Already seen it. I don't love Biden, but he's done "okayish" at most things. Every time the economy comes up, people start missing Trump despite the fact he was the one that destroyed it

I think girls who get long eyelashes do it because they like how they look.

And thank god if they do because I would hate a woman who only cares about what other people think of her looks.

The worst thing in the world is being the only non-wealthy person in a fancy private school. I spent a year in one (grant, partly) and kept getting in trouble for hurting some bully's fist when he punched me.

When the guy who treats people like shit has his last name in brass on the Computer Lab wall, he gets away with everything.

I'd say it's simpler than that. Russia keeps funding regions it wants destabilized so something bad is always happening at a time good for Russia.

No tinfoil hat, but total Scumbag Putin.

Does this guy really need the national fame with MAGA that comes with making it on NBC? I don't get it. We've already had 400 convictions. This is a random kid that pled guilty to civil disorder and got 2 months in prison.

If anything, an article should question how someone whose allocution contradicts the evidence got 2 months despite the prosecutor pushing for a year.

"First they came for the socialists..."

The moment someone courts Nazism or Fascism, diplomacy goes out the window for anyone worth being considered. There's a reason the US doesn't negotiate with terrorists, and that reason stands for fascists and other intolerant authoritarians or hate groups.

For what it's worth, I feel the same way about tankies. Anyone who would see me dead or censored by force does not get the right to compromise. The Republicans lost that right the moment the first innocent woman got locked in a cage post-Dobbs, if not pre-Roe in the first place.

You just described a Leftist, in some ways. Disagreeing with both majority parties doesn't mean you have to stand between "evidence-based" and "far-right".

There is absolutely no contradiction in being for police reform, and against riots lasting for days

That's being in the middle of the two positions. It's not that there's a contradiction, but that you just ate up the rhetoric that BLM protesting was all "riots lasting for days". And "Police Reform" is a middle-of-the-road alternative to "follow the evidence, defund 90% of the police and have non-lethally-armed services do those things". This fits our description of centrist to a tee

There is no contradiction in being for gun rights, while also wanting limits on them

Sure. I'm a leftist who feels this way. The "real center" here, though, would be the Democratic party, who still want less gun control than most civilized nations. Your view perhaps resembles the "the Right is so bat-shit insane that conservatives are confused for moderates"?

There is no contradiction in wanting functional government services and universal healthcare, and thinking that free markets are effective

I mean... yeah there is. If free markets were effective, we should be gutting all government services and regulatory bodies. Nobody actually believes free markets are effective. There are those who embrace the buzz-word without realizing it, and then there are those who want the free markets because they are ineffective and that the profit margins available to them are massive.

There is no contradiction in wanting a more balanced budget, and government services to be funded

Again, this is the formal Democratic position. The formal Republican position is called "Starve the Beast", and it is for there to NEITHER be a balanced budget NOR be government services funded. I'm not making that up. On this view, you sound like a Democrat, but if you vote for Republicans on their economic stances despite matching Democrats, that makes you the middle of the two views again.

The idea that there are only two sides in politics is a strange delusion created by your two party system.

Obviously, but there are two sides to every issue. If we get back to the OP issue, it's that one side has been screaming "climate change is real and permanent damage is imminent" and the other side has been screaming "climate change is fake and God loves us". Centrists have been between the two saying "I know the meteor is headed for us, but my retirement is more important to me than the world still being around when my kids grow up". We've been dealing with 40+ years of that. But yeah, that IS between the two sides.

If you are left wing, and argue for left-wing policies in every case, that means you will also be argued with by somebody who believes political nuance and not just waving a party flag.

The funny thing is that for 9 policies out of 10, most lefties just argue for the educated position against the "gut instinct" or "I know science says this but it worked for me" position. Hell, just look at the topic of parents hitting kids and it covers all the nuances of the leftist problem. Is the Left always correct? No. But the Right and/or Center is a broken clock in this. I think the Left is wrong on Gun Control and the Democrats are right. That's about the only issue I can think of right now that the majority of the Left is wrong on. Not because I'm a leftist but because I'm educated in the issues.

The right wing also shits on centrists because they think they are secretly left-wing since they argue with some of their stupider points as well.

Not quite. They pretend centrists are the far left and shit on them, so that "moderate" really means "neocon but not seeking Handmaid's Tale".

These people are not “secretly right-wing” and just don’t have the balls to say it. That is a horrendous take no matter where you fall on the political spectrum the only serves to limit conversation.

Anyone who voted Trump in 2020 was either ignorant or Right-Wing, regardless of what they claimed to be. He is against fiscal conservativism, against modern medicine, and was caught red-handed working with Russia to steal the 2016 election. His presidency damaged the economy, but also focused that damage on states that net-provide resources for the country as a whole because they are Democrat. A person in New York paying an extra $10,000/yr in taxes with reduced overall QOL and COVID-dead family members "voting Trump anyway" is not a centrist.

Yeah, no shit. If my coworker tries to bully me, I have him fired. If he tries to fight me, I have him arrested. If my boss (I have one, instead of 7) is an asshole to me, I put out my resume.

There's a lot of advantages to school if you're a lazy bastard who just wants life to hand you things on a silver platter and are willing to pay the price of freedom, but there's also a lot of negatives.

I mean, I wouldn't put Starfield in the same family as Diablo IV, with most of the game behind a microtransaction wall. Bethesda promised Skyrim in Space. We got Skyrim in Space. Skyrim is a polarizing game (much like Witcher 3 is, often for opposite people/reasons).

I don't think Starfield is "not so bad", I'm having the best gaming experience I've had in a year or two. I think all the critiques are valid, but I don't really care about most of them.

So why should I play a game I don't enjoy to punish the makers of the game I do enjoy? I have a very limited amount of gaming time. It gets the game I'm having the most fun with.

I'm sure most of them have never been to China.

I spent two weeks there and that was enough; I would never choose to live there. It's a fairly safe place as a tourist or on a business trip, but there were dozens of red flags in that time as well.

Ironically, though, none of the red flags there had to do with Communism. More about censorship and unnecessary overt shows of military force around every corner. I saw more large arms there than driving through rural America, that's for sure.

Yeah, that's someone who has so much money he doesn't understand it.

If a $4 latte a day is a significant financial burden for you, you will never own a home. If you can own a home, that $4 latte will have no effect on that.

And the avacado toast? The health effects alone are likely to pay for itself in the medium-term.

It's days like this that remind me I'm not a typical gamer.

When Sims 4 came out, I put Sims 3 away thinking it was time for something bigger and better even though I'd had wishlisted DLC unpurchased. When Sims 4 clearly had basic content locked behind future DLC, I quit and didn't go back to anything because playing the old version when the new version is out "didn't make sense". Went from being a Sims player to not a Sims player, not in protest but because their business model "failed to monetize" me. Obviously, if I were the base case, EA would have backpedaled.

Reminds me of the "mini-outrigger and story collection" thing with fantasy literature. I've gone from being a diehard fan to no longer even reading simply because I didn't have the bandwidth and research hours to take it all in (Dresden and Iron Druid, lookin at you).