BalderSion @ BalderSion @real.lemmy.fan

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5 mo. ago

The why doesn't strike me as hard. A number of domestic voting blocks in critical swing states will mobilize hard against any perceived flagging of support of Israel. It will play poorly in the press broadly, and opponents will successfully fundraise on the issue.

The worst part is the party is being entirely realistic. Jeremy Corbyn showed what happens when a party leadership is not sufficiently supportive of Israel. Any left of center leader will be tagged as radical, but the accusations of harboring antisemitic elements lost labour what should have been a landslide victory.

Continuing to write Israel a blank check may be widely despised, but the left might hold their nose and vote blue anyway. The left is famously never satisfied, so what else is new?

I was just thinking Blazing Saddles, keep a Bart. It would shut up all the people who insist you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today. It would be hilarious for Kermit to play the super drunk Waco Kid. That said, I'm not sure if the treatment would push the satire of racism, or defang it.

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating the obvious... At first Ford formed a theory to account for this human behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on excercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

One of my favorite passages from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

According to some myths, King Solomon did something like this. With his wisdom he learned the true name of a powerful genie, and with the true name a of a genie he could bind them and force them to obey him. So he commands the bound genie to give him all the true names he knew, and bring these genies to him. Once he had these genies, repeat the process until all the genies were bound under his seal.

There's lots of talk about the kids who didn't wait 5 minutes, but I also find it interesting to read about the kids who did delay gratification. It's not that they were superior specimens, or junior ascetics, or reborn Buddhist monks. They were as tempted as the rest.

They mostly avoided temptation by coming up with games to distract themselves. It's something creative and it can both be learned and improved like a skill. It reminds me of the people who compete in memory games. It's not a super normal talent, it's games people can practice.

It does raise a question why kids who could do this were more academically successful later, and if kids who are taught this will have similar success later. Important questions that should be considered carefully.

Musk is trying to check all the boxes:

• Iteration X: Tesla, Solar City, Boring Co.
• New World Order: xAI, OpenAI, Zip2
• Progenitors: Neuralink
• Syndicate: PayPal, X (Twitter)
• Void Engineers: Space X

It's like a Syndicate stooge staged a hostile take of the other conventions of the Technocratic Union, and it's going about as well as expected. Cybernetics is a bit of a cheat as it's in the overlap between Progenitors and Iteration X. If anything he's trying to sideline Progenitors out as he boosts anti-vax statements.

I've been working my way through NADDPOD, and there was a great session where ::: spoiler NADDPOD

the party is in an airship being chased by Knights of Hell riding Nightmares. Axford polymorphed the Duke of Hell's steed into a dolphin and they fall out of the sky.

The GM is laughing, but musing that this was supposed to be a big fight and Emily just dinked it.

Another player comforts him with, you forgot wizards are bullshit.

::: It was such a great session. It really emblemizes how I try to approach being a GM. Have a prepared roadmap, but have space around the road for the characters to take a roadrally off-road.

Indeed. It feels like a lot of historical context is missing in Lemmy political discussions. The Democratic party was the party of FDR, JFK, and LBJ. The Democratic Leadership Council took over the party after the left candidates failed to deliver election successes, but even then, the DLC had to do the work to take the party leadership positions, build a funding network, and win elections. Before that FDR had to wrestle party control from the the Dixiecrats.

Hopefully Hogg and allies will be successful in reforming the party once again.

If she's anything like Phyllis Schlafly, why yes, the moment her husband tells her to get back in the kitchen she absolutely will! Right away! She'll drop everything, her privilege, her power, her perks. Her entire staff will be S.O.L. after just a word from her husband. If he just says the word, why, she wouldn't utter a word of protest. Honest!

I'm often reminded that while Jesus counselled his followers to turn the other cheek, he reviled the hypocrites.

Have you seen Dmge ? It's web based, but it has fog of war and a few other nice tricks, if you've got the maps.

The number of warheads each nation maintains is agreed on in the START treaties, and those levels are determined by stockpile effectiveness. The US is recognized to have superior targeting and guidance systems, so they need fewer warheads to maintain parity with Russia's stockpile.

The best possible outcome is for SDI and it's descendants to be a complete waste of taxpayer money. If some clever chap comes up with a practical missile defense system, Russia would immediately generate enough warheads to overwhelm such a system and maintain parity.

Each missile represents a potential fault path to WWIII. We've been lucky with at least a couple near misses in our history. I don't look forward to a future with more.

A lot of the usual suspects, but when my group of grognards plays we reach back a bit. Tomorrow we're playing Traveler. Last few times we played it was Champions.

I'd like to run an OpenD6 game of I can pull a group together. The last few times I ran it was D6 Star Wars, but I like the system for other genres as well.

Let's not forget the endless conversations about which park is Werewolf territory and which is Gangrel Vampire territory. Then the slow realization that you don't live in a place cool enough to attract any supernatural presence.

The scientific method is more about falsification than problem solving.

"If you ever succeed, devise and implement a test to see if it was a fluke."

I too grew up in an era of action movies, where the good guy decisively self-defenses the bad guy to death, saves the world, goes home and has marital relations with the prom queen. It's a powerful story, but ultimately it's just a story.

Peaceful resistance does work, but there isn't a single event that achieves change. It has to be an accumulation.

Rosa Park's arrest didn't achieve anything "in terms of change".

Ghandi's protest fasts didn't achieve anything "in terms of change".

When the Baltics had their singing revolutions, there wasn't a single performance that achieved anything "in terms of change".

All these were parts of larger efforts of peaceful resistance that culminated in change.

What did Cory Booker's speech achieve? It's too early to say. It's possible it will be part of an accumulation that culminates in measurable results. On the other hand, it's possible cynicism will poison the resistance and it will achieve nothing. We'll only know once the history is written.

There was a period where it was still a skill to know how to use a computer. If you had a computer in your house it was a part of your identity, you were a computer owner. Using a computer was something you did. The computer is a powerful tool, and the user had an opportunity to overcome the challenge of learning how to use it.

Now a computer is an appliance. People know how to do what they do with it, but see no reason to explore farther. They aren't interested in delving into the device's potential. Owning a computer is like owning a car. They want it for the function they use it for. Learning more is like learning to change the oil in a car. In principle easy, but more of a chore than an opportunity.

I remember watching an interview with the CEO of SUN microsystems in the 90's argue that you didn't need to know how to run a nuclear power plant to use a light switch, and you shouldn't have to know how a computer works to use one.

I guess his vision came true, and we're mad about it?

We've literally been told money is speech, but just as soon as people start organizing to vote with our dollar, we're sabotaging everything.

Ok, so sure, a reasonably large chunk of all states education budget is going away, but for the states that do well, the hole will both be a smaller portion of the overall budget, and easier to make up.

No child left behind testing goes away, so the testing and standards all go away. You can bet the bottom 25 states in education ranking will quietly stop testing and claim they're doing just great!

It's the special Ed programs that are really going to catch hell. No dept. of Ed. no enforcement of standards. It will be the easiest portion to cut to save money, and the families left in the lurch will get nothing but thoughts and prayers to fill the gap.

This is the sort of thing that makes me feel more sympathy for the Democratic party. The party simply can't win with the left.

The party leadership worked against Sanders candidacy because they are convinced a liberal can't win in America. I don't agree, but recognize with Nixon and Reagan dominating over leftist candidates, Carter ekeing out a win as a centrist, Clinton winning convincingly as a centrist, and Obama winning as a rather vague candidate, recent history has given limited reason think a leftist national candidate is a safe bet.

But if voters are supporting Cuomo and the party doesn't intervene the party is the wrong for not ignoring the will of the voters and tanking his candidacy.

I mean I get it. The left wants their candidates to win, but the lack of consistency is grating. It makes the centrist seem more sensible.