MAGA throws around all kinds of violent talk -> Democrats denounce them as a danger to democracy -> MAGA uses the denouncements as a reason for the violence

I sincerely don’t want him to get shot at any time before the election but it doesn’t make me feel bad to know that he knows there are people who want to shoot at him, especially republicans who want to shoot at him

I’m starting to feel like this says more about Ohioans than it does about Hatians

‘Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.’.

The worst to me is everyone now including a shitty bag to put the product in. Like it MAYBE makes sense to include a case for travel headphones or something but no I do not need you to include something for me to put the external SSD drive in.

And those that lied the most and covered up the most

Not to mention, Russia has been waging asymetric warfare tactics against NATO powers for years. If anything, it’s that they haven’t woken up to the nature of the conflict.

Generally I’ve heard that a five point national lead equals a win in the swing states needed to win the election.

Puts him in a tough spot though right, like he almost has to go on and say ‘no this is not happening on my watch, the people of Ohio don’t need to worry about this happening’. He’s probably really pissed and rightly so at Trump for putting this on the national stage.

Maybe that’s why it’s blue

No that’s very true, I had it look up leather repair shops not too long ago and it listed six completely fictional shops with fully fleshed out trip-advisor style blurbs for each one. It was hilariously convincing and a complete waste of my time. But it does seem like that happens less and less lately.

Yeah I told my partner about some of the stuff that goes on and her first thought was ‘they shouldn’t allow kids in religion until they’re old enough to decide for themselves’.

I’m extremely wary and nervous about how disruptive LLMs can/will be but one relief is just getting an answer directly for things instead of wading through page after page of SEO optimized BS. Just really nice when you can get a quick answer and get back to the things you want to be doing.

I suppose the AI overlords will screw that up somehow too but IMO it’s at a brief moment of usefulness.

I grew up in a sect that I like to often describe as Beer Drinkin’ Christianity because it’s really chill about most things including homosexuality and gender. It wasn’t until I had grown out of it and basically gone full agnostic that I really realized how coercive even my version of religion had been. I could go on and on but the funniest thing to me was realizing during an Abnormal Psychology 101 course in college that my Church Camp basically used every last technique they listed for brain washing. It was a fun camp and not scary in any way but yet extremely manipulative in a subversive way.

I keep thinking Bluesky might be reaching a tipping point where enough of the influential users at least have an account there and on Twitter - but somehow it just won’t come

I’m sorry I don’t follow - what do you mean by dropped my comment chain?

It’s true that Manchin and Sinema are a pain and kill a lot of things that otherwise would get through majority votes. I mean I’m no expert or anything but I sure don’t get the sense that ending the filibuster would be something that would get the necessary unanimous support from the rest of the sitting Dems. It just seems like a lot of them believe it’s there for a good reason.

The person you’re replying to basically explains this - the two “democratic” senators (Manchin/Sinema) were not reliable votes so specifically on more rightwing issues you could usually get Manchin to be #50. Sinema is batshit as far as I’m concerned so it was pretty hard to ever get her to vote with the Dems.

Republicans absolutely will do something if it benefits them. We can safely assume current filibuster rules benefit them otherwise they would have removed them themselves already. Dems do actually stand on tradition (which is why they haven’t eliminated the filibuster even though it would greatly benefit them), often to their own detriment and I would say it’s far more likely that they are actully concerned about norms (I would say overly so) when they’re hesitant to do something like impeach justices.

I thought the larger point was that they’re using plenty of sources that do not lie in the public domain. Like if I download a textbook to read for a class instead of buying it - I could be proscecuted for stealing. And they’ve downloaded and read millions of books without paying for them.