Could you please define this. As it stands authoritarian is the thought terminating cliche of choice for the unintelligent and uneducated to avoid having to investigate and reckon with the questions of substance such as class content of the state, state form, satisfaction of the people with the government etc.

Normally I don’t respond to low level comments like this, but the intellectual laziness here is mind boggling. Dictionaries exist for a reason.

The people hold them accountable, through the mechanisms I described previously

So, free and fair elections. Well, now we’re back to square one, and pretty much describing how Western democracies work.

Nordic countries offer sizable concessions to their working classes because the Soviets were right next to them, and already offered better safety nets.

Ah, yes, the soviet Union, definitely not imperialist. Sarcasm aside, they literally did not allow their population to leave. They killed people who dared to leave. That’s not a sign of things going well, to mention just one.

The state serves private interests in capitalism

Just because you repeat it a hundred times doesn’t make it true. The very mechanisms you described are used (with varying degrees of success depending on how well the democracy functions) to keep the state accountable to the people.

you’re again giving examples of concessions given largely because of working class organization, not through the “democratic processes.”

So then why are these mostly things that parties campaigned on, got voted into power for and then implemented?

Fascism is a result of the decay in capitalism and imperialism

That’s a very, very broad interpretation that many historians would disagree with. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it’s the case. How do these capitalist structures decay into imperialism then?

consultative democracy

Yes, but who enforces the consulting and the usage of the information gathered from consulting? Without accountability, that’s just fantasy and/or simping for authoritarianism. Let’s not forget, every authoritarian leader, party or Organisation has its supporters who will claim they’re not authoritarian.

Capitalism inevitably tends towards centralization of the essential means of production and distribution into fewer and fewer hand

Except when it doesn’t. There are plenty of examples where countries that have capitalism based economies moved significantly to the left. Look at Nordic countries, for instance.

Very few leftist parties can get anything done in western countries because the media is largely controlled by capitalists

What about all the public broadcasters? There are many countries where they’re quite strong. And as to parties getting things done, what about:

• Minimum wages
• Welfare systems
• Massive improvements in workplace safety
• Universal healthcare
• Childcare

I could go on and on, but that’s not the point. The point is that fascists are trying to weaken the electoral system because they know how effective it can be. Otherwise, they wouldn’t give a fuck. And part of the way they do that is by downplaying its efficacy in order to wear it down and eventually get rid of it.

A single party system can be more democratic if it’s a consultative democracy and reflects the will of the majority, like how it works in China

Oh really? How do you hold the people in power accountable, then, if they’re part of the only party that is allowed to exist (which that party itself decided, what a coincidence!)?

In capitalism, a tiny class of people controls the most essential means of production and distribution for society.

False, that is the result of capitalism when it goes unchecked, not the definition. And different countries have different levels of checks on capitalism.

The state represents their interests, and any parties that exist must represent them

Yeah, no, that’s not the case. Otherwise explain to me how many western countries have leftist parties and even marxist-leninist parties. It’s just not the will of the majority. Which leads me back to the point: your (or even my) satisfaction with the results don’t measure how democratic a country is, despite the FUD spread by authoritarians and wannabe authoritarians to destabilize democracies by encouraging people to not participate.

How the hell are elections not indicative of democracy? I mean, just because you have elections doesn’t mean you have a proper democracy (e.g. if there is only one party available), but how those elections are run says a lot. They’re the core of any democracy. Democracy is, by definition, the people being ruled by the people. So you need some form of governance that is accountable to the people.

And capital is far from the only thing that determines if parties are viable. Yes, it plays too much of a role (especially in the US, but there are many western countries that aren’t the US), but let’s not pretend it’s some mysterious being that decides everything. That ignores so many important factors.

Just because the majority of the people in a country disagree with you doesn’t mean it’s not a democracy. In many western countries there are (still) free and fair elections. This is verifiable. But democracy lives off of active participation, and there are people (read: fascists) who see democracy as a threat and do everything they can to sow FUD in order to reduce election participation.

…maybe because many westerners are worried about losing their democracy? I mean, when democracies Fall, they usually don’t make room for better democracies, historically speaking.

What’s the first flag?

The goal is to create a more secure version of the program. Since (safe) rust eliminates entire classes of security relevant bugs, a rust version has the potential to be much more secure that the C version. And since rust can eliminate entire classes of bugs, we can put more energy into finding bugs like the ones presented in the article.

The weaker license is unfortunate, though.

How is it disrespectful to women who have experienced “similar” sexual assault (bearing in mind, this wasn’t sexual assault, she literally asked for it and planned it all out)? By that logic, it would be disrespectful to women who have experienced sexual assault for women to have sex at all.

Doing that can reveal a whole bunch of interesting patterns. I was repairing something on a circuit board once and was trying to figure out the wiring. Trying to get more light, I shone my phone’s flashlight at it. At some point I suddenly realized that the circuit board lets a bit of light through. I realized that, at least for some of the board, I could shine a flashlight onto the other side and see pretty exactly how the circuit was laid out. It also looked really, really cool.

Oh, so now you’re eating Jolly ranchers out of the carpet?

And with that memory freshly back in your mind, I’m out.

Honestly, I want to like Kodi, but even this first screenshot looks much better than anything I’ve been able to muster together in Kodi.

Technically, VBA arrays start wherever you want them to and end wherever you want them to. Thing is, since VBA is usually interfacing with MS Office, you’re heavily dependent on what the office APIs do. And unfortunately, they very often start counting with 1. So practically, you’re generally starting your counting with 1.

TIL

I mean, to be fair, at least they give you a warning. And honestly, I think it’s pretty fair to not allow things that wear down the scooter quickly.

Unless you’re programming in VBA. But at that point you’re already fucked anyway.

How about this: it’s awful in both places. Just because another country started doing it as well doesn’t excuse anything, it means they’re now both doing something unacceptable.

Honestly, did you even read what I wrote? Yes, these topics need to be talked about much more. But in a way that actually addresses the core of the problem, which this oversimplified message simply does not.

Discourse implies actually listening, or in this case reading, as well.

It’s a shitposting comm, but you asked a serious question which deserves an answer.

Trigger warning: it’s about rape, and I mention some pretty specific examples coming from reality. Honestly, I hope this doesn’t keep me up tonight.

To start, I think it’s important to look at how and why rape happens. In most cases, rape is a matter of the perpetrator asserting dominance over the victim. There are many non-sexual as well as sexual ways of doing that. Rape is one of, if not the most intimate way. It’s the reason why there are cases where heterosexual men rape other men, for instance. It’s not about attraction. It’s about asserting dominance, in one of the most disgusting ways imaginable.

Rape is rarely the “someone jumped out of the bush and raped me” story. In the vast majority of cases, it’s someone they know. A friend. A significant other. A family member. And it’s not necessarily the “I was forced into the bed” story, either. It’s often a direct pressuring of the victim into doing something they really don’t. “Why not, do you think I’m ugly?” “It’s been so long, how are you so insensitive?” “You never want to! How is our relationship supposed to survive?” (By the way, these examples come from reality - not word by word, but the statements as wholes.) It’s often part of a larger pattern of abuse - and I mean think about it, if you’re doing something that heinous, it’s probably not the only morally reprehensible thing you’re doing.

So honestly, I’m going to go with a pretty clear “no”. I mean, do we have signs telling people not to steal? Do we have signs to tell people not to kill? No. The closest thing we have to that is signs at stores that essentially say “you can’t steal here without getting caught”. It’s never about “watch out, you might accidentally steal something, here’s how not to do it”. And think about it this way: these “don’t rape” campaigns have been around for a while now. I have yet to see any evidence that they actually do any good.

In fact, I worry that they actually may do more harm than good. And I’m not even talking about people who would never rape someone who are even more scared to approach and make legitimate advances on people due to things like this. It’s oversimplifying the complex patterns present in abuse down to something that can be itself abused. Think about the statements I mentioned above and the fries poster. The last four points listed can be easily achieved by modifying those manipulative phrases. “You always make me feel like I’m forcing you, you know I always stop if you want me to” (for us looking in from the outside, that second statement is obviously a lie). Add a little Gaslighting and the victim will believe they’re freely consenting. So now the victim sees this poster, and goes, “well, I guess it was consensual?” The fuck it was not. And that’s often one of the main difficulties with recovering from rape in the first place: coming to terms with it. Rape is by nature incredibly traumatic, and in traumatic situations (especially ones like that) people often reason that the traumatic situation never happened, because dealing with it is too taxing. Meanwhile the person is developing psychological symptoms left, right and center, which the victim will often, then, in turn, also try to cover up.

So, what should we do to combat rape? Well, we have to take a more holistic approach. Consent is very important in sex, but it doesn’t only apply to sex. We need to teach people how to recognize abusive behavior - and teach kids in school (obviously, at an age appropriate level) about abusive patterns. How to recognize it happening to them, and how to recognize it happening to others. We need to teach people how to deal with abusive situations. We need to reach people how to help others in abusive situations. At the moment, this is knowledge that mostly only specialists in that topic and people who are or were personally affected and did a lot of reading know. When these things become common knowledge, then we have a chance at turning the tide. We also need to vastly improve the way we deal with mental health. Essentially, we need much more readily and easily accessible psychological care. Treating trauma is one of the best ways to avoid victims becoming revictimized, since predators tend to feed on those who are already down, and can also avoid extreme cases where victims become perpetrators. Now, you may be thinking, “isn’t that victim blaming?” We’re not blaming the victim. The victim is not at fault for being a victim. The fault lies clearly at the perpetrator’s feet for being such an abhorrent piece of shit. And while realizing that as a victim is incredibly important on the road to recovery, it doesn’t change anything about what will help. Unfortunately, a perpetrator who keeps getting away with what they’re doing will very, very rarely (really) change what they’re doing. So, we can only try to help victims and avoid creating further victims.