In the future, computers will do all our art and entertainment for us so we can concentrate on making rich people more money. Yay!

And how likely is it that a conservative majority SC will stand up to Trump?

Ehh, I mean yeah I get what you mean, but guns are still pretty useful tools (if not exactly pleasant.) US gun fetishism is way off the deep end, but we’re still pretty far from “bluetooth smart diaper” territory

The law’s impact on Bell’s experience highlights the inhumane consequences of abortion restrictions, which can lead to unnecessary suffering and even death.

The purpose of a system is what it does

Men are going off the deep end

Guns are inanimate.

People who do dumb shit like this are dumb.

And in your opinion, how could I have better represented someone test firing a gun in their own goddamn hand?

Wait, you’re right. After your reply I think “moron” was way too lenient of me.

Please tell me you weren’t wearing eye or ear protection, that’d make this even better.

Yeah, using the wrong kind of filament accidentally is understandable and doesn’t say anything about anyone’s intelligence.

Takes a real moron to test fire a brand new experimental gun in their hand, and then cry about it and blame their friend when it inevitably goes sideways

I just remember news about Germany planning to halve military aid to Ukraine from the summer, but honestly I haven’t been keeping up with the situation

But considering that Ukraine has been facing consistent shortages of materiel – including things like various kinds of artillery ammunition (although part of the problem especially with shells is that production is still ramping up) – that really doesn’t seem to have been the case. A lot of the equipment they’ve been given has just been token amounts that are clearly not enough but makes it seem like at least we’re doing something.

And none of that necessarily translates to a sufficient will to help Ukraine. Germany has already been making it clear they want to scale down support

While allies of US President-elect Donald Trump insist that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may have to cede territory to bring the conflict to an end, Sir Tony insisted that Western allies would be resolute for “as long as it takes”.

Let’s see how long that resolution holds once the US stops aid and starts blackmailing other countries to do the same by eg. threatening to cut NATO funding

That’s too many nuts. The recommended maximum amount of nuts is 2

Absolutely, but at least in many countries people understand that – here people love to pretend that there is no corruption here at all and that we’re good, honest folk all of us.

Finland is surprisingly corrupt (it’s just not the sort of corruption where you bribe cops) and Finns are generally stupid and gullible enough to think we’re not corrupt

I mean it’s absolutely possible and pretty trivial to do in-house online surveys so that you know whether someone has answered but can’t immediately connect answers to individuals, especially if the survey didn’t use an in-house web service.

Whether I’d trust a corporation that says some survey is anonymous is another matter entirely though, because I absolutely wouldn’t

I mean sure, that may just be an “innocent” poll and Uihlein might just be genuinely curious about what the percentages are, there is no way I would trust a conservative to not connect those survey answers to people.

Shit, they wouldn’t even have to explicitly note down who answered what in the database where they count answers, since employees have to be logged in they can probably look at server & auth logs to deduce who voted for who

Oh yes no disagreement there, but by all appearances it’s probably still going to be a fairly close shave – much closer to 50/50 ballpark than, say, 40 / 60 or let alone 30 / 70. So out of the people who do bother to vote, around half of them are still probably going to vote from Trump

Oh yes, liberals absolutely are way worse about this, but I do see it even with actual leftists. It feels like with “centrists,” the deal seems to be what you described: a sort of “well, certainly the leopards won’t eat my face, and I don’t like messing with the status quo because it works well enough for me.” However, with some leftists, it seems to be more about an optimistic view of “the human condition” and an assumption that people are, by and large, good and want to do good (even to folks they don’t know).

I’m a degrowth anarchist myself, and since I live in Finland, I get to enjoy proportional representation. I vote for a democratic socialist party that is at least reasonably close to my values and actually has a chance of landing parliament seats and governmental positions. Over the decades, I’ve noted that many “actual” leftist voters and politicians are maybe a bit… well, let’s say a bit too upbeat about what sort of animal Homo sapiens actually is. These are folks who genuinely do care about “woke” stuff like intersectionality and put in the work towards really changing things, but who seem to think that deep down, everybody wants a just, more equal society and not a hierarchical hellhole where the “strong” dominate some “lesser” social classes (foreigners, poor people, whatever)

My question is, if it’s sad and shameful, why is Trump still so popular in polls?

Sure, they may say it’s “sad and shameful”, but it’s clearly not bad enough for them to not want to vote for Trump anyhow.