The only difference between bigotry and compassion is attribution of cause.

Women are usually worse at math and science than men. Absolutely true fact. But why?

See also: Racial minorities being poorer, worse educated, and more inclined to steal. It's true! Now tell me why it's true. Trans people have higher rates of mental illness, self-harm, and suicide. No argument that this is true, it's rampant. But why is it true?

Qd3 Pg3 Qf5

I've just been on the internet a long time and pride myself on writing with precision. I am a rather bot-like writer, Narrrz.

There hasn't been a "good one" since WW2.

Short explanation: The arms Iraqi forces fought with during the Gulf War were largely bought or built by Americans. Isn't that interesting?

Long explanation: It's all connected to the Israel-Palestine issues we are seeing this very day. Iraq was dealt a very nasty hand by the UN after the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, becoming a landlocked country, with lines drawn such that they were made caretakers of ethnic enemies and forced to forsake much of their geopolitical power and resources to tribal rivals. It's difficult to say their claim to Kuwait was justified, but it's certainly just as difficult to say it was unjustified.
On top of that, we had just gotten done with fucking over Iraq due to their failure in the Iraq-Iran war. They had initially allied with the USSR to prop themselves up, and when that went to shit they turned around and tried doing the west and themselves a favor by grabbing a piece of Iran. We were directly supporting them (anybody taking a punch at Iran is a friend of ours!), and had been increasing our support, but when they agreed to a ceasefire we stopped, leaving them war-torn, deeply in debt, and with really nothing to show for their experiment of working with the west aside from all these shiny American weapons of course.

Medium explanation?: Iraq had been engineered to be an Israel-like anti-Arab agent in the region, but when they failed and sued for peace, we left them no other option but to wage another war to survive. When they went in a direction we didn't like, we got all our buddies together (including a surprising number of old enemies) and decimated them. Twice!

Yeah, I'm juuuust old enough to have a firm memory of when things that were laughably petty were the biggest problems in the world. You mean to tell me the PRESIDENT got a BLOWJOB?!

All the real issues that sowed the seeds for our intractably broken future were sidelined and mostly ignored. Desert Storm, woowoo go world police. LA Riots, oh you crazy minorities and your intolerance for extrajudicial murder. Climate change, what's that?

In practice, employment contracts are always good for employees and usually bad for employers. You don't want to be locked into a job? Then don't sign a contract that locks you in. Just refuse, as just about any sane person would.

Employers WOULD refuse to be locked in, except sane governments force them to. Sane governments do not force regular citizens into indentured servitude.

This boils down to "bad people are everywhere" which is universally true, to the point that it's barely worth mentioning. You will find shitty takes and hateful people everywhere if you go out looking for it.

The question is whether the bad people are running the show, or if the bad is endemic to the culture. I don't think you can say that of every fandom, or of gaming enthusiasts in general in 2023. And specifically I don't think it's fair to compare to the Valorant fanbase to something like the 2004 Smash Bros Melee fanbase.

There's still progress to be made and bad eggs to be found in every basket, but I think there's been enough mainstream attention and a hot enough crucible of scrutiny that we are for the most part beyond the era of "this tournament brought to you by actual rapists and chomos, don't forget to bring your racist slurs, misogyny, and homophobic taunts to the stage for everyone to enjoy"

Disclaimer that I am completely talking out of my ass and speculating, but I have a personal theory.

COVID has been around long enough to have two interesting effects.

1. Almost everyone has gotten it by now. Some of us got it really bad, and/or acquired long-term secondary conditions. Some of this likely caused impaired cognitive function.
2. Kids had their school schedules totally fucked up for years, and those kids are now the young teens on the internet. Young teens on the internet are already by default a disruptive demographic, but now add the effect of years of desocialization and missed education.

Xfce is a great example of how solving a problem in the best way results in low adoption.

People tend toward extremes. There is something in particular they really want, and they will gravitate toward the product that gives them the most of that thing.
I want total control over configuration: KDE Plasma
I want maximum performance: LXDE
I want something that looks good and I don't want to think about it: GNOME/Cinnamon

Xfce isn't on this list! It's not the best at anything. But it's pretty good at everything. It's an overall best (in my opinion) but because it's not beautiful, nor lightning fast, nor incredibly flexible, nobody will ever take it as their first choice. And the majority of people make a first choice and then never change, as whatever they start with is probably good enough for them. I've tried all of the DE's listed above, but I'm the crazy guy: that's a lot of work and churn! Any and all of them work well enough, why bother installing 5 separate environments?

If you want to develop something and have people adopt it, then your goal is to have a killer sexy feature at the expense of all else, rather than to be satisfactory in every metric.

Everybody's a little ADHD, and everybody's a little crazy. You have to reach a particular threshold before you qualify as "clinical."

If you are able to function independently, then you probably won't be clinically diagnosed even if you have some struggles here and there.

Consider the difference between a person with OCD who feels really uncomfortable when they aren't able to perform their compulsions vs. a person who suffers a complete mental breakdown and loses all ability to self-regulate for hours or days.

The Johnston & Murphy XC4 line has become my go-to. They are not cheap, and the selection is limited, but the construction and versatility can't be beat.

I've had my oldest pair for over 4 years, with no functional degradation at all, and minimal signs of wear (minor creasing in the leather, hardly worth mentioning). They're casual and comfortable enough for everyday wear, and stylish enough for business events. Easily the best value in a shoe I've ever gotten.

AKA Absurdism

The world is less frightening if it makes sense, even if the ways it makes sense don't make sense.