That's the point. They re-opened the government *because* there was too much momentum in the direction of something meaningful happening.

Literotica once rejected one of my stories because they decided the phrase "good little girl" meant the character was a minor.

I think the succubus should be purified and made chaste (she's still just as horny and depraved but every time she has a lewd thought she gets extremely embarassed about it (also her threshold for lewd thoughts is on par with the most starry eyed, innocent shojo protagonist))

Of course many are. There are easily way more than 87k people in America who would agree with that statement. I just also think twitter is full of bots.

Not saying that can't be true but where are you getting this info?

many are likely botted but yeah

mhm, this obviously doesn't apply universally, & the subject is far more nuanced than can truly be explored a bluesky post. But the more you move through the world with that in mind, the more you see rich people choosing inefficiently that keeps poor people down over max profit that helps the poor.

it is my genuine belief that if you offered elon musk the choice between everyone having what he has, or everyone, including him, be poor, but he gets to be the wealthiest poor person in the world, he would pick the latter.

Study after study shows things higher wages, unions, shorter work weeks, social wellfare, etc increase overall productivity and strengthen economies. They know this. They don't do things that would make more $ but help the average person because they want you to have less more than they want more.

Why? They have plenty. Once you become a multi-billionaire another x billion makes little difference. At that point they would rather you have less to accentuate the disparity.

That's because the ultra rich wants the most disparity possible more than the most wealth possible. Time and time again they choose the thing that will be less profitable, but fuck over poor people more over the thing that will make them more money, but simultaneously make poor people better off.

benevolence in this sense was meant to refer to the idea that as a structural force the affini act with kind intent (from their own perspective), not that they are morally good.

this is something we've been hearing a lot lately and we're possibly going to reassess how we present the idea of the affini being "benevolent" as the idea wasn't meant to be "they're the good guys" and instead "they are being genuine when they say they want to make you happy"