People on every single relatively small forum ever in the history of the internet have gotten frustrated and angry when other people do that, because it’s spammy.

Do you not know the history of the term “spam?”

It’s from a Monty Python skit

That’s what the front page of a forum (or the inbox of an email account) looks like when someone “spams” it - like “spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam.”

Just the opposite. I’m the one who goes off to do something else at family gatherings because they just talk and talk and talk.

Though it’s not so much that they talk so much as that it’s just the same stuff over and over - alternately, my brother slavishly regurgitating right-wing techbro quasi-libertarian bullshit and my mom reciting in excruciating detail some anecdote that’s maybe vaguely related to the topic at hand and that she’s told countless times already, because it’s her go-to every time something in that vicinity comes up.

And what I wouldn’t give to know them less well…

Most similar to Advance Wars:

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis

Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation

Shining Force:Resurrection of the Dark Dragon

Just in general:

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1 and 2

Drill Dozer

Golden Sun 1 and 2

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town

Guru Logic Champ

Metroid Fusion

Metroid Zero Mission

Medabots RPG

Klonoa: Empire of Dreams

I don’t believe that my approval or anyone else’s is at all relevant.

My position is that there’s only one person who has the right to decide whether or not it’s acceptable to trade sex for money, and that’s the person entering into the trade. Assuming that all other contractual requirements are met - they’re of legal age and acting of their own free will and so on - it’s just as much their right to trade sex for money as to trade ditch digging or code writing or coffee brewing or meeting taking for money.

(edited for clarity)

I would go so far as to say that it’s vital that Biden handles court reform, because it has to be done before the election.

We can already be sure that Trump and his backers are planning legal challenges on whatever grounds might vaguely appear to be something resembling legitimate in the event that he loses, and we can also be sure that at least Thomas and Alito will rule in their favor, no matter how ludicrous their arguments might be, simply because they’re entirely and completely compromised. They’ve already demonstrated that law is irrelevant - that they serve demagoguery, shallow self-interest, bigotry and corruption. And given the chance, they WILL do their parts to destroy democracy in the US.

We can’t afford to give them the chance.

And that could be Biden’s legacy - the president who led the efforts that saved America from a fascist coup.

I’ve seen no evidence that they are.

What little organic commentary I’ve seen has been cautiously optimistic at worst.

The barrage of anti-Harris stuff that all started appearing at essentially the same time reeks of astroturf.

The Song That Doesn’t End

Fight the urge to immediately get off the train.

Even with as many episodes of Star Trek as I’ve seen, I’m sure I’d want to rush right out and start exploring.

Neither really. Sort of.

There are certainly inherently repugnant beliefs, but beliefs in and of themselves are harmless - they’re just a particular pattern of firing neurons in a brain. They literally cannot bring harm to others just in and of themselves.

The thing that makes some beliefs horrible is not the mere holding of them, but the things one who holds them is likely to do. It’s those acts that are the real evil - the beliefs are just a foundation, or a trigger.

Now, all that said, I would hazard that it’s exceedingly rare at best (and arguably impossible) for anyone to hold noxious beliefs without them in some way affecting their behavior, so the mere holding of noxious beliefs can certainly serve as a justification for the conclusion that the person in question is in fact horrible. Still though, to be (perhaps overly) precise, I’d say that it’s not the belief itself that makes them a horrible person, but merely that the belief makes it quite likely that they’ll act in ways that make them (or reveal them to be) horrible people.

Even “the pot calling the kettle black” isn’t enough to sum this up.

It’s more like “the pot calling the salad bowl a pot.”

In a somewhat metaphorical but nonetheless very real sense - most politics is effectively snake oil.

There’s a set of people who exhibit a particular combination of mental illness and natural charisma, such that they feel an irrational urge to impose their wills on others, a lack of the necessary empathy to recognize the harm they do and the personal appeal necessary to convince others to let them do it.

There’s another set of people who feel an irrational sense of helplessness - who want to turn control of their lives and their decisions over to others, so they can just go along with a preordained set of values and beliefs and choices rather expending effort on, and taking the risk of, making their own.

And just as in any more standard “snake oil” dynamic, the first group, exclusively for its own benefit, preys upon the weakness and hope of the second. Just as in any other such dynamic, the people of the first group make promises they have no intention of keeping ultimately just so that they can benefit, and the people of the second group continue, irratiomally, to believe those promises, even as all of the available evidence demonstrates that the promises are empty.

Candidates for public office should be required to undergo a mental health assessment as part of the process of getting on the ballot, and those who score beyond (above or below, as may be relevant) particular thresholds are barred from seeking office.

I sincerely believe that there’s no single thing we could do that would provide more benefit to the world than to get sociopaths and narcissists and megalomaniacs out of positions of power. Each and every one of the most notable and contentious politicians in the world today is, if you just take a step back and look at them honestly, blatantly profoundly mentally ill. Enough is enough.

That’s so perfectly Turkeyish.

It’s a funny place - so obviously a result of its geographical location. It had its era of power-struggling against other Mediterranean civilizations, but as soon as the known world expanded out to include Asia, Turkey, stuck literally at the crossroads between the two, started playing both sides against the middle. And that’s what it’s done ever since.

That’s no surprise, and entirely irrelevant.

The US political system is broken. It doesn’t legislate according to what is thought to be best for the country or its people - it legislates according to what will bring the most money from wealthy individuals, corporations and interest groups.

Fossil fuel corporations and industry groups have very deep pockets and have well-established channels by which to funnel that money into the hands of politicians, party officials, and assorted powermongers, so the government is going to generally legislate in their favor, entirely regardless of any other considerations.

That Was the Day by The The

Imagine how much better the world would be if there was just a simple process of psychological screening for would-be politicians, and psychopaths were barred from holding office.

I would presume it’s not paid yet (though the CEO certainly is). That phase of the operation comes later.

For the moment, they’re working to solidify as much control as possible of as much of the fediverse as possible, which control will allow them to gatekeep it, monetize it, extract rent from it and inevitably enshittify it. That, so it’s hoped, will be the phase during which their investment now will pay off.

So… by my count, the board of directors actually outnumber the employees.

At a “non-profit” (until that was revoked) company that gets most of its funding through Patreon.

Years from now (and at this rate, not very many of them), when people wonder how it was that such a promising venture that championed decentralization turned into just another enshittified megacorporation squatting over a piece of internet real estate and extracting rent to pay obscene salaries to a handful of executives - this is how. We’re watching as the foundation is being laid, right now.

Imagine Israel, of all countries, crying to the UN, of all organizations, about a purported “flagrant violation of narional sovereignty, international law and Security Council resolutions.”

I laughed out loud when I read that. As if that isn’t exactly what Israel does virtually on a daily basis, and has done for decades now, and while thumbing their nose at the UN the entire time.

And again I find myself wondering by what purported authority it is that Israel “approves” the construction of settlements on someone else’s land.

That’d be like reading that the Mexican government had “approved” the construction of Mexican settlements in Texas.