But something must have triggered the big bang.

That’s a separate claim you’d have to prove. We have no evidence of something triggering it, we don’t even know that it would need to be triggered. All of our observations occur inside this universe, therefore we have no idea at all if cause-and-effect even applies to the universe as a whole. The short answer is: we don’t know and have no reason to posit the need for something else.

What does it mean for something to be “beyond” everywhere or before time?

I kinda thought you might put it together, but ok. Yes, those were rhetorical and obvious.

Police are responsible for police culture so pointing to culture doesn’t absolve them or change any of the math here. Same with the laws, they may not directly make them or have a say in them (unless you count police unions), but they can choose when to enforce them, when to not, and against whom. Again, your arguments aren’t changing any of the math here.

The problems of police are caused by the police and sustained by the police so they are entirely the fault of the police. Your comment seemed to imply that at least some of the blame should be taken from the police since it’s not them it’s the culture and the laws. I’m saying, it’s still all them. The culture and the laws are still on them.

Are the officers not part of that culture? Do they have no discretion in what laws they enforce and when?

I, for one, am shocked, shocked that defenders of Russia are still using the same easily disproven lies to justify invading, occupying, and murdering a neighboring country.

It’s not like Russia has a history of lying about its military operations in Ukraine or anything, right?

God the fucking privilege on display in these anti-Biden posts.

“I shouldn’t have to vote for the lesser of two evils, I should get to vote for a candidate that 100% aligns with my desires. Who gives a shit about what will happen to the people around me and the people I’m virtue signaling about, all that matters is the feeling of clean-hands I’ll have as my trans homies are marched off to the death camps or the Palestinians are eradicated. For I, the enlightened leftist, didn’t vote for Biden.”

For every reason you have to dislike Biden, you have an even larger reason to fear Trump. Want to support LGBTQ folks? Surely Trump will be better for them right? Want to support women’s rights? Surely the guy who put three anti-abortion judges on the court will give us abortion back, right? Want to support Palestine? Surely Trump will put BB in his place and stop the genocide, right? Are you really willing to risk that for those groups just so you can feel superior? Just so you can hope to get a shit party to the 5% threshold and have them still fall on their face the next election?

If you feel comfortable enough voting third party or not voting it’s because you have the privilege to be mildly inconvenienced for 4 years and be ok, unlike the groups you claim to be supporting with your protest vote.

Because that totally worked in 2026 right? They obviously just need to lose to Trump and they will suddenly realize the error of their ways and become a full leftist party overnight. All we need to do to save America from the evil DNC is let Trump win again! It makes perfect sense!

Balatro is super good if you haven’t played it yet. It’s the passion project of one guy that feels more cohesive than some AAA games I’ve played

For good reason the US and others don’t make public their playbook for responding to nuclear attacks on themselves or others with very few exceptions. We know about “mutually assured destruction” in the case of an ICBM, but not much else.

“Proportional” probably doesn’t apply in the case of nukes, it’s usually described as a maximal response to ensure it never happens again. However, the rumor has always been that an enemy using a nuke on an allied country would result in the US engaging in “total eradication” of that government. Probably, in this case, the complete destruction of Moscow. If I had to guess I’d think that would (since we’re pretty damn sure we could) do that with conventional arms to limit escalation.

Ya. This only ends one of two ways, either Israel succeeds in killing /displacing the people of Gaza (West Bank and Golem Heights next) and fills it with people loyal to them, or they stop the occupation. Terrorist groups don’t do well in stable, prosperous nations. If they really want Hamas and groups like them gone forever, they will have to take the winds out of their sails by letting the Palestinians have a real government with real control over itself. Even if they meet their stated goal of “destroying Hamas”, it (or another similar but even more extreme) group will take over.

There would be the same reaction if FB or Instagram or any other big platform was found to be allowing ads next to objectionable content (content the company in the ads would not want associated with their brand) AND that platform said that it wasn’t an issue, they won’t change policies to prevent it, and told them to go fuck themselves.

Twitter could absolutely have filters in place to prevent ads from showing up next to literal Nazi posts with a simple word list. The posts Media Matters showed were not subtle or underhanded, they were saying the quiet parts out loud. It would be trivial to prevent ads entirely from those posts, but then they’d lose ad space. It would mean less if this had happened with borderline posts or posts using coded language.

Facebook faced a ton of backlash for it and only stayed around because they are big enough that companies thought they’d lose more money by not offering their app then they’d lose by offering it. Also, as bad as Facebook moderation is, they were actively removing posts and banning users for things they said about J6 (odd to call it a protest but ok), which Parlor was refusing to do until after they were removed from the app stores. Parlor wanted to be all about free speech (hmmm just like Twitter now says they want to be) and refused to moderate the calls for violence until they were forced to by the big three, which led a lot of users to be angry at them and leave for other free speech platforms even less moderate than FB or Parlor.

So, are you saying you don’t have any evidence they colluded in the past, and no evidence that they colluded now, but are still believing it?

until they were able to get ads to show up

Yes, so they were able to get them to show up then. That means there are not mechanisms in place at Twitter that would prevent those ads from showing up next to Nazi posts. Which means the companies absolutely had a reason to pull ad funding. If you owned a company and were spending millions on ads, would you be ok knowing that it’s possible your ad shows up next to Nazi posts or Holocaust denial? Would it matter that it doesn’t happen most of the time? If it’s possible then Twitter has massively dropped the ball.

Where in the article do they say those ads “always” show up beside Nazi posts? They outlined their methods, and showed screenshots for proof. Even the CEO confirmed that those ads did show up next to Nazi posts, she just claimed it didn’t happen often. Media matters never claimed they happened all the time with every ad. If you had above a 5th grade reading level or had read the original article you’d know better.

Did any of those hearings end with a conclusion and solid evidence of collusion? How many of those companies or executives at those companies got convicted of market manipulation or conspiracy, or even charged?

Once again you are pointing to multiple independent companies, who are each other’s direct competitors, doing something at the same time and attributing that to collusion when there is no evidence for that at all. Is it that hard to imagine that multiple companies would decide at the same time to stop offering an app that harms their brand? Especially when those companies were getting heat because Parlor was used to organize the Insurrection and had many calls for violence? Also, are you now claiming that they previously colluded in support of Twitter but are now colluding against it?

You seem to have a tenuous grasp on…well, everything, but certainly reality. Companies do what they think will make them the most money. If all three thought that having Parlor on their app store, or ads on Twitter next to neonazis would make them less money than not doing those things, they would decide not to do them. It’s really really basic stuff.

By definition, a blockade is an act of war, regardless of who does it. I’m not sure why you’d think I wouldn’t call the US blockading some country and act of war (although I have a guess), just as much as I’d call Israel blockading Palestine as an act of war.

The reason other countries don’t respond to a US blockade with all-out war is because we get other countries to agree to the blockade first and then do it as a block, which means the blockaded country would have to be prepared to fight the US plus its allies. Given the relative size of the countries’ militaries involved, the blockaded ones usually decide not to fight.

Agreeing with the US’s decision to support Taiwan against China is not the same as support for all US military decisions, or even most of them.

That’s a pretty wild guess given how China keeps doing military drills involving amphibious landings and flying into Taiwanese airspace/going into Taiwanese waters. You wouldn’t practice amphibious landings to prepare a defense against the US, you’d do that to prepare for an invasion. China talks a lot about not using its military outside its borders, which has been mostly true, but they see Taiwan as within their borders so it doesn’t really tell us much.

If China wants to limit imports of goods from Taiwan they absolutely could, and it would be difficult for the US/Japan to respond to, but if by “restricting trade” you mean a blockade then that is an act of war that the US/Japan would respond to much more aggressively. Just like China would respond if we blockaded them.

^ Found the dumbass who didn’t even read the article and has zero understanding of how abortions work.

To be fair to Biden, the American public as a whole has been very pro-Israel for decades and I don’t think anyone expected the surge in people on our side of this issue. To be honest, I didn’t expect it either. It’s great to see but not surprising he would have preemptively said he supports Israel no matter what before realizing how popular the Palestinian cause actually is.

Even if that were the case, which it’s clearly not, wouldn’t it be better to move slowly towards full-on fascism than speed run it?

What is with all the both-sidesing and accelerationism on here in the last few weeks? Some of you all are either too young or too privileged to remember what living under Trump was really like, and he’s been abundantly clear that his next term will be far worse.

You won’t find very many enthusiastic Biden supporters, but I’d much rather have four more years of this than four-plus more years of Trump with a grudge and nothing left to lose.

Unless you do the online command so it pulls the most recent wim and does it on its own. I’ve got a batch file I use to fix computers at work that does the online dism followed by sfc and have had a few successes with it.

If you say so. Basic b&w laser from brother is $130 and the wifi model is $160. The entry level Eco-Tank is like $250 when not on sale. Laser is only expensive if you need extra features (document feeder, duplex scanning, multiple trays) or color.