Were you asleep for the last 2 weeks they’ve been doing the same to Canada, Mexico and Europe? The question isn’t that it hurts everybody, the question is who’s next and what are you going to do about it?

What a weaksauce article, spends most of the time arguing against itself, and the problem is most of the strawman arguments it sets up to argue against actually win in my opinion. Most of its arguments follow this kind of format:

I think that 2 + 2 = 5, now I know you might hear that 2 + 2 = 4, but the only thing that says that is thousands of years of math, and we can’t assume that’s going to continue into the future because Valve made a mistake doing math once.

Finally ends with some vague hypothetical about how even though they admit Valve is pretty good today, but still it will become evil someday because grr capitalism bad.

Steam is fantastic, they’ve made mistakes yes (Australia’s gaming laws are well known to be crazy for example so that’s not completely Valve’s responsibility) but on the whole they are doing great things and making money while doing it, which is great because a successful and profitable Steam is able to continue to do great things. Making money is not a sin if they do it fairly and ethically, and they do. 30% is a bargain for what they’re providing, especially the devoted audience which they have attracted (completely legitimately), and if you don’t agree it’s worth that 30% you’re welcome to distribute your game literally anywhere else.

Screw them! We’ll build our own peertube, with blackjack, and hookers

The mature thing to do would be to tell them something like “I can see that you’re trying and I appreciate that, but I don’t know if I can like or respect you after what you did to my mom and my family. I’ll let you know if that changes but I’m not ready to have you mother me, I can and will cook my own dinner for the foreseeable future.” however be advised this could cause more hurt and lead to escalation because some people can’t handle rejection even when it’s honest and will either desperately seek approval anyway or reject you back. Given what you said about her age she may not even be emotionally mature herself.

Also you’re under no obligation to be mature about it. You’re allowed to be an asshole if you want. Cheaters and homewreckers and broken family creators are some of the worst things in the world to me. As someone who was raised in a broken home I really have little sympathy for the people who don’t understand that having children is a commitment, not just personally but to their whole relationship. They’re not just possessions you get custody of and get to drag around on your own personal life journey.

I’m not religious but I think this is one of the things that religion was trying to accomplish by making marriage such a sacred thing and divorce so restricted and children out of wedlock so disapproved of. The “nuclear” family was a secular version of the same principle. Yes, all that had unintended consequences too but if you are not prepared to raise children with a person you should not be having children with them. Yeah, “people change” but your commitments do not. That’s why they’re called commitments. If you’re not going to follow through on your commitments you’d better have some really damn good reason to be causing such lasting damage to your child. It can be justified in some cases, but I think it’s pretty rare that it actually is justified. Children deserve a stable and lasting family environment. I think that’s a big part of why foster care is generally such a disastrous failure too. How do we fix this? I don’t know, but I know it starts with the parents being responsible.

State-sponsored violence, typically.

Authoritarianism is a threat.