Doc Avid Mornington @ docAvid @midwest.social

Not actually a doctor.

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2 yr. ago

Yes, you are correct, our democracy is severely flawed and limited, and we should fix that. I haven't seen anybody say otherwise. Becoming fascist isn't going to help fix it.

I am being realistic. Are you? Putting forward bills and forcing the corrupt and right-wing legislators to vote against them on the record is literally one of the biggest things that leftists have been calling for, for decades, that capitalist Democratic leaders have been suppressing, because it hurts their control of the party. Not doing this is exactly what right-wing Democrats want. Doing nothing is not a realistic solution to anything.

Oh, hah, woosh right over my head, thank you for explaining.

Honestly? Pretty well, relative to the "cry about it and do nothing" strategy.

The article describes it as

a visit that is believed to be the first stop by a president or vice president to an abortion clinic.

Can you name a prior instance? I'd really be surprised, to be honest. And hey, I am no Harris fan, but this is still a striking action.

On the one hand, candidates should not, under any circumstances, have a choice. Eligibility for office should be predicated on participation in public debates, structured and moderated under direct democratic control. On the other hand, stopping Trump is essential, and in the system we have, not the system I wish we had, this is a good strategy. Biden is assuming the role of adult in the room, and making Trump come to him, setting vague terms he never actually has to deliver on. He's setting up the conclusion that if there isn't a debate, it's because Trump was an ill-behaved child, but if there is, it will be on Biden's terms. Very well played.

Yeah, definitely not my kink, an absolute turn off, but still.... Very compelling TV.

The article literally tells you that this was done before, to give us the 40 day standard we now have. It worked before, and the article also points out that other countries have recently reduced work weeks under 40 hours. How is it hard to imagine that something that factually has happened could happen?

I mean, they actually can. That's a completely facetious argument. Laws can set standards without defining everything. It's done all the time.

I mean, yes? That's kind of the point. This is how we shift the conversation and put pressure on politicians. Put these bills forward and make people vote them down on the record, so those votes can be used against them.

Yeah, I mean you're technically right, but it's still a trash take because nobody in the running will even plausibly be better, or even just not worse, and ignoring that reality is BS.

My only quibble is that I think the top marginal rate should go back at least to the 94% it was in 1944, not just 70%. In fact, I'm not sure there is any reason the top marginal rate shouldn't just be permanently set to 100%, with the only variable being how high that margin is.

The two-party system is a system, and systems can be changed. If the Republican party finally implodes, just as when the Whigs did, it will be an amazing opportunity for progress. We need to be ready to move.

Ranked choice has to precede a pluralistic system. We've had similar upheavals before, a long time ago (one presaged the civil war), but as long as we have first-past-the-post, it will always settle into two-party lock-in. But, and this is the good news, after the civil war, we had the second founding - a massive overhaul of the Constitution, for the better. If, in the aftermath of the death of the Republican party, we get another chance at that, (hopefully without all the killing), maybe we can enact ranked choice, eliminate the electoral college, ban gerrymandering, establish mandatory voting, add an enforced "none of the above" option to ballots, expand the Supreme Court, uncap the House of Reps limit, eliminate the senatorial land-vote in favor of proportional representation, get fully publicly funded elections, and and and am I asking too much? I just want a real democracy.

Yes, but it's more than that. The electoral college only affects the presidency. We also need ranked choice voting. The first-past-the-post system assures the dominance of two parties, which can play the voters off each other to do whatever the donor/capitalist class wants. Mandatory voting and fully publicly financed elections would also be huge wins.

That doesn't mean they won't vote for him in a race against Trump.

I've seen a lot of them say they won't. I've seen people who I know in the past have argued that we have to support Clinton or Biden in the general election, because Trump is worse, and even campaigned for the lesser-evil candidate, turn around and say they can't support Biden this time. I don't know if they will reconsider, as the election gets closer, or when faced with reality of a ballot in front of them - I certainly hope so - but I'm not taking any vote for granted in this election.

As an aside, while the violence against Palestinians has really caught people's attention, I don't know why people seem more mad at Biden this time than last time, or more mad than they were at Clinton. There hasn't been a president in the last few decades at least who would have handled the situation better; on other issues, Biden has proven much better than I expected when I held my nose and voted for him last time; and Trump is a cornered animal, much more dangerous this time around.

Fucking apeshit craze-balls, makes sense, business as usual.

Bibi loves that because he can basically permanently avoid a 2-state solution, and if it ever does happen, it's just official apartheid. Separate, as the United States learned the hard way, is never really equal. The only realistic solution is a single secular state.

Medication helps a lot of people, and CBT is very effective for others. I've never heard of a "technique" that's effective against depression that can be reasonably described like that, but I'm not an expert. Would love some concrete examples.

Programming is the art of juggling of state and control flow

Sure, stateless functions deal with and impact state in some way. If that's what you meant by your previous comment, that's fine, but that's honestly not what would typically be meant by "juggling" state.

The part about declarative languages has nothing to do with state. Declarative languages do not give the programmer control over flow, the other part of your definition.

Learn Lisp, and you will never again be so certain about the difference between a programming language and a data format.