Sage_the_Lawyer

I was about to ask you what the first thing was.

Then my stomach rumbled.

They probably didn't have you as a prosecutor there, unfortunately.

I'm a public defender. Was about to talk about how even though I'm as leftist as they come and find this guy reprehensible, that I'd have had no problems arguing what he argued in court.... But I missed that it was charged as "attempted." That's an excellent point. I agree that he almost certainly attempted to commit voter fraud.

That said, I can still see how the jury could find a not guilty though, even if, were I on it, I would have said guilty. Attempted crimes still have a mens rea (usually, and I'll note here that I'm not barred in PA so this is all a best guess, consult a local attorney to know anything for sure). So the state would still have to prove his intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

I'm guessing the jury said they couldn't prove the intent beyond a reasonable doubt. Your argument convinced me, but, I can see how a jury might go the other way, for sure. Especially since juries are always unpredictable. I've won cases I should've lost and lost cases I should've won, you just never know what's gonna happen in the jury room.

If you're at a table with 11 people and a Nazi, you're at a table with twelve Nazis.

Most people aren't the extremes, sure. But if they refuse to denounce the extremists, they create space for the extremists viewpoints to survive and gain traction and acceptance on a broader scale.

So, no, even though I know most of my family would be against outright killing me, I also know they support and vote for people who are in favor of killing me. So no, I do not feel safe around them. How do I know if any of them hold extremist viewpoints before it's too late? If they don't denounce it, they're every bit as culpable.

You just made an enemy for life!

Fucking what?

It is well documented that the more educated someone is, the more likely they are to vote for left-wing politics. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/

Thus the right's war on education. They want uneducated masses to inundate with propaganda, not critical thinkers.

Also I think your definition of "nerd" is absurdly narrow. Dictionary says it's someone who is either highly enthusiastic about a particular topic or someone who is boringly studious. That's like, virtually everyone with a college degree. People tend to major in things they're enthusiastic about. Or, if they're just after the "best" diploma, they're probably in the "boringly studious" category.

You can be a nerd about anything, and I'd actually wager most people are a nerd about at least one thing. It's not limited to the categories you arbitrarily selected to make your point (without any actual evidence presented, I might add).

Meanwhile in Wisconsin I have to pay an extra $100/yr for registration because I drive a hybrid.

Why?

Because, I shit you not, driving a hybrid apparently costs the state too much money, because we have to fuel up less, and so they get less tax.

What the fuck.

I'm a big gamer, and was a massive HP fan. I did not buy the game, or even consider it, specifically because of JKR's bullshit.

I may be in the minority, but I guarantee I'm not the only one in this boat. So now you've talked to someone who cares, if you count this as talking.

And just to say a little more, no I didn't crusade against the game, nor do I villainize people who bought it and enjoyed it. I do think it's possible to enjoy art without liking the artist. Hell, my favorite book series of all time is the Ender's Game series, and Orson Scott Card is probably just as bad as JKR, though maybe not quite as famous/public about it.

But I can't bring myself to buy it. I'm trans, and her rhetoric, and how public it is, has been specifically harmful to me, directly. But that's just me. I won't tell other people how to live their lives or enjoy their free time, so long as they're not actively hurting others. And no, I don't consider buying a game where one person who is profiting from it might spend a sliver of that profit on anti-trans BS to be actively harming others, especially when she already has enough money to do whatever the hell she wants anyways.

This doesn't make a dent, and ethical consumption under capitalism is impossible anyways. I just hope that some portion of people who bought the game heard about the protests and maybe donated a fraction of what they paid for the game to some pro-LGBTQ groups. I have to believe there's at least a handful of people like that. I do believe that people are mostly good, and want to do good.

Yeesh, I wrote a lot more than I planned to here. I'll stop now lol.

I guess I probably have more experience than the average player, about 25 hours so far. But I also learned my 3rd point the hard way, by doing ~10 hours of research outside of playing to try to optimize. It mostly just drove me crazy, but I did pick up a lot of little helpful tidbits. So if anyone has any general gameplay questions I'm happy to do my best to answer!

Just know I definitely don't consider myself an expert by any means. I'm not even at the level cap yet.

Oh that's my bad. I missed what community this was in. I don't have any steam deck specific knowledge.

I've heard about some performance issues on multiplayer servers for console users, but iirc most people don't have issues for single player. Wish I could say more but I've only played on PC, sorry.

Palworld is mine. I've been loving it so far.

I'd say a couple things though:

1. Don't expect perfection. It's still early access and there are bugs. They put out a patch last night that fixed some of the most glaring issues, but there's still some wonky stuff. I'd recommend, when you build your base, to keep all the workstations that pals use on the ground level, and build your ceiling/second floor two units high. Some larger pals can't get through single tall doorways.

2. Feel free to play around with your server settings if you want things a little easier/harder (but I'd say definitely turn off structure decay right away, and maybe increase pal spawn rate slightly, mine is at 1.2x and feels good). The game is almost entirely customizable to what you want it to be, everything between super casual fun and hardcore survival is easy to set up.

3. Don't stress about min/maxing everything just yet. First of all, you probably simply don't need it while leveling up. Second, people don't know what the fuck they're talking about yet. There are conflicting sources for the best of pretty much everything. So just play how you like (but I'd say wait until you have a pal you know you'll use endgame before powering it up with essence/condensing, those can't be refunded to my knowledge).

"The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forego one's own." -The Satanic Temple's Fourth Tenet

However. I also believe the right to be offended is one of the freedoms we all have. There's a lot of discussion over what this tenet truly means. I believe it should work hand-in-hand with the other tenets, which include "one's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone," "one should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason," and "every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word."

I take it to mean that yes, you do have the right to offend, but also to be offended when someone violated your own personal freedoms. To say something that challenges someone's understanding of the world may offend them, but that doesn't mean its wrong. However, the use of the freedom to offend should be used sparingly, and with caution.

But if we start telling people they're not allowed to say things that are offensive to us, then that same logic can turn back on us later when we say something offensive to them. Pretty soon, nobody will be allowed to say anything. People should be free to express their opinions, so long as they abide by the rest of the tenets, in my opinion.

But, that doesn't mean we need to give people who are out to offend others bigger platforms to spread their messages. We don't even have to listen to them.

I'm reminded of the famous Voltaire quote, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

This is a complex topic, and I'm worried I'm not making my message clear enough here. Let me try to boil it down to a more direct response.

I do not agree that people are "too easily offended nowadays," but I do agree that people have the right to say things that might offend. I think people have the right to be offended about whatever they want. But they do not have the right to impose their own beliefs on others. If you want to say something offensive that I don't agree with, knock yourself out. But if you want to try prohibit me from saying something offensive to you, you can fuck right off.

It's a fine line. Yes, you have the right to offend others, but not the right to control them.

"Correctional officers from the jail responded to a medical emergency in one of the cell pods.

There, inmates explained that they believed [Jessica] Barry was experiencing a drug overdose.

Within 3 minutes of being notified of the emergency, officers gave Barry a dose of Narcan.

A total of six doses of Narcan, chest compressions, and an AED were given to Barry, but officers were not able to resuscitate her."

Tragic stuff. I know we all like to blame the cops, and usually I'm 1000% on board, but it sounds like they did everything they could here. At most they could maybe be blamed for not catching and stopping the drugs from getting in. Maybe the ongoing investigation will turn something up as to how that happened, but I can't say I'm surprised. I've been that courthouse and jail. It's not the most well-funded, and addicts tend to find a way. Sad stuff.