What does libertarianism have to do with anything? The US health insurance industry is objectively evil. It exists solely to extract profits, while providing no service. It's just a middleman between you and health care providers. It's a poster child for regulatory capture and blatant corruption.

Damn ~~Uncle Scrooges~~ Uncles Scrooge ruining the economy with their improbably swimmable money bins! Where's Magica De Spell when you need her?

I guess what we want to do is to cultivate a community where people—and especially bots—will have a hard time engaging dishonestly. Having said that, I'm no closer to knowing how to do it. The struggle with ~~misinformation~~ disinformation seems like an arms race where the bad actors will always have the advantage.

barely a percentage point compared to the fossil fuel industry's war on Green Energy

That's not really relevant in this context, though, is it? Maybe a better comparison would be 2024 election spending by foreign-connected PACS. According to opensecrets.org, the "nearly $10 million" allegedly distributed by RT employees is equivalent to the sum of all other foreign pac money donated to the GOP this cycle. It's certainly not "dwarfed by any other country" as you spuriously claimed.

Saudi sportswashing and other shenanigans are also cause for concern. That in no way lessens the severity of this problem.

I just think calling people bots and shills has no place in honest discourse and the brushstroke always tends to get bigger and bigger.

Bots and shills have no place in honest discourse, but they obviously exist. Should we pretend they don't—assume everyone is arguing in good faith, regardless of how blatantly dishonest and inconsistent they are? What would you suggest?

I don't disagree that there's a slippery slope problem; there's no shortage of fringe internet echo chambers that dismiss all dissenting opinions as coming from npc's, cia shills, shitlibs, bloodmouths, breeders, , etc.

Thank you. This pretty well sums up my perspective on them as well.

Yeah, it's too bad it's only 200 million, and only "X". All the billionaire-controlled, black-box content algorithm social media sites are a cancer on humanity. Nobody's freedom is being impinged upon by banning them; they're the private fiefdoms of oligarchs, who blatantly wield them in service of their own agendas. Banning them is the sensible thing to do, and I can only hope that other governments follow suit.

H.E.B. store brand toilet paper is like that. Haven't seen any other companies do it.

Yeah, I don't think he'd have made an overt dick joke on stage at the convention. This, as you say, was masterfully done. It's just the kind of thing that I'd expect to get under trump's skin. I'd like to have been in the room when they came up with that, assuming it wasn't a brilliant improvisation.

FWIW, I'm dual-booting windows and mint atm. Separate drives, but just one EFI partition, and this update hasn't borked things for me.

Nope, the user they responded to appears to be an actual trumpet.