It is not. You need to re-familiarize yourself with what monarchy actually is. Maybe spend a year in an actual monarchy/dictatorship country if you have so little appreciation for the democracy you currently enjoy?

Even if this does end in political violence or civil war, if you vote, at least you will have tried to avoid that fate by participating in our democracy as much as possible. Voting is just so easy to do, how can you justify not doing it as anything but laziness? It can’t hurt and takes almost no effort.

I encourage you to reconsider and vote for whatever you perceive to be the least of all evils. Voting is relatively easy and doesn’t require much effort. It’s literally the least you can do. Yes, may not matter in the end, but it can still inform certain statistics that can be used to support various messages and arguments down the line. If you don’t vote at all, you guarantee you have no impact. Don’t throw away the little power you have.

You’ve given into despair and have opted out entirely, which is exactly what the people you gripe about want you to do. Congratulations, you’ve surrendered.

the ballot is one big trick question

I’d like an explanation of what you actually mean by this and why not voting is better than voting for the least bad candidate, if you regard them all as bad.

Nah, if it was communist propaganda, it would mean that you get no material reward compared to anyone else, but could count on the teacher to pass on a good word for you with the principal, who then might mention your name positively at an education board meeting, who then might mention you to the mayor, the governor, etc, and now you have a real shot of becoming dictator of the single-party government that rules your country.

Value not consumer prizes and instead seek nepotistic alliances, for through them will the material comforts flow. —Mao, probably.

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I feel like the meme also works if you put the red box around “Gay. Depressed.” instead.

…No, no—I’ll see myself out.

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Much better headline than a previous article from yesterday stating he was sentenced to “life in prison.”

It’s pretty simple: the bugs weren’t gay.

Then they’d be wrong. It objectively isn’t worth it.

Not everyone can do it, because the necessary muscles (auricular muscles) are considered vestigial at this point, meaning not everyone has them or doesn’t have large enough ones to wiggle their ears. In other words, evolution is slowly deleting them from our bodies as a species, with some of us being “further along” than others.

I mean, it can still be whatever you want it to be even if it’s dirty…it’s just also gross.

In the paragraph the HBS draws attention to, Gessen wrote that “ghetto” would be “the more appropriate term” to describe Gaza, but the word “would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”

Not taking sides here, but it does seem to me like Gessen’s phrasing was deliberately provocative towards those who might be offended by their comparison. I’m left thinking, “I mean, if you kick a beehive, don’t be surprised if you get stung.”

Agreed, but it’s not really like you’re any different, is it?

In a lot of vampire fiction, it’s the faith of the cross-holder that matters. I’d like to see a movie where a vampire is turned by a person holding up a teapot.

I really hope he lives so they can properly execute him.

Refreshing to see an article focusing on the suffering of boys and men in these sorts of wartime atrocities. Normally, articles focus on how women are raped and/or sold into sex slavery, while not at all or merely as a footnote mentioning that boys and men are systematically killed or forced to serve the attacking militia as cannon fodder.

I did a brief Google search prior to making my comment and found nothing, so I figured I’d ask you. It does seem like the kind of claim that someone would make based on mere prejudice. I take your refusal to provide evidence as a sign that it is, indeed, baseless.