This is an important part of it. The other part is the fact that success in politics is very hard without money, and most rich people aren’t progressives.

The official FAQ says at least 25k karma (or a mod with at least 500 mod actions). Open registration isn’t supposed to be until the first. If you don’t meet either of those criteria then I guess that’s just a lie.

https://redditforcommunity.com/Directed-Share-Program

It’s still censorship. The distinction is that most private entities can’t enforce their censorship with violence.

“IDF said”

Yes, the ones here (California) can be set to keep pumping automatically until the tank is full and then stop.

If you google “electric lighter” you can see a wide variety of lighters that work by either making an arc of electricity or just getting really hot.

Au contraire! Isreal has been working hard to end the humanitarian crisis by the simplist possible method: getting rid of all the people.

I was all set to call the guy a hero based on the headline, but apparently the reason he leaked the info was that he thought the war crimes were being investigated too much?

Is this hypothetical artist an Israeli settler in the West Bank? If so, I certainly would not give them my money. Otherwise, if we’re just talking about some random Israeli then there’s nothing inherently objectionable about that.

It’s important to note that DC have denied that Willingham can do this, so the first person who tries to take advantage is going to get sued. That alone is probably enough to scare off most people, regardless of who is technically in the right. We’ll see how this goes.

The point of putting a property in the public domain is precisely so anyone can do whatever they want with it. The basic idea is that all creators draw on their wider culture for ideas, and therefore all creative works belong, in part, to the wider culture, and need to be turned over eventually. The fact that Willingham uses so many public domain characters in his comics is itself a good illustration of how this works. Two of his main characters are Snow White and the Big Bad Wolf (among many other fairy tale characters). They eventually get married. Are you concerned about preserving the “spirit” of those original stories, which Willingham freely reinterprets? I doubt it, and you shouldn’t be. We all, as a culture, own those characters and can use them however we want. What this decision means is that the same now applies to Willingham’s specific versions. I have immense respect for the man for making a principled decision.

As for how it damages DC, it doesn’t do anything directly. They can still make and sell whatever they want, same as before. It’s just that now they have competition, because other people can also make and sell Fables books. Assuming DC loses the inevitable legal battle, at any rate.

The US legislatures give a lot of power based on seniority. There’s a lot of incentive for a party to keep members in office as long as possible.

The Russian air force is much better off than the army due to Ukraine’s lack of modern fighters.

The fact that Mexico is making progress on this is good to see, though also pretty embarrassing as a resident of the USA that our society is moving backwards at the same time.

US conservatives lost the war against homosexuality and so they needed to move on to a new target that didn’t have as much mainstream acceptance (yet). There is no good reason for their hatred other than that the fundamental purpose of conservatism is to divide the world between a privileged in-group and a marginalized out-group.

Many disabled people are unable to drink without straws.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/11/627773979/why-people-with-disabilities-want-bans-on-plastic-straws-to-be-more-flexible

On social media, many people have responded to claims that people with disabilities need plastic straws by asking what people did before plastic straws were invented. “They aspirated liquid in their lungs, developed pneumonia and died,” says Shaun Bickley, co-chair of the Seattle Commission for People with DisAbilities, a volunteer organization that’s supposed to advise the city council or agencies on disabilities issues.

There are some real disgusting people here. Anyone who thinks that the solution to climate change is to kill a lot of humans should consider going first.

When does that ever happen?

I’m sorry, what? Are they defining “democratic” to mean that each government has a say, regardless of how democratic that government itself actually is?

In socialist analysis, there are really only two classes: the working class and the capitalist class. The difference is that the capitalist receive passive income from their legal ownership of the means of production and while they may choose to do some sort of work, they are not dependent on their pay for survival.

The idea of the “middle class” is a relatively recent invention which in this analysis serves to divide the workers by giving some of them the impression that they are higher status than others while still leaving them subordinate to the capitalists.