In theory, Judges hold individual people accountable, the representatives of the people hold the judges accountable, the people collectively hold their representatives accountable.

However, if a significant part of the representatives refuses to do their job, and the nature of the two-party FPTP system combined with highly effective identity politics makes it hard to hold them accountable for it, the system breaks down.

Butterfly gang

That’s what I was trying to allude to. Whoever is left is either not competent enough or unwilling to call him out (possibly because being employed is generally more important than being right).

I don’t think she’s particularly good looking, which may just be personal taste, but in any case doesn’t matter in the slightest. She’s not running for Miss America, she’s running for President.

Not that I hold any particular love for beauty contests either, but - like Harris’ looks - that’s irrelevant here.

I like how Julius’ lines fit the pentameter, but Brittanus’ “What?” shits right past it.

Oh absolutely, provided you’re versed enough to understand the resource limitations, the need to prepare scaling solutions and have the willingness to admit that your in-house resources might not be enough. I’m not confident Musk ticks any of these boxes, let alone all of them.

And a competent team can only do so much. He ripped out data center servers, against his competent sysadmins’ advice.

I don’t think auto-scaling can scale to resources that don’t exist. Besides, I’m not sure how many people with both the competence and the spine to advise Musk when he’s doing A Stupid again still remain at the company.

He’s a product of a biased system. He was elected to the Senate in '72, over 50 years ago, and spent 36 years there. That long, during that time in a highly business-heavy state, would probably have been untenable for anything left of liberal. I’m not optimistic that anyone trying to be an effective politician in those circumstances for so long could have been much more progressive.

Considering all that, he got a lot of good done. But like you say, it’s easy for the media to focus on the things that generate outrage. He wasn’t a saint by any measure, but he was a decent compromise at a time when the Democrats were scared of losing the moderate votes. Him being nominated for re-election is probably a product of the political inertia that sitting and eligible presidents are rarely swapped out instead of being put up for re-election (actually, is there any precedent at all?)

Walz, by contrast, was in the House for twelve years, then governor for another five. That’s a third of Biden’s time in Congress, and much later too. I think it’s much more realistic for someone in his position to be and stay progressive, and I hope he helps pull the Overton Window to the left. I hope this election shows that there is a platform for progress, that Biden was an emergency measure for damage control and that handing the baton over to Harris and Walz was a step in the right direction.

Of course, that hinges on Harris also driving a more progressive line than Biden did, instead of resigning to another term of mediocrity. She seems to signal as much, but whether that will be followed up with deeds remains to be seen.

…then you use the brush to clean them? Is that a big deal?

Notably, his adopted child whose name he decided to change. It’s also not an actual child with actual feelings, just a platform.

I don’t think it makes a difference.

Musk isn’t concerned whether we think X is the same that Twitter was. His whole point was to usurp Twitter’s reach and pervert it to the cause of spewing toxic shit. The old Twitter means nothing to him, just the users do.

And for the most part, the users are the same ones as those of the late Twitter.

So I think calling it ex-twitter, xitter or anything else doesn’t have an impact on anything. My preference to call it Ex-Twitter is mostly just spite.

This sentence is a lie.

-The Ascended, product of Trump and his cult fusing into one giant monstrosity… That promptly implodes from the self-loathing of realising it’s mostly made up of 🤢 poor people 🤮

I’m in your boat often enough. Sometimes a post assumes familiarity with a context and it may be hard to figure out the intent or sincerity without that familiarity.

That is a reasonable proposition. Have you considered, however, that those are the people that make the money off it? I’m not too confident they’d do something about them until they become a competitor to an even bigger fish.

It’s not projection, just regular hypocrisy. Almost boring, these days.

I think you did good, I took no offense. I often get insecure about “Are they joking? I’ll give a serious reply in case they’re not, or in case someone else thinks they might be serious” myself, so I’m usually more concerned with the question “Is this clear enough as a joke?” than with blaming other people for not getting that.

I have an irrational aversion to suffixing my posts with tone markers like “(joke)” that I probably should do something about. It would certainly help with that confusion.

Either way, offering a serious take as a safety measure is a good thing, and I appreciate that you took the time.

May life be as kind to you as you are to others!

You are completely right.

I was trying to make a joke, piggybacking off the other guy’s joke, but I can see that was poorly communicated.

Why not make a podcast about gatekeeping and use this as your first example? There, you’ve got an objective.

Pageant Predator?

I imagine there are a lot of conservatives that aren’t actually so concerned about racism / sexism / LGBT issues as about financial ones. They fear that empowering the “leftists” will lead to them losing all the luxuries they enjoy, a flame Conservative pundits are all too happy to fan. Particularly when they believe they have a chance to become one of those rich people the leftists are actually targeting, they’re worried about “lazy” people (obviously not working hard enough) coming for their hard-earned wealth. So even if they might disagree with the GOP’s stance on the social issues, they’re concerned about the “collateral damage” the progressives might do their own lives, and since that affects them much more tangibly than reports of social issues, they’re naturally biased to worry about their own wellbeing first.

Religion obviously plays a role in enabling that mindset by justifying supremacy (I’m a better person, so I deserve better) and inequality (God gives us each what we deserve), giving an explanation for things we don’t understand (God’s plan) and a goal (be a pious Christian and go to heaven), relieving of guilt (just ask God to forgive you and that’s that) and a fear of death (I’ll go to heaven anyway). It also provides a mechanism for Power to steer people (The preacher I trust tells me it’s God’s will) and direct their anger and attention away from the people exploiting them (Those damn <insert relevant slur> are the devil’s agents and working against the good and pious people like myself).

Better access to education, teaching critical thinking and scepticism, helping people realise the lies they’re fed - and particularly the fact that none of us are immune to deception and propaganda, no matter how smart - could help both these problems.