As the distance between two species widens, viable (ie, not sterile) offspring become rarer and rarer (although not impossible), so there would be a biological incentive not to “waste time” banging something that looks too different from yourself

It’s extremely frightening but now that the rule of law is dead in America, I am forced to ask myself, what are my red lines? One person in this country has almost completely unchecked power, what would a criminal president have to do before I start condoning violence?

I’m running out of boxes of liberty here

We’re supposed to be evolving into a more free society… this is just going backwards.

You have discovered the great fallacy, the presumption that democracy and freedom are the natural course of things: they are not. Every single inch of it we have was taken by force from kings and dictators, and they’re always waiting in the shadows for their opportunity to take it back.

The peace dividend created by the end of the cold war has unfortunately made an entire generation of people who believe this fallacy, this is one of the glaring reminders that it’s not true. Democracy and freedom are things that must be actively maintained in perpetuity by everyone who wants them, we must be ready and willing to use all four boxes of democracy (soap, ballot, jury, AND ammo) to defend it for the rest of our lives. We must educate, we must vote, we must nullify unjust laws, and we must arm ourselves, because at the end of the day, violence is the one enforcement method that everyone is forced to listen to. It doesn’t matter how right you are if the other side has more people willing to kill and die for their cause than yours does, so we better damn well make sure that’s not the case.

The ruling more or less explicitly states that Biden could go on national television, say “Won’t someone rid me of these troublesome justices?”, have them assassinated, and face no legal repercussions because using the bully pulpit is covered by presidential immunity

Yeah but I don’t think the average smash and grab thief is going to be smart enough to recognize the potential value of the data on the laptop, they’re just going to pawn the thing off as quickly as possible

Anyone smart enough to want the data probably doesn’t need to smash a window, they’ll just access the data remotely when the computer is on and the drive is unencrypted

So even then, it only protects you from the very narrow overlap of thieves who are dumb enough to need to break into cars for a living, but smart enough to harvest data off of stolen laptops

I still stand by full disk encryption accomplishing almost nothing for the average user but separating them from their own files

If you don’t have data on your PC that someone might be willing to kill you for, you probably don’t need it, and Microsoft enabling it by default for Win11 installs is crazy

Peace offer:

I receive: your land

You receive: I stop trying to kill you (for now)

I can’t believe the only reason they’re not accepting this deal so graciously offered by Russia is the US stopping them

The west sure did buy a FUCKTON of oil from the Soviet Union for people who were apparently trying to bankrupt them since 1917

In fact the US is so NOT a member of the ICC that it’s currently federal law that if a US soldier was being held at the Hague, the US military would be obligated to invade The Netherlands in order to recover them

Correct, the entire concept of physically backed digital lending is being threatened, and many physical libraries contracted with IA to digitize their books and then facilitate digitally lending their physical copies to their patrons

“Lifehack: Literally just steal”

Yes it predates the country

It seems you have read a book in the last 2 hours, I’m glad we’re in agreement that it doesn’t involve the US then

Good thing we have this expert history book reader to tell us that the first thing the UNITED STATES did wrong was import slaves into the ENGLISH COLONY of Virginia in 1619

Sorry sweaty, but saying anything bad about authoritarian governments (aside from Israel) is xenophobia, you’re clearly just suffering from transnationalism and were born in the wrong country

The founders were entirely aware that not only an entire party, but the entire government could become irrational and work against our best interests: that’s why we have the second amendment as a backstop and last line of defense against authoritarian rule

You can submit a request on their website apparently

You are cutting off your nose to spite your face, your selfishness and inability to move past your moral grandstanding on this single issue will guaranteed cause untold suffering across the globe (especially to domestic minorities) should the Republicans gain more power

More dead Ukrainians, more dead Gazans, more dead women, more dead LGBT, and if they get their way, the death of American democracy as we know it

If that’s what you have to tell yourself when you and others like you not voting enables Donald Trump and the GOPs super genocide on the Palestinian people, I’m sure their spirits will rest well in their mass graves knowing that you really stuck it to the Democrats

I for one will be trying to save lives come November

Non-votes literally do not matter, mathematically it’s the same as if you had two votes and you gave one each to both candidates. Parties cannot appeal to you as a non-voter because they have no idea what you want, the only way they can is if you vote in primaries for your candidates of choice so they can see the sorts of things their constituents value. Only don’t vote if you truly don’t care whether we have “fascism or fascism-lite”, because if you would prefer one then not voting only helps the other win.

Again, general elections are about harm reduction, sometimes you have to be an adult, grit your teeth, and choose between two bad choices because one is clearly the better option. We’ll have to eliminate FPTP first if we want anything different.