Getting older and more mature has definitely helped with this. For example, I completely cut out the part where I promise myself I’m going to change the pattern.

The only categorical difference between a child’s painting and a professional illustration is that the latter has value as a commodity. If that’s how art is being defined here then we can dismiss this opinion as deeply unserious.

In philosophy, it’s called Pasta’s Wager.

Twitter Migration Report

I appreciate how many people are ignoring the X rebrand entirely and referring to it as Twitter. I doubt that'll ever go away fully.

I don’t know about the media, but the official communication from the government is basically “End hostilities to avoid civilian casualties and make every effort to establish an independent Palestinian state as soon as possible.”

Not a super radical thing to say, but notable is that they did not condemn Hamas, and they explicitly call for Palestinian sovereignty as the only path to lasting peace. Israeli and western media are responding to that about as well as you’d expect (crying and shidding).

Oh, word? History is complicated and full of nuance? I wonder if that principle might apply to more recent events.

You’re essentially talking about decommodification of housing, which is the only correct answer. It is necessarily impossible for a house to be both affordable and a good investment, and the current status quo means that housing will be used as an investment. Whatever mechanism used to fix the housing affordability problem will require that housing no longer be subject to commodity market forces.

Feinstein's most recent term in office has been one long Weekend at Bernie's joke. You're not hurting anyone by piling on.

Very true to form for Bethesda. They give the players a bunch of mechanics to play with and then see what happens. Reminds me of the bucket trick in Skyrim where you can put containers on NPC’s heads to block their vision so that you can steal from them. It’s very silly, breaks the game, and ruins immersion, but it’s a single-player game so who cares? Enjoy the silliness if that’s how you want to play.

Elon Musk got me to stop using Twitter.

Give us full 20+ episode seasons, cowards! I want bottle episodes, slice of life stories, maybe a few two-parters here and there. Star Trek was born as an episodic network tv show meant to run from fall to summer. Let it breathe.

Your position is impossible to argue against in good faith when you start with "any Estonian who is critical of both of their occupiers is a holocaust denier".

I mean this with greatest respect: pointing out Double Holocaust Theory is not arguing in bad faith. It's arguing that there has been an organized push by antisemites to trivialize the Holocaust by equating it with crimes committed by the USSR. This mostly comes from 20th century anti-communist propaganda efforts. The forces that are trying to push the equivalency narrative are aligned with Nazi ideology or similar. Liberals may not care about the distinction because they figure that they can point at both communists and Nazis as being bad and move on, but doing so only assists the antisemites in their efforts. Point being, regardless of how you feel about the USSR or communism, you are effectively carrying water for Holocaust-deniers by failing to recognize the difference.

To be clear, I am not calling you an antisemite or a Holocaust denier, because it is very clear you are here in good faith trying to sort out this mess, and have been doing so respectfully. I am only trying to explain the argument so that you and others can attempt to make sense of the obvious dissonance between viewpoints. It's akin to unknowingly using ableist or misogynist language. If you're ignorant of the issue, then no one should ascribe malice to your language, but upon being made aware of the issue, it's expected that you should be more careful going forward.

Posting "[hammer and sickle] 10 reasons why we need communism..." is clearly not Kremlin propaganda. Posting "[hammer and sickle] Ukraine shouldn't even exist, long live CCCP" is clearly Kremlin propanda.

Again, with respect, I don't think this addresses the issue. I appreciate that you are open to the idea that advocating in favor of communism isn't de facto Russian propaganda (the current Russian state and ideological bent bears no resemblance to communism). Hexbear users are, at most, critically supportive of Russia for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with Putin or Russian nationalism, and much more to do with criticism of NATO and the US, in particular.

I think what we're trying to figure out is how to engage when anything that doesn't explicitly agree with the Western narrative is immediately dismissed as Russian propaganda. As an example, the Snake Island incident last year smelled fishy, but to call the Ukrainian government's statements about it into question at the time would get one accused of being a Russian shill. We now know that the Ukrainian government lied about it. That's fair pool, as far as I'm concerned. It's how you wage an information war. I don't care if a state wants to lie about things (and states will do so regardless), but I do want to get as close to the truth as possible, and that means critical analysis and skepticism. If there's no room for that analysis and skepticism then it's effectively declaring not just an anti-Russian-propaganda position, but rather an active preference for Western propaganda over everything else. That, by the way, is a valid choice, but if that's the party line then it should be made explicit. It's valid to say "anything pro-Russia or anti-NATO is banned" but that needs to be said, rather than hinted at. "Kremlin propaganda" isn't a self-explanatory phrase.

All of that said, I empathize with you in your attempt to make sense of all of this. While there is a lot of friction here, I think most of us are earnest in trying to reach understanding, if not agreement. The above is an attempt to shed some light on what might be causing dissonance. You're very patient to try and work through this, and I hope I and my fellow hexbear users haven't caused you too much stress. Most of us really are trying to play ball.