Ty for the links! I'll give it a watch

Thank you for the reply! This has been super helpful in guiding some reading and providing some context. It's very interesting that there was quite a bit of criticism from all sides about the laws outright banning discussion and support of communism. Following that, there didn't seem to be much in the way of responsiveness to that criticism. Even the Venice Commission was pretty highly critical of it, and of conflating Communism with Nazism.

Right, I know NATO was literally created as a show of united force against the Soviet Union post WW2- when you say encirclement, what does that mean? Is it specifically the growth of NATO to include more States in what's traditionally Russia's sphere of influence?

Ok, so I want to know, if anyone would be kind enough to humor me, what's the general understanding of the context behind the war in Ukraine here, on Hexbear?

My personal understanding has been shaped by just passively existing on the Internet through this event, and I'm curious if there's another perspective that I've not been exposed to.

"Some ideologies are inherently more violent than others," she said, sitting in a chair on land stolen from indigenous people and stained with their blood, "Manifest Destiny never hurt anyone and capitalism is fully ethical."

THIS IS THE REAL LIBERAL AGENDA, TURN WHITE WOMEN INTO THE MOST BASED RAPPERS YOU'VE EVER SEEN, LYRICISM UNTOUCHED AND INALIENABLE

I gotta say, I was expecting vitriol when I first got a reply to a comment from a Hexbear user, but y'all are genuinely appreciative of discourse and it's been refreshing to not immediately be attacked when I argue in good faith. Y'all are getting a bad rap lol, glad to be able to communicate with you

What's more American than casually preventing brown people from participating in governance?

"Running from lions." Fucking idiot. Same old "we saved them from barbarism" bullshit that's been fed to colonialist shills for centuries now. Find a new line lol. Guy's probably just reciting shit he heard from some other racist asshole.

Within you there are two wolves

Wow, I'm seeing a lot of strong anti-therapy vibes here, so I'll pitch in my two cents.

Therapy is a great tool, if you go into it with clear expectations and you can stomach the cost- both in time and money. Some insurance providers cover it, some don't, but either way if you don't have a therapist that you vibe with, you need to be willing to swap around until you find someone that fits you. Note, however, that there's a big difference between a therapist that is right for you, and one that just doesn't challenge you.

My experience with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has been really positive; my first therapist that I really got along with professionally was a great teacher, I really learned how to unpack things that I was feeling in the moment. He helped teach me tools to alleviate the intensity of moments that seemed dire, and to then reflect on why they felt that way, afterwards.

There's a lot of people who think that it's supposed to magically fix you, and no, it's not. It's work. Genuinely some of the hardest work I've done has been applications of the stuff I've learned in therapy. But, while I recognize that with stuff like chronic depression, true cures are rare-to-impossible, I've got a much better handle on my negative thoughts and self-esteem than I had pre-therapy. It's been a tremendous help.

I think more tools for people in general would be incredible - the work of normalizing therapy has come a long way, but still it has even further to go. I think the biggest barrier is always cost, and in a perfect world we'd treat both sickness of the mind and body free for everyone.

I think that one (HUGE) part of BG3's success is that it was in Early Access for, what, 2-3 years? During which it grew a dedicated modding scene, received a metric fuck-ton of feedback, and regularly dropped large content patches. This wasn't an average dev cycle, and I think it shows. In some ways, the Dev. Feedback and interactivity reminded me a lot of the way Warframe does dev interactions.