• 0 Posts
  • 74 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
cake
Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

help-circle
  • Yeah the thing I really can’t understand is why did the voters pick Biden in 2016? Even on the moderate side of the party there were much better choices. The democratic voters who just seem to pick the name they’re most familiar with - Clinton, Biden - those are the people who made Trump happen.

    I think the majority of Democratic voters just assume the most familiar name is the most electable in the general, but as we’ve seen that’s simply not the case. Ironically, if it feels like Democrats run the worst candidates against Trump, that’s probably not an accident. Trump makes Democratic voters pick the “safest” candidate, who turns out to be the least electable.


  • I think what it all comes down to is most people don’t really want rational debate, and don’t participate in debates in the hope of learning or even to help others learn. Most people participate in debates to feel superior/“own” the other side. The result is debates that are typically lazy, uninformative, and downright mean.

    I think all of us have a little bit of this desire for superiority in us and we need to consciously make an effort to suppress it.


  • I’d argue madness is sticking with a candidate who now has virtually zero chance of winning what should be an easy race with anyone else. Democrats have stuck their head in the sand way too many times. They did it with how unpopular Hillary was in 2016. They did it with RBG not retiring. And now They’re doing it again.

    This is the simple, undeniable truth: Biden is extremely unpopular. One could argue he might win, but that’s the best you can do. A remote, unlikely possibility that he could beat what should be the least electable person in history.







  • “Sustaining the space mission, disaster preparedness, and communications efforts across a 14-year timeline would be challenging due to budget cycles, changes in political leadership, personnel, and ever-changing world events,” the report says.

    First administration: “We must do something about the asteroid. I’ve started a plan to divert it, but it’ll take several years.”

    Second administration: “The asteroid is a corrupt globalist conspiracy. We never needed to divert asteroids in the past, why do we supposedly need to spend all your hard-earned tax dollars on this all of a sudden? I will prove my anti-elitist attitudes by cancelling the asteroid program as soon as I take office.”

    Third administration: “Yes we recognize that the asteroid is a threat, but as we saw last time there’s just too much political resistance to solving it. Let’s focus on other priorities that we can solve.”




  • Let he who has to deal with that friend who constantly sends blatantly false Xits to them throw the first stone. Honestly I feel like every social media post that makes a factual representation should come with a big flashing warning “THIS IS ALMOST CERTAINLY FALSE, LOOK IT UP BEFORE YOU REPEAT IT YOU DUMMY!”

    And I’m only like 10% joking. Given the success of language models it should be moderately trivial to train one to recognize when a factual statement is made and apply the above warning. It’s not even the children and teens I’m worried about. The people who seem to have the most trouble handling this are the adults.



  • Pressed on whether the court has an obligation to put the country on a more “moral path,” Roberts turns the tables on his questioner: “Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?” He argues instead: “That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.” Presented with the claim that America is a “Christian nation” and that the Supreme Court should be “guiding us in that path,” Roberts again disagrees, citing the perspectives of “Jewish and Muslim friends,” before asserting, “It’s not our job to do that. It’s our job to decide the cases the best we can.”

    I know John Roberts has made some terrible rulings, but he deserves credit where it’s due in that he won’t literally tear up the Constitution. Unfortunately he’s the exact kind of Justice the Trump-era GOP tries to avoid choosing, because he puts the Constitution above Trump.







  • X has been toying with the idea of fully embracing adult content and has even planned a feature for adult creators that could position X as an OnlyFans rival. That plan was delayed, Platformer reported in 2022, after red-teaming flagged a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to the launch: “Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale.”

    Non-consensual porn had also been a serious problem for PornHub, eventually they just nuked all unverified accounts.

    Hmm, maybe that’s the plan for X too. It’s been going in that pay-to-play direction for a while now.