themeatbridge

Oh I completely agree with you, and I don’t begrudge anyone who’s willing to do what they have to do to keep their jobs. My point is just that fascists don’t play fair. They won’t put their hands on their hips and smirk disapprovingly at malicious compliance. They will keep stepping on your neck until you do exactly what they want without question. You know that when they say the Bible, they of course mean their interpretation of their version of a Bible of their choosing. They aren’t going to permit debate on the topic.

Malicious compliance is still compliance. If you concede this hill, the next one will be a requirement to teach the Bible as historical truth. And then it will be to prevent teaching actual science.

Agreed. But it still encourages strategic voting and discourages third-party spoilers. It’s fptp with extra steps, and it gets worse the more candidates you have. If you don’t pick a frontrunner first or second, there’s a chance your vote isn’t counted at all.

Unfortunately, RCV doesn’t end the two party system. It’s better than what we have, but only marginally. My hope is that when voters complain about it, the next step is not to repeal RCV but to evolve into Star voting.

If you lived through the Trump presidency, and you are unsure you want another one, you’re either a closeted bigot who doesn’t want to admit you want Trump, or you’re a moron.

The problem is that it’s next to impossible for a party to replace an incumbent president on the ticket without a fight. And the Democrats don’t have time for a fight right now.

The logical choice would be the VP, but Harris is less popular than Biden with all his flaws. She gets tagged with all of his negatives plus the misogyny and racism pervasive among voters who would vote for Putin before they vote for a minority or a woman. If she had a more progressive record as a politician, maybe she could bring new, young voters to the table.

If the DNC and Biden wanted Harris to be the candidate, the time to step aside was two years ago. That would have given Harris the opportunity to establish herself as a leader worth following. The racists and the misogynists have less ammo if she’s already doing the job well. Of course, that assumes she would have done well.

And then we could have had a legitimate primary. If Harris was failing, it would have been easier to run against an incumbent who was not elected and had a low approval rating. The best candidate could have risen to the top, introduced themselves to American voters, and built a political machine capable of beating Trump in the general election.

Biden didn’t want to do that, so now he must win. There isn’t another option.

Do vultures do something other than what other birds do? Because most birds regurgitate food for the chicks to eat.

I always kind of hated that bit, because it seemed so unrealistic. And here we are.

Life imitates art.

It’s amazing to me that “he sounds feeble” is worse than “everything he said wasn’t true.”

It actually doesn’t have to be a nightmare for anyone. The rich can have perfectly pleasant lives while everyone is provided for. It’s just not the most profitable situation for the rich. To have their best life, everyone else must be miserable.

One guy is slightly hoarse.

The other is a delusional fascist.

So basically both sides the same.

Where do you think we are?

Sure, but you’re equivocating two things that aren’t the same. Until you’ve written infinity 9s, you haven’t written the number yet. Once you do, the number you will have written will be exactly the number 1, because they are exactly the same. The difference between all the nines you could write in one thousand lifetimes and 0.999… is like the difference between a cup of sand and all of spacetime.

Or think of it another way. Forget infinity for a moment. Think of 0.999… as all the nines. All of them contained in the number 1. There’s always one more, right? No, there isn’t, because 1 contains all of them. There are no more nines not included in the number 1. That’s why they are identical.

They don’t need to win the legal battles. Just getting to court is their victory.

So… we’re doomed?

Maybe, but there is a significant Jewish population in New York for whom no other issues matter. So you’d have to be an excellent politician to sell that line after you’ve already used the “Z” word. Bowman is not an excellent politician. He seems like a decent human being, in over his head and unprepared to defend his positions from all sides. I wish he was better, because we need more progressives in leadership positions, and the centrists will use this to continue to sell the line that progressives can’t win elections.

It is physically equal to 1. Infinity goes on forever, and so there is no physical difference.

It’s not that it makes almost no difference. There is no difference because the values are identical. There is no infinity between the two values.

In a manner of speaking, yes.

See, the church of Scientology cloned Tom years ago, and rolls out a new “stunt double” for each movie to make sure that his productions are done on time. If one Tom falls during a stunt, a new one is released.

Unfortunately, due to a clerical error, the original Tom was mislabelled before being put back in his tank, so it’s unclear which one was the first. This led to several Toms being accidentally left out, allowing this picture to be taken and forcing the church to pretend that they are different people and give them each a fake identity under which to live out their natural lives.

Except it isn’t infinitesimally smaller at all. 0.999… is exactly 1, not at all less than 1. That’s the power of infinity. If you wanted to make a wooden board exactly 0.999… m long, you would need to make a board exactly 1 m long (which presents its own challenges).

He doesn’t strike me as a particularly thoughtful or talented politician, but the situation in Gaza is particularly fraught. Nuance doesn’t fit into a campaign slogan, and you’d have to be better at this to thread the needle between Zionism and anti-Semitism. I’m certain he would have preferred to make the primary about domestic issues, but his opponent wanted to make it about Israel/Palestine.