At this point I’m not sure what’s newest, since my kid just watches everything streaming.

I do have to say the newer 2D animated shorts, The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, are a fantastic return to form.

Like most really early animated characters, Mickey Mouse was a lot of things over a long period of time. And as far as American animation goes, Mickey Mouse has been a staple for the childhood of literally every generation. Younger millennials and zoomers grew up on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Children in decades prior watched Mickey be a musketeer in one short and starving due to poverty in the next.

So while the rough edges of the character have been sanded down over time, he’s still very much a plucky, brave, kind, and helpful protagonist in most of the media he’s in.

Which to your average adult viewer means… he’s a bland and uninteresting character.

That said, he’s still an icon of animation as a whole, and most things with Mickey in them are doing some new and novel something (design, production pipeline, whatever) that pushes the whole industry forward in some way.

Pseudoregalia is a PS1-eta low-poly aesthetic 3D metroidvania with really, really slick movement mechanics. It’s the kind of game that really could’ve existed back then, had developers just known all the little quality of life design choices we have these days.

On the one hand, if the people are armed, the government should theoretically fear the people and want to keep them happy.

But even with millions of armed citizens, nobody is even close to putting up a fight against the US. And they know that. And they keep shitting on you because they know you ain’t doing shit about it.

And then you look at the countries that are more democratically reflective of the will of the people… and they have strong gun regulations. It’s almost like maybe governments that at least work even a little don’t need the fear of popular revolution to keep them in check.

Oh I did think the F in FOSS was about the price. Good to know!

I can vouch for Foundry VTT being really nice to use, overall.

It’s not free though, so I’m not sure it falls under the FOSS label.

I can’t be arsed to look up any actual research at the moment, but if you wanted to provide some, I’d be appreciative.

When doctors ask if you smoke, they primarily care if you smoke things containing nicotine. Iirc, that’s the cause of the smoking related heart disease risk (among other health concerns).

Boy howdy

Except the US constitution does not include that language. The “a wall of separation between church and state” phrase most notably comes from an 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association. Not a legally binding document by any means.

I imagine you’re thinking of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution which forbids the US government restricting the free exercise of religion.

I believe, iirc, the Supreme Court over several decades has affirmed and reaffirmed the overall position that the US government must remain secular and not favor a particular religion. Which is effectively what you’re getting at.

I believe they are referring to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character on Seinfeld, Elaine, who was the most overtly progressive of the main cast.

Cool. Thanks!

I’m unclear what your title means? Is it like, mods are saying thinly-veiled homophobia isn’t worth moderating? Or am I missing it entirely?

Perhaps my point didn’t come across. I’m not trying to explain why a swing voter would stay in one party. I was trying to understand what might cause someone in the US in today’s world to be the kind of person who could feasibly vote for either party when they are wildly different on the major topics in the zeitgeist.

That’s something a swing voter might be likely to do, but it’s not a cause of being a swing voter.

I wish Democrats were willing to put in the same amount of endless, ceaseless planning and toiling and preparing so when an opportunity arises, you can snatch it up. Republicans did this with the Supreme Court, with religion in schools, etc etc etc. Last time Democrats had both Houses and the Presidency, we got barely anything (to my memory at least).

I wish Democrats had an ounce of Republicans’ ability not just to shape narratives, but to conjure them from thin air and still dominate the news cycle.

I wish Democrats were as willing to bend to the extremists in their own party as the Republicans do. That’s a real monkey’s paw wish right there, but at the moment the extreme right is literal fascists and the extreme left just wants the cool quality of life stuff the Nordic countries already have.

Speaking personally… yeah we ARE divided here in the US. It kind of IS that bad. There are a lot of reasons for it, but in my mind the biggest thing is the legacy of slavery in this country. It’s not a scar… it’s still bleeding because bigots keep picking the scab. There’s been so many knock on effects from it that have gone unexamined and unaddressed because there are enough bigots to be a stupid but effective voting block.

Because they find voting Democrat to be more distasteful, for whatever reason. I have to imagine the people who swing the swing states have to be a really interesting mix of uninformed and having close relationships with people from both major parties. Like they only know the ideas at super high levels, basically just the slogans and spokespeople. It’s all vibes.

Or I could be way off, I dunno. World’s a wacky place

Fair enough. I stand corrected.

The framing of the article’s headline is bad, but the problem is that because people in starter homes can’t trade up, first time buyers can’t buy starter homes. Ultimately, the problem is that MORE people are stuck renting.

And that’s purely descriptive. The people in the starter homes are not to blame, in any moral sense. But people read blame into it because emotionally resonant headlines get more clicks, so they frame it that way.

Reefill.com isn’t even a registered domain. I call horseshit.