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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Up until the court decided to start ignoring centuries of legal tradition that is the bedrock of our legal system and threw out stare decisis the decision was actually more secure than a specific law.

    Any law codifying it can be challenged on many grounds, especially the 10th amendment. It could easily have been struck down as unconstitutional because the federal government has no power to pass a law affecting this issue, since the constitution doesn’t grant it.

    Only a constitutional amendment would have been likely to survive a court willing to do what this one has done, and there is zero possibility the Democrats could have passed one.




  • Every former president tends to be called president still quite often. If you look up news articles about most former presidents you’ll find a pretty solid split between just saying ‘President X’ and specifying ‘former President X’.

    It might be related to a military rule where retired officers get to keep using their rank title unless discharged in negative ways. Or maybe it’s just sort of traditional.


  • Yeah, while there was mockery it didn’t come from ‘official’ sources. They called him serious names and didn’t ridicule him. They made it clear he was dangerous, but they also gave him respect like a serious candidate, contender, opponent, rival.

    It probably would have worked from the beginning to just laugh at him, IF it was coming from the actual political establishment. If Clinton had essentially based her entire campaign around ‘hahah…oh wait you’re serious? Let me laugh harder.’ there’s a good chance he would’ve crashed and burned before ever getting off the ground, I think.









  • It irritates me that so many forums and media sites allow you to edit your posts at will. There’s one site I go to that I like very much - it has a 5 minute edit window, and after that, your post can no longer be edited. You can’t change what you said, pretend you never said things, etc, once you say something it remains. It would be nice if more sites were like that. Or at least, if you edit/delete something, for there to be an option to check the history to see what it used to be, so if you try to delete some comment you made people can still check it. Whether it’s informational, or it’s because you’re trying to hide something you said that you realize was actually super shitty and people are getting angry at you for it, I prefer things to stick.



  • Despite Musk, Teslas did have some positive effect as they helped push electric car adoption. The big automakers were not interested in taking risks, and nobody was eager to build out large charger networks.

    I certainly don’t credit Musk himself for it, but no one should feel ashamed of having bought one of those cars back then. Today there are other good options for electric vehicles from companies run by slightly less bad people, but let’s not kid ourselves. Everything we buy comes from some company that is enriching monsters…it’s just that some of them are more monstrous than others.




  • In small (population-wise) rural areas like that, where positions are running uncontested or only contested in the primary, it’s actually possible individuals could make a difference. But there’s some caveats.

    If the area is extremely Republican and would never vote for a Democrat, don’t run as one. Unlike in races like President and Senate, independent and third party are actual choices at this level, they’re not simply false choices.

    An individual could find some local issue that matters to a lot of people in the area but seems to be being ignored. Talk to neighbors, local people, etc, figure out what they’re upset about that actually falls under the purview of local or state government, then make that the core of your platform.

    As long as you’re not officially listed as a Democrat, you’re not platforming on things that the locals would never vote for (and you probably couldn’t do anything about anyway in the lower office you’re running for) and you’ve actually done some local research and found an issue that a significant number of people in your area are upset about, you actually have a chance. You’d probably lose, but there’s a real chance.