Yeah, when the Krasnov thing first got published, I said something to the effect of, “I would skeptical of explosive, unverified claims like this because they may be disinformation, and either way there’s more than enough evidence that Putin has control of Trump.” Then someone accused me of being a Russian asset because everyone has brain poisoning now.

Why stop the quote there?

Because none of that information contradicts the statement, “Its 1.7 billion in tax exceptions,” so the rest of the quote was irrelevant information.

It says exactly what they claim it does:

Good Jobs First, among other things, serves as a watchdog for government subsidies, and maintains a database of subsidies and tax bonuses awarded to companies. Of note is the page for Royal Dutch Shell…The value presented on the page for RDS is $1.725 Billion…

Women want one thing and it’s disgusting.

• It is instantly familiar in operation to anyone who has used Twitter. It looks and feels almost the same to use in a way that Mastadon doesn’t (arguable whether that’s a good thing or not, but it makes for a comfortable transition).

Yup, pretty much. I tried Mastodon and found it very unintuitive, but BlueSky was immediately understandable as a former Twitter user. I don’t really use either that much, but I’ve spent way more time with BlueSky.

Honestly, it’s the same with Lemmy. I tried a lot of Reddit alternatives, both federated and centralized, and I landed on Lemmy because A) It has the only decently-sized user base and B) my preferred Reddit app, Sync, moved to Lemmy. Lemmy is similar enough to Reddit on it’s own that transitioning over wouldn’t have been difficult, but having Sync just made it that much easier.

Yeah, sports is a great analogy. Just because you don’t like basketball, doesn’t mean you won’t like soccer, and just cause you don’t like turn-based RPGs, doesn’t mean you won’t like 2D platformers. It’s all about finding what you vibe with.

Lots of good advice here, but I would just add, start with your interests and work out from there. You like puzzle games? Portal is a great physics puzzle game, so you might like that. It’s also a 3D platformer, so you’ll find out if you like games with a lot of running and jumping. It’s also technically a first-person shooter (not in the sense that you shoot enemies, but you do shoot a portal gun at walls), so if you don’t like that aspect of the game, you’ll know that FPSs aren’t for you.

Doesn’t have to be the type of gameplay either. You like designing things? Maybe try the Sims or Animal Crossing. Like horror movies? Maybe start with something simple but creepy, like Limbo. Detective stories? Something like Strange Horticulture might be up your alley.

The most important thing is to look around and see what catches your interest. Read some reviews, watch some gameplay footage, and find something that’s right for you. Don’t just say, “I’m going to do video games now,” and buy a Call of Duty or Dark Souls because, “gamers,” like them.

Sooner or later, you will get trapped somewhere forever. Over the course of an infinite lifespan, the odds that a building collapses on you or a tunnel caves in on you basically become 100%. Someday, you will fall into the hole that you will stay in until the sun explodes, and then you will drift in the void until the heat death of the universe.

Did you read this? This article is about the pro-Russian separatists’ conscription of Ukrainians to fight for Russia.

From your source:

The Guardian recently reported that men in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine are being forcibly conscripted into the armed forces of the self-declared Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR) and Luhansk Peoples Republic (LPR).

From the Gaurdian article they’re referencing:

Pro-Russia separatist forces have stepped up the forced conscription of men – including Ukrainian passport holders – in occupied areas of the Donbas region, amid mounting evidence of the scale of losses on the Russian side.

According to credible evidence from the region, forced conscription – already a feature of the Russian-backed separatists’ rule before the Kremlin’s invasion on 24 February – appeared to have picked up again in June, with checkpoints and patrols, some reportedly involving Chechen fighters allied to the Kremlin, on the lookout for men to recruit.

From another article cited by your source:

Russia justifies its invasion of Ukraine arguing it is defending the “Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics.” Mere days before Russia launched its attack, when tens of thousands of Russian soldiers had been amassed on Ukraine’s border, these self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” beyond Kyiv’s control launched major mobilization drives. Men between the ages of 18 and 55 are no longer permitted to leave.

Even if Ukraine is using conscripted soldiers, you just proved that A) pro-Russian forces are doing the exact same thing and B) you don’t even look at the articles you’re sharing.

I mean, the point of a mermaid isn’t that it’s a sexy looking fish, it’s that other than its tail, it looks like beautiful human women. In some stories, sailors don’t even realize they’re taking to mermaids because their tails are underwater. Also, mermaids were generally considered bad omens or malicious entities, and when they did seduce humans, it was usually to kill them, so it’s not like the folklore was very pro-mermaid sex.

It looks like you squeezed him real hard in the middle trying to get all cat out of him.

We feed out cat wet food every day, but not a lot. Wet food is much better for cats because dry food has a lot of carbs, which cats really shouldn’t have in their diet. Our cat is a pretty picky eater though, and we don’t want to put down wet food just to watch it dry out and get thrown away, so we give her a small amount of dry food in the morning, and a little more dry food at night with a tablespoon of wet food.

I don’t know where my Dad got them, but they were pretty much all Apogee games, so he might have order them directly. I was really young, 4 or 5, so I didn’t really ask for them. My Dad would just install them for us and create directory shortcuts so we could load them easily. Part of how I learned to type and read was spelling out, “keen4” and either getting the game to load or, “Bad command or file name.”

Commander Keen: Marooned on Mars. My Dad had an IBM machine that booted up in DOS, and he installed a bunch of games on it for us. I played every Commander Keen game (including Keen Dreams), Wacky Wheels, Oregon Trail. Sim City, and Sim Ant on that machine (although I think I needed to boot up Windows to run those last two).

That’s horrible, but I was relieved to learn that CPS doesn’t stand for, “ChIld Protective Services,” in the UK. I was expecting a much darker story when I clicked.

Yeah, you know what’s great for global political stability? Assassinating the heads of state of countries with massive nuclear arsenals.

Yeah, I thought that looked wrong, but I couldn’t tell for sure which lightsaber that was, and I wasn’t even 100% that was supposed to be a picture of Kylo Ren, so I just stuck to what I was sure of.

It’s driving me crazy that the TNG officer has the TOS phaser, and the 10th Doctor has the 11th’s screwdriver.

I don’t know, but it seems weird that they wouldn’t know that but still know what Super Saiyan Blue is.