Tankies love going on and on about how intellectual and well-read they are, but in my experience they're some of the dumbest mofos I've had the misfortune of encountering (second only to fascists). Their ability to completely miss the point of a book/article/argument/literally any interaction that involves two humans exchanging knowledge leaves me flabbergasted, every time.

Or maybe fascists are just transphobic bigots who want to torture and kill trans people because, well, they're fascists, it's what they do?

You need to understand the far right doesn't give a damn about economic issues. Not one crap. (Because most far-right supporters are middle-class or higher, for the record!) They want power for one reason, and one reason only: to lord it over the minorities they consider their inferiors, if not outright killing them.

This isn't a "distraction", it's the fucking goal.

Spend any length of time in the tumblr Star Wars fandom, and two things will happen: you'll come out loving Star Wars a million times more than you did before, and also you'll be completely unable to talk about it with anyone not in the tumblr fandom any more.

Also, on tumblr every single Star Wars character is bisexual, except Anakin (who's demi), Ahsoka (lesbian), and Luke (gay). So be ready for that.

Yep, the Republican base has proven they'll vote for literally anyone with an (R) next to their name no matter how many felonies they commit. And because they're fanatics, they turn out to vote every time, no matter what.

The only way we get out of this nightmare is to hold the line, keep voting every cycle to keep the mainiacs out of power until the party inevitably implodes due to demographic shifts. Hopefully it'll happen soon, worrying about this shit is exhausting. But until then, we can't afford to be complacent.

Putin did it because he's an abusive dickwad who thinks it's his god-given right to control Ukraine. That's it. That's the entire explanation.

People keep trying to rationalize his actions, come up with some more respectable reason, because there's no way this much death and suffering could be happening because one guy is an entitled, controlling piece of shit, right?

But in reality, that's how fascism always works. It's always been how it works. Why'd the Nazis invade Europe? Because they were entitled, controlling pieces of shit. Why'd the Soviet Union refuse to let the countries they liberated after WWII go? Because they were entitled, controlling pieces of shit. Why does China want to annex Taiwan? Because Xi's an entitled, controlling piece of shit.

True, but there are definitely places where it's much better to be trans than others, and Russia's near the bottom of the pack.

This. People this controlling and with this little regard for other people's rights and boundaries tend to react extremely poorly to having their control challenged. The most dangerous time in any abusive relationship is when the victim leaves-- and make no mistake, OP, that's what's happening to your friend. Escalation to physical violence in these circumstances would not be out of the ordinary.

Please be careful, and make sure your friend has a plan to make sure she's in a safe place where her soon-to-be-ex can't get to her before she breaks up with him. And I would strongly recommend you both get a restraining order if that's something you feel comfortable doing.

I know this may sound paranoid, but it's always best to err on the side of caution in potentially dangerous situations like these.

My guess is it's to offset the lack of other benefits-- health care being a huge one-- that you lose when you sign up to be a gig worker, not a full-time worker.

And we already have different minimum wages for at least one industry: servers at restaurants. The economy isn't going to collapse if we put gig workers in their own category, too.

Germany is building coal plants, pretty much the rest of Europe is transitioning away from fossil fuels at a breakneck pace.

(And to be fair, Germany's also investing heavily in clean energy and has made huge progress on that front. They just made the incredibly stupid decision to shut down their remaining nuclear plants before they had enough clean energy sources to make up for the power difference, which is why they're temporarily using coal as a stopgap.)

Yeah, and the author all but freely admits that. But they're apparently willing to throw all that away to have it "feel like everyone’s there."

Maybe this is me being uncharitable, but to be blunt it sounds like he just wants to feel like he's sitting at the cool kids' table.

True, but the original intent was that defederation would be a nuclear option, reserved only for instances that totally failed to moderate stuff like hate speech, bot activity, etc-- given that it damages the Fediverse as a whole.

The lemmy.ml admins are free to federate or defederate from other instances as they please-- and we're free to criticize their decision as we please, too.

The counter offensive isn't into Russia, it's them trying to get back their territory which was occupied last February. Where a lot of Ukrainians currently have family members, and where we know for a fact torture of dissenters and kidnapping of children is taking place.

IIRC almost all polls show strong support from Ukrainians to take all their land back.