A notable intrinsic dodge bonus.

Decent but not great healing, blessing, persuasion, rally, calm, etc.

More or less neitral disposition with virtually everyone, save only the most extreme pro- or anti-religious.

Surprisingly good hand-to-hand combat, but only under duress and/or drunk.

It’s those roughly squared off, dirty, slushy heaps of packed snow that were plowed out of the way after the snowfall and are the only thing left after the rest of the snow has melted.

I can’t see any situation in which I would.

Mostly I have zero interest in sucking any dick (other than maybe my own, and I’m not that flexible).

But beyond that, $20 just seems wrong no matter what - if I wanted to do it, $20 would be pointless and if I didn’t, it wouldn’t be near enough.

The timing here is what makes this move particularly baffling…

It’s only baffling if you cling to the ever-more-laughable belief that the Democrats are any sort of meaningful opposition.

If you instead simply shift to the ever-more-supported belief that they are in fact essentially oligarchic co-conspirators, then the timing makes perfect sense.

That whole family is just rich white trash, aren’t they?

Yes.

If you qualify, they’ll contact you.

And so on, and so on…

If my government the government that’s managed to weasel its way into power over the land on which I happened to be born proposed an initiative to tackle fraud, I would look for the catch, because it’s guaranteed there would be one.

“Lefties keep calling us Nazis but they don’t even know what Nazis are, and oh yeah, by the way, all of these people over here should be killed because they’re an inferior race.”

Even setting aside the staggering psychopathy of the modern right - their complete and utter disregard for the lives of other human beings - I don’t even begin to understand how any human being could have so little self-awareness.

There are too many variables for there to be one answer.

For instance, are their intentions sincere or just claimed? If they fail to carry through, is it because of things outside of their control or just because they can’t be bothered to put out any real effort?

Or from the other end, if their actions are harmful, is that by design or inadvertent? If inadvertent, do they feel any regret or do they just treat it as too damned bad?

And so on.

Of course. It’s a junk product, so they can’t count on the lucrative corporate contracts they were hoping for. So they’re angling for lucrative government contracts instead, since landing those doesn’t require a quality product - it just requires bribing the right officials.

In the terms of the cliche, they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too.

They want the immediate gratification of being rude assholes, so they do it just long enough for that initial rush, then they back away to try to avoid the consequences.

A loaf of Skyrim bread.

That’s a great essay and I agree wholeheartedly.

However, it neglects to mention the one fatal flaw in the whole idea - a strong, pro-people, leftist economic platform would be opposed by corporate America and most wealthy individuals, they’re the main source of soft money donations to the DNC, and the DNC values that money more than anything, including winning elections.

So it is a sound observarion and a worksble strategy, but can only succeed if those in the position to affect Democratic platforms would be willing to engage in it, and all indications are that they simply are not.

Still though…

I think that if humanity can manage to survive long enough, anarchism is inevitable.

It’s essentially the adult stage of human society - the point at which humans collectively and consistently, rather than just individually and situationally, can be trusted to generally do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing and therefore the most reasonable thing to do.

For the time being and the foreseeable future though, humanity is nowhere even close to that. Through the course of history, human society has managed to advance to about the equivalent of adolescence. There’s still a long way to go.

In spite of that, I do identify as an anarchist, but my advocacy is focused on the ideal and the steps humanity as a whole has to take to achieve it. I think it’s plainly obvious that it cannot be implemented, since any mechanism by which it might be inplemented would necessarily violate the very principles that define it. It can only be willingly adopted by each and all (or close enough as makes no meaningful difference), and that point will come whenever (if) it comes.

Pretend you know nothing at all about “AI”/LLMs, and someone comes to you and says, “I want to start a service that will scrape everything that anyone’s ever posted to the internet, let some corporate weasels decide which parts of it you’re allowed to see, then feed you bits and pieces of what’s left in some order or another.”

Does that sound appealing?

This is a coup.

This has apparently become a new vector for transferring bribes - Trump files a suit, and then the corporation that wants influence pays a “settlement.”

In a way, doesn’t that mean that it would be more accurate to say that the bot stopped being rogue and went legit?

It’s unfortunate that the mod devs were so thoroughly fucked over, but their response was perfect.