dactylotheca

Well that's… weird. Why on earth would they do that?

Assuming any of this is true, at any rate.

I think it's interesting is that so many autocracies keep up the pretense of democratic and rules-based governance; even North Korea has elections. Same with political trials like you see in so many authoritarian regimes, from modern Russia or China to Nazi Germany – it's like autocrats need to be able to pretend to themselves that the system they run is fair and just, and that they're not just tyrants who govern with impunity and enforce rules arbitrarily.

What I don't get is why? Why bother when it's immediately obvious to everyone that it's all a sham? Why not drop the pretense, which everybody knows is just a pretense?

the only political group that supports Putin in Portugal are the communists.

I'm very much a leftist and this is just something I haven't managed to wrap my mind around. How can anyone claim to be a leftist and support an extremist right wing dictator?

We've known about the dangers of overusing antibiotics for decades now, and it's become obvious that this is yet another case where we won't do near enough to combat a problem until it's already much too late and practically disastrous

the former president's campaign has disavowed the project and recently went so far as to say its "demise would be greatly welcomed," while Trump urged his supporters to boo it at a campaign rally.

You'll have to excuse me if I don't believe for a fucking second that this is anything but optics. It's not like conservatives have to explicitly say they're following the playbook, but they obviously already are – many Republican lawmakers are members of the conservative organizations that wrote the fucking thing (see eg. this bit of news from TN)

Surprising that Euronews is still running pro-Ukraine news considering it's now owned by Orbánists

Was

Gamers aren't persecuted anywhere near enough

This is pretty much one of the sanest things calkearns has drawn, too

Some plans less so than others.

Also, I like this framing of users as the enemy. Matches my experience, really.

Oh there's no difference, "bell curve" is just a more colloquial term for a normal distribution. "Normal distribution", "Gaussian distribution / curve" and "bell curve" all mean the same thing.

Wouldn't be math if there wasn't 736 different names for the same thing 😆

Wasn't expecting a fucking rainforest