Takios

I play on a smaller galaxy size and have a beefy computer.

It's a mix of strategy and role-playing. Sure if you want to survive on higher difficulties, you probably need a build that is meta. But on medium difficulties or lower you can pretty much roleplay your empire as you like and there's many mechanics in the game that help with this. Your empire can be a democratic haven for all, a mega corporation, a machine hivemind forcefully assimilating organics into its network...and much more.

There's also a great exploration aspect of the game. Your exploration vessels regularly find anomalies that tell a neat little story and provide bonuses to your empire (which can range from a small resource bonus to making one of your leaders immortal).

Of course, there's also the power fantasy. You start with just one planet, but you will quickly expand throughout the galaxy. You can then wage war against other empires, build a federation together with them or convince the galactic community to crown you as Emperor of the entire galaxy. But the game also regularly throws adversaries at you if the AI empires are starting to become no match for you, may it be one of the space fauna suddenly becoming extremely hostile or a Great Khan uniting a marauder horde and demanding everyone to become their vassal.

It is also rare that a bad outcome leads to a straight loss. Losing a war (usually) does not doom your empire but you only lose a bit of territory or get vassalized, both giving you ample opportunities to build up your strength again or make allies to stand together against an enemy.

Stellaris. I'm almost at 1400 hours in the game and while I now play it a lot less often than in the first 1000 hours, I still get the itch to play it again a few times a year.

Barrier of entry is marginally lower. With mastodon you'll have to make a decision on what instance you're creating your account. With Bluesky there's just Bluesky.

Trump and Vance hold no actual power. Musk is now the shadow president of the USA.

That's been going on since 10 already at least.

"perhaps" "I think"

In short you've got no clue.

In authoritarian environments, any compassion you show the declared enemy is a grave offense and needs to be punished severely.

Exactly, the moment things cost real money in the game, the design of the game changes to increase likelihood of spending. Guild Wars 2 e.g. sells increased inventory space..and it fills your inventory with so many crap items that you'll constantly be managing your inventory without the extra space.

This person is a danger.

4chan is comprised of different boards. When you hear about 4chan, it is most likely from the /b Board which is the "anything goes" board with pretty much zero moderation. Other boards are better.

The russian soldiers are in an awful predicament in this war. But they are still the aggressors and Ukraine has the right (obligation even, seeing what Russia tends to do to civilian population it conquers) to defend itself against them..and as awful as these weapons are, they have not been used in an illegal way here according to international law (something that Russia doesn't give a flying fuck about, btw.).
Personally, I don't see a moral issue here though I of course would prefer if noone had to die of which only happens in the case of Putin withdrawing his troops right now.