Fun fact: Caulrophobia (fear of clowns) is way more common than arachnophobia (according to a quick glance at wikipedia), if we ignore how serious a reaction usually is in deciding what to cw, we better be ready to hide all Balatro screenshots.

Despite the name and status as a pest (they are literally European scarabs), I feel nostalgic whenever I see one. Farmers ruthlessly fought them, so there hasn’t been a swarming event here in at least 20 years.

No fireflies where I live, but that doesn’t mean my childhood was free of a beautiful insect swarm.

My area had a bad outbreak of cockchafers I got to enjoy.

Entweder man stellt sich für die Wähler als rückgratlose Versager da, oder man bekommt die alleinige Schuld für den eventuellen Fall Ukraines. Keine gute Optionen für die Grünen. Guter Schachzug von SPD und CDU.

Da wird vermutlich noch ein Detail zu Gunsten der Grünen ausgearbeitet, um die Wahl leichter zu machen, die Grünen werden aber im Gedächnis bleiben als SPD der Opposition.

Back when Germany finally criminalised marital rape, he was one of very few voting against it. He is more conservative than most of his party.

More recently, he invited wanted for war crimes Netanyahu to Germany and thus break Germany from the ICC. His views on how to handle immigration also align with AFD: he and his party did start a motion in parliament to handle immigration (non-binding) and did try to pass a law to limit it, both with the help of the AFD. 2 Years ago, he sparked controversy nationwide by claiming asylum seekers are clogging up all the dentist appointments for Germans.

He’s a pos.

CGPgrey’s AI and his self driving cars videos.

Definitely made some poor choices in life due to these that I could scream into a pillow. The future is always unpredictable, and while behind the scenes I’m sure a lot happened to improve both of these technologies, more than a decade later the use cases of both are still the same - grifting investors.

Yeah, sorry, one comment up from that one was the one I thought you responded too. Doesn’t change anything though as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t think there is anything left to say, good luck with that Revolution thing.

The commenter you replied to was basically just informing people not to buy. You made a great showing that you were going to buy anyway and you don’t care. That is something you need to justify, not the buying itself. No one would even know if you didn’t go out of your way to tell everyone.

And yes, what you do is good, but takes time to amount to anything. In the mean time, it is perfectly acceptable to also pursue methods that work in the short term. We aren’t just individuals on a forum, we are public opinion. As flawed as it is, that’s still better than the apathy you promote in your first comment.

Anyone who disagrees with that fact also thinks it’s okay to go to the casino just for the bar at the back.

You can always be mad at 2 or more things at once, and how the gaming industry sucks out money from the consumer to pay their executives should be one of these.

In all the industries you mentioned, “voting with your wallet” is a thing that’s universally accepted as effective but at times hard to do. In gaming, it couldn’t be easier, you can literally safe money by buying anything cheaper from the indie sphere, not buy anything at all and play games you already own, wait 2 weeks and get a 2nd hand copy, or the unnamed 4th thing.

And the impact is more than just having a worse game to enjoy. As much as we like to laugh at people for their bad financial decisions, some people just cannot think rational about these things, and every game that includes microtransactions is simply not safe for them. Casino’s are heavily regulated for a reason, it is perversive brain stimulation with decades of research behind it, and we invited it into our consoles and computers for kids to enjoy. And more and more people just expect games to be predatory, and it warps how they think of the effort put into games. Being a functional, complete game without any in game purchases used to be the minimum. But if you expect anyone to have your mental fortitude, that no kid will wander into this menu and that everyone has an unalterable image of the industry, feel free to support this.

Genshin Impact lies at the end of this road.

You do not have to support these decisions. You can be a Monster Hunter and Capcom fan, and not buy into the hype. Vote with your wallet.

Everything else being equal, of course electric and induction stoves are preferable to gas. I spend most of my life with an electric stove, no apartment I ever saw had induction, but I didn’t particularly like the gas stove I had to use for some years.

But if you want the worst user experience ever, find an electric stove with touchscreen controls. What the hell, landlord, where did you even find that one?

True, but this is really basic stuff. I think I learned this for English as 2nd language in primary school. We trust that people here know English well enough to understand the server rules, why then assume they don’t know basic grammar?

What makes this different from SVO word order? YSK how to use participles? Did you know about the order of adjective (That one is actually pretty interesting, but i’s not basic grammar so it gets to pass). At some point it is ridiculous to try to teach some grammar rules of English in English, and I believe this is well past that point. Even if one doesn’t speak the language naturally or have a formal education in it.

Why would you use Ukraine as the example word instead of uniform?

I’m pretty sure I’ve heard “the Ukraine” been pronounced both ways often enough.

I’ve seen a good 15 minute essay-video about this:

https://youtu.be/nCe7Fj8-ZnQ

TLDW: English speakers increasingly use the consonant versions of “a(n)”, “the” and “to” for anything in casual conversation, just with a glottal stop to separate vowel sounds. This is then found more and more in written and formal language.

Da wir ja alle hier am Meckern sind:

Mir gefiel überhaupt nicht, was für Kompromisse die geschlossen haben, um zu regieren. FPD kriegt mit weniger Stimmanteil den Verkehr und Wirtschaftsminister, und hebelt damit gefühlt alles aus was der Umweltminister fordert. Super. Aber zumindest ist das Kiffen jetzt legal - nein, kriegt man natürlich auch nicht vollendet.

Und was hat man eingebüßt? Lützerath, Scholz kriegt Amnestie für Cum-Ex und G20, Palestina wird mit unseren Waffen ermordet und alles andere was Gerechtigkeit angeht begräbt man auch als man nichteinhaltung des Fraktionszwanges mit Parteiausschluss kontert.

Ich hoffe, man steht das nächste Mal wieder für etwas - sei es Klima, Gerechtigkeit oder was auch immer. Und dann drückt man das auch besser durch, wenn man regiert.

The only way the conservatives get the funding for increased arms manufacturing is by disabling/changing something about the debt ceiling.

Debt ceiling is in the basic law (constitution), which requires a 2/3 majority to be altered.

Linke are against the debt ceiling in general, but not if it’s only disabled for military spending while still preventing investments in public infrastructure. I think with a bit of diplomacy and concessions in the wording, Linke can be persuaded here.

Edit: Or Merz can just say he doesn’t want to change anything about the debt brake, OK. Saves him from negotiating anything I guess. Maybe the billions he needs will just fall out of the sky then.

Edit2: Quite the heel-turn. So they just announced that SPD and CDU want to reform the debt brake. They plan to reach the 2/3rds needed by… rushing it through before the new parliament forms. This means they do not need to negotiate with Die Linke, but with the Greens. Quick reminder that the last government, which included the greens, collapsed because CDU wouldn’t help reform the debt brake. Either be forever known as spineless suckers (like the SPD) or be the ones blamed for the fall of Ukraine, no good options for the greens here.

In der offenen Feldschlacht gefallen, o7 Soldat!

Worst possible outcome right now: BSW gets just enough votes to make it into parliament.

This results in an unstable government, since CDU/CSU and the expected partner SPD don’t have enough seats, with no one willing to help form the government. New elections are called shortly after.

BSW can destroy parliament by simply existing (well, the voters who put us in this situation with so much AFD), and the only hope is that we throw out all their votes when they don’t reach 5%. I don’t think it’s likely, but it is possible.

EDIT: BSW didn’t make it, a boring stable, yet slightly right wing, government for us.

Aside from what the others have said, there is also a 2nd exit poll, with slightly different estimations. If reality will match this one, the BSW will get into parliament. They are a splinter party of the leftists, taking a most of the tankie nutcases with them.

They won’t be in government or important opposition, but if they make it, the 2 centrist parties alone don’t have enough seats. This means they need a 3rd party to form a government, and they have no good options. The preferred party would be FDP, but they are estimated to not make it. The greens would normally be up to it, but CDU/CSU campaign has mostly run on getting the greens out of government. And the Leftist, BSW and AFD are all too extreme for the very pensioner friendly CDU/CSU.

There is a chance we simply won’t have a stable government and will have to redo this election, but from most to least likely:

• Reality is closer to the first poll, boring centrist government, AFD can try again in 4 years
• The CDU will make some meaningless concessions to the greens and the greens will fall for it
• The CDU will completely destroy any trust and form a government with AFD
• There won’t be any stable government and a new election is called.
• Any Leftists in Government
• There won’t be a stable government, our president still elects a chancellor, we will have 4 weeks of a minority government and then someone triggers new elections.

Edit: Results are in, BSW missed getting into parliament by a very slim margin. CDU can form a stable Government with SPD.

Statistisch betrachtet wohnst du vermutlich in einer Großstadt, da ist das üblich. Als ich im Ruhrpott wählte, wurde mein Perso auch überprüft, wenn ich mich richtig erinnere.

Nun wohn ich aber im Dorf. Bei 3 Wahlhelfern und 1000 Einwohnern ist es eigentlich gegeben, dass man die Leute wiedererkennt oder zuordnen kann. Hätte nur nicht gedacht, dass das schon der Fall ist, wohn erst ein halbes Jahr hier.