I used to love this comic! Is still going?

Mind sharing what you mean, “or whatever?” Are you arguing using facts that came to you in a dream?

I guess it was just no term limits? Still, he’s got control of all the levers of power and without term limits he can continue to consolidate power over time, gathering favors, loyalty, etc. There’s a reason people like term limits and Mexico fought a couple wars over the idea.

In what way?

Power goes from father to son. They have elections but the person in power always wins like 100% of us vote, and I don’t even think they have alternative candidates. Someone else above had a link that showed they have a person and you just vote “yes or no” for that person, which isn’t very democratic if you don’t know the alternative.

Do you have evidence that there were not popularly elected bodies making all of the decisions, and that leaders of AES states were never contested successfully?

I don’t, but if you have proof that those things have happened before, I’d be curious to see them.

What about Stalin who purged rivals and sent out hit men with ice picks to take out his critics? Or Xi Jinping who’s been made President for life or whatever recently? Or Fidel Castro who basically led the country from the revolution until he was too old to run it? The DPRK which looks like a monarchy in all but name? No one says dictators run whole countries literally by themselves but they do dictatorial things to make sure people only loyal to them can have power, their word is law without going through other checks or balances by the people, like some popularly elected body or something.

I will admit though that after Stalin, the USSR changed out rulers pretty regularly so that doesn’t seem like a dictatorship to me. Same with Cuba now after Castro. Now people just say it because those countries allow only one party I guess.

That is hilarious. I can imagine it with perfect clarity lol

I haven’t seen these posts, either. But I have to ask, are you this person?

By that logic, the NY Times should be banned as a source. They’re opinion section is chocked full of basically the pro US point of view and defending Israel (including a memo advocating genocide denial). One-sided coverage, poorly sourced, nakedly biased, it all applies to them, too.

Allowing sources from all points of view, as long as the facts are true, seems better than picking and choosing due to bias. Even these “centrist” institutions have their own biases.

The downside of the fediverse =(

Wasn’t that the German or instance? I wonder why they went down. They seemed so big and established.

I’d like to get more tabletop rpg content back on ttrpg.network if possible. So in that spirit, just want to remind people that

!dndnext@ttrpg.network !rpg@ttrpg.network

Both exist

Thanks!

Arrest you for protesting a genocide or trying to get an abortion? No, sorry, that’s something people in the US have to worry about when their government has their data, not China.

Considering our data is being bought and sold by US companies to whoever I don’t think this is going to help with that. Tbh, I’m more scared of the US having our data than China. The US can use it to find people seeking abortions, or to track protestors trying to get human rights, or things like that. Not China. I’d rather they make a general law to preserve privacy, but this half-assed measure to preserve US monopolies.

The revealed their code to a US company already: Oracle.

They just don’t like that the youth use it to see what’s happening in other parts of the world, like Palestine. They want to be able to keep the US populace within their propaganda bubble, in the state we were in when we didn’t know about things like the Irgun or The Great March of Return.

So does Firefox make this more unique or something? I didn’t know this was a thing but I’m interested in privacy and it sound like something I should be looking into.

Same. I forgot to mention that I like to buy cheaper games through second hand rather than paying full price on electronic stores. Often even their big sales aren’t as cheap as secondhand.

I still buy physical whenever I can. I’d hate to have my entire collection beholden to one account, although I know people do that with the PS Store, or Game Pass, or Steam. I don’t trust corporations, I guess. I really hope they don’t make disc-less consoles the standard.

Oh Yay! Admittedly, I didn’t try it recently but I remember seeing an article that was down. If it’s back up, I’m glad to hear it.

Is torrent galaxy still down? That was my go to and sounds like I have to find another. I am a little worried if they keep bringing down the big ones like that, that we’ll be left with less choices and it’ll be more difficult.

I didn’t even know Reddit had an offline reader app.

Hopefully the Windows debacle and abortion and Palestinian resistance issues in the US remind people why privacy is important.