Doc Avid Mornington

No. I do not have a birth certificate, I lost it several years ago and haven’t obtained a replacement. More importantly, this is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Voter fraud is almost entirely non-existent. As I recall, the only instances of voter fraud that were uncovered in the massive amount of litigation after the 2020 election, were a tiny number of Trump voters, encouraged by his lies about how easy it was, and found out by his insincere attempts to prove Democrats were doing it. The risk of imprisonment is sky high, the payoff of one vote is rock bottom. But you know what does actually influence elections? Voter suppression. Trump wasn’t legitimately elected. It’s very clear from the statistics that if everybody who had a legal right to vote, had been able to vote, and have their vote counted, he would have lost, by a lot. And this measure is just designed to suppress more votes.

I don’t think it’s clear, given the known massive voter suppression, and the likelihood of machine tampering, that we actually did elect him, but you’re still right. The people have to hold him to account, because nobody else will.

So the people who made the Democrats suck are mad that the Democrats suck. Cool.

The scriptures, if one believes these things, were fulfilled, right? If the reason given not to fight was so that the scriptures would be fulfilled, doesn’t that logically leave Christians free to commit any violence, now?

Bringing up his actions in a different job doesn’t really seem to have bearing on comparing administrations. Biden has a pretty bad history prior to his presidency as well.

But also, and more importantly, judging progressiveness just by final results, without referent to the era, is not useful. By this logic, the Biden administration could literally be rolling back progress, and as long as they don’t go too far, we’d still have to call them “more progressive than FDR”. The only useful way to judge progressiveness is as progress made - or at least progress worked for - from the starting baseline.

I think it’s reasonable to say Biden has had the most progressive administration since LBJ. I was really surprised by how good he’s been, relative to my expectations.

That’s how you talk?

I get what you’re saying, here. That’s why I specifically disclaimed making any judgement about whether it would be moral, or wise. But consider the other side of that same coin: the court did this specifically to overthrow democracy and allow Trump, or any other president who will carry out Project-2025 to use this power to maintain an effective dictatorship. There’s no other explanation for this ruling. Would using this absurd power once, now, to restore a court that is loyal to the Constitution and People of America, be worse than letting Trump get in, assassinate any and all opposition, and end democracy? Could we trust it to end there? Would Biden install justices that would immediately reverse the ruling and bring things back to normal, or just install his own loyalists? I dunno, it’s complicated.

Ultimately, it’s also all just theoretical, anyhow. I find it almost inconceivable that Biden would do this.

Is that an act of an insane person? It’s apparently legal, now. Do you broadly think that using violence against tyranny is insane? Our founders committed their lives and fortunes to the violent overthrow of tyranny. It would be much easier, sitting in the oval office, with legal authority granted to him by the very people he would be targeting, to authorize the extrajudicial execution of a few traitors. Do you think that extrajudicial execution is insane? Then you’ll have to admit that most presidents in the last few decades were insane, especially Obama. Is it only insane when the target is white people in power, rather than brown-skinned people overseas?

I’m not commenting, at this time, on whether it would be moral, or wise, but insane? I can’t see how.

Oh, they can read, they know exactly what they are doing. The Republic has had enemies within from the start, and now they control the most powerful branch of government.

But who, who is “you” in this scenario? Who do you think can just tell the court “no”? Let’s be specific.

What? Your colleague sounds like they may be struggling with some serious cognitive issues, they may want to see a doctor about that. As for me, I’ve been living with my brain my entire life, and have kept several different sleep schedules in that time, for one reason or another, including rigid adherence to a schedule you would certainly approve of, and at no time has the basic fact that my brain works better later in the day ever changed. Some people never learn that their own circumstances and experience are not universal. Maybe try not to be one of those people.

I am definitely not at my most productive at the start of the day.

Between fascist Republicans and liberals pretending to be libertarians, I think it’s a pretty clear choice. We vote to live another day.

Private ownership of capital altogether, but yeah.

Or gets promoted, and keeps moving on to new and bigger projects, leaving a trail of destruction, because all management sees is they close tickets faster than the people who are busy picking up the pieces behind them.

Emacs Magit is so much better than the CLI, and I don’t say that lightly. And it’s available on Linux.

STAR is ridiculously bad, it just has good marketing. It favors the preferences of voters who pick extremes, ranking everybody either a 1 or a 5 - likely the least informed and thoughtful voters - over voters who carefully weigh whether a candidate deserves 3 or 4 stars. Ranked choice is simple and effective, takes more granular voter preference into account, and provides runoff for each virtual round, rather than just the last. It also has a simple variant that works equally well for multi-seat elections.

I do rather like science.

Facebook is capitalist spyware and a social engineering tool. You have to remember that capitalism is not a normal power relationship, even though they have been working tirelessly to make the world believe they are – capitalism is at the bleeding edge of techno-fascist authoritarianism.

OK you get the idea, and I’m not trying to defend China, but they’re just one of many powers - most private - that are using tools like this. I’d favor legislation to break them all up, to say any social network over a certain size has to federate, to say no one company or government can own more than one social network, lots of possibilities I would favor, but cherry-picking TikTok seems like Congress is working for Zuck. Taking out one of the big players just consolidates the incredibly dangerous power of the others.

And truthfully, in my time scrolling TikTok, I’ve generally found the content to be a lot less manipulative, more liberal, and more democratic-leaning than on capitalist social networks, so if the CCP is actively using it for social engineering, they’re doing a terrible job of it.

So, writing stateless functions, or working in declarative languages doesn’t count?