Sorry, what? I don’t know where you think you are, but this site is pretty pro-Palestine. Even the pro-Israel people here don’t sound as insane as what you just said.

I agree with you that “free market” standpoints aren’t very good places to criticize this decision from – except to point out the hypocrisy of the right-wing, which I do think the original comment was trying to do – but it has to be said that nobody is obligated to criticize both China and the U.S. equally in order to not be a hypocrite.

One simple example of why would be that most if not all users here have absolutely no say at all as to what China does. There aren’t a lot of Chinese citizenry here. But there are a lot of Americans. It so follows that it makes sense to criticize the U.S. more, because many people on Beehaw can actually do something about it, especially in aggregate.

It doesn’t help to criticize China much either, anyway. China’s bad, yes; we know. Even among honest-to-god capital-C Communist circles, China is controversial. Posts about it tend to do three things: 1) Create a sort of misery/anger circle-jerk, 2) arbitrarily and unnecessarily signal to others that you aren’t a tankie, when nobody should really need to clarify that in most scenarios, and 3) further U.S. propaganda interests by taking people’s time and attention away from issues they’re more likely to be able to do something about.

I’m obviously not in favor of forgetting what China’s done, either, but there’s a happy middle-ground I think a lot of Western-centric sites sail right past, and I don’t think any of it is helpful.

Some American or other company should just hurry up and make TokTik and rake in the bucks.

Google’s already been trying with Youtube Shorts. Let’s not encourage them.

This is tragic. Nobody should be gunned down in the street like this.

I agree. Which is why we should address the problem by dealing with the absolutely ghoulish situation that is American health care, profiteering, and late-stage capitalism writ large. If there’s one thing I am very happy about, it is the fact that the number one thing being talked about due to this – besides the shooting itself – is the problem that caused it and so many other deaths; not a preference for vigilante justice, not guns, not terrorists, but a desire for profit above all else, regardless of how many die from lack of care as a result.

To be clear, I suspect you agree, at least with the “ghoulish situation that is American health care” part. But what I want to highlight here is that I don’t think almost anyone wants to live in a world where things like this happen, much less one where so many of us are happy about it. In the end, though, we don’t get a choice. We live in that world, and it is far more important for us to worry about fixing that than it is for us to wring our hands when one of the 1% dies while the millions he’s killed got nowhere near as much sympathy.

Murder is obviously bad. Even when it’s justified, it is a tragedy, and indicative of a failure to find a better solution. But this is a failure of the system people like Brian Thompson helped to create. On some other sites, I see a lot of people saying things like what you’ve done here. They spend time focusing on how his death is tragic, prefacing anything else they wish to say with statements to that effect as though they were warding against a curse. Individually, I don’t find this to be a problem. But when a lot of people are doing it? I think that’s an insult to his victims.

I can’t say I’m too confident about data that was obtained by methods including 1) Facebook data collection (we trust that now?), 2) machine learning and 3) potentially nebulous, unspecific definitions of various political groups. Still, allow me to indulge in some confirmation bias, if you will:

This shouldn’t surprise anyone, if you ask me. People are stressed and limited on time. Of course they’ll take shortcuts!

On places like Bluesky, most articles, videos or news content I’d share would have more to do with how much I trust the person posting or sharing it than with its main body of content. I figure that someone I value has read it, and so I skip it, because reading it would feel like work and I have to deal with enough of that as it is.

Places like here, I take more caution, but as a direct consequence of that you’ll notice I really don’t post very much at all. Comments, sure, but that’s because those are more my opinion than anything else. I don’t have the bandwidth to put through more effort than I already am.

RCV is definitely better than FPTP, but basically everything is. From what I’ve seen, the only thing mathematically worse than what we have now would be a random pick.

I strongly prefer Approval because ranked voting systems in general tend to have glitches. Unranked ones still suffer from issues due to strategic voting, but no moreso than their ranked counterparts. From there I prefer Approval to Score and others simply because Approval is easy to explain (“vote for as many as you want instead of just one” — there you go, one sentence!) and thus easier to sell to people who don’t understand it.

Still though, there’s a lot of options for sure. If you’re interested in learning more, there’s a couple of interactive articles about voting systems I came across (one while writing this comment); this first one by Nicky Case is a great starter, and this followup by Jameson Quinn gives a bit more detail for some stuff, particularly about strategic voting.

I still wish more alternative voting systems were being considered. RCV is the conversation-dominating option, but it’s a far cry from the best, and I’d much rather Score or Approval Voting got passed than RCV basically anywhere.

Either you’re misreading or I am misreading, because going by this, Yes on 2 is the campaign in favor of repeal – i.e., the one Leman is in favor of – and the latter paragraph is backing up what he says by saying No on 2 spent more than Yes on 2 by a 100x difference.

Considering that (insofar as I can tell) literally just a petition and nothing more, your joke actually sounds pretty accurate to me.

The only way this’ll do good is if a miracle occurs and it becomes ludicrously successful. In any realistic scenario, all it does is make a convenient list of people the new administration won’t like. Well, that and create a treasure trove of profitable data.

Fear is bad when it stops us from doing useful, helpful things. I don’t think this is one of those things.

Is the judicial system different if a convicted felon’s base is energized?

Technically yes, since the convicted felon is the president-elect and has literally changed the power balance of the judicial system already.

Really though, it all comes down to risk. The more frenzied his base becomes, the more they let him get away with, and thus the more he will take advantage of that. Normally, I wouldn’t care about this, because if Republicans aren’t given this “feral consent” they’ll manufacture it themselves. But I pause because the actual benefits of this are so slim as to measure up poorly against even this low-level con. I mean, he’s in jail for a couple months — so what? Does that stop him from doing much of anything? Will he even care, when he knows he’ll leave it with just as much power as he had when he entered?

Were it that he’d lost the election, I’d feel differently. But we don’t live in a sane world. What do we actually get out of this?

Trump is in a position where the rule of law scarcely affects him, regardless of what a judge sentences him to, because of the sheer quantity of political capital backing him. If this happened, he would spend a couple months in a cell and nothing else, at best. So if you think he should be arrested based exclusively on the law itself and no other reasons, sure, that’s justified. But I’m talking impact, here.

I think the overall impact would be negative for the reasons given above. He’d face scarcely any truly proportionate punishment, would learn nothing, would lose nothing, and his supporters would become even more rabid. And all that would mean the political calculus for “is it worth it to commit fraud” either doesn’t change or goes even further in favor of “yes.” What’s the point, then, besides to make us feel a bit better until he inevitably gets released?

I suspect that even if this did happen, it would mostly just energize his base. It’d help him make a faux martyr of himself and rile up all of his worst supporters. It’s not like he’d stay in that cell, after all.

Maybe learn how to use it correctly in its current state

The slop being talked about in this article was made by OpenAI themselves. You know, the company at the forefront of the genAI/LLM bubble, with billions of dollars of money behind it?

I don’t know what kind of mythical standard it is that you believe generative AI is capable of, but when even the organization at the forefront of the tech can’t make this shit look good, you can’t exactly claim it’s a skill issue.

Mainly to identify plants and mushrooms.

Considering modern-day “AI” track records at this, the only thing I’d trust a device like that to do is massively increase poisoning deaths.

All I’m seeing is pro-Palestine content. Or do you define that as anti-Kamala on account of Harris being pro-Israel?

Frankly, if you do, I’d consider this comment very disingenuous. “anti-Kamala” and “pro-Palestine” sound very different to people.

If they’re arguing that people should vote, or that they shouldn’t vote Green due to spoiler effects, then they’re not arguing with me, frankly.

My position throughout this thread is that it’s folly to avoid pressuring Democrat tickets to improve their platform, not that anyone should abstain from voting or vote third party. I’m going to vote in November and it won’t be for the Greens. The key part is that I also plan to shame the Dem ticket for doing such a poor job in the meantime, too; they need to move left now, not later.

Believe me, I’ve got no qualms with you, in this thread or elsewhere. I upvoted several of your comments here because insofar as I can tell, you are right. I’m not defending the Greens in this thread and never have. I do not care for them.

But I’m sure you’ve seen as I have the negative reactions that so frequently occur from so many when Harris’ platform or campaign are criticized. Anytime anyone tries to suggest that she is doing a terrible job of appealing to anyone left-of-center, all while playing ads that play up conservative talking points, it feels as though a barrage of comments is immediately launched to decry it. This is and has been extremely frustrating for me to constantly see, hence why I push back so much on it in this thread.

And I can probably guess as to the feelings that motivate this; people quite possibly fear the criticism will undermine the election’s odds of not going towards a fascist. But this is still misplaced blame. If the Democrats lose this election, it’ll be their fault, not the fault of people like Flash Mob.

The Democrats’ own platform doesn’t matter?!

I really hope I don’t need to explain why this is an obnoxiously awful take.

None of that changes anything about the fact that this is still the entirely wrong way to go about trying to win an election. The Democrats are letting people down and trying to win solely off of Trump being worse. You shouldn’t be surprised that this strategy does not resonate with people. If everyone here pressured the Democrats to do better instead of yelling at folks for not being jazzed about milquetoast-at-best non-promises, I can guarantee you voter turnout would be much better.

Nobody’s obligated to continue a debate ad nauseam. Bowing out is a healthy skill, and we should not be shaming that.

Besides, if your interlocutor leaves the discussion, that means you got the last word. There’s no need to sling mud. Just take the win.