Revolution will either come, killing most of us, or the train of rampant capitalistic destruction will continue on, killing all of us. We’re not close enough to immediate death for most of us to view revolution as an acceptable answer yet, but I have no doubt that in a few decades, when the young adults of that time look back on the current times and think “they had it so easy,” the risk associated with an uprising will seem much less daunting when compared to the risk of simply living within whatever jumbled-together scraps of a system we’ll have left by then.

Revolution isn’t a solution that any sane person gets excited for; it all but guarantees a short life full of suffering for the vast majority of people, but it’s a solution that is chosen when the alternative is guaranteed suffering for everyone outside of the upper class. It’s the last resort used when the best hope you have for the future is to fight for the chance that a few people make it to peaceful times, because you don’t see any other way for anyone to get there by working within the system.

Voting is important, yes; we get the best chance to make it to a revolution by voting blue, slowing down capitalism’s destruction of the world, but so long as each election is populated by 2 candidates proudly bought out by corporations who don’t give a shit about the world, there will be no viable option within the system to actually stop its destruction. That requires actually changing the system through uprising.

And he’s got 38 degrees in fucking.

Why the long face?

Microsoft was screwing over consumers before Google was even founded.

Huh, that’s interesting. Though, how do you pick MLK specifically out of a recording of an orgy, let alone definitively enough for it to be damning to his reputation?

But they were writing the letter under the guise of just being some guy. I’d believe the government could make the public think I’m some sexual deviant, but not a random person writing a letter to me.

Is there something I’m missing, or is this letter nothing more than an old-timey version of modern internet comments and conservative “LGBTQ+ people are somehow pedophiles!” claims that are as outlandish as they are unfounded? Like, how is claiming a reverend has secret massive orgies he’s clearly not having going to get him to kill himself? He probably just read this, said “Well that’s a load of nonsense.” and threw it away without another thought.

Did you get the chocolate cake shake with it?

I mean, the bleak thing is that the world works through people making deals with murderers to not be murdered, instead allowing other people to be murdered. I don’t give a shit about her gender, I just want a story about a good person winning in spite of corruption, not a bad person winning because of it.

As bleak as it is, given the high amount of other political opponents that died, the fact that she didn’t is likely an indication of how nice she plays with the people doing the murdering. I’m hopeful that she’s just good at dodging assassins, though!

I tried so hard as a kid to sing the entire list in one breath, but never made it…

Makes sense. I’ve always been disappointed that instead of using better processing power to make bigger, more complex games, we used it to make the same games with more complex animations and details. I don’t want a game that only differs from its predecessors through use of graphical upgrades like individual blades of grass swaying in the wind, or the character starting to sweat in relation to their exertion; I want games with PS1-PS2 graphics and animation quality, but with complex gameplay that the consoles of that era could only dream of being able to handle.

I’ve always felt that republicans were the ones to push pronouns mattering, to the point of obstinance; they frequently get worked up about people’s genders, and refuse to use pronouns that differ from what they believe to be the “correct” ones for a person. The lefter people understand that pronouns really only matter to the person who identifies with them, so we’re fine calling people whatever they want, since it’s their choice and we don’t really care what they choose in the end.

Yeah. Obviously if a candidate is a criminal that should invalidate them in the eyes of any sane voter, but really the bar should be a lot higher for anyone to be happy with their choice. The real motivation shouldn’t be to vote for the lesser of 2 evils and call it good enough, it should be to literally fight back against corruption until we have options we actually like. Obviously it’s too late for that in this election, but we should already be getting started in the fights to get someone worthwhile in the 2028 elections.

This looks really cool - I put in my beta tester registration!

24,609 is an anagram for 69,420.

Gotta have both.

Well, yes, but that’s kinda my point. If you don’t patent, you get exploited, like how the discoverers of insulin synthesis decided not to patent, so companies patented similar, but not exact methods, and now it’s incredibly expensive. But, as you said, if you do patent, there is still a risk of exploitation if the patent holder sells to an exploitative company. However, that exploitation is still less likely than when not patenting, so I support the practice so long as patenting is still possible.

I worked at a small nonprofit back when genes were still able to be patented; we mostly studied the condition Pseudoxanthoma Elasticum, and held the patents to a few of the genes associated with it. However, we still allowed people to research them freely - we only patented them to prevent a company like Myriad Genetics, who had been patenting genes so that they could sell expensive genetic tests, from patenting it instead. We celebrated when genes were no longer able to be patented; I imagine that the researchers working with golden rice will do the same if we’re ever lucky enough for GMO’s to no longer be able to be patented.

I wholeheartedly agree. I was working for a small genetics nonprofit when they removed the ability to patent genes, and the whole office had a party to celebrate. It was mostly a celebration about freedom to research and test, but we were also very excited to no longer have to deal with having a bunch of patents. Even though we let people research the genes freely, we still had a bunch of paperwork that needed to be done any time someone wanted to do so.

Selection technically isn’t modification, since the modification had to have already occurred for it to be selected for. However, modification certainly did occur, and all crops are genetically modified. Indeed, all living creatures are genetically modified, as without modification, evolution can’t occur.

The public fear of GMO’s is largely due to Monsanto, who aggressively protect their GMO crop patents to the point where farmers who just happened to have some seeds blow into their fields have been sued.

The issue with GMO’s isn’t the modification, it’s the lax patent laws that allow companies like Monsanto to exploit people for profit, giving a bad name to the field as a whole, in spite of the immense potential good it can do, for which Golden Rice is a prime example.