It isn’t absolute, but its rare for a politician not to be corrupt in some way. Generally to get into power, you have to be willing to put yourself above others or abuse the system. Then, once you’re in power, most systems encourage corruption, or even make it hard to avoid. Generally the more powerful the position, the worse it is. That said, just as you should never underestimate the amount of evil in the world, you shouldn’t underestimate the amount of good. Even if the system is stacked against them, some good people do manage to get through and genuinely do good things for their people.

Well, seeing as your post seemed to be much closer to an excuse to post a news article (and one that is particularly iffy sounding at that) rather than an open ended question, I can see why they would have assumed it’d be an attempt at astroterfing.

The vast majority of those machines are very rigged, with a configurable winrate. I’m guessing that machine was set to just never pay out the large prize.

I’m not educated enough to have an opinion on this, but is the EU different from other places in terms of requiring a lot of expensive campaigning to have any chance to win?

But its not even Wednesday?

Are people seriously just jumping into this routine as a means of getting fit?

I’m sure there’s someone, but its mostly just a meme. Even in the context of the show, its played as a joke.

I was going to respond with a gif but the fact that someone on a health/medical website had to write this is funnier than anything I could have found:

https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness/one-punch-man-workout-review

Purpose: Determine if you are able to harm teammates, or they are able to harm you in Counter Strike 2.

Hypothesis: Teammates are able to harm one another, although damage is decreased relative to damage against enemies.

Materials:

• 2 copies of the game Counter Strike 2
• an in-game AWP rifle

Procedure Aim at teammate’s head and click mouse.

Observations Teammate is dead.

Conclusions Friendly fire is enabled in Counter Strike 2. Further testing is required to determine if damage is decreased relative to damage against enemies.

An upvote should be for quality content/discussion. This might be a well researched comment, a good joke, or just something that leads the discussion in a meaningful or interesting way. Generally, things I think should be valued or shared. There will obviously be bias, but my opinion isn’t the basis of my decision. I try to upvote good-faith or thorough arguments I disagree with.

Downvotes are for low-quality and unhelpful content that I think shouldn’t be spread. This doesn’t have to be irrelevant or against the community rules, but often is. Things I might downvote include overused reposts, unnecessarily rude or insulting comments, low quality comments (IE someone trying to argue a well cited comment with an anecdote and nothing else), or spam.

Unfortunately, Lemmy is the only one with content that appeals to me so far (at least to my knowledge, given the near-unsearchable nature of the fediverseso far). The platforms just aren’t large enough.

Its just been my personal experience browsing, sorting by new. Generally, anything that could potentially be viewed as an ad (nonetheless a paywall) gets downvoted. For example, I used to see more art shared, and often users who included watermarks (even non-disruptive ones), or links to a patreon would be immediately downvoted. I’ve also seen YouTube creators criticized here for simply selling merch. Even just a couple days ago, I commented on the same trend, and another user quickly replied to tell me its a good thing nothing here can be monitized because money ruins everything. There are exceptions, esspecially with open source software, but these seem more the exception than the norm, in my experience.

They also often rely on commissions or supporter pages to cover costs or make a living, which Lemmy is often hostile to.