pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
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User ID: 278
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1mo ago
I thought about this some more, and I think another sticking point is that this is an iterative game, and people know it is an iterated game. So, if you want them to be able to concede when they're wrong, there has to be done easy to do so that doesn't undermine their future ability to raise the same issue. I think a lot of people would probably grant that at least there is no solid evidence of widespread fraud in 2020, if they didn't also sense that this would be used against them, either immediately to demand more concessions, or in the future to demand acceptance of actual wrongdoing. It's a clear case of arguments as soldiers, and nobody is going to agree to unilateral disarmament. This explains both why people resist being moved from their public position but also why they seem to weigh it as a low priority.
At this point it seems like the idea that elections are rigged is functionally unfalsifiable.
So is the idea that elections are not rigged. The real argument is over priors.
ETA:
Is there anything the government could feasibly do to nudge Republicans towards accepting the results of the election in the event that Trump loses?
Most posters are talking about regaining trust, but I'll point out that's not part of the question: you could achieve the result of "nudging" people to accept the results - at least publicly - by much more harshly punishing nonacceptance.
Also, I believe the majority of the value of the aid given to Ukraine in particularly is not cash, but arms, ammo, and loans.
From https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107232:
Of the approximately $62.3 billion provided to the Department of Defense, it had obligated about $52.3 billion, such as for procuring missiles, ammunition, and combat vehicles for Ukraine and to replace U.S. stocks. In its own reporting, DOD combines this formal obligated amount with internal commitments to convey its financial commitments. Of the approximately $46.1 billion provided to the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the two agencies had obligated about $44.4 billion, such as to support the Ukrainian government's civilian budget, including salaries for first responders, health workers, and educators. Of the approximately $3.4 billion provided to the Department of Health and Human Services, it had obligated about $3.1 billion, such as in grants for supporting Ukrainian refugees settling in the U.S. Of the approximately $1.6 billion provided to eight U.S. agencies and offices covered in this review, they had obligated about $1.4 billion, such as for nuclear security and sanctions enforcement.
So, it appears at least a near majority (51.1 of 103.4 billions) are in fact cash disbursements.
ETA: Not intending to dispute the post above, just adding context that the balance is pretty close.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1mo ago
Incredulous? Have you been to Haiti?
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
It seems to me even if you’re the only one who wants Mediterranean and there’s no hope of swaying enough to your side, you still come off badly if you can’t even be bothered to say that.
Interesting, that doesn't match my intuition at all. If my party mostly wants pizza or tacos and I know they are not interested in sushi like I am, bringing up sushi at all only impedes collective decision making and may come across as whining. If I am truly indifferent between pizza and tacos, my input is useless at best.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
Declaring something a federal holiday does not automatically mean any workers except government employees get the day off. For example, I am required to work on Juneteenth day and MLK day and a number of other federal holidays, and many service sector workers must work on other more widely observed holidays so that people can still buy groceries and have electricity and report fires.
A better option would be to treat it like jury duty and require employers to permit up to 4 hours of unpaid leave on voting day during polling hours, and allow some nominal nonrefundable amount like $100 to be deducted from taxable income for anyone with hourly wages recorded as having voted.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
Less. Bird bunting is a common wealthy blue tribe activity. More if he had been deer hunting.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
There are prominent republicans opposing Trump, does that make them blue tribe?
Indubitably yes! Remember that the red/blue split was not supposed to cleave on party affiliation or even ideology, but cultural affiliation. A republican from, say, the northeast, who comes from money and lives on an estate is going to be blue tribe almost without fail.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
It would be - the common man is pretty happy with their insurance-provided health care, as opposed to VA or Medicare.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
It's a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of government money laundered through NGOs and contracts back to the DNC.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
Compared to the energy needs of continuing current western lifestyles and patterns of consumption into the future, which is the only comparison that actually matters.
Specifically regarding EROI, this makes it sounds like you're calling for continuing to use fossil fuels.
The reason I bring up profitability and cost is that they are ultimately a reflection of viability, and probably our most accurate one (which is why France's cheap uranium is relevant).
I disagree, the politics are too fucked and the regulatory environment too insane for cost to be a reliable predictor of viability. As I said, the price of uranium is practically a rounding error in plant operation, so France's uranium deal, whatever it was, is basically irrelevant. Actual fuel, including all the expensive processing and assembly which is unaffected by raw uranium prices, still only accounts for something like 20% of a plant's costs. Obviously I am not arguing for having no regulations, just that there might be a rational middle ground between "dumping radioactive waste in the local primary school playground" and the current status quo of "store all of it in the least efficient possible way." We actually created a facility specifically for this, and then just decided not to use for essentially no good reason.
However the recent regulations definitely strangled the industry. The lack of any clarity as to permitting, approvals, and timelines made capital investment impossible. It just isn't possible to underwrite a billion dollar project without some assurance that it won't be litigated for multiple decades, or ultimately rejected halfway into construction. As has been discussed in other contexts, allowing indefinite project blockers is usually sufficient to make it a soft rejection. There is no scientific or practical reason that the law needs to be so ambiguous and burdensome. As I said, it has recently improved and some of the first new reactors since the 1970's have finally started to come online.
However, it's unlikely new reactors will "solve all the energy problems we're facing"* because fossil fuels still exist and will still be cheaper.
- Curious what you think the energy problems we are facing actually are. We could theoretically create lots of power with solar panels in the desert, but without a way to store and transport it, it would do little good. So is storage and transmission the biggest problem we're facing? Or is it simply decarbonizing baseline load as quickly as possible? Or reducing overall demand?
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
within a long enough timeframe
This timeframe is not that long - likely within the lives of people alive today.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
Nuclear power as it is currently available to us does not provide enough energy returned on energy invested for it to be a viable option even without the costs of dealing with waste.
Compared to what? As far as I know it easily beats under reasonable operating assumptions almost everything except for fossil fuels. Are you talking about energy return on investment or financial return on investment? The cost of uranium that France paid has nothing to do with EROI. But in any case, the cost of uranium is, at this time, a miniscule cost of nuclear plant operation. The current high cost of nuclear plant operation has much more to do with deliberate regulatory sabotage than the inherent cost of the technology. There are, as we speak, newer, safer, more efficient reactors that have been designed and even passed through the arduous DOE approval process such as the AP1000 - not hypothetical in the least - but the high cost of legal construction delays and regulatory uncertainty makes commitment to construction very difficult and until very recently the DOE has been extremely reluctant to approve almost any experimental or prototype reactors, often on the grounds that the technology was not proven and so the risks could not be quantified - an obviously self-fulfilling state of affairs. They are being deployed in other more pragmatic countries. That said, I personally thing the prevailing LWR uranium cycle is terribly inefficient and a technological dead end, but it still generates an incredible amount of power.
That has started to change and in addition to the small modular reactors that are nearing market availability, serious followup to the molten salt reactor research that was done in the 1960's may finally be moving forward. However, I don't anticipate this will change many peoples' minds about whether they oppose nuclear power - it will just change the reasons. And sadly, the U.S. is playing from far behind other countries, especially China, in terms of building and testing experimental and prototype reactors. I don't doubt that many other countries will be deploying Chinese reactors, which we will of course refuse to do out of sheer pig-headedness and because we still have lots of fossil fuels to consume, and all the while people will be claiming that nuclear power just isn't practical enough.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
He failed to figure out some kind of judo or direct assault to get out of some very typical leftist traps, such as accusations of racism, in a way that would make him look good.
That's a ridiculous standard though. In that setting, those are superweapons. There is no judo counter and no defense, the only thing you can do is absorb the hit and press forward.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
I think her strongest line of attack would be the people who have worked with him before who either disavow him or are endorsing Harris. The nonpolitical normies are most likely to defer to people whose names they know and that they remember as competent bureaucrats.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
Having a Sunday morning breakfast by myself at the local diner counter, with bottomless coffee and taking 90 minutes or more to eat, drink, and read.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
Edge + Bing. This is a result of both a decision I made a while back to rebase my digital services with Microsoft, and a gradual comfort with the windows default settings from reinstalling windows many times.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
At that point, limiting Starlink is just a matter of banning its terrestrial assets in the country, which is easy enough.
The newer versions of starlink have laser cross communication capabilities, so no terrestrial assets in the country are required. So you really would have to hunt down the end user dishes one by one.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
Interesting, I just realized the Expanse (which I really enjoyed) subverted this by having that character in the first few episodes, and then having her fall in love with and becoming a supporting partner with the (white male) lead. But then again, the show writers were constrained by the source material so probably they shouldn't get any credit.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
In what way did she lose?
She is well known for having scolded previous participants including Mike Pence, so I strongly suspect the goal is to portray her dominance by both interrupting Trump and throw him off balance and theteby goading him into a nasty retort, and also to contemptuously scold him if he interrupts her. I'm sure the idea is to exploit female sympathy to the maximum extent possible. It didn't work that great for Clinton though, so I doubt it's worth the bad PR of reneging a fair agreement.
ETA: I previously stated that I much preferred the debate with no talking over and everyone I discussed it with expressed the same. They should keep to these rules purely for the benefit of the viewing public if nothing else.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
My hope is that adoption of e-bikes will improve the behavior of cyclists as well, as it seems like the most annoying behaviors are driven by their desire to never lose momentum and especially never to come to a complete stop.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
I've occasionally experienced this with various foods but eventually determined that it was usually because I was in an (often minor) illness phase accompanied by reduction in odor sensitivity. Remember that almost all of what we consider flavor is not taste but smell.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2mo ago
This seems like an exception that swallows the rule. Suppose that instead of the police blocking the streets, it was conservative protestors riled up over reports of voting irregarities. The police arrest people getting violent but otherwise do nothing. Is this still just the nature of politics?
Shifting the vibes is by far the most important economic contributor. Talking about lower taxes and then not lowering them will likely bring in far more revenue than talking about raising taxes and then not raising them.
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