40 seconds in... Tyra Banks has gained a lot of weight.

Please tell me your friend is okay.

Sumo is more philosophical than I thought.

...you're such a sucker...Being a slave sucks, huh?

Not as much as you suck your friend's balls.

They have plenty of things to blame the collapse on than this energy vampire eating ice cream.

I just knew he was a fed! This confirms it.

That was the original proposal, but everybody thought it was an April Fool's joke.

Smithfield Farms (now China owned) did this with the pigs in America, except that was due to them being "unsellable" because of the supply chain.

You're not going to get a VR POD.

This is the most important thing to teach children, ever, and we need to be the ones in charge of what is taught!

I am not conflating the two. I believe that the word democratic, used as an adjective, can apply to various governmental structures as long as the people legitimately have a legally-binding say in who the ultimate decision makers are. Would you entertain the thought of a democratic, constitutional republic or a constitutional, democratic republic?

You seem to be arguing that democracies cannot have constitutions, as having one would make the government constitutional and therefore not democratic. Is that was you mean?

Lots of us are here to have serious discussions, you know.

In case anyone was wondering, the United Nations had no part in creating this public service announcement. Glenn Beck has been posting it.

The elderly should kill themselves because they have kids like it's going out of style. The earth simply can't handle how quickly they reproduce.

So a small group of wealthy people can buy up all the food and make it unaffordable by everybody else? That can't prevent famine.

You're not limited to one adjective/noun pair. The truthfulness of the USA being a democratic republic is up for debate, but they have taught that in schools.

I am not talking about a governmental structure, but democracy in that the people are able to replace leadership. If governmental policies cause famine, those starving people will decide on different policies.

Of course, if the famine is due to external forces, the best they can do is share food in a way that minimizes the damage.

Out of curiosity, what's the deal with putting democracy in parentheses like that?

Democracy prevents famine. (Amartya Sen) Food shortages would be a sign that the world is nearing the adoption of the China Model.

The 49th!

In a generation or two they would be able to fashion the world after A Game of Thrones

Twitter has banned accounts that talk about public health policies, the American elections, Hunter Biden, the U.S. Capitol protest, the Freedom Convoy, Ukraine and other topics that don't serve the political interests of the people who are right now taking full control of the United States. You simply cannot believe that is no different from what I have described.

As a note to others who may be reading, look how u/bobwehadababyitsaboy repeatedly tries to conflate banning political discourse with keeping trolls out of a serious discussion. The links I provided demonstrate in a crystal clear way that we are--and have been for some time--under attack from those forces. Of course we have to defend ourselves.

I meant the tweet. Now looking at what I wrote, I should have written it more clearly as a question about my link. I'll do that now.

Mods can't be trusted to not have their bias steer the conversation.

People certainly can be trusted to have public discussions about topics the government would rather you not. To that end, some of them can make good faith efforts to do that acting as discussion moderators. We do not need to trust the moderators; if one behaves improperly they can be replaced or people can move to a better discussion. Even if that issue were intractable, people must be free to have forums that remain on-topic and free from malicious attack. Overzealous moderation on some forums is better than every forum being a graffiti wall.

...you think more accounts should be banned around here. Literally advocating for more censorship.

I do not see banning fake accounts as a form of censorship at all. People do not come to forums seeking what malicious people want to do.

Free speech is free speech. Not free speech with an asterisk. That includes trolls, shills, spammers and glowies.

You absolutely cannot be serious.

• Trolls: If you are here to make fun of people, waste their time with meaningless word salads, post illegal material, or otherwise disrupt communication, you can get the hell out of any discussion I moderate.

• Shills: If you are here to serve an external agenda, make the community look deplorable, give us "daily reminders" (not to vote, or whatever you're promoting), or earn money through your participation, you can also get the hell out.

• Spammers: If you are here to pretend to engage the discussion topic while actually just advertising or you intend to say the same thing every few hours just so people can see it, get the hell out.

• Glowies: While I think using that term is a red flag for being a shill account, if you are a government agent tasked with creating the illusion that discussion forums themselves are the problem and therefore the government needs to actually censor them all to solve it, you--yes, you-- can get the hell right out.

What is happening is the most dire threat to global information access I have ever seen or can even imagine. I am right about this one.

Obama Warns That “People Are Dying Because Of Misinformation,” But Is His Warning Coming Too Late? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fr89LXNzRo

Challenges to Democracy in the Digital Information Realm -- Stanford Cyber Policy Center https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/events/challenges-democracy-digital-information-realm

I am not doing that. Do I really need to go into ELI5 mode with you?

Many countries like China (authoritarian regimes) censor the Internet. They block people from accessing the information they want to get. They take steps to ensure their people can only see what the government wants them to see. We can all agree that this is censorship.

Many countries like the United States are increasingly using social media, search engines and online publishing platforms to block people from accessing the information they want to get. They take steps to ensure their people have a harder time accessing that information while artificially promoting approved content. I think most reasonable people would call that censorship.

A moderated discussion is one where certain people can remove content that was posted to disrupt the communication process or further some external agenda. The moderators take steps to ensure the participants can have a discussion about a particular topic. Rather than restricting access to information, the mods help people get the information they want. It is unreasonable to call that censorship.

None of what you wrote describes "my side" of things.

And what you are actually trying to do is persuade other people that one "side" of the political spectrum is full of outspoken racists and antisemites. That is what all the fake accounts are out to do. We know this because this is a very new problem that now conveniently happens as they are about to implement hard lockdowns of online discussion.

This isn't some place full of noobs. I can tell by the things people here write about that they have been around the Internet for decades. We have seen noticed the sudden change. Anyone aware of current events going back a few years will be able to link it to efforts to ramp up "Internet governance." The only people you are fooling are actual new people (many of them younger) who don't have much experience in discussion forums.