Great write up. It bothers me a lot when I see people suggest that supporting Ukraine is imperialist and therefore bad, and that Russia's aggression should simply be accepted. Judging the actions of any entity based on what category you can put it into is dumb as hell when you can judge it on its merit instead.

Its certainly harder to explain over text since we can't hear your tone. Do you put in a lot of effort when you speak ? Does talking come naturally, or do you spend a lot of energy trying to be polite ?

well if I had said that I’d mean it manipulatively

Without knowing exactly what you said its hard to know if this reflects more on your friend than you. Apologizing should be fine, so the issue is either how you apologized or your friend. Also a two day argument is a long argument. Who kept it going? Who would bring it up first?

Edit: I see in one comment that you are autistic. Have you talked to your friends and family about what this means in a conversation ? At some point its on them, honestly.

One possibility is that it's how you phrase things? Everything seems fine here but people tend to write and speak differently, so just throwing out a possibility here.

I used to say essentially "not my fault" a lot as a kid (it was a kind of deflection that I resorted to instead of actually dealing with stuff), and my mom called me out on it once, which caused a huge shift in how i thought about communication from then on. See, sometimes it was my fault, and other times it wasn't, but that doesn't really matter a lot in a conversation, so I started kinda taking a mental step back to consider what I was about to say would actually accomplish in the conversation, or how it might be perceived by others, and it became clear to me that I had some other bad conversational habits as well that escalated situations when they didn't need to.

It might not be easy to detect all of them at once, but just getting into the mindset of thinking about this stuff might help. Hopefully this technique isn't why I'm anxious these days :P

Edit: Also some subjects are sore as you experienced with your unemployed friend, so having this habit of taking a step back might have helped with realizing that in advance. It's not always doable of course, you can't know everything.

and download F:NV

Only after I've installed linux and Celeste 😈

Oi, just a heads up as you don't seem to use it in a negative way, but

slur

tranny

is considered a slur these days. Calling someone trans or transgendered is preferred.

OP and me are venting, we are well aware that the issues can be mitigated to some extent. Also, this post is literally about someone putting hateful messages in their username and profile picture, hiding your identity won't exactly help then :(

Constant harassment? ... a single infraction is enough to remove internet strangers forever.

I think maybe you don't quite understand, doesn't matter how many we block there is always one more phobe just around the corner, and being attacked by these people can be quite taxing emotionally in the long run.

I reported their account and a couple of other ones, hopefully steam will do something eventually.

Direct action is an easy way to end up in jail

I get you. It's hard to organize something that can't be shut down easily, and honestly if it can be it might not be worth it. I see a lot of americans and sadly people where I live as well who underestimate the importance of unions in a functional democracy as the most viable way to force the government and businesses to listen.

Voting downballot but making no choice for president sends a very clear signal.

After the election maybe? That seems rather late to me. Direct action and building up third party alternatives seems to be the best long term courses of action. If I were american I would work towards unionizing as many people as possible, report that I won't vote democrat, and then vote democrat unless a third party has a chance of winning in my state.

I disagree on principle. Voting for a lesser evil is still voting to perpetuate evil. At best, it maintains an intolerable status quo, and it comes from a fear of the radical change that we know is sorely needed. “Lesser evilism” is conservatism.

I disagree. Voting is currently not a means of meaningful change in the US (at least for the left), which is why I refer to it as damage control. You are correct however if all people do politically is vote.

I live in a very small town so if I want vegetarian here we're talking a margarita pizza or eggs on toast :P

That said I've mostly cut dairy out of my diet, but I don't remember to check the ingredients of everything I eat so who knows how plant based I am these days. Probably some dairy based butter in some of the things I buy.

I have a lot of stomach issues and unfortunately react somewhat to oat milk, but almond milk (which has other climate issues to my knowledge) and coconut based milk is working very well for me.

Vegetarian with ADHD (among other things) here! I started the same way many years ago, by cutting out red meat and pork, and then reducing meat consumption until I realized I had been eating like a vegetarian for a week and then committing.

For me it was about what was and wasn't doable. I struggle with motivation a lot, and bothering to cook a proper meal everyday or sit down and do proper research into what constitutes a healthy diet isn't something I can just make myself do.

Honestly if this is about CO2 emissions, which it originally was for me, then cutting meat by 90% or whatever is almost as good as going vegetarian and will be way easier in terms of nutrition.