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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Ok sure but if Person U from a large city comes to the city council meeting and asks for help because their neighbor, Person R, is building a new garage on Person U’s property, it’s understandable that people from around the city - no matter how far afield - might express support for Person U.

    At the same time, if Person T or Person I or Person M from far across the city don’t express support, so what? What does it matter? Maybe they’re afraid of Person R. Maybe they truly don’t care. Maybe they hate person U.






  • If this is a transition from how I live now to never needing to work again, I’m guessing the first 6 months to a year would just be disbelief and slacking. Video games, TV/YouTube, etc.

    I’d probably do more of the things I do with my limited off time: gardening, taking care of family & pets, taekwondo.

    Honestly have no idea what I’d do once I became accustomed to it. Maybe travel? Participate in local politics more? Volunteer? I would definitely have a sense that I needed to do something to make my life “worth it” that I currently get from working to provide for my family.

    It’s definitely a result of conditioning, not some fundamental truth of the universe. But nearly 50 years of that conditioning is hard to break overnight.






  • I read a pretty convincing article title and subheading implying that the best use for so called “AI” would be to replace all corporate CEOs with it.

    I didn’t read the article but given how I’ve seen most CEOs behave it would probably be trivial to automate their behavior. Pursue short term profit boosts with no eye to the long term, cut workers and/or pay and/or benefits at every opportunity, attempt to deny unionization to the employees, tell the board and shareholders that everything is great, tell the employees that everything sucks, …


  • There were enough Republicans who voted for Biden in '20 to flip Georgia, which is solidly “mainstream” Republican (e.g. Reagan Republicans).

    The article’s analysis of why Hillary lost is correct, and the diagnosis of the failures of Clintonism is also correct. They fail to point out that Clinton “won” '92 because Perot pulled away enough Bush votes in enough states to swing the Electoral College to Clinton, who only got 40% of the popular vote. That “victory” somehow convinced a bunch of Democrats that conservatism without bigotry (or at least less) was the key to electoral success. Clinton got reelected with the power of incumbency and BobDole being a fairly weak candidate. That cemented the conservatism lite in the Democratic Party for a generation, many of whom are still in the party.

    It’s changing though. Biden is not a classic conservative Democrat anymore, or at least his team and policies aren’t.

    One big thing they need to do is acknowledge that the system is rigged against the non wealthy, and that small-d democracy as it exists today in America is not up to the task of helping the non wealthy. Then they need to propose ways to fix our broken democracy, ask young people for suggestions for how to fix it, and write some binding policy proposals to implement those fixes.

    Because right now Trump and the Republicans are acknowledging that our democracy is failing non wealthy (straight white Christian) people, and the solution they’re offering is to do away with it entirely in favor of Hungarian or Russian style authoritarianism.

    The first part of that message will resonate, and the “help us fix democracy” part needs to be the 2nd half. Or Trump probably will get reelected.




  • If Trump had allowed his lawyers to mount the best defense they could, he’d probably have a decent chance at complete acquittal or a hung jury.

    Instead he forced them to perform a “defense” aimed at his base and maybe some people with “soft” dislike of him and most importantly aimed at hurting his “enemies” and puffing up his ego.

    I did hear a persuasive argument that he might be acquitted on the charges related to checks he didn’t personally sign (his sons signed instead) but get convicted on the checks he did sign. From what was reported that means it’s possible the first 10 verdicts will be “not guilty” and the last 20+ will be “guilty.”

    I actually sort of hope that’s what happens because 1) it will prove the jury wasn’t out to get him and 2) he’ll be feeling really good for those first verdicts then get gut punched for the last ones.