PanGodofPanic

I got an orchie a while ago and the difference has been life changing. Still excited for the full surgery coming up.

Jets offer an extremely different range of capabilities from drones. They broadly aren't interchangable. Some highly advanced, expensive, and large drones have pushed the boundaries on this, but currently fighter jets are a largely unique asset.

I don't doubt any of that. I also don't care, because it's irrelevant to whether or not it's acceptable that he's being imprisoned for what he wrote.

...and? That's entirely irrelevant.

The main draw is that Ecuador is currently in a full scale armed conflict with cartel gangs in its Western costal regions (which the gangs started very publicly), and unfortunately, it's apparently losing. American money is already the only thing keeping the war effort funded at the moment, so some people are on board with direct military support to turn the tide as well. Obviously, we've seen more than enough reasons the US shouldn't be trusted with this, but I can understand the appeal to at least some people.

Yes, but we could be fired for it (as in, the employer openly proclaims that as the reason) without legal repercussion at the national level of law.

In their defense, sometimes that interest is "please stop slaughtering our people to grow your army of undead". In my defense, maybe they need to have more of an open mind about what "alive" truly means.

Please god no 😭

Slavs

uhhh, these ones in particular seem to be, but that's an exceedingly broad group to throw that label on. Even "Israelis" is extremely broad, though I get that that could just be a shorthand reference to their government and worst actors among their society associated.

I mean, yeah. Normally North Korea is so irrelevant to the discussion, or it would be so absurd to suggest that we're talking about them, that we can just exclude the territorial indicator when it's not relevant. We don't call Kpop "SKpop" because it's exceedingly obvious to everyone involved that Korean culture reaching outside the peninsula is almost exclusively emanating from the south. North Korea has made itself so isolated and irrelevant that we can just forget it exists in regular discussion.

While the US budget is financially in freefall, that could be remedied very easily (with a more competent administration) and won't meaningfully impede its ability to aid Ukraine. Russia, on the other hand, can be screwed by extreme expenses.

This is a good question, and unfortunately there's not a consistently good answer. Partly because we're diverse humans all experiencing our transitions and differently, and partly because it can be a touchy subject for some of us and a lot of us have had a lot of bad experiences around being noticed, which combined with not so great political environments can make a lot of us varying degrees of paranoid.

Some people (like myself) have no idea what to do with compliments period, so I wouldn't know what to do with that kind of supportive compliment either. Others might love compliments, but are terrified of being clocked (someone else recognizing we're trans when we're trying not to be noticed as such) in public, either due to personal insecurity, or due to legitimate personal safety concerns. Others know they don't pass as cis, but still don't want it acknowledged. Others would appreciate the gesture. There's just no simple "correct" way to go about it, you just kinda have to sus it out individually.

Most of the time, not saying anything you wouldn't say more or less the same to a cis person is the safest bet, at least until you have any queue from the person in question that they're open to recognition of their trans identity.