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naraburns  nihil supernum  16d ago (text post)   26865 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

If you're a U.S. citizen with voting rights, your polling place can reportedly be located here.

If you're still researching issues, Ballotpedia is usually reasonably helpful.

Any other reasonably neutral election resources you'd like me to add to this notification, I'm happy to add.

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Honestly, I was nonplussed at how convinced The Motte was about a Kamala victory in the predictions subthread. Most picked Harris, and even those who picked Trump expressed less confidence than the prediction markets, which were about 65% Trump at the time.

My guess? I don't think you guys are susceptible to propaganda so much as addicted to the black pill. This is a very dour message board. So I agree with the second half of your post more than the headline.

The prediction markets obviously had a mild bias in favour of Trump in that:

  • You needed crypto to use Polymarket, which means it has a more pro-Trump userbase who are vulnerable to wishcasting.
  • There was an identified French whale who did not appear an entirely rational actor betting on Trump. So the "trust prediction markets" view is slightly more pro-Harris than the actual market prices.

Remind me what the black pill is again ?

Capitalroom’s posts.

Red Pill and Blue pill originally derive from the matrix films. Red pill means accepting reality, blue pill means lying to yourself. People adapted this to other contexts, one of the prominent ones being the general anti-feminist backlash in the mid-2010s, with an additional resonance from "Red" being the conservative color and "Blue" being the Progressive color post-2000.

As the culture war heated up post 2014, and a lot of people perceived the world to be more or less falling apart around them, the "Black Pill" rose to prominence: Black in this case meaning despair, an acceptance of defeat, the belief that things can't get better, only worse. "Black Pilled" means you're despairing of the present situation and have little to no hope for the future. "White pilled" means the opposite.

Everything is as bad or worse than it seems, and there is no hope.

Internet speak for "self-indulgent extreme pessimism".

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