I liked the character’s from Project Hail Mary perspective. The fact that we experience less time the closer we are to the speed of light is almost like an invitation to explore the stars.

Another things that gets me is the time experienced by black holes. We would think of the black hole at the center of the galaxy as some enduring, permanent thing, but with so much gravity, from the black hole’s perspective it may only exist for a fraction of a second.

Political parties are inevitable with fptp elections. It will always come down to 2 candidates. Any 3rd candidate will only split the vote with whoever is most similar. People tend to naturally organize themselves into groups based on who they agree with most. I don’t know if its possible to get rid of political parties all together but having more than 2 would be an improvement. The only way to do that is to change our elections. Either ranked-choice voting or runoffs when no one gets more than half the votes could allow for people to vote 3rd party without throwing away their votes.

I saw a theory the other day that there was no tip from an McDonald’s employee. The authorities might’ve used some illegal surveillance to find him and just said it was a tip from an employee to avoid acknowledging that.

If only the media would cover epstein the way they covered this…

I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying here, but yes there are lots of oppressed people all over the world. There are lots of people fighting for a better world. I just meant to plead to the ones who are not. Authoritarians have power because a not insignificant amount of people support or at least tolerate them. I used to think that everyone could agree that anyone who wants to be a dictator should be held far away from positions of power, but now there are too many people that tolerate it when their leaders go too far.

Well if we are able to get out of this shitshow and get competent people in charge again maybe we can use whatever loophole they use for this to enact some actual gun regulations.

That’s a little bit of a different issue. Not so much a dictator taking power from within but an invading neighbor. My appeal would be to the Israelis. Netanyahu should have been gone a long time ago. If I remember right he was under a lot of pressure before Oct 7.

Every country is a democracy in a sense. Its just a matter of the amount of effort needed for the people to make their voices heard. Under dictatorships, to make your voices heard, it usually requires a significant threat of violence. Its much more stable in the long term to just have elections. Not fighting for a better government is, in a sense, allowing that dictatorship to continue.

The fact that they are serious just shows how dumb they really are. We are not even close to that. The stress from that many transplants would probably reduce life expectancy. But let’s just imagine it works, you would still have to deal with brain degeneration and dementia. These are not serious people. Can we please stop allowing arrogant psychopaths to take top positions of power

Why does she have to sue? He doesn’t have the authority, so she hasn’t actually been fired. Can’t she just ignore it and keep going to work? Its like if a random coworker said they’re firing you.

Any law against gerrymandering passed by this congress will only target democrat states. I live in Missouri, a state completely run by Republicans, and in the last decade we have passed referendums on independent redistricting only for us to pass another referendum that gave the authority back to the governor before any independent redistricting could happen. We also recently had a referendum on banning ranked-choice voting. It had a provision that said only citizens can vote, something that was already a law, but because this state is full of fox news addicted morons it passed. Republicans have no interest in improving elections. They’d get rid of them entirely if they could, which they’ll be able to soon the way things are going.

The comment I responded to is a picture of Washington.

Washington reluctantly became president and then left after two terms, so no I don’t think using the presidency for tyranny was what he had in mind.

Everything you just said describes the behavior of irresponsible kids. I not arguing that we should stop kids from doing all that. I agree that it is a part of growing up. I’m arguing that they should not be able to sign legal contracts, such as marriage, that will have a major impact on their lives without truly understanding it. That’s the best case scenario. There are much worse people who take advantage of such lax laws.

So I am. In my opinion people should wait even longer than that. I remember when I was 18. I was an idiot just starting to learn about how to live in the world, and I’d say a significant percentage of the people my age were more reckless than even me. Any big decision one has to make at that age is at best uninformed.

Sure. I slammed anyone who thinks kids are mature enough to marry. There’s plenty of states here in the US that fit the bill too.

Its not really a culture issue though. In the US we decided on 18 because that’s the age it is believed that people can make decisions for themselves. Personally I think it should probably be higher. In other countries that have a lower age of consent don’t do it because they think the kids are mature enough to make that decision. They do it because they view the kids as similar to slaves who have to do what they are told. If it is a culture thing, then should culture be enforced through threat of death i.e. honor killings? They just use culture as an excuse to be shitty.

They don’t raise the standard of living for the poor because they view labor as a commodity. If we made things less difficult for the poor then the price of labor will go up because people wouldn’t be as desperate. Their goal is to make the price of labor as low as possible.

I remember back when Trump got caught with all those classified docs there was a story about him showing off some about submarines to a rich Australian dude. There was a comment about how everyone in the navy knows that you do not talk about subs. Everything about them is top secret, and if it were anyone else there would be very severe consequences.

Wasn’t it a big thing when the white house was first built that they didn’t want it to be a palace? They wanted to make it clear that it was not meant for a king.