The one that I remember best was restricting eating food outside of the cafeteria. Previously it had been allowed to eat outside (the school had a patio area out where kids would wait for the busses, right outside the cafeteria), but there’d been issues with people leaving trash and things out there. The options on the ballot as I remember them were to continue to allow it with no change, to allow it but to implement strict punishments for anyone caught leaving trash around, or to just ban it entirely, and surprisingly ‘Ban it’ ended up winning, but it was really close. There was a group of students really pushing hard for that; they made posters with pictures of garbage and whatnot outside on the patio area and posted them all around, and got enough support to make it happen.

The student council got to decide the items that went on the ballot and the choices (probably with some faculty pressure for certain things, I imagine), so it was all student-led initiatives, which was neat.

Where I grew up, the schools all the way down to elementary school would hold votes to decide some school policies. Things like dress codes and rules governing hallway use, minor stuff, but stuff students care about and that affected us on a daily basis, and whatever won the vote became policy for that semester. We had lines and ballots and everything… The schools were the local voting places, so they had the official voting booths and everything from real elections. Was a great introduction to the process. We’d even get students canvassing in favor of certain policies beforehand if there was something particularly controversial on the ballot.

It’s not like I’m sitting here actively supporting the genocide. I’ve been speaking out against Israel since this conflict started. Look, here I am being critical of Israel 10 months ago.

But I’m going to level with you - if I was going to choose a single issue to base my vote on, it wouldn’t be this. It would be climate change. I’d throw in my cap with whomever had the most decisive, immediate plan to cut fossil fuels and major pollutants, enact climate-friendly policies, and put 100% of our budget and focus into reversing as much of the damage we’ve caused as possible, because I think that’s a much bigger issue than Gaza, or Ukraine, or anything else.

Compared to that, which is a global problem, I think any individual nation’s conflicts are pretty trivial. It trumps genocide, it trumps fascism, it trumps everything.

If Trump and the GOP have their way, there won’t be another election cycle. Maybe you need to think beyond this one, too.

99% Hitler

Well, I guess this conversation is 99% over, then.

Where along the DNC’s journey to the right do you hop off? Is it never?

When we have a viable progressive candidate. Until then, I’m going to continue being a pragmatist and vote for the candidate that I think is better among those who have a chance to win, rather than waste my vote trying to make an idealistic point.

Even if it were the case that both were exactly identical, then you’d have to admit that your vote won’t matter for Palestine, and you should base it on other factors, so why don’t you tell me which of Trump’s policies you’re okay with having in exchange for the opportunity to take the idealistic stance in this election?

We can sit here and quote conflicting sources at each other all night, and it’s clear that neither of us is going to sway the other, so we probably should just shake hands and agree to disagree, but fuck it, I’m not doing anything else, so I’ll start. Here’s one. Okay, your turn.

I’m so sick of this horrible take. You do realize that, of the two candidates who have a chance to win this election, neither are good for Palestine, but one is worse, right? It’s not like Donald Fucking Trump is out there campaigning on cutting off arms to Israel and supporting Palestine.

You give me an actual viable candidate who has a chance of actually winning an election in the US and I’ll give them my vote, but right now, what’re you proposing? Voting third party? Why, exactly? Do you only value “taking a stand”, or are you actually trying to do what’s in everyone’s best interest?

The problem is really that republicans keep putting up the worst possible candidates and policies. If the choice was “A sort of bad candidate or another sort of bad candidate”, we’d all happily vote third party and if the slightly-worse-but-not-appreciably-so candidate won as a result, it wouldn’t be a huge hurdle and over a few election cycles we could maybe effect change.

Instead, in that scenario, it leads to Trump and Project 2025 and I’d love to hear your explanation of how that helps us get progressive candidates into office, because I just don’t see it.

I’m a “single issue voter” and that “single issue” is that I don’t want another Trump presidency, so I’ll vote strategically to prevent that from happening, even if I’d much rather have someone else.

Do you see yourself going back to Unity after they changed streams?

The only reason this didn’t stick is because they got overwhelming backlash from it. They didn’t revert it because they’re thinking of their users, they didn’t revert it because they had a change of heart; they did it because it was a PR issue and they decided they’d make more money by reverting the decision than by keeping it. That’s the only reason.

The next time they think of some half-baked idea to milk more money from their users, they’ll try that one, too, and they’ll just keep doing it until something sticks, then probably start the process again and add something else on top of it. Anything they say denying this is just corporate speak.

Case in point, they’re still adjusting their prices; they’re lowering them for some very low-revenue teams while increasing them for their larger teams and this is, I guarantee you, because they ran the numbers and realized they’ll make more this way.

Don’t trust them. Get out if you haven’t already. There’s too many great, free options out there. Godot basically has feature parity with Unity right now except for console exports, and that’s coming later this year.

The answer can be found by looking at how most of the commercial open source products are monetized. Software hosting and technical support are quite lucrative if the software is valuable.

This only applies to some software, though, no? Like, let’s say a group of folks make a game or something, and release it as FOSS. Assuming they’re not hobbyists, and this is their career, how are they covering costs and making a living on that?

How do content creators get paid?

Largely through sponsorships, I think, right? Sponsorships and crowdfunding, but both of those require some measure of notoriety. It’s an unfortunate case where you have to spend a lot of effort doing it effectively unpaid until you get a following large enough to bring in sponsorship money or ad revenue or donations. Or you need to be a pretty woman who’s willing to monetize that, that seems to have a much lower barrier to entry.

Out of curiosity, under this system, how do the people writing the software get paid? Are they all dependent on donations?

I don’t think there was much that will hurt Harris from it. She performed very well.

She was articulate, well-spoken, performed well unscripted, and next to Trump she looked like she had her shit very together.

You seem very passionate about this issue, which is great, but you also seem very bad at communicating about it, because even after reading two full paragraphs here, I still only have a vague idea of what exactly you’re lobbying for. Can you just link us to something succinct and printed explaining it?

Long term, you could impact the trajectory of the next few centuries in substantial ways and lessen the coming dark age

With a budget of $1,000,000? That seems very ambitious at best.

The enshitification is progressing nicely!

and the idea of some cop having to cut it open and go through it because you called it in is sort of funny.

“Yeah, officers, uh… I definitely saw a body, at the bottom of the landfill… If you don’t find it right away, just keep looking, it’s definitely there.”

This post feels a little like bait, but that said:

To me, this is not even a question. It doesn’t feel great to say, but the only correct response is to choose Pathway 2. There’s a lot of things at stake in this election but one of the things on the chopping block if the GOP wins is trans rights. We’ve seen what they do when they have full control (look at Florida - that’s their vision for the whole country); securing a win for them just to maintain a moral high ground on this one issue will only make things worse for trans people. Trans rights being left “in a vulnerable position” is far better than trans rights being eliminated completely. That’s not even taking into account any of the other problems this would cause.

Anyone choosing Pathway 1 is not thinking through the ramifications of their choice. That said, it’s a stupid premise for a discussion, for exactly the above issue. For there to be an interesting moral dilemma, there has to be a dilemma, and there’s only one here if you’re not thinking about it past the surface.

To be clear this is purely in response to a hypothetical and I’m not in any way suggesting actually taking that course of action in reality. I in no way believe there’s enough single-issue swing voters for the democratic party being pro-trans-rights to make a lick of difference in the actual outcome.

Everyone I want to talk to knows not to call me; I feel exactly the same. Phones used to be useful, but the sheer volume of telemarketers and scams have reduced it to uselessness. If it wasn’t for 2FA occasionally requiring a phone number, I wouldn’t even have one at this point.

If I were the victim of genocide, I wouldn’t be a voter at all, because I’d be dead. However, that’s kind of irrelevant - are you the victim of genocide? I’m assuming not, if you’re voting in the US election. Even if you’re Palestinian, your people are the victim of genocide, but unless you’re in Palestine, you aren’t.

That said, if you are Palestinian, I feel for you, I honestly do, and it would explain your view somewhat.

I think we can both agree that there’s only two outcomes that’re possible in this election: Trump wins, or Harris wins. (If you don’t agree, I’d be happy to hear your third outcome.) If you truly believe there’s no difference between the two of them, you need to do some research on the topic, because there are a lot of differences, even if they don’t pertain to this issue specifically.

If, between the two of them, you hope Harris wins, a 3rd party vote is voting against your interests. If you hope Trump wins between the two of them, a 3rd party vote is still voting against your interests, because you’re effectively taking a vote away from your preferred candidate among the two who could possibly win.

Edit to respond to your edit:

The outcome is the Democrats stop committing Genocide or they don’t get votes. “But Trump” isn’t even an argument.

Unless you’re out there protesting, or writing letters, or making phone calls, or in some way letting them know that their policy is costing them your vote, it’s a useless gesture. Posting on Lemmy isn’t going to change any politician’s minds. It’s not even going to change anyone’s mind here, in all likelihood. If you actually want to make a difference, you need to make your voice heard by the people whose minds you’re actually trying to change.