established service of the federal government.

I disliked it from the moment they called a glorified language database and collator “AI.”

Except that you’d have to survive the DNC/establishment Democrats’ attempts to sabotage your entire campaign.

It’s amazing the lengths the Republicans will go to just to make it harder for poor people to get healthcare.

Oh for fucks sake - Trump and his goons aren’t even bothering to pretend to be legitimate any more. They’re brazenly nothing but vile, corrupt, autocratic pieces of shit and they’re fucking parading it in front of the world.

We’re watching history unfold. The startlingly insane decline and fall of the United States under the deranged lunatic Trump is going to be the stuff of future legend.

This isn’t about Charlie Kirk This is about the faacists incrementally establishing the legal authority to punish speech.

I don’t think that internet technological development is even relevant.

Internet sociological, philosophical, cultural and psychological development is about at the level of the Dark Ages, and that’s the problem that needs to be addressed.

Um… no. I’m an anarchist.

And you sound like a helicopter parent who’s balanced on that fine line between hysterical tears and explosive rage because somebody at the playground said something mean about their darling USSR.

It didn’t. And I’m an anarchist.

If you’re going to rely on ad hominems, you should at least try to make them somewhat accurate and relevant.

Stalin was the leader of the world’s first socialist state

Socialist state is a contradiction in terms.

Stalin was CEO of USSR Incorporated.

Funny that this is the exact same “logic” the libs use to try to defend running a pro-zionist, pro-corporate, pro-billionaire slimeball in the last US presidential election - “But Trump was worse!”

I really can’t wrap my head around what it must be like to be a Republican.

At this point, their “logic” would have to be something like “All indications are that we’re so wildly unpopular that we’re going to get our asses kicked in the midterms, so we’re going to own the libs by cheating.”

That’s not just irrational - it’s pathetic.

The problem is that the ban is one-sided, and generally boils down to “the oppressed are disarmed but the oppressors are not.”

Shukran from Arabian Nights: Sabaku no Seirei Ou on the Super Famicom

Ifrit is a djinn who was once the king of the djinn. Then he was cursed and bound to a ring until he granted the wishes of 1000 people. He’s granted wishes to 999 people when his ring comes into the possession of an orphan girl named Shukran. Over the years he’s become bitter and cynical, and he just expects she’s going to want gold or such, but instead, to his surprise and dismay, she wishes to bring peace to the land. And she means it. So Ifrit has to first set out to find and recruit the most powerful of his former djinn subjects, and since he can’t stray far from the ring, Shukran has to come along.

She’s far and away the weakest character in the game, but at every turn, when it’s (eventually predictably) revealed that whichever djinn they’re trying to recruit at the moment has a well-deserved grudge against Ifrit and no intention of helping him with anything, it’s Shukran and her optimism, determination, honor and kindness that wins them over, and (after Shukran and Ifrit and their allies complete whatever trial or quest the djinn tasks them with) they end up swearing allegiance not to him, but to her. So while she herself remains ridiculously weak, she is very much the driving force behind the party. And over time she can summon more and more powerful djinn in battle, and they’re decidedly not weak.

Even aside from the whole “we should centralize the fediverse” thing, there’s something I’ve never really understood about threads like this

Imagine a single sign-in for the entire Fediverse. You wouldn’t need to worry about instances, and onboarding could be much simpler.

I don’t see where that would make any notable difference.

I currently have three different accounts that I use regularly and two more that I use off and on, and I just happened on another instance that looked interesting, so set up an account there day before yesterday, and will certainly do the same somewhere else in the not very distant future. That’s what I’ve done the whole time I’ve been here - I start accounts, sometimes I use them and sometimes I don’t, sometimes the instance shuts down, whatever. I just keep juggling some number of accounts, and always have. So I should be a prime use case for this sort of thing.

And I just can’t see the value at all.

I can get to any of the accounts I currently use regularly with a single click, since they’re all pinned to my home page. And I can get to any of the others with two clicks, since they’re bookmarked. In the event that I get logged out of any of them (which pretty much never happens), I can log back in in about five seconds. And that’s it - that’s the full extent of the labor I have to put in

But every time someone trots out this centralized identity idea, it’s presented as if it’s some sort of wonderful labor-saving thing - as if it will save us all from the horrifically onerous drudgery of having to log in to separate accounts And I just don’t see it. It’s already almost entirely effortless.

??

When it’s fully groan.