This is the advice I usually give. I hate the concept of smart TVs, but I’m not willing to spend more when I can just ensure my Hisense U8K never connects to the internet. It’s a gorgeous and completely affordable display for the quality it provides, and there are no relevant features that are unavailable because it’s offline.

For real. Academics are some of the most prolific pirates I’ve ever met. Usually out of necessity because we don’t pay them reasonably or value their work.

As I said in the next sentence, “it’s highly unlikely, but you know we’re real people here, with real thoughts and ideas.” Lemmy is the only social media I use, period. I don’t contribute to any other social media, so it’s perhaps more likely than you’re thinking, but still, like I said, highly unlikely. Why take the chance?

This comes across as an extremely heavy-handed way of controlling the conversation. I get wanting to keep things civil, but taking a massive world-changing subject completely off the table, a subject that many many many of us clearly want to talk through, is not a reasonable response in my opinion.

Who’s to say some random comment in a random post on the presidential election doesn’t come up with some incredible idea or solution? It’s highly unlikely, but you know we’re real people here, with real thoughts and ideas. You never know where that one good idea will come from, but it definitely won’t be coming from here if you shut down the whole conversation. I understand this is your instance, and you can do what you want with it, but this is a disappointing response to a very live issue.