Yeah it’s not great, but like… coming across as coherent is important no matter the position. Biden kinda failed that basic competency test, probably just due to his age and not like, stupidity or a personal failing of any kind. I’m still voting for Biden, but yeah it’s not exactly an enthusiastic vote.

So, speaking from a purely pragmatic perspective, voting for Biden is better than other US electoral choices for the purpose of trying to help Palestinians.

I understand your reticence and moral indignation, I largely feel the same.

But the biggest reason Trump won in 2016 is because voters were not particularly enthused with their choices, and a great many decided not voting at all (or voting for Trump as a protest against the establishment) was preferable to voting for HRC.

I have to imagine that we both believe that Trump is worse than Biden when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Given that we’re already in election year, it’s down to Biden and Trump. One of them is going to be president come January next year.

Taking all that together, if we want things to get better for Palestine, we should vote for Biden because the alternatives are much worse.

Granted there is a lot you can do outside of elections to help, and I wouldn’t recommend ignoring those. But given that voting for the US president takes a few hours out of one day every four years, it’s not a good idea to ignore that either.

I hope this helps you understand those of us who don’t really like Biden but will vote for him regardless.

It’s entirely possible I’m only familiar with the far right, and not so much the average mainstream conservative. Which is a wild thing to think about my life, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

You have not been listening to conservatives, then. I grew up on a steady diet of Rush Limbaugh and later Fox News. “Activist liberal judges” has been a decades-long refrain on the right.

He was kind of a wet paper sack sitting the primaries, if he’d come in with this energy he might’ve gotten somewhere.

You’re not wrong.

At this point I’m not sure what’s newest, since my kid just watches everything streaming.

I do have to say the newer 2D animated shorts, The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, are a fantastic return to form.

Like most really early animated characters, Mickey Mouse was a lot of things over a long period of time. And as far as American animation goes, Mickey Mouse has been a staple for the childhood of literally every generation. Younger millennials and zoomers grew up on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Children in decades prior watched Mickey be a musketeer in one short and starving due to poverty in the next.

So while the rough edges of the character have been sanded down over time, he’s still very much a plucky, brave, kind, and helpful protagonist in most of the media he’s in.

Which to your average adult viewer means… he’s a bland and uninteresting character.

That said, he’s still an icon of animation as a whole, and most things with Mickey in them are doing some new and novel something (design, production pipeline, whatever) that pushes the whole industry forward in some way.

Pseudoregalia is a PS1-eta low-poly aesthetic 3D metroidvania with really, really slick movement mechanics. It’s the kind of game that really could’ve existed back then, had developers just known all the little quality of life design choices we have these days.

On the one hand, if the people are armed, the government should theoretically fear the people and want to keep them happy.

But even with millions of armed citizens, nobody is even close to putting up a fight against the US. And they know that. And they keep shitting on you because they know you ain’t doing shit about it.

And then you look at the countries that are more democratically reflective of the will of the people… and they have strong gun regulations. It’s almost like maybe governments that at least work even a little don’t need the fear of popular revolution to keep them in check.

Oh I did think the F in FOSS was about the price. Good to know!

I can vouch for Foundry VTT being really nice to use, overall.

It’s not free though, so I’m not sure it falls under the FOSS label.

I can’t be arsed to look up any actual research at the moment, but if you wanted to provide some, I’d be appreciative.

When doctors ask if you smoke, they primarily care if you smoke things containing nicotine. Iirc, that’s the cause of the smoking related heart disease risk (among other health concerns).

Boy howdy

Except the US constitution does not include that language. The “a wall of separation between church and state” phrase most notably comes from an 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association. Not a legally binding document by any means.

I imagine you’re thinking of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution which forbids the US government restricting the free exercise of religion.

I believe, iirc, the Supreme Court over several decades has affirmed and reaffirmed the overall position that the US government must remain secular and not favor a particular religion. Which is effectively what you’re getting at.

I believe they are referring to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character on Seinfeld, Elaine, who was the most overtly progressive of the main cast.

Cool. Thanks!

I’m unclear what your title means? Is it like, mods are saying thinly-veiled homophobia isn’t worth moderating? Or am I missing it entirely?

Perhaps my point didn’t come across. I’m not trying to explain why a swing voter would stay in one party. I was trying to understand what might cause someone in the US in today’s world to be the kind of person who could feasibly vote for either party when they are wildly different on the major topics in the zeitgeist.