jwiggler

Nah, you haven’t, I appreciate that

I definitely agree with all that. I think its highly highly unlikely Biden steps aside. I guess I was trying to get at why OP thinks it’s so silly that a person would think that another candidate has a better shot of beating Trump.

You’re technically right there, but I think you know what I mean: the OPs position is that if any other candidate replaced Biden, they will not have a chance of beating Trump.

Oops, I didn’t see that they had a weighted average there, I literally just counted the spread and divided. Well that’s better than I thought, but I’m still just not feeling good about November.

You can laugh me off, but I think even the fact that there are mainstream publications coming out with articles about the logistics of replacing Biden shows it’s, while not probably in any sense, still a thing on many people’s minds. I still empathize with those people and don’t think they’re laughable. But thank you for correcting me.

I mean, regardless of whether you personally believe Biden is doing well as President, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the general population’s disposition toward him. And also, I just averaged the spread of each general election poll listed on that site, all of which have Trump leading.The number came out to 4.63%. That’s kinda a far cry from 1.5% that you mentioned.

Let me be clear. I do not want Trump to win. Please do not put that in my mouth. Thinking he will win and actively hoping and voting for him are not the same. I do not want to be right in my feeling that he will win.

Why try something that’s never been done before? Well, I think Trump broke politics already. We are already in unprecedented territory regarding presidential power, this particular election being between two previous Presidents, etc, so I personally don’t think the “established norm” argument holds too much water. And then you have my other arguments: The polls aren’t looking good, and we just came off a terrible debate performance.

This isn’t all to say another candidate would definitely beat Trump, or that I even think it’s a good idea to get someone else in there. But I don’t think it’s a silly or idiotic to want that, as it seems you’re making it out. I can empathize with people who feel that way, because I am also frustrated with having to choose Biden.

I was just wondering why you think its so silly, and I guess the answer is, “because it’s never been done before.” Thanks for responding.

Would you mind elaborating on this? Polls don’t favor Biden right now and obviously his debate performance was really REALLY bad. I mean, if he’s the nominee, you gotta vote for him, but I’m curious why you think it’s so crazy that a person would feel like another Democratic nominee has a better shot. Especially considering how dissatisfied almost everyone in the country is regarding the two choices we have before us, and how often the explanation of that dissatisfaction ends up being because of age.

I think it’s a pretty reasonable take to want someone other than Biden to run, considering those things I mentioned. Even if you personally think another candidate besides Biden kills the chances of us beating Trump, why do you think it’s so absurd of a position to want someone to take Bidens place?

It seems right now your position, that Biden is the only chance we have against Trump, is the one that is kinda illogical, but I’m curious what your take on that is because there’s a chance I’m not accounting for something big, like the logistics of getting a replacement candidate in there and publicized.

I discovered Mastodon the night the Wagner group started marching toward Moscow, and was seeing live updates. From telegram or something. That was crazy.

The top comment on this thread contains a conversation (argument) about Chomsky’s view on the term “genocide,” as well as his verbiage discussing Serbian-run concentration camps.

I listened to Understanding Power fairly recently and it definitely changed my outlook and broke me out of the lull of neoliberal self-satisfaction, and helped introduce me to other leftist writers. So I’m a fan of Chomsky’s, but it doesn’t sound like he had that good of a take on the Bosnian genocide. He seems to only reserve the word genocide for the Holocaust so as to keep its significance, and despite supporting a UN fact-finding commission that did find Serbia was running concentration camps, he refers to said camps as “refugee camps,” instead, and seems to infer people had the freedom to stay or leave as they please (even if this was technically true, I doubt it was practically true).

So, not a good look for him, even though he had other viewpoints that I’ve been strongly influenced by.

Have you happened to read the book? He has a chapter dedicated to his decision to call it technofeudalism rather than capitalism, hypercapitalism, technocapitalism, etc. Basically he’s saying profits have been decoupled from a company’s value, and that it’s no longer about creating a product to exchange for profit (which, in his words, are beholden to market competition) but instead about extracting rent (which is not beholden to competition – his example is while a landowner’s neighbors increase the values of their properties, the landowner’s property value also increases).

Anyways he describes Amazon, Apple store, Google Play, cloud service providers, as fiefdoms that collect rent from actual producers of products (physical goods, but also applications), and don’t actually produce anything, themselves, besides access to customers, while also extracting value from users of their technologies through personal information. They’re effectively leasing consumer attention in the same way landowners leased their lands to workers.

It sounds pretty accurate to me, but I haven’t had much time to chew on it. What’s your take on that idea?

Actually, you’re not being clear, at all. The article you linked, yourself, notes that the 37 murdered political candidates were local government candidates murdered between September and May, not national candidates. Far cry from your insinuation that 37 of Claudia Sheinbaum’s political opponents were murdered so she could win by the hands of the cartels.

That last section of the article you highlighted makes me think about Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. Imagine if everyone going to bullshit meetings actually did something productive for society, or did something that they themselves found fulfilling. Makes me sad.

Sorry, buy-it-for-life

I kinda like the idea of a phone that is usually small, but I can make big by unfolding it if I want to. But I do agree that the fewer moving parts, the sturdier and more BIFL. It’s just that BIFL is not really attainable anyways in the current state of the phone market due to software support obsoletion.

I’d like to see a small eink phone or the tiny matchbook from Her.

“You are shredding the UN charter…with your own hands.”

As he shreds the UN charter…with his own hands.

I don’t know, unfortunately. GF watched it on Netflix while she was in Portugal. Then we watched it together in the States, by means of the high seas. Matey.

My GF recently introduced my to a show called Please Like Me. It’s out of Australia from a comedian named Josh Thomas.

Don’t look at the IMDB score or anything like that – this show is pure art. It’s got a lot of heart and the cinematography is better than it has any right to be.

Please Like Me is honestly better than Fleabag in that it is a dramedy that covers real issues, but it resolves more satisfyingly and feels more grounded in reality. It is so good and nobody has heard of it.

I love Ted Lasso season 1, and season 2 to an extent is also very good, but it kinda lost its footing in season 3, IMO.

The longer episodes are not as tight, writing-wise, and the story suffers a quite a bit because of it. Still a good show, but it went from “This might be one of the best shows I’ve ever seen,” to “Yeah it’s not bad, but…”

But the person above said

While technically true for some but not all places, in reality it’s just not a practical thing anymore as it has been displaced by motorized transportation and social media being where 99% of the people are, respectively.

You’re allowed to try to make people notice a website with no social media presence in the same way as you’re allowed to run for congress as an independent with a budget of the necessary registration fees plus $5.

Aren’t they pretty much saying the exact thing that you’re claiming nobody is saying? That in practice it’s still easy to create your own website, but nobody will use it because 99% of people are on social media platforms, instead

I dunno maybe I’m missing something.

I agree with you and the original guy – the web is still just a collection of interconnected computers, and it’s still open and mostly inexpensive anyone to host a website on. The trouble for the individual is the maintenance cost, especially if their site sees high traffic. But that brings us back to the idea that you’ll pretty much never see the same userbase as the large social media platforms.

This isn’t to say that the power held by Google, Meta, Snapchat, or TikTok to direct information any which way they would like doesn’t need to be dismantled. It’s just that the web is still free, in the sense that it is just a road to another computer, and you can still prop up a house with an address on that road for relatively cheap.

Hey! I’m not on the toilet.

right now…