Chess is an old game, and stalemate wasn’t always considered a draw. At other times, creating a stalemate may have been considered a win or loss or partial win, or it may have been illegal altogether. But the modern draw makes sense if you keep in mind a few things. First, the victory condition is putting the opponent’s king in checkmate (or accepting their concession). Second, exposing your king to an attack during your move is not just a blunder, it is actually an illegal move, to the point that you can’t even do it as a pass through while castling. So stalemate is a unique outcome where neither player achieves their victory condition, yet the game cannot continue, since the player who must move next has no legal moves available.

In a practical sense, stalemate offers a means of giving a player in an inferior position a means of escaping a loss by punishing the dominant player for not being able to capitalize on their lead. It helps prevent someone from being able to brute force a win by making safe moves that do little to actually progress the game, like advancing all their pawns until the game is trivial. It’s much less interesting to have the end game strategy be more about not losing one’s lead rather than extending it.

So a win requires being more than slightly ahead of an opponent. It’s worth pointing out that most high level chess games end in a draw where neither player has a sufficient lead to force a checkmate. There are other rules in modern chess that also force a draw to make sure the game is more about getting a win than just avoiding a loss. Otherwise there would be plenty of ways someone could stall forever to try to get their opponent to concede, and that’s not very interesting.

Exactly how I feel. It is certainly favoritism that undermines our justice system, but I think very few people would choose not to intervene to save a child they loved from great suffering, even if they knew their child had earned the punishment. It may be wrong, but it’s very understandable that in this case he prioritizes being a good father over being a good president.

These aren’t normal questions from strangers. Unless you have a strong reason to, you don’t assume details about people’s lives when getting to know more about them. Even the questions on the left are presumptuous and can represent a faux pas, but they’re mild enough that the recipient would likely correct any wrong premise without making it an incident. But trying to guess details reflects poorly on you if you are wrong. Mostly you would express interest in what you can see about someone as an invitation for them to share more if they care to.

But that’s just a pithy statement that someone of any political position would likely agree with. Everyone wants their government to be efficient. What does justification mean to anarchist specifically?

Yeah no problem. It’s always nice to be able to discuss something with others and be respectful even if you don’t fully agree.

I understand where the protesters are coming from and the idea that doing anything sounds better than just allowing the world to deteriorate. But I genuinely believe the less dramatic strategies do work better, even if it’s hard to feel the effects. Not too long ago, the idea that the climate change was happening and that humans were to blame was largely ignored. Now, most people acknowledge that it’s the case, and it’s a matter of making it a priority. But that’s still meaningful progress.

Anyways, thanks for the conversation and being open to push back. It’s great to see in spaces that seem more divisive than ever.

The problem is that it doesn’t help their cause in the least. If anything, it damages it. To onlookers, it makes supporters of the cause look crazy and makes them easier to dismiss by opposition.

Climate change is a very serious problem that requires billions of people working together to solve. Culturally significant objects being vandalised is a much less serious problem but it also only requires a few individuals to not do what they have done to become a non-issue.

By all means, protest polluters, badger policymakers, and argue in forums. But if you start being annoying to people equally as powerless to effect meaningful change you’re only going to make people less likely to listen to you.

Yeah maybe you’re right about Kamala’s unpopularity being reflected on Democratic congressional candidates. Everyone’s quick to point fingers about why the election results are the way they are (myself included of course), but it’s honestly hard to say which factor had the most impact.

And I feel the same way about the electoral + popular vote thing. If the Democrats are going to lose anyway, a convincing defeat can at least be a wake up call for change. And this way we don’t have to worry (much) about people claiming it was rigged.

This is clearly a silica gel shill. Do not listen to the propaganda.

The obvious answer is that it’s fast, tasty, and requires minimal effort for the consumer, especially if it’s getting delivered. But it also tends to be very cheap compared to dining out. I don’t know what you are ordering where a combo is so much but I normally get a bunch of food from Taco Bell to eat over the course of two days. I can get 2000 calories of food I like to eat for $12.

It’s true that Trump had a simple majority of votes, but you can win the electoral college and lose the popular vote; this is typically what happens for Republican victories. Kamala lost MI, PA, and WI by 3% or less. If those had flipped, she would have had her 270. You are right that third party votes wouldn’t have been enough though. The bigger problem was reduced turnout from people not voting at all.

The fact that Republicans also managed to do so well in Congress to me suggests that the problem for Democrats wasn’t really just their choice for presidential candidate. Voters really care about immigration and inflation right now, and those tend to be stronger for Republicans.

This is actually a very good comparison, thank you.

You are still participating by choosing to be a bystander to injustice. Abstaining when you can support something less bad only says to others that you do not care how bad it gets.

It is rich to criticize the Democrats for claiming moral superiority while doing nothing, as a justification for not voting for the candidate who would at least try to put a leash on what Israel is doing to Gaza.

If you want what’s best for a suffering people, you should vote for the candidate not trying to give their oppressors a blank check. All of America is responsible for what the president we chose does next.

It’s important to remember the Holocaust happened largely because people didn’t do enough to stop it. “First they came for the Communists…” and all that. The Nazis were a fairly minor party for years, but they were able to consolidate power because their opposition wouldn’t rally against them. Coalition requires compromise.

I am not happy with the Democrats either, but they were the better option. And abstaining from a decision between bad and worse doesn’t help anyone. By allowing Trump to take power again when we might have stopped it, we are all responsible for what comes next.

Honestly, there is a reasonable chance he gets assassinated this term. No one is out of reach from the sword of Damocles.

Trump is projected to win the popular vote too, the first time a Republican presidential candidate has since 2004. There are more of the other guys showing up at least.

The TvTropes links are mostly right though? It matches the third variation of Earth All Along. The linked examples match what OP is describing except not being restricted to Fantasy.

Yeah Marvel characters’ identities don’t usually feel important. Nick Fury was race swapped for the movies and it was well-received.

In the US, brokerage companies legally have to send you a Form 1099 which covers all investment income over the year. You then include this when submitting your taxes. They probably send a similar report to your government instead.

Yes, there is the possibility that self-reported cases are untrustworthy. But there is no reason to think vegan cat owners would be more biased than non-vegan cat owners.

My desired outcome is simply showing that it is possible for cats to be healthy on a vegan diet. I only need one example to show that. And there are examples of such cats in the study my link had. At least for its tested disorders, reported vegan cats on average were slightly less likely to have at least one. The majority of both groups were in fact “healthy” (having no measured disorder). The difference between the healthy rates is small enough that it can be explained by variance and other factors contributing to health besides diet, and that’s fine.

Before anyone starts, yes there could be health metrics not being measured that are relevant to the spirit of the idea being explored. But you need to measure easily quantifiable things. If you just asked “Is this cat healthy?”, you would have some owners disqualify a cat for having a cut on their paw, and others disregarding serious concerns just because there hadn’t been a diagnosis. This is as wide a scope as you can expect to explore a qualitative idea with.

Unless you are suggesting that literally every owner reporting a healthy vegan cat in the study is just lying, my claim is supported by the study. And if you thought otherwise, you invented a different claim and assigned it to me.

I genuinely want people to engage honestly with other people’s arguments made in good faith. I know Lemmy is ultimately a collection of largely anonymous internet users, but still, I expected better than what I have seen in this thread.