We need zines to be a bigger thing again

It’s so dainty 🥺 yeah, far from the norm here I’m ashamed to say

That would probably be a “small” at most fast food drive thrus here. Also, nobody orders a small unless they’re on a “diet” - in fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of my friends order a small. Generally everyone gets a large or extra large (because it’s only a few cents more!!), which looks like this here: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/denise-gray-holds-two-extra-large-soft-drinks-from-news-photo/145545668

How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, Mickey7? Stop posting this shitty boomer Facebook humor that is neither accurate nor funny. I understand this is likely a bot account, but maybe whoever manages it will see: We aren’t falling for it. Save your electricity and go post this trash on Reddit

All joking aside, the cup really is too small and the burger really is too lettucey to look authentically American, 100% seriously

Cease posting

So everyone who tells people not to vote is a tankie? Real nuanced thinking you’re doing there. I’m happy you found a fun word to use as shorthand for “people I disagree with”, but maybe try to actually understand the people you’re throwing it at first, you tankie

That’s not why anyone abstains from voting. People abstained from voting for Democratic candidates because they felt that they are controlled opposition, who only slow the rate of decline temporarily before the pendulum swings back to Republicans to do the dirty work. The only way to break that cycle is to force the Democrats to run better representatives of the people’s interests, and the only way to do that is to deprive them of power when they run shitty candidates like Kamala and want you to vote for them just because Trump is worse. This is the same thing that’s been happening since the 80s, and if people would have stopped falling for it back then, it wouldn’t have got as bad as it is now. If Kamala had won, we’d still be heading towards he same horrible destination, it would just be slowed down a bit. You could argue that slowing it down is still better than letting it go full speed ahead, and that’s true, but only in the short term. At some point we need to pay the price to turn the ship around.

I don’t know if you find this line of reasoning convincing, but at least try to remember that the reason people abstain from voting is not them being picky or perfectionist. It’s them trying to look at things in a longer-term, greater-good sort of way. I have a 60 year old friend who spent her whole life voting for Democrats she didn’t really like. What did it get her? Bush, Obama, Trump’s first time, Biden. And the possibility of Kamala. And you do realize that if Kamala had won, we’d just be getting all this same Trump shit but a few years later, right? That was her reward for voting “blue no matter who”: the same fucked up situation we’re in now. So she’s tired of it, she doesn’t want to vote anymore for someone who won’t make things better. Her only hope is that starving the Democrats out will force them to eventually run someone who might actually change things in the same aggressive, effective way that the conservatives always manage to achieve.

Again. It’s not about “I only vote for someone who perfectly agrees with me”, and in fact the people who abstain from voting are most likely people who have voted MANY times in the past for people they don’t even like at all, so it’s a really misguided accusation.

I think the problem is that certain views are much stronger indicators of someone being willing to eventually shove their views down your throat. If I was a big corporation shopping for, say, spam filter software, I’d rather sign a 3 year contract with a regular company than, for example, a company that is openly fundamentalist Christians. Why? Because the Christians are much more likely to start randomly making ridiculous changes that only make sense to other Christians, like spam filtering out anything with the word “Allah”, etc. They may not do that now, but I need to look further than just right now because I don’t want to get locked in to an ecosystem that is going to turn sour. Sure I can always switch, but why not just choose the one that has less risk of that at the onset?

Now some beliefs that I disagree with are less like this than others. For instance if the devs disagreed with me about their favorite movies, I’m not going to take that into consideration, because that’s not the sort of thing or the sort of person who is likely to abuse their power to aid that cause. But transphobia? That is exactly the sort of thing that someone, as has been proven many times now, will sit on and downplay until they are given power and influence to act on it. Using their software contributes to their influence, especially in the browser world.

Lastly, all other things equal, I’d rather use the product of a smart team full of smart people, than a dumb team full of dumb people. Transphobia is a dumb belief to have, it is a result of being unintelligent. Many smart people (and let’s be honest, especially developers) won’t want to work with someone like that. Whether you think that’s reasonable or not, it’s hard to deny. It’s certainly hard to picture any great trans developers wanting to contribute. So a lot of things add up, especially when looking a few links down the causal chain, to make it more than just a matter of whether they believe differently than I do.