Bill's verticality is absolutely elite. That's probably a 37 to 38-inch vertical leap; he was tots-totally living on the edge!

You should be free to be rude online. It’s useful to know who the rude ones are so you can avoid them. Censoring is a bad idea in this case, and I believe Valve has taken the correct stance.

As an Estonian, I’d just say that Americans have a heavy presence on the internet, that’s all. In my opinion, it’s a human thing, not a matter of race, nationality, or gender. If there were a study showing that one of those groups had a higher prevalence of that behavior, I’d expect it to change over time, just as women and men in South Korea have recently shifted their voting patterns. In other words, the behavior could be tied to temporary cultural/other factors.

The 2005 Kingdom of Heaven movie really did Guy and Sibylla dirty. I’m fairly sure the history was especially distorted because the writer and director were atheists and clung too tightly to a “religious tolerance is ideal” message, even at the expense of accurately portraying the actions of the actual historical figures.

This reminds me of Jeremy Kauffman's ad, "War is Gay," which advocated for making militarism as gay as possible. The point is that militarism, or zabernism, is considered acceptable and even encouraged as long as DEI quotas are met within the military. https://youtu.be/kdfym6LKpQ0

Perhaps laudanum deserves a comeback, along with bacteriophages, which would be an excellent complement to antibiotics.

Why is being confidently wrong considered an exclusive or primary trait of white males, and why would anyone attribute this behavior primarily to their gender or race?

A young father, Yoda was. A good dad on OnlyFans, he turned out to be.

Censorship almost always starts with something that sounds sensible and ends up in absurd territory. If people choose to censor in this way, the fediverse risks repeating the same mistakes made during Web 2.0.

Just because one does not blame billionaires as the root cause of problems does not mean they are inclined to automatically blame those who look different from them, whether in terms of gender, ethnicity, nationality, or whatever.

What do you mean by "Do tell"?

Realistically, people are sharing abstracts with one another and then citing their preferred, biased sources of information, whether it’s Al Jazeera, the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, Democracy Now, The New York Times, etc.. In practice, this means relying mostly on secondary sources, with primary studies cherry-picked to support whatever point they are trying to make.

I am pretty sure that this “paradox of tolerance” argument was one of the major factors that led to the takeover of Wikipedia as well. Personally, I would prefer a genuinely neutral platform rather than one that is overly tendentious. Hard-left activists took advantage of liberal sensibilities to push the platform in favor of their own beliefs on Wikipedia.

Realistically, the American military is likely to be fairly diverse, just not especially gender-diverse. You do not need quotas to achieve a reasonable level of racial diversity, as many men are psychographically drawn to military service regardless. An Estonian military, by contrast, is unlikely to be diverse no matter how aggressively DEI policies are applied; attempting to force diversity would effectively result in a foreign legion.

Women tend to require incentives, often in the form of college funding, to develop an interest in joining the military. They also tend to be less effective in duties involving firefighting and direct combat and can be liabilities in those particular situations. However, they are no different intellectually and are fully capable of performing engineering, technical, and similar roles, & advances in technology may help bridge some of these physical gaps in the future.

Regarding your claim that “a team with 20 percent minorities will be less likely to be overzealous toward minorities,” the reality may be closer to the opposite. White personnel can experience anxiety about appearing prejudiced and may therefore become overly cautious or under-enforcing in certain situations. Some evidence of this can be seen in instances where white police officers avoid proactive enforcement out of fear of being accused of racism, homophobia, or similar biases. Black officers (for example), by contrast, often appear to have greater immunity from these particular concerns.

P.S. Ideally, the U.S. military and other militaries would not be searching for monsters to destroy abroad, such as inventing reasons to attack Venezuela, Iran, etc. possibly for the benefit of Israel, lol.

Yes, I am probably more accepting of discussions around “racism and genocide,” by your standards, than whatever camp you belong to. I believe it is important to maintain open dialogue with everyone, even those you consider evil or those you actively oppose. For example, speaking with a murderer can sometimes lead to a confession. There is always a chance that you, I, or someone else is in the wrong, just as there is a chance that we are in the right. Humans are fallible, and we cannot know everything.

P.S. I am also a Christian who is willing to forgive murderers who repent. They still deserve punishment on earth, but forgiveness is a separate matter.

Janusz is okay. It reminds me of Waldemar Januszczak.

We need some “everybody love everybody” and some Jesus-style politics, instead of all this identity politics whatnot.

There is probably a better way to avoid interacting with Zionists than banning any account potentially associated with Zionism. I personally oppose Zionism, so this does not affect me yet, but it could easily turn into a slippery slope. If someone does not oppose Zionism in the “correct” way, perhaps in an anti-hierarchy, anarchist, left-libertarian fashion, they could end up being instantly banned.

Policies like this risk turning the platform into yet another echo chamber, similar to Gettr or Bluesky. I honestly do not think there is any need to ban Zionists, since their ideas are easy to refute in the marketplace of ideas. That said, this may simply reflect my own (maybe) culturally liberal outlook, which does not align with this site’s apparent bias.

Human Spiral, this policy could end up banning people like you, right? Personally, I do not support Israel, but even supporting a two-state solution might be enough for a left-libertarian to want to ban you.