While everyone is right about the reasoning, no one brought up the relevant historical example: Eugene Debs in the 1920 Election… which is unfortunate because it’s a good one.

Euegen Debs was a socialist candidate who ran in the 1920 elections after being jailed by Wilson’s Sedition Act of 1918 for opposing the US joining WW1 and the accompanying draft.

The words “right” and “left” politically mean the same thing they did 200 years ago. Left means you view human rights as paramount over property rights, and “Right” means you view property rights as more important than human rights. This means the dividing line is pretty clear. Capitalism, as a system, depends on property rights being enforced at the expense of people (see, being allowed to own empty residential property while people are homeless), and is therefore the dividing line. Left of center is anti-private property and anti-capital, and right of center is pro-private property rights and pro capitalism.

There are actions that can be taken that are far more effective than shit like that. I’d maybe go see what Andreas Malm has to say on the topic, for instance.

As much as I don’t like this bill the answer to your question about the house is “because the house has been an absolute cluster fuck (more than usual) and it would exactly be surprising if they modeled incompetence for us again”.

I also suspect that the goal is to sweep the wedge issue and win moderate republican and non-affiliated moderates, not to increase democratic voter turn out. They’re basically giving the Republicans the “let’s shoot immigrants” bill they’ve always dreamed of to take that card out of play for them.

Noone is saying that. The argument is pretty much that people want more scrutiny applied to other companies beyond tiktok, and ideally not be under constant surveillance by any of them, not that people want to be monitored by all police states equally.

Fascists fundamentally support political violence as a method for “solving division”. Anyone who is not a fascist and supports such violence at this moment needs to understand that political violence is going to backfire and play into the fascist’s hands unless you can first build alternative systems of power and support outside of the government.

If you start violence without that network of support in place, you will disrupt people’s lives, and the only support structure that can help will be the current Government. The military will be the ones providing food, medicine, and shelter. If you don’t have a strategy to get regular people affected by the disruption food, water, healthcare and shelter, you’re going to make the government the hero.

If you’re not a fascist, and believe political violence is necessary, your first step isn’t violence, your first step is to take a page from The Black Panthers and starting a community breakfast program.

Mike Johnson all but said he has the Democratic votes to avoid the fate of his predesessor. This might be the “Sedition Caucus”'s death knell if he’s right. This is basically all their leverage.

They got part of one demand (4 days of sick leave for some workers, iirc) out of 5 or 6 demands ( more pay, 15 days sick leave leave than they got, different scheduling that would allow for more time to inspect trains to prevent shit like East Palestine, Ohio, amongst other things). Absolutely not everything. He took away their right to strike and gave them the tiniest possible consession so that people would go and defend him by saying “ok. He crushed the strike, but he actually turned around and helped them get what they wanted after”. Purely doing whatever is politically convient, just like him standing on the picket line with the auto workers only a few months later. Disgusting. Thank for reminding me why he sucks.

I recently heard somewhere that the joke in India is that in western tech company’s “AI” stands for “Absent Indians”.

it’d be a great place to grow some weed.

That’s an interesting claim considering that US oil production has rapidly increased in the last 10ish years. Like, I hope he’s not full of shit, but the numbers I can find suggest were actually producing the most oil we’ve ever produced right now.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus2&f=m

Like it’s nice that he’s saying that and all, but I hope my skepticism can be forgiven until the US government, like, actually does something to reduce oil production. I hope he’s right, but right now congress can’t even pass a fucking budget, much less create sweeping, radical anti-oil-production legislature.

No the part where he’s leaving.

“No matter the odds, or personal cost, we did the right thing… in this spirit that I have decided to depart the House at the end of this year”

Never thought we’d agree. Hope more people decide to make the right choice.

My money’s on Sean winning.

But he… wasn’t. He lost the presidency in 1932 to Paul Von Hindenburg (53% to 37%. not even particularly close) who later appointed Hitler under pressure to the channclorship (which was an appointed role) in 1933. Hindenburg died in January of 1934 and Hitler de facto merged the presidency and chancelorship into one office (Fuhrer). The story isn’t “regular people put Hitler in power”, it’s “broken legislative systems are vulnerable to facists”.

There’s good reason to presume carbon is required. Carbon has some nice, and totally unique properties that allow it to facilitate life.

The most important features to carbon in this context are:

1. Stable catenation of atoms. Carbon atoms can bond to other carbon atoms in a long chain, and that chain does not become appreciably more reactive. This allows for the construction of very large molecules with specialized mechanical functions.

2. Ability to form stable multiple bonds. Carbon can form single, double, or triple bonds with itself (and oxygen and nitrogen), which allows carbon-based molecules to have ridgid shapes. Double bonds are found all over the place in life because they allow molecules to have sections that aren’t just wiggly noodles of atoms.

3. Bond stabilities that fall in a kind of “goldilocks zone” where carbon bonds to other atoms are strong enough to resist falling apart, but weak enough to be broken later.

4. Nearly identical electronegativity to hydrogen. Carbon pulls on the electrons in its bonds about the same amount as hydrogen. This allows it to make stable bonds that are non-polar, which, when used in conjuction with other, more electronegative atoms (particularly oxygen and phosphorus) allow Carbon-containing molecules to be hydrophobic, hydrophilic, or both simultaneously. This property is what allows for complex structures like Lipid bilayers and proteins to be formed.

No other atom, not even silicon, has this set of properties, and it’s very hard to imagine how you would make all but the most simplistic verson of life without these.

I mean, I can agree that simple autocatalytic reactions can occur with chemistry based on other elements… but it’s a stretch to say that suggests “alien life might not be carbon-based”. Maybe very, very simple, life-like chemical systems, but life as we know it is defined by large, many-atom molecules, and no other element can do this the the way carbon can (not even silicon, whose bond energy decreases with catentation of more silicon atoms link, which, combined with it’s poor ability to form multiple bonds ruins the possibility of silicon-based life). Anything that we can conceivably think of as “life” beyond simple self-reproducing chemical, or bizzare Boltzmann brain-esque systems will have carbon-based chemicals in it.

Hey…If she wants to wear a bikini, who am I to tell her no? Go for it. Unless of course, she doesn’t actually want to and is just being intentionally obtuse like a old judgmental cunt.

tomato, tomatoe. Not that I’d ever put tomatoes in a cucumber salad. That’s heathen shit.

I’m not your boss. Do it up, man.