Em Adespoton

So… internment camps and deportations to keep foreigners off US soil, and tariffs to keep foreigners from working remotely.

Have fun having to do ALL the jobs….

As someone who pre-dates the public Internet and spent a lot of time dialling in to BBSes when most people thought personal computers were for nerds…

The Internet will fracture, but not break down. What would happen is balkanization of the Internet, with physical areas running their own networks, and a bunch of poor “dark” areas. Some of those networks would likely have low bandwidth interconnections, such that digest data could still spread, much like the early days of usenet and fidonet.

Local culture and tribalism would increase, and information would skyrocket in value. The rich would still have access to, and control, the information. The poor would be left out completely.

I hope she’s your younger sister….

You’re only incorrect on one point: he’s not taking us into the past. There has never been a time in the past that was comparable to the future he’s dumping us into.

The problem is that he’s spread such a large volume of misinformation that people select bits of it that THEY want to believe and accept those lies as truth while dismissing the rest.

One of the lies is that he’s returning America to how it was in some mythical golden age. That’s not where he’s taking it at all. That lie just gets buried under the others.

Wouldn’t they have an uncertain future no matter who was in charge?

With Trump, the future is uncertain for everyone.

Yeah; he’ll stay in power long enough for that.

But he’s 78 years old. When he’s supposed to step down in 2029, he’ll be almost 83.

The average life expectancy of men in the US is currently 73.

Based on historical data for people Trump’s age and health in the US, he’s likely to die of natural causes before he’s 86.

So the longest he could likely hang on for is one more term than he’s supposed to.

Agreed; after using various running and other gloves, I settled on a set of work gloves that are thin nylon weave on the back and dipped in nitrile on the front, similar to gardening gloves.

They let the steam out while keeping my hands from getting too cold in -10 weather, AND I can use my phone with them on (although I don’t recommend doing that below freezing).

I do 3 hour trail runs through the winter and they’ve worked better than my running gloves or my merino wool cutoffs. And they’re $3 a pair.

Bingo!

But what’s been lost can always be found.

Wait… why would the leader of the face eating leopard party appoint a LEOPARD to the post of Facial Analysis?

The thing is, a message that’s simple, resonates, and allows people to blame others will always win out over a message calling people to pull their own weight and do the complicated but correct things.

Here’s one: where do you put things like The Long Earth where it’s not time you step through per-se, but all the possible futures starting from the beginning of the universe?

I really want to see someone make that series into a movie.

If he runs again anyway, what are you going to do? Sue the POTUS in federal court?

Some of them are talking publicly about Gaetz, so they might. Or, Trump might nominate so many other Russian assets that Gabbard looks goid in comparison and sneaks through. Or, recess might be called, allowing Trump to appoint his entire slate of doom with no opposition.

We’ll find out in February.

I’d say the comparison between Edison and Musk is pretty spot-on. Both were men who were better at taking credit and monetizing an idea than at improving things for the common people.

https://www.grunge.com/250292/the-shady-side-of-thomas-edison/

Besides Edison’s famous rivalry with Tesla, he also made a LOT of money as a patent troll. He’d buy patents for cheap from starving inventors and then sue anyone who made anything remotely similar. He’s even the one responsible for the precursor to the MPAA - the Motion Picture Patent Company.

Like Musk, Edison wasn’t stupid, and had some business sense. He knew how to take advantage of others, and had no reservations for doing so if it got him further ahead. He wasn’t above ruining someone’s reputation if he couldn’t beat them at technology or business.

Leaving, unfortunately, just gives you less power. The US plays in a global sandbox.

Going low gets you power. It doesn’t tend to get you long term good results.

The universe tends towards entropy.

How about we delay it for… hmm… four years and three months?

Er, he voted for Harris? I’m pretty sure he understands the situation.

But even those who didn’t… I can understand why someone being repeatedly punched in the stomach would have difficulty deciding who to call their leader between the person punching them and the person off to the side jumping up and down saying “Ooh… let ME have a turn!” They know that voting for a third party will still end up with one of these two punching them, so the reasoning shifts a bit.

One part of this is history.

Canada and the US were British colonies; Mexico was a Spanish colony.

When some of the British colonies declared independence, they still had to trade with the colonies that hadn’t. People had relatives on both sides, the postal systems were integrated, indigenous people were mistreated in the same manner, and the list goes on. Culturally, the two remained very similar while the political systems differed.

Stuff coming from England often ended up in Toronto or New York; both of these cities became hubs of publication.

This is the way the relationship stayed pretty much up until NAFTA in the 1990s; books had already had over a century of being published in Toronto and New York for distribution across English North America.

Mexico had a different history, and a different relationship with California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Instead of Mexico being a route for culture and European goods to enter the US, it was a source of cheap labor once slavery was abolished.

Unlike Canada where the most influential Canadians lived right along the border, in Mexico the influential Mexicans lived further south, with itinerant workers living along the border.

NAFTA changed the balance of trade somewhat, but it didn’t change the already established cultural norms or the places people lived.

So what this really tells us is that Republicans are staying solid at 1/3 the voting population, and fewer people are identifying as Democrats.