It wasn’t ‘voter apathy’ it was a misplaced sense of voter moral superiority. It’s the thing leftist rhetoric has been weak to for a very long time. That love of withholding support except for perfection. The idea that compromise or chosing a lesser evil from two bad options dirties you. It doesn’t matter what you lost if you personally took “the high ground”.

This cutting of our noses to spite our face was exploited all to shit this election. They lulled people by appealing to the same zeal of righteousness that they know divides us fundamentally knowing that when push comes to shove people will turn up their noses on principle of not being personally catered to and forget that their ability to help at all is contingent on the freedoms that one party was explicitly putting on the chopping block.

It will be a while before people can admit that they were duped and there’s a lot of fault to go around, particularly in those funded astroturf campaigns designed to bait the hook… The right have been watching us for the past decade they knew how to divide us and it is on US that so many of us fell for it.

We assume omnipotence from Gods but it’s not wholly true. Most gods out in the world of myth are limited in their reach and ability. If they are in a pantheon then often that implies that they have no direct power over each other and thus they are not all powerful.

Interestingly omnicence or omnipresence is not something claimed even by the monotheistic religions. No God is actually all seeing. Plenty of times in script things have been hidden from God or something has to be told to God to bring it to his attention.

This has nothing to do with his dick persay… Just the assumption of omnipotence. If the Christian God exists he coulda just be lying about what he’s capable of and what human is gunna be able to check the math? Guy seems like the kind of dick who would pull that shit.

Shelters often share resources and many are more flexible than you would expect. They might not take you personally but dollars to donuts they can point you in the direction of other specialized resources.

You need to call your relatives. If one of my second cousins whom I never met gives me a call saying that they are in your position and don’t know where to turn I am driving out 4 hours to pick them up at the drop of a hat.

It is going to be be hard but there are means to get free. Explore your options once you are safe but right now job one is get safe.

You got it backwards friend. In the grand scheme here Trump isn’t comparitively rich, he has an empire that constantly hemorrhages money but value wise he is sitting around 3. 6 billion.

Musk’s currently valued at around 269. 8 billion. He spends a ridiculous amount of money on super PACs and uses his purchase of different platforms to kill news stories that show Democrats in a positive light and bankrolls a lot of Republican stuff. Musk isn’t being bought, Trump is.

My Grandmother always called this sort of thing being a “red letter Christian”. Basically like you take a highlighter to everything Jesus specifically did or said and discard the rest.

My Mom’s family all followed this principle since like the 70’s thus saving my trans ass from any hint of intergenerationally inflicted religious trauma so I am a fan. My 92 year old great uncle went to bat to fight for non-binary gender accommodations in his seniors home because one of his nurses is an enby who was getting a raw deal from a number of their paitents. Honestly, though I don’t think the Christian God is what he says he is, his kid seems weird but as a rules for life kinda thing the results seem good. .

Huh. So I imagined the ball on the table immediately as a colorless glass sphere on a white table. Before I even read the prompt to push the ball in my imagination I had already placed my index finger on the ball and was rolling it around it place like a fidgit so I just tapped the ball to push it with my index finger so the person who pushed the ball was me (non-binary) for reasons that I was already interacting with the ball anyway. I imagined this in the first person so I didn’t really see myself in full. The ball itself was baseball sized and rolled a short distance, stopped and wobbled after being pushed.

I didn’t think about what the table was made of but the ball itself was glass that was smooth and cold to the touch. The table was square, waist height and dining room table sized. The room these objects were in was featureless and visualization was instant upon reading.

To be honest no… Because I think I violently expunged it from my memory and mind as my brain probably interpreted it as some kind of threat to my cells.

I read a bunch of those books because my roommate was in love with them. It established an idea of a writing flaw in my mind that I called “The Heirachy of Cool”. Basically the guy practically has an established character list of who is the coolest. Whichever character in any given scene is at the top of the hierarchy is mythically awesome. They have their shit together, they are functionally correct in their reasoning, they lead armies, they pull off grand maneuvers, they escape danger whatever…

But anyone below them in the Heirachy turn into complete morons who serve as foils to make the people above them seem more awesome whenever they share page time together. These characters seem to have accute amnesia about stuff that canonically happened very recently (in previous books) so they can complicate things for the hierarchy above, they usually make poor decisions due to crisises of faith in people above them in the hierarchy… But because that hierarchy is infallible it’s predictable. Less cool never is proven right over more cool.

… Until that same character is suddenly alone and they go from being mid of the hierarchy to the top and all of a sudden they have iron wills and super competence…

Once I caught onto that pattern it became intolerable to continue.

“The Cat Who Walked through Walls” by Robert Heinlein…

Now Heinlein is usually kind of obnoxiously sexist so having a book that opens with what appears to be an actual female character with not just more personality than a playboy magazine centerfold, but what seems like big dick energy action heroesque swagger felt FRESH. Strong start as you get this hyper competent husband and wife team quiping their way through adventures in the backwoods hillbilly country of Earth’s moon with their pet bonsai tree to stop a nefarious plot with some promised dimensional McGuffin.

Book stalls out in the middle as they end up in like… A swinger commune. They introduce a huge number of characters all at once alongside this whole poly romantic political dynamic and start mulling over the planning stage of what seems like a complicated heist plot. Feels a lot like a sex party version of the Council of Elrond with each of these characters having complex individual dramas they are in the middle of resolving…

Aaaand smash cut. None of those characters mattered. We are with the protagonist, the heist plan failed spectacularly off stage and we are now in his final dying moments where we realized that cool wife / super spy set him up to fail like a chump at this very moment for… reasons? I dunno, Bitches amirite?

First time I ever finished a book and threw it angrily into the nearest wall.

Alberta adopted this model and saw an increase in public health wait times and a sharp increase in the required government spending required to run the public system.

Creating a two tiered system means that it bleeds doctors, nurses and admin into the private sector which is fundamentally at odds with the philosophy that everyone deserves the right to life sustaining care. If the rich want to dodge the cue then they can quite frankly afford the plane ticket. If the system is being undermined by politicians - oust the politicians. Let them know that that system is of the highest priority and should be first to see reinvestment.

But we should all be aware that Canada is one of the most challenging landscapes for delivery of any kind of health care. We are diffuse over a large landmass and the commitment to the system means that if you live in a remote place 2 hours away from the nearest surgery then the government is on the hook to spend an outsized amount of budget to uphold the commitment of care for you. The temptation to cut corners is always there and each Provincial trust is its own battleground. That we have the level of service we do is a credit to the efficacy of public health systems… Which means upping the costs to create competitive private sector development hurts us all.

It may be a step up for Americans to have any system at all as a right to health safety net but it’s a sharp step down for anywhere running a full public system.

That is actually one of the major issues at play. One of the kind of predatory things about right wing politics is it plays into a fallacy that the truth is simple, easily recognizable and can be rendered down into axioms a child can understand. Anything that doesn’t fall under these parameters cannot be the truth.

But science moved away from big axiomatic stuff like 50 years ago. It became the study of variation and nuance.

The left attempts to have a aspects of this simple explanation stuff in sections by adopting almost slogan-like things - take “Trans women are women” as an example. That easily digestible slogan sits on top of a whole bunch of consequentialist based philosophy, psychological research with a focus on harm reduction, a history of uphill public advocacy to just put trans issues on the radar and being trans itself isn’t easy to explain. It is simple and quippy - but not axiomatic. So a lot of people on the right tear into it as a target because the optics of defending a short quippy but nuance laden argument in slogan form while keeping it short and easily digestible is basically impossible.

This issue is throughout progressive political thought. Any short form word we use to describe practically anything has a whole swack of addendums, hidden complications, edge cases and multiple historical definitions. If you use very technical language you can be more specific but then you can easily talk over the heads of your audience.

Well… Short answer talking about “the left” and “the right” is effectively doing something called “constructing a public”. These are are not just political constructs, they are political constructs that do certain things. Neither of these constructs have hard boundaries and throughout time they shift.

But there is a distinct difference. When you look at the right, while the presentation changes they have a fairly straightforward citable group of guiding philosophy traceable through a small handful of writing. If you read Thomas Malthus and Edmond Burke they will sound like slightly more archaic versions of modern pundits on the right. When you listen to the modern pundits you will notice that they are very repetitive and what differentiates one from another is more or less just presentation style. That repetition of talking points changes it’s arguements but never it’s foundation. Since it’s mostly in service of protecting a status quo where hereditary privilege is upheld it doesn’t have to get complicated. It just has to justify the world as it has been and that humans are sneaky, fundamentally flawed and morally defunct but that by structuring society as a winnowing process where playing the game the rightful and just few will rise to the top.

But when you look at “the left” it’s not an easy gradient, it’s a loose scattering of little clusters of very different ideologies and guiding philosophies. Since it largely works of a guiding concept of dissolution of established aggregated personal fortunes and radical anti-supremacist framework of various forms it’s not uniform. There’s anti-colonialism, anti-racism, anti-monopolist, anti-capitalist, anti-discriminatory, pro-neurodiversity, expanded personal rights, pro public service, pro democratic and anti democratic groups, pro freedom of movement, anarchists, and acedemic political theorists each with individual theories about how to bring about a state of all these things when none of this has in living memory existed. It’s not generally trying to defend a status quo but trying to feild test different ways of doing things… So basically everybody and their dog has a slightly different opinion of what is a good idea.

It’s kind of hard to see " bad faith actors" as it were because any two leftists might have almost no ideological overlap as far as praxis. They might not see each other as being part of the same tribe even if outsiders looking in would classify them as “left” and they might all claim to be “left” themselves… It’s not that it’s contradictory, it’s that the branching paths of divergent evolving philosophies have rambled off in a whole bunch of different directions and effectively become whole other creatures entirely.

Love the idea… But let’s be real, Conservative rhetoric has depended on attacking peoples trust in acedemia, administrative government positions and anyone who is an expert who doesn’t reinforce the vibe of being a “dissenting voice”. Fact checks make those of us who understand sourcing feel like we’re owning the idiots, but for the Conservative audience iit very rarely shifts people out of their steadfast adherence and instead tends to make them distrust the medium the debate is held in.

Conservative rhetoric has been a poisoned well for a long time. To play by their game one has to look more at a vibes based playbook. Their voting block generally have a misplaced overconfidence in their own ability to read body language and tone. It’s literally not the words and definitely not the facts, it’s the affect they are delivered in.

It’s part of why they dunno how to think about Harris and have conspiracy theories about her earrings piping her answers. She is outperforming Trump on affect of delivery based on their playbook and they don’t know how to interpret that.

I would say less than on reddit but still a thing. Being cisgender still is treated as a norm and the sort of folks who openly display misogynistic tendencies are fewer and farther between… But any innocuous mention to being trans will very get you a couple of dedicated downvoters or people who use gender essentialist arguements, silencing tactics (oh you’re just being devisive) or transphobic rhetoric.

Not to say that it is bad comparatively. This is one of the most trans neutral places on the internet. It’s not “trans friendly” mind you, I would categorize that as places where concensus about trans people being a normal thing to be has been reached and attention has shifted away from our basic rights as being up for debate… But trans neutral spaces are important too. We need holding spaces away from places where trans people talk openly where people can get to know us where the majority of support shuts down open hostility towards us prompting more nuanced interaction.

A lot of trans hostile spaces exist out there where being openly trans or advocacy for our needs invites a lot of death threats, calls for suicide, doxxing attacks and so on. If you see a comment section on youtube on a queer creator for instance that’s overwhelmingly trans positive that generally means there’s heavy moderation at play because they are trying to create spaces safe for their queer audience to interact with each other. What you as a casual visitor generally don’t see is the mental cost being taken on by that moderation team to artificially create the illusion of that positive space. Here on this instance that level of moderation is unnecessary because generally speaking the volume is manageable.

As someone who is 15 years into the situation OP described - yes it’s somewhat of an oversimplication of how it all works… but broadstokewise it’s on the money with the right partner and mindset. Whether your marriage works this way or not comes down to how fungible you both believe your partner to ultimately be and how much you dedicate to being each other’s joy.

Thinking being pessimistic in the face of romance is just “reality” means your chances of experiencing that kind of romance become mighty slim. Optimism and trust are nessisary components to making it happen but are sadly also attractive to abusers. End of the day I wish OP the very best of luck because coming home to your partner excited to see them every day for years on end really is worth the attempt.

A demonstration that the person is not interested in a conversation, they just want to grandstand and use rhetoric tricks to feel like they are superior and are strictly aiming to used the conversation as a way to inflate their sense of self worth at the cost of treating you like a human being.

“No way I am reading all that” on a average sized post while expounding their opinion in an equally lengthy paragraph is usually the same start of the end. These people are generally not actively trolling they are just up their own ass. If they cannot demonstrate basic intellectual mutual respect after having this pointed out to them blocking them is both for best of us.

A particular pet peeve is people who quote every bit of a post in sections to refute it. It’s lazy and I have witnessed it from people in my life who are extremely narcissistic. Writing your own brief is respectful. Essentially writing over someone else’s entire post with red pen isn’t. It’s not a block, but it’s a contributing factor

If it’s someone using very bad faith rhetoric like moving goalposts or extreme cherrypicking - basically any stuff that demonstrates obvious trolling I don’t block, I counterpunch. My goal becomes making sure you do not leave the arguement with what you come there for.

All in all I have blocked about 3 people. I believe in second chances so someone has to show no signs of improvement after about an average of 7 replies.

Dunno what to tell yeh mate, it’s about as oldif not older than Furry culture. Weeki Watchee springs started a whole thing with their Mermaid shows and the subculture basically took off from like the early 60’s… And was probably about as horny as a lot of other subcultures that started around the same time.

Uh… I hate to tell you this but people absolutely dress as mermaids and do conventions… There’s a whole home industry of people who make custom silicon tails.

https://aquamermaid.com/blogs/news/mermaid-convention?srsltid=AfmBOoofN82kC8kQ_774E8rKcE1-Mi9CBZXEfvIqLckEK1cq7bXWHFum

https://www.themernation.com/silicone-tail

Nope, different nerd culture entirely. Seriously, they have their own conventions, instead of fursuits they do custom silicone tails and train to swim in them, have contests and pagents and things. There’s basically no overlap between the two communities. Scaleys are folk in the fursuit community who do dragon and lizard personas.

I have odd connections. Being in the film industry I have friends through props depts who do furry cons and one of my coworkers does underwater photography for people in the Mermaid subculture.