I don’t know Lawful Neutral or Neutral Evil

Fake news, thinking about baseball would make Sisko misfire instantly

I thought it was the dentist scene from Little Shop of Horrors, but I think that one has another actor that looks kind of similar

I think you’re being overly simplistic - sure, ideas and debates have a place in politics. And “political power flows out of the barrel of a gun” doesn’t mean “Whoever has the most guns wins” (though this is the case most of the time) - but it does mean that a group with no guns has no power.

Like the other commenter said, the quote is partially metaphorical - it just means that force is the basis of political power. The people willing and able to apply the most force will almost always win in the end.

Think about in America. If, tomorrow, 75% of Americans were in favor of abolishing the police, would it happen? Maybe, but probably not - because the people with political power, the people with guns and the will to use them (cops, troops, fascists, small business tyrants) support the police.

History is shaped by material conditions; ideas play a part in this, but material interest is the primary driving force.

Mao Zedong; his quote was “Political power flows out of the barrel of a gun.”

The quote is not a moral statement or a call to action, but a scientific analysis of Historical Materialism: the Chinese civil war was not fought with ballots or debates, it was fought with guns, on both sides.

Ultimately, the people with the guns hold all political power in society.

People who get mad at this episode because “That’s not how evolution works!” miss the point of Star Trek.

Chronotons and dilithium crystals also don’t exist. The science of Star Trek only exists to facilitate interesting stories, involving character drama and philosophical quandaries.

Instead of picketing the streets and striking their jobs, they should try picketing Musk and striking him in the head

https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/2010/11/18/b03176c8-a642-11e2-a3f0-029118418759/image4061139x.jpg

Bomb Palm Beach

Basically the upper management was getting mad that Paper Mario was taking on too much of its own identity compared to the broader Mario brand. It’s why Origami King is mostly just Toads all over the place.

I really think you’re onto something - just the headline (and, remember, the vast majority of people only read the headlines of articles - so the headline is where the company gets the information they want to convey to as many eyes as possible) calls the company:

• Dying
• Fraudulent
• Anti-Privacy
• Anti-American

Just to give a potential shareholder as many reasons as possible to decide “I no longer wish to support this company/I want to get out before this company fails”.

Maybe TEMU is a bad company with a bad product, but it’s worthless arguing about whether or not this is the case when the article itself cares very little about making concrete points and has an ulterior motive in publishing the article.

Crypto is not “technology”, it’s a grift and a scam

Unitary Representative Parliament.

Ultimately, Democracy is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. And as we can see in the United States, people do not tend to vote wholly in their own collective interest but according to media (and even educational) influence and voter manipulation (making voting easier for certain people and harder or impossible for others).

Ultimately I believe in the inverse-heirarchical system: where people elect local representatives (for their town, or a neighborhood of a large city), who elect state representatives, who elect national representatives, who appoint a dual head of State and Government along with an executive committee to carry out the mandates of the national body.

I believe that parties whose purpose is counter to the public good should be banned. My main concern here is not for “anti-democratic” parties, however, but fascists and other right-wing groups.

Yes, it is, but I’m not a Libertarian - some censorship is good. Fascists, trolls, and child pornographers deserve to be censored.

No my cat isn’t diabetic

You can replace most anything with wood or sheet metal. Not only that, but without subsidies to the fossil fuel industries, it would actually be cheaper to make many products we make out of plastic of wood or metal instead.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say we need to ban plastics entirely. Expensive, long-lasting items like certain electronics (televisions, game consoles) are probably fine made of sturdy plastics (think the old stuff SNES’s were made out of, not the brittle shit they make Xboxes out of today). And I’d have to guess there are certain electronic components that are best made of plastic and not likely to introduce any microplastics into people’s systems.

What we need to cut down on are disposable plastics and plastics in food service. Styrofoam trays, plastic wrap, tupperware, plastic bottles, plastic grocery bags, plastic packaging, plastic dishes, plastic handles on silverware. All of these could be replaced with glass, metal, wood, or fabric and become more renewable/reusable/recyclable and less dangerous to people’s health.

If I could drop two bombs, the second one would be on Silicon Valley. Tech “workers” are a scourge on society.

It does feel kinda weird asking someone out at their place of work and I don’t want to put her in an awkward situation.

While I get that things are different across genders, my first date out of high school was a girl who asked me out while I was working (in fact, I’ve never dated a person I met outside of school or my or their work). My dad asked my mom out while she was working. Everyone meets people at work, it’s where we spend the vast majority of our time out of the house; and the same people who say you shouldn’t approach women at their place of work say the same thing about the gym, the store, and public transit.

I find that when (many) young women say “I don’t like it when men do X” (such as, “ask me out while I’m working”), they really just mean guys who are (1) way too old, (2) overly persistent, or (3) complete strangers. If you roughly fit within the “half your age plus seven” rule, and she’s spoken to you longer than she is contractually obligated to by her job, you’re probably in the clear to offer to give her your number and to let you know if she wants to grab lunch sometime.

Good, we don’t want them

Reminds me of how Reddit had “Community Engagement Ambassadors” (or w/e they were called) who were paid to just go around making low-effort engagement-farming posts on random communities like “What’s your favorite X in this game?” or “What do you think [sports team]'s greatest strength is?”.

People tend to look down on that sort of thing in retrospect, but this sort of “manufactured engagement” is likely the key factor in Reddit’s success as a platform.

I sometimes wonder if I (or just people in general) should start doing this on Lemmy as well, and whether the increased engagement would be worth the bad faith interaction.