This may shock you, but there’s a lot of us. It’s not the same people doing both.

You cannot change the game, you cannot change others. The only one you can change is yourself, and thus the only time blame can be profitable is when pointed inward. Just remember: sometimes the mistake is in playing the game at all.

I’m a compatiblist. I don’t think a deterministic universe precludes free will. Of course there are reasons for everything we do. If free will was only the freedom to make bad or random decisions, what’s the point? That’s a lot of free but not a lot will.

I can’t be the only one who puts them all in the same (lidded) cup, right? Because if there’s more than one I will knock one over.

Yeeeees, join us

My whole life, yeah.

I’d be more likely to blame the lead exposure on the deregulation that red areas tend to favor, but I know the truth is more insidious: both are correlated to poverty.

They’ve dealt with so many bad actors in the past

This is for sure part of it. Remember that most of us fled here from reddit, and many made a clean break. For me, that includes avoiding political discussion communities. I actively moderated two conservative political communities for years (r/AskConservatives and r/Tuesday) and also r/As an American, where political discussions often came up. I’m just exhausted by it. I’ve seen every bad argument under the sun from and towards every major political position.

When I spooled down reddit, resigned my modship in r/AskConservatives, and came to lemmy, I resolved to a) never mod a discussion community again and 2] never sub a political discussion community. And my life became so much better! I still engage with politics IRL, with real people in my community, but have zero interest in seeking out the same here.

So yes, if you want to discuss certain topics here you’ve got an uphill slog. And if you don’t want to be treated like a bad-faith actor you’ve got to put in the work to build a reputation as a good-faith one. There’s no shortcut for that; users recognize each other here.

If there’s a local community / cultural center, they probably offer classes or even immersion. My local mutual aid society has Spanish-immersion craft night once a week.

sounds like labels just aren’t that useful to you

It still needs to be staffed and maintained after being built. It’s not a one-time cost.

Electoral College yes, in favor

Senators appointed by legislature no, not in favor

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of Electoral College reform. I think in particular unbinding electors is necessary, as is doing away with the “winner-take-all” distribution of electors. And while uncapping the House isn’t EC reform per se, doing so would make a drastic improvement to how representative the EC would be. These three things would fix most of the problems with the EC, ranked-choice voting or similar would take care of the rest.

You mean the instance that hosts the “not voting” community? I think I’ll be fine.

Who would want “real democracy”? Have you met people? They’re terrible.

It’s unclear if the above comment is agreeing or disagreeing with the lower one.

I don’t have the energy to hate like that. If I don’t like it and I’m not getting any use out of it, I just avoid it.

So the RV was the backup plan?

The point of a constitutional monarchy is to transition away from an absolute monarchy towards a republic.

Not to mention, how are you making that much and not socking anything away for later?

the fastest way to detect the event horizon is by shooting light past it, so no, not faster