Playing on the highest difficulty level

FYI, I’m not Ukrainian. I’m Romanian. We have more skin in the game than Germany or France though. If Ukraine falls, Moldova falls 24 hours later, and allowing our brother country to go back under Russian domination is pretty unthinkable.

Even without that existential issue, allowing democratically minded Europeans trying to walk the same path we walked 25 years ago get invaded by Russia without as much help as we can give them seems horrific to me.

Another Deezer user in the wild! Been a subscriber to it for years now.

Need a dispenser here!

This period of war in Eastern Europe is pretty shit and I would like Western Europe to take it more seriously, thx

Nonviolent successes are always paired with violent alternatives. Nonviolent protests by themselves can be ignored, but if you have a nonviolent movement and a parallel but seperate violent movement biting your ankles… now negotiating with the nonviolent movement seems like a really good idea.

Wikipedia has a decent chronology tab of the kind of insanity going on when the UK just went 'Yay Ghandi! Nonviolence wins! Definitely nothing to do with all the terrorist attacks!"

Before India became completely ungovernable, their response to peaceful protest was to imprison anyone threatening their rule (make sure to read the “local violence” part).

Technically yes, but I don’t mean technology as phones/laptops/tablets/etc. Imho, the biggest factor in social isolation is atomization due to bad urban planning. When everything and anything is only accessible by car, you lose any connection with your local neighbourhood and local stores/cafes/etc.

In environments where people walk around the neighbourhood, doing small daily shops, going to local businesses and taking mass transit to work/school/restaurants/bars, then you’re much more likely to interact with people rather than driving around in your social isolation-mobile.

Urban planning can be considered a form of technology, which is why I said technically yes.

EDIT: Oh, another big factor here is the loss of the third place. It still exists in some places (local pubs in British towns, local coffee shop in Portugal, etc), but in places without a socially normal “hangout spot” that is separated from both home and work/school, it’s much harder to meet acquaintances which may in time become friends.

Presumably Valve’s lawyers can make this case, so I guess we’ll see if the judge is receptive to it.

Thanks for the link, it was a very interesting read. While it is disappointing that it’s not actually a collective (assuming this blog post is accurate), having a platform run and owned by 6 creators is still better than YouTube’s governance structure, and still has the advantage in having both the capacity and desire to invest in creators.

An advantage of funding things via a collective like Nebula as opposed to each individual creator managing their own patrons is that new creators can start making bigger, more expensive projects quicker. Even established creators have this advantage, they can take bigger risks on bigger projects with the safety net of a share of the nebula pie.

I don’t think a project like The Prince would exist without Nebula, for example.

Do I grab them by the bridge bit that sits on their nose

This is the way.

You’re ok dude. It sounds like this guy/gal has had similar conversations and was frustrated by them. Understandable on both sides.

She was a big champion of Medicare for all in 2020. It is indeed a shame she isn’t talking about it now like she did last election. Judging from her 2020 rhetoric though, it is definitely something she would be open to doing if given a cooperative government, I think.

Well, there’s not much she can do atm as vice-president. It’s very well-known that Biden is very pro-Israeli.

Her rhetoric on the topic as a candidate has been very mixed. She’s been improving since she had that meeting with Uncommitted leaders. Hopefully she can have a better plan than “ask nicely for a ceasefire” to present to voters before the election.

What specifically do you think she should do better on?

He does display more than those traditionally masculine traits. He portrays himself as a protector of the vulnerable and a provider. Making sure women and children are safe and provided for is very traditionally masculine. He has made it a point of his political career to help children, and as an ex-member of the national guard, he can claim that “protector” archetype.

This is not to say that there aren’t problems with traditional masculinity, but there’s more to it than just family.

I truly wish Romania would do the same with Roma people here. The culture is still very racist towards them without any actual understanding of what Romanians did to cause this to happen in the first place.

Short version: slavery followed by mass murder during WW2 (not on the scale of the Jews, but still pretty bad) followed by forced assimilation of the style described above against the Sami.

Yup, absolutely. We have 2 posts in the two rooms we spend the most time in for exactly this reason.

My younger cat needed a lot of convincing to use only the scratching post. Every time I saw her scratching the couch, I’d pick her up and put her in front of the scratching post. Took a few weeks, but we got there. She hasn’t scratched the couch in ~2 years now.

I see you have a scratching post. Excellent! Number one mistake new cat owners make is not having somewhere for the cat to scratch (it’s a physiological need for them), then they get annoyed when the cat scratches their furniture.