“Ron, who served in the military for 25 years, said the 2008 housing market crash left him “really disillusioned with the Democratic Party.”” …what? How unaware does someone have to be to say something like that? The GOP took (literally) the WH and held congress for most of the years leading up to the '08 Crash. I mean, not knowing that the GOP are the ones that led us into the Great Depression (a feat they’re about to repeat) is one thing, but this moron was alive and presumably can read during the events he is describing.

Yeah, humans would never destroy natural resources in favor of some tech fix or just kinda assume that the planet would fix itself… /s

My headcannon on the human battery thing is that the machines have core programming to make reasonable efforts to preserve human life. Designing power reactors (look how thick the cores are on the towers) with humans slapped to the side technically aligns with the core programming while allowing them to stick it to us apes. It’s also why the attack on Zion was one tentacle abductor machine for each human instead of dumping super plague down the hole and calling it a day.

Good summary. What’s wild to me is reading through this and pondering the frequency of these events. “Someone made an arrogant/stupid business decision” multiple times a day every day. “Someone tried to weasel out and was told that was stupid” also every day. “Went ahead with the plan anyway” - very frequent. “Tried to burn it all down” - all too often. Then we get to the turn where the wronged actually got a fair day in court- far, far less often. Then the villain of our story with $250M on the line somehow didn’t lawyer up enough to get the best justice money can buy - almost seems like fiction at this point and beyond.

Wait, you mean Dr. Feynman didn’t speak extensively on the healing power of crystals? /s It’s really super-duper-cool that we’ve created a system of zero platform accountability.

There is stupid, and there is trust Trump to pay you as a contractor with the backup plan to sue the federal government if it goes bad.

Nope. There are many proportional government systems in the world that work just fine. Ranked choice makes zero sense in this context. Assuming everyone will be tactical is cute. The considerable leap in logic to the Abilene effect is… where to begin? First, we already have coalitions they just form before the election, but the voters are NOT deciding the power balance at the DNC/RNC. Second, nothing is forced and Abilene Effect is not a state of being. Third, as Larry David said “A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied”.

We have local and state governments. Focusing on these minor differences at the federal level made less and less sense with the industrial revolution, rail, telegraph, highway system, internet. I’m not sure where exactly we crossed over from valid governance to outdated system to absurd, but we’re definitely there.

Also, these differences tend to be overblown which is why people, politicians speak about them in the vaguest of terms. Yes, when comparing a large city to hill people there might be some differences (though again, far less than historically). However, we’re at the federal level and big city to big city and hill people to hill people it’s all more or less Anywhere, USA.

Wow, if you don’t read what I say and just reduce it to something else, I sure do sound silly. Congrats on your smug internet points.

The FF tried that and it immediately failed, leaving us with a system ill equipped to handle political parties.

“Let’s keep all the existing problems slightly repackaged and create new ones.” -VP at a Think Tank

No wonder we’re in so much trouble. With friends like this who needs enemies. Better solution:

No more geographic attachment for the House. Proportional representation time. In 1776, local concerns were much more distinct. Now, Anywhere USA is everywhere. Plus, Senators are still bound to states for people who worry about that. Instead, parties win seats based on a percentage of the vote they receive and can assign members (which they do already, just with more steps) as they see fit. Gerrymandering solved, also we just broke the terrible de facto 2 party system.

I like AOC. I would vote for AOC. AOC will not win POTUS. We’re tried this twice already, and a woman who has had years of non-stop character assassination attempts lobbed at her is not going to win. It’s terrible that sexism and lies play such a big role, but that’s where we are as a nation. Dems had the right idea in 2020 setting up the first woman president via VP. Then they did the worst job possible of handling any potential transition, because of course they did.

No. My hypothetical statement concerning human methane release comparing different food production was meant to be taken as a bold new era of forced rice eating for everyone always forever. We’ll make it a crime not to have rice in your mouth unless you’re asleep or have a doctor’s note.

Yes. Roughly 1:5 calories consumed by humanity are rice, so based on the above chart we could, hypothetically, make all calories rice without increasing total methane. Though, it’s worth noting, the “replacing cattle calories” part of that would be less than a 1% increase in rice’s methane footprint resulting in a 30% overall reduction. Reclaiming several billion acres of cattle land would just be icing.

Cool chart, but as other have noted it’s more than a little misleading without context. Rice accounts for about 10X more of humanity’s total caloric intake than beef. Weighted as such, Rice becomes a lot less significant.

He already did that. Now it appears as though he is aiming to be the last.

I would like to believe you are correct, but all I’ve seen is some sternly worded letters and people hanging out in the park with signs. Neither of these is much of a resistance. No answer to Project 2025. Nothing but a death by inches defensive approach politically. The Democrats selling out voters at every turn and calling it decorum or similar. It certainly looks like we’re cooked.

No wonder Democrats lose. The inclusion question and the GQPedos targeting groups is the easiest fix in the history of fixes, but Dems keep getting it wronger and wronger. The answer is not to make more exhaustive lists of the groups they want to help, which invariably leaves people out, it’s to say “everyone”. Any stupid questions about [insert targeted minority group], answer “everyone should feel and be safe”. This is an easy fix and they’ll taking 18 months to wiff on the answer? We’re in trouble.

Geez, a person would have to think for like 2, maybe even 5 seconds to forsee how this plays out. Instead of buying apples from the orchard, we’ll be buying apples from the local apple thieves. Hey, why are there no more apples?

Do not adjust the gas tax for 33 years, do not listen to all the civil engineers telling you heavy vehicles do almost all road damage, and propose a tax with no method of enforcement. Brilliant leadership out of DC.

Good stuff. One small note: I’m not sure how useful the distinction of “Chinese state-sponsored companies” is in recent history when comparing to the US, let alone now. The US has retooled much of federal research engine toward promoting US AI. Even fired the NSB (among many other long standing, expert driven advisory boards) to replace it with a bunch of tech baron stooges. States are offering unprecedented payouts to data centers. The AI hyperscalers already have a bailout all but guaranteed when the bubble pops. It’s all state-sponsored, just with extra steps.