Just cheat? Whatever happened to class cheating? In the old days if the game was too hard and you didn’t have a big brother to do it for you, you just put in the godmode code or turned on a trainer or something.

Some games are just hard. That’s what makes getting good at them feel rewarding. The Souls games haven’t really been for me either (due to the pking–not so much the difficulty), but it’s not like the game makers owe me anything.

Citation needed.

That’s a game of legal Russian roulette I wouldn’t want to play. Eventually he’s going to rip off the wrong person, and in the meantime all his victims have the option of sitting on their claims (SOL notwithstanding) to find out if he ever makes any money.

It’s a broad generalization, but it’s not really a matter of opinion. We can scan people’s mouths and faces when they talk (and have in order to demonstrate this stuff). I think the last example probably only applies that way in particular circumstances though, since English speakers automatically group, contract, and arrange certain phonemes in certain orders (e.g., I’m not, I ain’t, but never I amn’t–and in real speech “I ain’t” is almost always one syllable). In this example, more frequently my country ass contracts the first syllable of “gonna” away instead of the second, so “I’m 'na head to the store; y’all need anything?”

The hot potato example just stands for the premise that in real speech the t at the end of hot and the p at the beginning of potato slur together, and if you deliberately enunciate both consonants, you sound like you’re reading to a transcriber. Compare the way a normal person says “let’s go” to the way you sound if you force separate the words: you sound like you’re doing a Mario impression.

I don’t know that company personally, but at a glance it appears to be a for-profit corporation that has been the subject of litigation recently. So… not really what we need.

The funding needs to be going into public schools via taxes, not to private corporations via tuition. We need local oversight by public schools accountable to voters for all education. That company–again, at a glance–seems to be the exact opposite, and kind of part of the problem.

Alternative schooling arrangements need to exist, and the pandemic really demonstrated why. They just need to be subject to oversight by the state public schools.

The way faith is treated in the First Century doesn’t translate well to modern audiences. Having faith of a child isn’t an analogy to a child being gullible. It’s an analogy to the way a child trusts in and depends on his parents. Trust, arguably, would be a better translation than faith in many instances.

Faith for ancient religious peoples wasn’t about believing without proof. That would be as ridiculous for a Firsr Century jew as it is for us. Faith is being persuaded to a conclusion by the evidence.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I could, but that wouldn’t be true. I’ll tell you the same thing I told the other sockpuppet: you’re not entitled to an argument just because you ask for one.

“You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to.”

So no, thanks. I don’t owe you a defense, engagement, or an policy apologetics treatment of the current administration’s governance for the last four years. There are plenty of places to find that information if you actually care to find it.

So far you’ve managed to call me an idiot, a liar, and a coward in all of about fifteen minutes. Why on earth would I believe you’re capable of nuanced political discourse? We’ve nothing to discuss.

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Oh I know. Trust me, I don’t engage with these people with any illusions. There’s no arguing with the agitprop element here. The point of responding at all is just to identify them to the general public.

Then why are you campaigning for Trump?

That’s probably why they said they were talking about Spain over and over again.

140 != all

Dont expect more replies.

Thank Christ.

But that wasn’t the question, was it? United international action works and also doesn’t really exist. You think billionaires are going to just throw up their hands and give governments their tax dollars if enough nations agree they should. Doesn’t work that way.

Read the article you linked. Who’s going to jail in Panama? A few bankers–maybe. Panama changed its rules, and the billionaires just moved all their money elsewhere–exactly as predicted.

The solution to tax evasion isn’t more tax law. That’s like saying that if only everyone agreed rapists should go to jail, people would stop committing rape.

I’m in favor of a wealth tax just because any action beats no action, but it is absolutely a half measure. The real solution to this problem is not financial. It’s personal.

Tell us then. Where are they currently hiding their money?

It’s a safe bet. The number of voters Biden loses if he were to change positions enough to appease any authentic anti-Zionists (as opposed to agitprop elements, for whom no position would be good enough to silence) would dwarf the number of voters he might gain. That might not mean he gets reelected, but hell, changing positions at all would cost him votes. Like I said: all choices are bad. It would have been a political disaster for any president, because every voter who cares enough about it to be a single-issue voter is entrenched enough to not be swayed at all unless the other side is completely alienated.

He can’t find a way to appease both sides? Well what does that look like? What’s the position that appeases both staunch Zionist voters and the subsection of the anti-Zionist protestors who vote? That’s not a rhetorical question. Every other US politics-adjacent post on Lemmy recently has been OP or one of their comrades criticizing Biden for his position on Israel, and I’m genuinely interested to hear someone articulate the nuanced position that Biden should supposedly take that he’s currently failing at, and how he’s supposed to do that and not immediately lose all prospects of reelection. FFS, even characterizing this as a division between “pro-Israel” and “against genocide” is already throwing nuance out the window. From where I’m sitting, Joe Biden has as nuanced a position as he can, because the nature of foreign relations in the Middle East in 2024 is itself nuanced and, for US interests, profoundly precarious. If you want nuance, you better be prepared to swallow a healthy dose of realpolitik alongside it, and that’s something that as of yet I’ve not found any noble armchair advocates and red-shadowed “patriots” willing to do.

I love Biden. He’s easily the best president of my lifetime.

QED.