This is why I’m of the opinion that we should refer to everyone in the legislative branch by state. Names should only be necessary for campaigning for the primary and the general. Sure, put their name in the title bar at the bottom of the screen as they speak, but the media should just refer to all politicians by their state of origin.

hear me out

We have almost 600 people in power in the legislative branch. 100 in the senate and 435 in the house. My home state has 10 Politicians in this branch, Georgia has 16, California has 54 . Most people struggle with 10 names at a party lasting 4 hours. Good luck trying to keep track of all of them on, unless you are a political science major, a purely casual basis. We will only be able to keep track of 3 to 5 politicians that just… truly suck. A few that we really like, and the rest… let’s just be real here, do god knows what.

You can do a lot of damage being hidden and convoluted, and I don’t think it’s unfair to simplify it by grouping politicians by state. If a Georgia politician does not want to be grouped with Marjorie Taylor Greene then they need to provide ammunition to get them ousted in the next election cycle. If they don’t then they’re part of the problem. This also drags all of the state into things. If I don’t like Tom Emmer, I sigh and move on about my day. If I find Minnesota did something dumb, then I get cranky. Oh wow, this is the guy in my district, or my neighbor’s district? I had no idea. I want this guy out!

What’s more, it incentivizes cooperation and competition at a state level, and begins to break up the more monolithic federal level of the parties. Federally, it’s easier to pace the unpopular positions to be pushed by people with 4 years left in office, and hope the heat cools down three years later. If the entire state gets dragged into unpopular positions, it makes them much harder to push.

All the ones I’ve met have always been super nice and all work in some form of IT.

It’s constantly evolving. New communities are getting constantly added, and new servers spun up for different reasons and ethos’ are being spun up every day.

I for one cheer and root for my flip phone friends.

I’d never do it, but we have one at work and he’s singlehandedly causing so much grief at work. Because none of the engineers wanna use a security app for login. They want a fob.

IT refuses to pay for fobs and wants us to use an app, but they also don’t want to pay for a phone for anyone in engineering just to use the security app because it opens a floodgate of people with company phones.

It’s just wonderful to watch this fight from the sidelines sipping tea.

You know, I have been thinking that my 3d printer has been more reliable than my 2d.

Every day I get closer and closer to just attaching a sharpie to the carriage.

In practice, you’re probably right.

But in terms of “I wanna cut waste, and make the government lean! So I am gonna delete the space part of the government and replace it with my own!”

Just sounds bad, like really bad. Even worse than the armored Teslas. I can’t imagine NASA is the top of people’s lists of “utter wastes of time” It’s not a regulator, it’s not in the “known enemies” list unless you’re a flat earther. I dunno how you spin it to be palatable.

… I mean that would’ve been the clearest conflict of interest you could’ve possibly summoned.

I mean, they had 14 years didn’t they?

Have they ever tried to pass an ammendment for this?

Is there even a point to which one you pick? I just picked .kbin because I liked the UI, and when that fell apart I moved to .world mostly at random.

Is there really a large difference between them?

I really struggle to see a unilateral mobilization and that the US military truly goes through with it.

Especially when foreign assets are getting absolutely left stranded by Trump, programs are getting gutted (he hasn’t touched the VA, yet) and everyone who helped after 9/11 were getting shafted by their government in terms of Healthcare.

If you take away the rather potent motivators of “national security and safety or preventing terrorism” I think you’re gonna get a lot more of a strike from soldiers. Unless you can somehow believably apply that to canada.

Had a new hire try to do all his automation programming in python with an AI. It was horrifying.

Lists and lists and lists of if else statements they caught if a button errored but never caught if it did the right thing. 90% of their bug reports were directly due to their own code. Trivially provable.

Work keeps trying to tell us to use more AI but refuses to mention whether the training data is using company emails. If it is then a buttload of unlabeled non public data is getting fed into it. So only a matter of time until a “fun fact” from the AI turns into a nightmare.

Most of our stuff is in an obscure field with outdated code, so any coding assistance is not really that impressive.

No, they had a Scotland to fight for. A Scotland where they could have a home, a family, a community, where they could ask a doctor for help and that they could build in a general upward direction.

America nowadays has skyrocketing home costs, a kid who can’t leave your basement to make a family, record breaking loneliness, doctors who can’t help you even with insurance, and absolutely nothing implying that any of it will get better.

Defend this from the man who will make it hell, so that it will take longer for us to reach hell.

Such a powerful message to send the voters.

I’m sorry, I just think that the Democrats could’ve won so many more people with better messaging. I have no faith that they will have anything better come 2028. Assuming we still have a democracy come then.

The issue I have here is that Trump was not new to politics this time around.

Giant wall of terrible things Trump has done.

… Yeah, I agree. As a matter of fact, it sounds exactly like " if you’re not with us then things are going to go to hell." or “if you don’t vote for us you are gonna feel even worse we promise you”, but a lot more verbose.

If you want to rally people to a cause, you need TWO THINGS. A thing you don’t want, and a thing that you do. Either a thing you will have, or a thing you have right now. If you don’t have that thing you want, then you don’t have a better of two options.

You just have a less hopeless of two options, and you shouldn’t be shocked that you didn’t draw a fighting force of people together like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

aaaaand, what’s the most efficient way to reach all those voters and change their mind? To persuade the wind to blow us in the right direction?

we’d need some sorta… grand organization of people who have an incentive for Trump to lose who will reach out to the voters, educate them, motivate them. Maybe they have their own candidate? That’d be a fine incentive. Then they can get the word out, organize, throw in some goals for the people to rally behind. Like a- like a political party!

What exactly is your argument here?

That the wind cannot be moved via external forces? It does whatever it feels like it wants to, completely and utterly out of our control and we were screwed no matter what? The wind was always gonna blow us to Trump? This is just fate? Really all the money the democrats spent was never gonna change anything so they’re just blameless? Howling at the sun in a vain attempt to keep it in the sky?

Or is it that the Democratic party was perfect. It was perfectly min-maxed in such a way that we had the maximum possible electoral votes. They were just given an impossible task. No candidate existed that could beat Trump, no platform existed that could defeat Trump. They could’ve lost harder, but there was no way to win? There’s just too much of the voter base that is just so EVIL.

I am not criticizing Democrat voters. I am criticizing the Democratic party themselves. I’m criticizing the campaign, I’m criticizing the president and the VP. I’m criticizing everyone in power who didn’t try to convince him to step down and not run again. They are the rocket scientists and all the voters are the wind.

If the Democratic party aren’t going to learn from this and just go “well voters are dumb we did everything right”. They will lose again to the next fascist (or maybe the same? Who knows what Trump will do)

If that’s the case, then the Democratic party just ain’t the way to win against facism.

It’s also frustrating to spread the word and make sure everyone knows the consequences

That’s the point that people are trying to make though. That’s the only thing democrats ran on. Everything we’ve done is great, everything is getting greater, if you’re not with us then things are going to go to hell.

That rings hollow when many people you know are NOT doing great, you do NOT feel anything improving and everything is getting slowly worse, oh and if you don’t vote for us you are gonna feel even worse we promise you.

The only way you could make a worse call to arms would be to just out and out shout “it’s hopeless let’s end it now!”

no, I’m not.

I’m not angry at the voters. I’ve watched the whole primary looking at the democratic strategy thinking. 'That’s not gonna work", “thats not gonna resonate with voters”, “where the hell is Biden?”, “Is Biden still cognizant?”

At some point, a campaign or candidate can be so bad, that I can’t blame anyone but them for losing. Joe Exotic, the tiger king, ran for an elected position and lost. I blame him. His campaign was trash. He did better than expected purely from his fame, but I do not credit the voters for keeping him out of office. He did a lot of damage to himself all on his own.

Your comparison is worse.

The options weren’t chocolate and vanilla. They were getting kicked down a steep hill or kicked off a cliff, and you seem flabbergasted that some people chose to flip the bird instead of groveling and thanking the democrats for only kicking them down a steep hill.

Especially when in the next 4 years their options are gonna be slightly steeper hill or another cliff.

I just don’t understand people railing at the non voters and the people who voted for Trump. It seems as backward as a rocket scientist raging at drag and wind breaking their rocket. “How dare the wind do this! Don’t they know this will progress humanity!?!”

It’s your job to build a rocket that can withstand the air at those speeds. The air is always a problem you have to deal with, and no, you can’t shame the air into doing what you want.

Genuinely the democratic campaign seemed more like they were pushing a trolley problem than a future. So why is everyone so shocked it failed?

Oh my god we just bought a house and I feel this too much.

The previous owners will constantly shift between roberts, phillips, hex, and flathead within the exact same sheet rock wall.