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WhiningCoil
5m ago
I don't think anything of the sort will happen. Biden and Kamala are way too chill and upbeat about this. I don't trust it. They are busy cooking up some Steele Dossier V2 or some new rule making red tape so that Trump will be tied up with bullshit for 4 straight years trying to unfuck their executive orders.
jeroboam
16m ago
Yeah, probably.
I think there's still a man inside their somewhere. I'm on the record saying that Biden's physical decline is worse than his mental decline based on my interactions with other older people with Parkinson's.
But, even in his prime, Biden was always kind of a non-entity who twisted with the political winds.
I just know that there's a window here and maybe there's someone on his staff with a whiff of guts and creativity. Who knows, maybe someone posts here, it gets tweeted by someone important and it reaches someone who matters? (<0.1% chance).
Folamh3
19m ago
All of this is premised on the assumption that Biden is capable of exercising any agency of his own. One would like to imagine that the person or people who were calling the shots in the last two (three? four?) years have some kind of investment in Biden's legacy and might hence be motivated to do something nice for which Biden can get the credit, but I don't know if we have any good reason to believe that's the case. Probably the people calling the shots are some anonymous DNC staffers who have more important things to worry about, like making sure everyone knows that that Orange Man sure is Bad, huh?
No_one
22m ago
Short review: Factorio: Space Age is .. pretty good. It's kinda like Space Exploration mod but somewhat lite & polished.
There's a whole bunch of new mechanics, such as spoilage of certain items on Gleba, grave-robbing on Fulgora and industrially excavating the ruins of an entire civilization and turning it into recycled materials and reusing some of it. Spaceships can't use logistic bots and have only one chest, requiring a whole additional way of building stuff.
Item quality, unlocked by said grave-robbing is a replacement for the upper tiers of materials Bob & Angels used to have. It doesn't seem critical so far, but it's nice to have and makes things more efficient. Might be critical for late game, who knows.
All in all, if you like automation games, this is a worthy DLC for the one that started the genre.
The only downside is, it's not 3d. Why, I can't tell you, seems to me the entire belt-related code could be pasted into a 3d game bc essentially, the belts on a 3d grid are the same as on a 2d grid (if you had infinite belt-types for interleaving).
Folamh3
22m ago
One of the comments on the video:
Video: Graphic Design is my Passion
Lyrics: Sapphic Desire is my Passion
Biden is now a lame duck President. What can he do to help secure his legacy in the small remaining time he has left? Here's a couple ideas:
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End the Ukraine War. The war is coming to end soon in the next year anyway (65% chance). Trump might get credit. Why not strike a deal now and make a bid for the Nobel Peace Prize? Obviously, there are pitfalls here. But in the end, it will be seen in the same light as U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Messy, but ultimately necessary. Normie-ish people are starting to reach the same conclustion.
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National parks. This is a common thing that Presidents do to secure their legacy. Biden is the first President not to create a new National Park since Truman. Surely they can dig one up (hopefully better than the St. Louis Arch).
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Move a department to the heartland. Move the Department of the Interior to... the interior. Build a new "Joseph Robinette Biden Building" for its HQ. This shows his commitment to the common people and sticks a finger in the eye of the DC insiders who shanked him. It also might take the wind out of the sails of the Republicans who would be more loathe to axe jobs in Kansas than in DC.
I hope he resists the urge to issue a bunch of unpopular ultra-left executive orders before he leaves. No doubt his staff will want him to do that, but ultimately this is going on his permanent record, not theirs.
On the other hand, Biden has a chance to soften and improve his reputation by doing something that is non-partisan and magnanimous. (Example: G. W. Bush helping to stop the AIDS epidemic in Africa).
What can he do to salvage what will no doubt be seen as a bottom-tier Presidency?
eudemonist
24m ago
So, I had suggested this in response to someone asking about ways to disrupt the process rather than accomplish actual fraud, and so I tossed it out there with that in mind, thinking that the investigations and sorting of good from bad ballots post-hoc would be a wrench in the gears to sow discord. Application to successful fraud with this method would be somewhat limited.
However, in Pennsylvania any registered voter can "Vote In Person By Mail Before Election Day" by providing a valid Penn driver's license number--not a license, but a number--in person at a designated location, and apply for, receive, complete, and submit a ballot all at one time. Problems with this approach are that 1) in-person limits the number you can crank out to one per visit; 2) employees at the designated locations are finite in number, so while you could maybe get away with a couple visits depending on the size of the office, even that would be pushing it, and 3) if those voters ended up trying to vote on Election Day, they wouldn't be able to because a ballot had already been submitted in their name--which is fine for chaos, but not good for successful fraud. The latter of those could perhaps be gotten around if the fraudster limits themselves to inactive voters, but would require eithier getting really lucky none of them pick this year to become active or somehow having knowledge they won't, like perhaps knowing they're dead or have moved states. Alternatively, an associate in the Clerk's office would make things a lot easier.
Generally speaking, though, I think for successful fraud you'd be almost better inventing voters from whole cloth.
roystgnr
27m ago
I could take or leave the music, but I do have to admit that PowerPoint-97-looking music video is amusing.
She seems to have some impressive vocal control, though. Flipping through other videos, it sounds like this one is way above her usual register, and yet she's still doing smooth glissandos up to the highest notes?
oats_son
27m ago
Are politics in Japan as vicious as they have been here lately? Can you summarize the "sides"? Maybe material for Transnational Thursday.
No_one
30m ago
This belongs to the WW thread, I think.
And yeah, social media is a great timesink good for.. very little.
No_one
31m ago
I don't even know who a single of these people is.
How does one even get exposure to pop girls?
Olivia Rodrigo
I thought that song "Vampire" was alright, if a bit melodramatic. Can't imagine getting that bent out of shape about some dude you probably didn't even have sex with.
I’ve liked Charli XCX since 2013 and she’s only gotten better since
There were a few songs off the How I'm Feeling Now album I enjoyed, but I found the marketing campaign surrounding brat so annoying and inescapable (not least of which the "Kamala is brat" "endorsement") that I'm refusing to listen to her as an act of protest.
campfire
34m ago
That’s the only one of her hits I don’t find obnoxious. I mostly can’t stand the new crop of pop girls. Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter have some okay singles but their most popular songs are annoying, Espresso has some of the worst rhymes I’ve heard in a while. On the other hand, I’ve liked Charli XCX since 2013 and she’s only gotten better since.
justmotteingaround
39m ago
Its worth keeping in mind the pitfalls of the media landscape. A fund manger posts screenshots of an AP article to 1.5M followers, with the incisive commentary "wait, what?!" What does the payoff matrix look like in this environment?
On one hand, information is spread widely and quickly. Great! On the other hand, I have an aunt who has long told me that Hitler put fluoride in the water to shrink the pineal glad of the populace, reducing their creativity and making them obey. She teaches anatomy and physiology at a community college, and loves listening to Coast To Coast on the AM radio. Crank it up fuckers!
But what does the article say? Well, the AP reported on this "long awaited study" two months ago. We didn't find this out this until quite recently. However, it seemingly only applies to 0.6% of US water systems, and then again only to children and pregnant women. For adults, more study is needed. The 300 page report was done by the National Toxicology Program, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2015 Federal authorities revised their recommended level of fluoridation down from 1.2 mg/L to 0.07mg/L. This study pertains to levels of fluoridation of 1.5mg/L and above. How much above? I don't know, but the WHO currently thinks that 1.5mg/L is safe. The EPA actually mandates that water systems contain less than 4mg/L, the impetus in that case being fluorosis. This study extends research done in China in 2006 about cognitive effects of fluoride - naturally occurring and otherwise - and wait, what!? This is fucking booooooring. A bunch of nerds debating a the effects of less than one PPM of fluoride in a country that already recommends half the level studied? Fuck that. Give me Hitler. Give me chemtrails. Inject me with autism. Lets blast some Coast to Coast on the AM radio!
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
44m ago
No, people would fall right in line just like during COVID, and any that didn't would be forced in line by government force, just like during COVID. There might be some violent resistance in Red areas until some high-profile loudly-praised shootings of the resisters.
No_one
49m ago
I spent almost all the entirety of its free time playing Factorio: Space Age. Even to the point of neglecting the imaginary girls and thus giving my GPU a well-deserved rest.
Yeah, fun week.
population
But what about area? Personally, I feel that a useful statistic for comparing the "sizes" of geographic entities with significantly different population densities is the product of population and area.
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K. of Bavaria: 9.4⋅1011 people⋅km2
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K. of Austria: 7.6⋅1011 people⋅km2
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K. of Pennsylvania: 1.6⋅1012 people⋅km2
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K. of Virginia: 6.3⋅1011 people⋅km2
Also, what really matters is the inherent prestige of the title, not what the title actually controls. The ERE was an empire even when reduced to one province.
I think the US was a Kingdom-tier title at the time of the founding (given that it was plausible for the British Empire to vassalize it) and became an Empire in the usual way once it de facto controlled 80% of its de jure territory.
Well, we can imagine that the de jure map changes as population density skyrockets with the colonization of virgin land. Start with the sparsely-populated colonies as duchies, the Dominion of New England as a failed kingdom, and the USA as a successful kingdom. Then at some point (between EU4 and V3) population density becomes high enough that the states now are important enough to be considered kingdoms. The sea-to-shining-sea USA can be a hegemony, encompassing the empires of New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, the Midwest, Louisiana, and the West. (Or something vaguely similar to that.)
Shrike
55m ago
Correct, but that was two years ago. Even if the Russians still don't have front-like troop superiority, they have larger manpower reserves and have narrowed the deployed troop gap considerably.
No_one
55m ago
Thx. I also note the UA numbers are probably bullshit - we can be reasonably sure how many Russians died, but no one's counting Ukrainians and it's a state secret too.
yofuckreddit
1hr ago
Agreed. I can't believe this whole planet fell for the scam, to be honest. I guess double-walled steel water bottles were more expensive in the 90s or something but...
Folamh3
1hr ago
Earlier this week, I said that everything I've learnt about Chappell Roan was against my will. But after repeated exposure to her single "Good Luck, Babe!" I must confess that it's grown on me and the hype might be warranted: this didn't top the singles chart here for no reason.
johnfabian
1hr ago
Depends on where you live; varying with the source tap water can be awful or quite tasty. The tap water in Toronto is delicious, in my opinion.
It's just a motte-and-bailey, because "race realists" would be quite happy to carve up races further for precision (and do ime) but their opponents have no interest in that task at all.
Admitting that the colloquial definition of "Asian" isn't fit for purpose and maybe we should speak of "East Asians" and so on has never, AFAICT, won someone over to some sort of race realist view. If anything, people just seem to ignore it altogether and go back to attacking the model that has like five races.
The classification based in the idea of notable biological differences itself is the sin.
Being wrong about this would have zero impact on his reputation. Haters would put another hop in their gish gallop against him. Fanboys would ignore it or find some plausible deniability ("all he did was post a screenshot of a news article!").
Did Andreessen lose credibility when, despite having published "It's Time to Build", he hypocritically implored the city council not to build more housing? No. It is, as they say, already priced in.
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