Supreme Court justices are nominated by the president and then the house and Senate approve or deny the nomination. The current justices were nominated by Democrat majorities.

Kamala Harris is actively campaigning with Dick Cheney.

Electoral districts are drawn via bipartisan committee.

This is ultimately the problem with metaphors… What specifically are you looking for to confirm or deny?

Are Democrats holding a gun to your head?

Yes. They are called police, the gun isn’t figurative.

But if you want to change metaphors:

“if you leave him alone with your stuff he’s going to steal it, you better leave me alone with your stuff as I won’t steal it.”

They then invite the other guy over and help them steal it, but blame it on the other guy and say “we tried to stop it”. Who would you be more angry with?

Holding a gun to your head is “not doing anything”?

Yes, dictatorships and monarchies sometimes have a petition process, but they tend only to pay lip service. Not because they care, they will do as they please becaue they have the power-- hence a dictatorship.

You’re so close to getting it…

So if one person is holding you at gunpoint while another rummages through your pockets, you should definitely only be mad at the one going through your pockets right?

The promise is that Harris is essentially a continuation of Biden so with that in mind comparing to your list above:

Similarities ✓ the “Muslim Ban” on air travel, employing white nationalists as staffers, packing the supreme court with extreme conservative justices, giving permanent tax cuts to the rich, expanding the presence of immigrant concentration camps, cozying up to foreign dictators, directly pursuing strikes and assassination attempts against middle-Eastern military generals and diplomats, trying to start a trade war with China, discrediting his chief medical advisor on factual statements about Covid, saying Black Lives Matter protestors were “burning down cities”, wanting to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization, declaring “far left radical lunatics” part of his “enemy from within”, sexually assaulting over a dozen women and underage girls, being a generally abusive sleazebag, also funding a genocide (Israel has always been ethnically displacing Palestinians), also building the wall, also not implementing healthcare reform (and being against what we have), also not protecting abortion rights, and also denigrating anti-genocide protestors (but not as harshly since he wasn’t the one in charge when it happened)

Differences: X Popularizing the idea of the wall in the first place, calling illegal immigrants “murderers and rapists”, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, being an avowed friend of Epstein, stating he wanted generals like Adolf Hitler’s behind closed doors when his own generals refused to nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else, egging on a far-right insurrection attempt, calling climate change a Chinese hoax, calling Covid the “China virus”

They are faaaarrrr more similar than they are different as honestly some of the “differences” I’ve noted are just because the exact quotes aren’t the same, even if some similiarly spirit quotes have been said.

Okay, nobody I can vote for will change the process. Now what?

Also dictatorships, monarchies, etc. pretty universally have some form of petition process as well, so not actually a difference…

The history of that phrase and how it re-entered modern English is fascinating though!

It’s not a hierarchy per se so much as different categories/distinctions which I do think is useful. A serial killer is different than a hitman which is different than a soldier. I agree they are all functionally the same but they serve different purposes and have different characteristics which are important to keep in mind when talking about them.

That being said you’ve changed my mind on calling it a “soft” coup as it doesn’t really accurately describe the differences I was trying to convey. “Incompetent, halfhearted, and poorly planned autocoup” would be more accurate but it’s a mouthful and I don’t know if that’s the most useful distinction either.

Either case thanks for the pushback!

Several deaths:

six people died: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, three died of natural causes, and a police officer died after being assaulted by rioters.

I’ll admit it may technically be a mischaracterization, but I don’t think you understand the level of violence that is typical of “hard” coups.

LMAO at the amount of “her entire career has been about building and filling internment camps, but at least she doesn’t have the popular support for a coup!” in this thread.

Likely contentious but my experience has been “newb” has a slight vocal raising to indicate light-heartedness, ie:

Noob: no͞ob Newb: nyo͞ob

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Except that’s not even how most bus systems work because most of them are majority funded by taxes with fares originally meant to serve as a stopgap but then slowly converted into a profit engine (usually after privitization). Fares are a way to gatekeep a service which your taxes already pay for, which I would argue, is by itself a form of theft.

As an example check out the latest MTA report only 26% of funding comes from fares, and that ones a bit in the higher end from what I’ve seen (NYC public transit, picked as the example a it’s recently been in the news for issues with fare evasion)

All that aside, it’s also worth noting that fare increases are extremely unpopular and it’s not that easy to increase them without potential serious backlash (ie the mass protests in Chile a few years back that were in part set off by the fare hikes.)

Less than you would expect, this looks like it’s a good, balanced synopsis if you’re interested however you’re not wrong about it being a problem, and pointing out the PR/gaslighting that surrounds the issue.

Also it’s worth noting that SpaceX is using LOX-Kerosone because it’s “cheaper” than options which pollute much less (namely LH2-LOX) because the cost of the kerosene is “externalized” and you are correct that something like appropriate taxing could start to fix that issue and force them to make better decisions…

From an article about a recent lawsuit

The App Store appeared to harvest information about every single thing you did in real time, including what you tapped on, which apps you search for, what ads you saw, and how long you looked at a given app and how you found it. The app sent details about you and your device as well, including ID numbers, what kind of phone you’re using, your screen resolution, your keyboard languages, how you’re connected to the internet—notably, the kind of information commonly used for device fingerprinting.

Notably, knowing keyboard language and monitoring tap locations allows for reconstruction of text the user types (as detailed in this article

I do think you are correct that Apple probably isn’t actively keylogging every iOS device (just because there’s easier ways with less legal concerns that ultimately get the same outcomes), but it’s not like there’s “no evidence”.

This is a classic case of “tech journalism”… If you follow the sources the source of the data and it’s methodology uses the CBECI which the latest update lists a range of 75-384 TWh. (Note that the “2%” listed in the parent article is the global power consumption of the Bitcoin network compared to the US electrical network, aka a bad faith comparison). It explicitly states:

The upper-bound estimate corresponds to the absolute maximum power demand of the Bitcoin network. While useful for providing a quantifiable maximum, it is a purely hypothetical value that is non-viable for various reasons…

Which of course is the estimate that the journalists use for this peice.

There’s also a bunch of likely issues within the methodology as it’s estimate is largely based on the number of ASICs produced; the assumption that “mining nodes (‘miners’) are rational economic agents that only use profitable hardware.” and that any amount profit is sufficient to keep a mining operation ongoing; and many others. It actually does a pretty good job of disclosing a lot of the methodology flaws within the link above.

My goal is just to call out bad/lazy journalism and what I assume is oil/gas distractionary tactics. Electricity is ~38% of US energy consumption and even that maximum bound of 2% when comparing it to the global Bitcoin network is practically negligible when contextualized.

If you build a base on/near a bunch of ore nodes and dedicate it entirely to mining your pals will mine it for you and it respawns daily (passive ore generation ftw!!!)

Another factor was the PPP and other “totally not bailouts” that were part of the COVID relief spending.

Of the roughly $800 billion dollars from PPP which was provided as uncollateralized, low-interest loans 66-77% went directly to companies and ~92% of those loans were completely forgiven.. In other words an ~5-600M bailout predicated on keeping positions open long enough to maintain plausible deniability that is what the goal was.

I can’t tell if sarcasm… If not why?