I don't think it's a waste of time. Even if I can't convince him specifically, there are other people reading these posts. If someone came to this thread who was less sure, and I can change their mind, that's good enough for me.
KoboldCoterie
Well, I'm not a single-issue voter.
I'm not rewarding them for anything, but I accept that it's possible to oppose one policy a politician has, even a very important one, and at the same time support a lot of other policies they have, while also vehemently opposing almost all policies that their opponent supports, and make my choice based on that information.
Based on this post, you seem to be a single-issue voter, though, so I'm trying to understand what you're hoping the outcome is. You acknowledge that a vote that supports Trump, even indirectly, is not helping the people of Gaza, so why would you vote against your own self-interests? What's your goal?
If your goal is to show opposition to what's happening in Gaza, there's much more effective ways to do that. Get out there and protest - the protests at the DNC are getting a lot of news coverage, that's where your activism could actually make a difference. Not here.
A normally blue voter voting 3rd party is indirectly helping Trump win the election. Do you think Trump's Israel policy is going to be better than Harris's?
So, what course of action are you proposing? Vote Trump? Vote 3rd party? Don't vote?
What's your intended / expected outcome?
Oh, we can see post / comment count, but that's a meaningless statistic, no? The whole point of karma - the whole thing that makes karma toxic - is that it's based on farming upvotes; it's why Reddit is a cesspool of low-effort meme comments that're engineered to gather those upvotes. Post / comment numbers can't really be hidden anyway, unless you're also proposing hiding a user's comment history... you could get a quick rough total just by checking how many pages of posts and comments there were and doing some quick multiplication.
This might just be a feature specific to the app you're using; it isn't displayed publicly on web, at least on any instance I have an account with.
The only things I've found that just straight up don't work on the deck are things with draconian anti-cheat (which don't work on Linux in general, not just the deck), and very old titles that have weirdly restrictive resolutions or control schemes or whathaveyou. Some games require some tweaking (mostly around controls, occasionally changing the Proton version, which is very easy to do within Steam), but generally that's been minor. The things that don't work well are typically things you wouldn't expect to work anyway.
It's worth noting that it makes it very easy to remap controls, even for games that don't natively support controllers or don't let you remap the controls at all normally. You can also invoke an onscreen keyboard as needed (for e.g. typing names). The controller mapping is very strong; it's not limited only to single buttons; you can create custom contextual radial menus, for instance, so even games that need many more unique controls than the Deck has buttons work fine with some tweaking. You can also view / download / rate other users' control mappings for any game that has them, so you don't even need to do the work yourself.
It's a fantastic piece of hardware for gaming. Looks great, feels great. It's a bit large (won't fit in a pocket, obviously), but that shouldn't be a problem for anyone who would reasonably want a handheld gaming PC. It's not a phone or a Gameboy.
I was without a desktop PC for a week or so due to a hardware failure, and was able to do everything I needed to do on the Steam Deck (with a USB mouse/keyboard, plugged into a monitor via a dock). So it's a great piece of hardware even for that.
We went a long way from this:
despite the fact that Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaida, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Iranian regime purport to speak in the name of Islam, and commit to end Israel's existence and to the destruction of the Jewish people -- when religious bigotry rears its ugly head against Muslims, we must speak out.
(A quote from an opinion piece by Foxman) to this:
"Why can’t good people see the truth?" said Foxman. "The protesters are not for freedom of speech. They are for hate speech. They are not for peace. They are for destroying Israel."
Obviously it's only okay to speak out against bigotry against Muslims when it's not Israel that's perpetrating it, and it's only okay to speak out against Genocide when it's not Israel committing it.
I'd go so far as to say no op eds at all. If I'm paying for news, I want factual, high quality, ideally unbiased news, not some chucklefuck's opinion. I can get some chucklefuck's opinion all over the internet for free. (Case in point: You're getting it right now, for free, by reading this comment.)
Darktide is, too, if you prefer WH40k to WHFantasy.
Also all books you lend from the library should be public knowledge.
Terrible analogy. You can consume the post without anyone knowing. Voting is more akin to signing the guestbook.
If I were the victim of genocide, I wouldn't be a voter at all, because I'd be dead. However, that's kind of irrelevant - are you the victim of genocide? I'm assuming not, if you're voting in the US election. Even if you're Palestinian, your people are the victim of genocide, but unless you're in Palestine, you aren't.
That said, if you are Palestinian, I feel for you, I honestly do, and it would explain your view somewhat.
I think we can both agree that there's only two outcomes that're possible in this election: Trump wins, or Harris wins. (If you don't agree, I'd be happy to hear your third outcome.) If you truly believe there's no difference between the two of them, you need to do some research on the topic, because there are a lot of differences, even if they don't pertain to this issue specifically.
If, between the two of them, you hope Harris wins, a 3rd party vote is voting against your interests. If you hope Trump wins between the two of them, a 3rd party vote is still voting against your interests, because you're effectively taking a vote away from your preferred candidate among the two who could possibly win.
Edit to respond to your edit:
Unless you're out there protesting, or writing letters, or making phone calls, or in some way letting them know that their policy is costing them your vote, it's a useless gesture. Posting on Lemmy isn't going to change any politician's minds. It's not even going to change anyone's mind here, in all likelihood. If you actually want to make a difference, you need to make your voice heard by the people whose minds you're actually trying to change.