#battle for democracy

[techdriveplay]

A Short Guide to Helldivers 2

Welcome to the action-packed world of Helldivers 2, where the battle for democracy spans across hostile exoplanets teeming with alien threats. At first glance, Helldivers 2 might seem like your typical co-op shooter: drop into enemy territory, unleash havoc on alien foes, and extract before the peril overwhelms you. Yet, delve a bit deeper, and you’ll discover a complex game ripe with strategies,…

[kaysdenofchaos]

OK we're trying this again

Pictured are some of the comic ideas I have lined up for the two AUs ^^ if you guys can agree to choosing one (ONE) to draw first after I finish the BS Prologue, I'll release the Stage 4 lineup and reveal who this kid is

[imaginal-ai]

"Defender of the Republic" (0003)

(More of The People's Champion Series)

0002

0001

[000-pawz]

i should write today but i have no idea what wip to work on first!! DECISION PARALYSIS!! these ones are all above 2k words already so what do u guys wanna see???

snippets + poll under the cut!

taesan rivals to lovers college au, forced proximity, fluff/suggestive

sungho pining to lovers college au, mission park sungho is a-go! (ft. sidekicks jaehyun and yujin), fluffy (maybe one suggestive scene?)

country boy leehan x city girl reader, strangers to lovers, small town romance!, fluff + smut

[buttonsgoblin]

I’m really excited to see the inevitable liberal consensus that trump is the next hitler but also that it’s bad to try to kill him

[beeseverywhen]

"All political parties face a trade-off under a first-past-the-post electoral system. Governing depends on attracting a broad coalition of voters, inevitably involving compromises that leave a party’s base disgruntled.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that as we move closer to a general election, the discontent from the anti-Labour left who claim there is little to distinguish Keir Starmer from Rishi Sunak in the battle for the premiership is only getting noisier."

"The argument is threefold: there’s no meaningful difference between the Conservatives and Labour; Starmer supposedly can’t be trusted because he has dropped pledges he made in the 2020 leadership election to shift his party towards the centre; finally, the “Tories are toast” and Labour can’t lose, so disgruntled left voters can safely vote for other parties, such as the Greens.

With Labour so far ahead in the polls, the urge to debunk these sentiments may seem like an expression of paranoia. But all three aspects of this narrative are comprehensively wrong, including the reassurance that it is safe for anyone who would prefer a Labour government to vote for another party in Labour-Tory contests."

"But what this underplays is the number of Labour-Tory marginals where a relatively small vote for other left candidates could cost Labour a win. James Kanagasooriam, of the polling company Focaldata, has written about the “sandcastle” nature of Labour’s likely majority; his forecast is that there will be many more marginal seats in the 2024 parliament compared with 2019. If more than predicted numbers of those who voted Green in the locals decide they can afford to do so in the general election because Labour is so far ahead in national polls, that will boost the Conservatives.

Next up is the idea that Starmer’s dropping of some of his leadership pledges makes him dangerously untrustworthy. But this is the product of a system in which the tiny unrepresentative slice of the electorate that is a party membership pick their leader before voters choose their prime minister. Anyone hoping to be PM would have to shift position between a leadership selection and a general election: a Labour leader’s most important job is to connect with potential voters, not to coddle members with the comfort blanket of a policy platform such as the “free broadband for all” 2019 pledge that was roundly rejected.

Liz Truss provides a cautionary tale of what happens when a party leader seeks to impose a membership-endorsed platform on the country without a general election. For Starmer to have stuck to his 2020 leadership election pledges, instead of spending the past four years understanding voters, would have been fundamentally anti-democratic.

The most egregious aspect of the anti-Labour left argument is there isn’t much to choose between Starmer and Sunak. Yes, Labour’s “Ming vase” election strategy has seen it take a much more cautious fiscal approach than many of us would like: it has effectively adopted the Tory macroeconomic worldview and with it a set of spending constraints that no one sensible thinks either party could stick to in the wake of the election.

That is frustrating for anyone hoping this election campaign may illuminate some of the tough trade-offs facing Britain; but it would have been incredibly risky for one side to go it alone on this. The alternative is Labour walking into the trap and handing the Conservatives a “Labour tax bombshell” election campaign.

From a commitment to scrap the Rwanda plan to making clear that in an ideal world Labour would discard the two-child benefit cap, there are plenty of reasons that it is preposterous to think that a Starmer government would make the same trade-offs as successive Conservative governments that have financed billions of pounds worth of tax cuts for more affluent families by cutting tax credits and benefits for low-income parents. The six pledges Starmer launched two weeks ago may be incremental, but Labour needs voters to believe they are deliverable, and they are indicative of a very different set of priorities than those that animate Sunak."

"Starmer is not without weaknesses, as shown by the days he took to clarify an interview last October in which he gave the impression he thought Israel had the right to withhold power and food from Gaza. But there is no doubt whatsoever he would make a vastly more compassionate and competent prime minister than Sunak. To encourage people to put that outcome at risk by casting a protest vote against a Labour government that does not yet exist is perhaps the ultimate form of luxury belief campaigning."

[iwasateenagenosferatu]

YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE!

[emcads]

🏴‍☠️ Tumblr Pirate Battle 🏴‍☠️

Round 3 - Side A (secret edition)

[segretecose]

early roman history is literally so funny like the first sack of rome really gave them the perfect excuse to rewrite exaggerate mythologize and, being romans, they sure took that chance

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

(one of) my dream games is a super ultrarealistic city-building game and it's (ideally, though unrealistically) set in america or at least in major american cities.

and i mean extremely ultrarealistic. cities: skylines is like dumb as fuck arcade shit compared to what i want. it may as well be townscaper.

i want it to be detailed enough that it's used by actually irl city planners to simulate their building projects. i wanna be taking soil samples and hydrogeological surveys and flood risk assessments. and i want the regulations and zoning to be really complex and detailed.

and again, i want this to be set around real-life locations. there should be an option for "present day" mode where you start working with the city as it exists today or "historical" mode for some previous period in the city's history or "free play" more where it's just the blank slate terrain and no development.

and of course you gotta manage natural resources and tax revenue and population growth and population happiness and all that.

if you wanna make it ideal-ideal then there should also be a complex political/government angle too.

and ideal-ideal-ideal there should also be an army/military dimension as well. and actually you should be able to play as city, county, state, or federal governments. all simultaneously (although obviously these different governments should also be able to govern themselves automatically so you're not having to micromanage).

[genniviva]

The mood was pretty weird while counting votes tonight. We were all... baffled? Baffled, yeah, especially at first when we were unfolding the votes and were met with party four, four, nineteen, four again. Wilders' PVV ended up with more than a quarter of the votes cast at our location.

We tried, but none of us could imagine what that guy would do if he were to somehow form a coalition. He has been opposition for so long that we had to wonder--does he even know? He doesn't have a party program beyond "fuck migrants." He relies on charisma and the neat thing called "not being in charge of the government people hate." Dick.

Anyways. Not happy about this at all.

[beyourselfchulanmaria]

Listen to 勇士 ⚔️ Warrior II 🔥, a playlist by chu-lan-maria on #SoundCloud just Simply thoughts having music be with without lonely :))) hope you will like it. Lan~*

"民主的可貴在於制衡的力量 The value of democracy lies in the power of checks and balances."

袁崇煥/明代 崇禎皇帝之【死前遺言】 👍

一生事業總成空 半世功名在夢中 死後不愁無將勇 忠魂依舊保遼東

兒時就曾聽過我爹講述他的史實，我其實挺欣賞他的。～「明知其難，但絕不知難而退 。明知官場凶險，但絕不知險而避。」

他像是古希臘的悲劇英雄，他有著巨大的勇氣，和敵人作戰的勇氣、道德上的勇氣；他那沖天的幹勁、執拗的蠻勁、剛烈的狠勁，却在當時猥瑣萎靡的明末朝廷中，加倍的突顯其與衆不同。- ℒan

(PS. I don’t own any music and songs right, I just make the playlist for listening easily and enjoy all musicians your works and love to share it only. all copyright belongs to musician & singer. If you want me do delete yours from the playlist, please tell me then I will do it. Blessings! Thanks! Lan~*)

[imaginal-ai]

"Defender of the Republic" (0002)

(More of The People's Champion Series)

0001

[the-90s-music-colosseum]

Also y'all goofy af voting for all the same bands, no offense but having 2 Green Day and 2 Nirvana albums in the finals (by the looks of how the polls are going so far) is just fucking hilarious to me

[saintruairri]

🐅

[havinganormalone]

I'm glad Biden is dropping out, but it's impossible to quell my rage over the fact that they didn't even host fucking primaries so that they aren't even PRETENDING to care about democratically choosing a president. Some old fucks choose their successor and we get to decide between the two of them, but that's far from a democratic election.