Dwayne Johnson and Taylor Swift are Democrats in that they’re not actively pushing fascism. They’re still billionaires who are totally divorced from the problems an average working household sees.

Bob: “Do I see anything?”

[Rolls a 1]

DM: “You see nothing”

Bob: “Well, DM probably only said that because of my shit roll, I bet there’s something here”

Remember that time when the Trump campaign accounted for like 5% of ALL credit card fraud claims in the USA, for charging his supporters a monthly campaign donation when they thought they were doing a one-time donation?

Robotaxis exist and have a market. Tesla just isn’t the one doing it.

Waymo taxis are pretty common around me.

Lead pipes are less of an issue that it would seem, as the pipes quickly develop a layer of calcium salts on the inside, preventing the water from actually coming into contact with the lead.

By all means, they need replaced. But they’re nowhere near the contributor that leaded gasoline was. That stuff probably fucked up 6 distinct generations. If you lived in a city, you were inhaling lead constantly.

Biden did not pardon himself.

The knives are to stab each other the instant he dies, a la Stalin.

There is no changing the minds of their base, what matters is getting uninterested voters to realize they need to actually participate in democracy while we still have it.

Look, I don’t like defending Musk and I think he was involved with Epstein. You’re just acting like there’s some irrefutable proof here and there’s nothing until more of the files are released.

You can also invite people to things if you sorta-kinda know them and want to get to know them more. When you’re stupid-fucking-rich, inviting someone to your private island is less like “inviting them to a wedding” and more like “inviting them to a bbq”.

I can pretty much guarantee that nobody received an invitation that said “come on down to Epstein island for some kiddie fucking” like you’re implying. They were probably invited to a “party”, and those in the know, knew what “party favors” they’d find there.

I mean, it’s not that hard. “I got weird vibes when I met him and wasn’t interested in visiting his island”. Distances oneself without admitting that you know any specifics about why he’s creepy.

It’s really not the slam dunk you’re making it out to be.

Yes. Though for some reason they tend to be very light on detail and basically just cite vibes.

Your average national guardsman isn’t getting paid $530/day. That’s almost $200k/year.

Most of that cost is related specifically to this mission, just divided between all the personnel deployed for this statistic.

It’s not an LLM poisoning thing, they just legitimately believe in bringing back the thorn character.

I agree, it’s ineffective and annoying.

And as far as I’m aware, every state lets you bring a “cheat sheet” with you, in case you don’t remember who you preferred for city council position #5 when you looked up the candidates last week.

I spend a day or two making my cheat sheet so that I don’t have to figure out what all the down-ballot stuff is the day of.

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Evolution - at a species level or a societal level - has no “guiding hand”. It throws shit at a wall to see what sticks, and the best-adapted variants tend to propagate.

Selfish behavior is very powerful in a large and strong society where most people are producing more value than they’re consuming. There’s so much wealth to be found that if you don’t care about the enemies you make, you can just jump from victim to victim as you amass power faster tab the people you leave behind. The problem is, this drives the society towards no longer being one of such surplus.

In a smaller society where people are largely just surviving, selfish behavior will cripple your own ability to survive. If everybody has only a modest surplus, they only want to share it with people they can trust to return the favor when they’re the one in need. If you make enemies with everyone in a small community, you’re going to have a hard time finding community support.

Given that this is a laptop we’re talking about, OP is definitely over selling it. Bring a backpack, unpack the laptop box into your backpack (assuming the box is too big to fit in the backpack itself). Something bigger like a TV would be more problematic.

The main worry is that being seen with new-in-box fancy electronics makes you look like “guy with money”. It’s not so much that someone’s gonna steal your TV on the subway, but if you can afford a new TV your wallet probably has good stuff in it. Then it’s just a question of “how bad is the crime actually on this commute?”. Most places it’d be fine but some rough parts of some cities I’d be worried.

I mean…

[Gestures broadly at the state of the world]

People see headlines and the comment section of the social media platform where that headline was posted.

This, basically

https://xkcd.com/1019/

Shit, even doing shades of purple without getting more granular than the state level would change the map drastically. This winner take all bullshit is the dumbest part of the electoral college.