Well, that's because most elections, they're the only ones running who make even a remotely credible effort to attract votes.

Well, I'd love to drop things like huge subsidies for large businesses that result in them being in a better position to charge higher prices, but apparently the Republicans aren't ready to consider that. :)

We've done it before in a booming economy, and survived... and the real threat is that the same people will use the same terrorist tactics on the debt ceiling, which really would be pretty catastrophic.

The problem is, if you are paying them as much as you can afford on bills that are 20x your likely annual income, you are never gonna be able to do anything else. No savings, no investment.

Oh, sure. And we had prosperous booms without computers, too. That people succeeded without something isn't evidence that having it won't help them.

I didn't even really understand entirely what was bugging me at the time, it wasn't until a friend pointed it out that it became more clear. She's more alert to the details of agency questions.

In FF14, I had a thing where I had a quest to "go tell some guy in a crowded bar that you did a thing", and it had the visual effects for "warning, you're about to be in a huge fight". Of course, what happens is I tell the guy, who is happy, and nothing at all happens, and then there is a disturbance outside and my character automatically runs out, witnesses a confrontation between some people, and ends up taking a side in their battle. Then there's a fight where I am automatically placed on one side of that fight. After that, my character goes back to whatever was previously going on.

I don't get the option of not joining this random unrelated fight.
I don't get the option of, say, interacting further with the poor girl I just defended against thugs, either.

And that's sort of frustrating, because it's great storytelling for the story of a specific character that may not be the one I wanted to create...

Myst's issues were more subtle, but more totally pervasive. I very rarely knew what would happen when I clicked on something.

Did you read all the remarks, rather than just the summary? Because it doesn't seem to me that you did.

And you're right, there's no requirement that their beliefs and values represent anyone else's. Or that anyone else buy their pasta.

Well, "tolerance" which includes saying that people shouldn't be allowed to adopt kids isn't particularly tolerant, and is very bad for society as a whole. We all suffer from kids not getting good homes, and there are more kids needing adoption than there are adoptive families. Preventing gay people from adopting would be bad for everyone, so opposing gay couples adopting is hostile to everyone.

Long story short: People react very strongly to things being unfamiliar or strange. Things you see at least occasionally are much less threatening. If occasional ads include gay couples, then people are a lot more likely to be tolerant of gays and inclined to think gays should get the same basic legal protections other people do. If there are no gay couples on TV, then people are a lot less likely to be tolerant of gays. This is just very basic low-level wiring in the brain; we distrust unfamiliar things, the same way just about all other animals do. And that means that there is significant social impact from having advertisements include, or not-include, particular recognizable classes of people.

Of course, the advertising thing might not have sunk him; it was the adoption thing that sealed the deal.

Probably because they're not relevant to the story. We have technology right now to prevent male or female babies; that doesn't mean that this should be a prominent part of any story about sexism. ("And a reminder, the only reason women are getting treated this way is that people keep having girl babies, despite technology allowing us to detect them very early and abort them.")

Not all phobia is "fear" in the straightforward way. No one worries that spraying materials with scotchguard makes them "afraid" of water.

Secondly... While many anti-gays aren't really exhibiting phobic behavior, some are. Go browse Not Always Right for a while, and look at some of the people who start freaking out and screaming because a store has a gay clerk. That's reasonably categorized as phobia-like.

The first amendment doesn't, really. All the first amendment covers is Congress making laws. That said, the principle of free speech says that they should not be threatened with violence. ... That said, I am pretty suspicious that there's a lot more people saying they were threatened than are actually threatened, because I've never in my life met one of these people who threatens people with violence, and I've met lots of people who said completely different things, then got accused of threatening people with violence. Because there's a lot of people who are pretty clear on the fact that they can say they got threatened and their core demographic will accept it as a given because of course the mean old liberals are actually violently oppressive.

You haven't really established that this is the case at all. I got told by a shrink that I was obviously not autistic, and I went on muddling along for a few more years before realizing that he was almost certainly unqualified; went and saw a specialist, and got a lot more information. And one of the things I've gotten, from hanging around with autistics, is that there's a whole heck of a lot of variance, and autistic people don't always react or act the same way.

So, moral of the story, some guy who comes into it overtly hostile and dismissive and hasn't got any relevant qualifications or skills can basically disregard anything. Well-illustrated!

(And yes, I'm familiar with such disorders, and no, that's not "unusual to the point of it being near impossible". That's just you not knowing, at all, what you're talking about.)

I think it's more complex than that. Autism and sociopathy are wildly different. Sociopaths don't feel sorry even after getting caught, although they may regret getting caught. Autistics may fail to evaluate other people's emotions or responses even in places where you'd expect "everyone" to, but are not necessarily going to be unconcerned once they do notice or get told.

It was an analogy, which means the parallels don't have to be exact, it's just there to communicate a concept.