I wouldn’t necessarily say it fixes problems and if it does it certainly isn’t free of cost in more than one way. I do think it can temporarily lessen some anxieties that one might view as obstacles to happiness because they impede one’s ability to engage in meaningful social interaction. I also think that making friends and finding romantic partners are learned behaviors that you need practice to get good at. If alcohol can help you be social enough to make friends in a new place or find a partner then I can see why someone would say it fixed a problem for them. It’s certainly more expedient and cost effective than therapy to get past your hangups would be.

That said, that sort of “responsible” use of alcohol isn’t without its drawbacks and risks. I don’t know how common it is either. Perhaps that’s just what people who like to drink tell themselves to avoid feeling shame about their behavior.

I also am extremely socially awkward

That’s what the booze is supposed to help with. Whether or not it does is up for debate but it certainly makes you worry less and that’s a huge part of awkwardness.

Next to their degenerate friend holding a crack pipe in the alley behind the library where they read trans propaganda to our kids of course

I have thought about this very topic quite a bit over the years. Maybe I’m more judgemental than you but I don’t think anyone who doesn’t have a few specific handicaps is incapable of developing critical thinking skills. The people who don’t develop them simply don’t want to and that’s something I feel more than justified in blaming them for. That may not be accurate in reality but I don’t know how you could prove which one of our views is more correct.

They can’t do any of this other shit either. That’s not stopping us from doing it

The same thing it always does. In the best case, exactly what a program written by a human developer could do but with a high chance of hallucinations and an insane power draw nowhere near worth applying to the trivial problem at hand.

If the beliefs held up to scrutiny they wouldn’t be associated with the modern Republican party

I do wish we could stop confusing tolerance with active support though. I don’t need to be on your team to tolerate you or your lifestyle. In fact, we don’t even need to acknowledge each other’s existence to be tolerant of one another. We just need to let each other exist unimpeded.

Is furry a sexual orientation or a kink?

No, the political part is you forcing your sexuality to be discussed in a non-sexual context. I don’t care what you do in your bedroom but I don’t want to be forced to talk to you about it. It’s not relevant to our work therefore we don’t need to discuss it at work. Unless you’re trying to fuck me I don’t need to hear about it at all and that’s probably not something you should be doing at work either, certainly not in this context.

Nothing I have said is exclusive to queer people. They are universal rules that everyone should follow.

First of all, if you don’t think it’s weird to start off an introduction with “I’m queer and I’m a furry” then I’m not sure what to tell you. The vast majority of people in the world are going to be put off by you introducing yourself that way. That’s personal shit you talk about once you get to know somebody not an ice breaker. You can make the argument that people should be more accepting of that kind of thing but the fact is this sort of introduction breaks just about every social norm there is and when you do that willingly you should expect people to get uncomfortable.

Second of all, quit forcing your kinks on everyone else. I don’t care what weird kinky shit you do in your free time but I don’t want to talk to you about it, especially not at work. It doesn’t matter if your thing is women’s feet, dudes buttholes, or guys dressed as a cartoon wolf, the answer is the same, ew stop. It isn’t bigotry to not want to be forced to deal with your sexuality as a prerequisite for interacting with you. I probably don’t want to be interacting with you at all, much less talking about what you like to do with your genitals, so stop oversharing and keep that shit to yourself.

And some people can’t pull their head out of their own ass long enough to see that their problems aren’t the same as everyone else’s problems. You’re right though, it’s naive to expect others not to view themselves and their pet issues as the only thing worth discussing in the world. Your response being a great case study in how you can do exactly that while also implying that no one else even has problems to begin with.

When can we stop inserting politics into every little thing? I know it’s a big deal at the moment, what with the fascist takeover of our government, but are Linux devs and their moderators really the people we expect to represent all of us in that fight? They don’t have the power to help in that capacity.

We should be able to accept people’s help in whatever realm they are offering it without trying to force them to help with everything else at the same time. These guys signed up to support open source software. That’s an important and helpful thing but it isn’t gay rights activism. That is not their area of expertise. They’re not supposed to be representing LGBTQ interests in anything except the right to privacy. Quit making them the arbiter of morality in battles they didn’t sign up to fight to begin with. It doesn’t help anybody. It only redirects anger away from the people that we really should be mad at, namely our absolute disaster of a federal government.

Who are the good guys? I don’t have any problem identifying the bad guys but the good guys seem pretty hard to locate when it comes to politics.

I’d rather have ads placed in the text in a context that makes sense than the abomination of a system we have now that is both intrusive and irrelevant.

I don’t give a fuck what any of these people thought they were getting into. All the information they needed to make a rational decision was easily accessible to them and they refused to look at it. They took zero action to verify that their feelings lined up with reality and that is how shitty people conduct themselves. I hope every single person who voted for Trump gets a personal taste of the absolute chaos their ignorance has unleashed on the rest of the world.

It’s down 8% ($27) as of right now.

That’s a decidedly generous interpretation of events

The comfortable will never rebel. No one is going to give you those things and we can’t build them without dismantling the current system. You’re going to have to get supremely uncomfortable in order to give others the possibility of having those things at some indeterminate time in the future or face a dystopian future so bleak that it will make The Hunger Games seem like a fun vacation. Either way, comfort is rapidly fading from the picture.

18 months ago Hegseth wouldn’t have been allowed inside the DoD.