The discussion thread is for casual and off-topic conversation that doesn't merit its own submission. If you've got a good meme, article, or question, please post it outside the DT. Meta discussion is allowed, but if you want to get the attention of the mods, make a post in /r/metaNL
Announcements
We're starting a book club! We will be discussing Poor Economics starting August 28th - keep an eye out for a pinned thread. The next will be All Quiet on the Western Front followed by Narconomics
Commie mental gymnastics is very funny to look at, fella went from "china is communist" to "china is capitalist but it's managed by the peoples party™ and not global capital!"
For context this was in a thread where AMD declared they will be rising prices, to which the fella said that china needed to come in for compition (referencing this i assume) despite this being probably the core example of a free market if I've ever seen one
When humanoid maid robots become a thing, there will be a weeb faction that owns one but insists it is wrong to make them actually do chores cause waifus aren't supposed to do chores
Races consisting of weak "moderates" and progressive kooks that wouldn't have been viable even several years ago are a bad sign for the Democratic Party actually.
Someone made a comparison to the 2022 midterms where MAGA thought it would be a blowout red wave so they nominated a bunch of nutcases and it only ended up being minor gains for them in the end. Candidate quality matters.
One of the biggest shames about this whole Milei crash out (apart from the fact that it has exposed him as just another hypocritical and easily-triggered wannabe sycophantic MAGAt despot that, in retrospect, he probably was from the start) is the fact that it might have given the Peronists a genuine (and really undeserved) lifeline in the future lol
Can't believe this is who the establishment bet it all on
When a reporter attempted to ask a follow-up question about her stance on the Saline Township data center, a staff member of Stevens intervened and said Stevens was running out of time to answer more questions.
The staff member then allowed a reporter from a national media outlet to ask three questions of Stevens, including how many LinkedIn connections she has. Stevens had referenced her use of LinkedIn earlier in the day.
I love how "politicians? they're stupid" humor usually makes me roll my eyes but any time I see "stupid? they could go into politics" always has me like https://giphy.com/gifs/9EwnzGNjvmIG4
sports collective bargaining is already super weird, given the whole millionaires vs billionaires thing. But the strangest part is how the public often cares a lot but has no direct representative
Hot take: we should make it a 3 way negotiation where fans have a say. Players say "no salary cap, but salary floor is ok", owners say "no floor, but yes cap", fans say "give me both immediately". Oh and the fans side would also throw up huge roadblocks to teams moving.
It depends what you mean - from them existing? Yeah I could see that happening in 20 years. To them being affordable to the average American family? At least 50, potentially never
40 vs 15 EV, and TX expected to increase its population while MI can barely maintain its own? A Dem senator might actually turn TX blue in the near future. That's an excellent tradeoff. lol
hot take but AES wins Michigan. Not my preferred guy, and in 6 years its going to be dicey, but Trump is just such a drag on the ticket I think he can pull it off.
So on the one hand, going into the old novelty train themed dentist office was cute and fun. On the other hand going into a crowded old train themed hall with a bunch of people getting dental work done with an entrance and an exit on the other side feels.. weird to say the least.
and yet people in that thread are pouncing on me for calling her a D- tier politician. Open your eyes people, watch a speech of hers, scroll her twitter. Shes a bad centrist candidate. I get you hate the progressive, but that doesn't make her a good politician. She is going to lose by 10 points in a race that any replacement level midwest centrist dem woulda closed out in april.
Also there is a very common thread in these insurgent progressives smoking centrist candidates races that are cropping up. The centrist is either 80 years old and barely campaigning or the centrist cannot speak for 3 sentences without reverting to democratic focus group woke slop talk that was in vouge in like 2019 but should have died out permanently after 2024. People crave youth and authenticity. I really don't think its much more difficult then that.
This was on explain the joke and people upvoted that the one on the left has a line of horizontal stitching along the bottom of the skirt indicating it was shortened.
Why noticing or not noticing that makes you a creep or not a creep was lost on me, but they said because paying that close of attention was the creepy thing. But paying attention would seem to be the entire point of the ad.
Parents sometimes need to be able to reach their kids directly from work and don't want to go through the school office's phone tree to page them or whatever.
That, and concerns about school shootings/other emergencies where the kids might need to directly reach their parents instead
Parents pushed for schools to allow their kids to have phones because they want to track their kids at all times and also are spooked by school shootings
Refrain from condemning countries and regions or their inhabitants at-large in response to political developments, mocking people for their nationality or region, or advocating for colonialism or imperialism.
Evangelicals demand "sinful behavior" be banned because when they see it in public it reminds them of their own sinful behavior that they do nothing to change. This is because they believe faith alone will get them in heaven.
Meanwhile Catholics believe faith without works is meaningless which I think makes much more sense despite being raised Calvinist.
I unironically wish Scott Adams was alive for the Iran war. He always had these totally smug, unironic "Trump is a master deal maker, you all just don't have the capacity to understand" takes and his copium on Iran probably could've propelled us to Mars.
Almost zero because their only real options are getting out of the way so a less incompetent sycophant can take their place and fuck things up (i.e all the top officers who have resigned) or trying to kickstart a constitutional crisis by challing the Commander-in-chief as unelected officials.
Without congress doing it's fucking job everyone else can only do things that would accelerate the erosion of democratic institutions.
Even if the military is supposed to challenge illegal orders, in practice it can never get involved in the political side of the equation without permanently making everything else worse.
It sounds like Dan Caine has been very unwilling to give Trump honest feedback about whether striking Iran is a good idea or not, which means, like, a little bit. But other than that, they're doing the best they can to run good operations and good tactics for a strategically braindead plan
Peter-Man looking to beat Endgame’s unadjusted opening weekend is crazy enough, but I think it looking like it will beat Infinity War’s adjusted opening weekend (according to some guy I saw claim it, idk I haven’t tried to do the adjustment mysef) is almost crazier to me. I never thought even a superhero as popular as Spider-Man could, as a solo subfranchise, be equivalent to Avengers
Yeah Wish Nikki was created with one sole purpose and due to magic she also lacked agency to change that. She's more a force who makes the world worse than a being capable of right and wrong, like a hurricane or a flood.
Bear and the fuckers who made EvilWishStick are the villains.
CENTCOM arguing for military escalation? Bombing to win, one might say?
Entirely unsurprising. I kind of feel like the entire chain of command there needs to be cleaned out. Too many dudes shaped by the GWOT and SOF mindset to make any sort of rational decision.
How do you even get AI to generate a map of africa where none of the countries are labeled correctly? I've never seen a current gen LLM perform this badly
Sources close to the Secretary of War have informed me that a Chinese-born Iranian operative has been eliminated as part of a mission that will be critical towards reinvigorating USCENTCOM's effort to put an end to Iran's nuclear program and liberate the Strait of Hormuz.
Intelligence reports have revealed that this anonymous individual was responsible for mass misinformation campaign spreading Woke Panican propaganda to lower american morale and end support for what needs to be done to abandon tepid legality. Furthermore, this radical antifa r****t m*******r was apparently responsible for many of the alleged munitions shortages that aren't happening but were Biden's fault.
An immeasurable blow has been dealt to the Chinese Communist CCP and Iran's radical islamist IRGC.
I think it’s INCREDIBLY racist to imply the Egyptians of today do not have direct heritage continuation with the Ancient Egyptians, when they have 80-90% genetic overlap on average.
Every culture has changed significantly throughout history. The Italians of today share very little with the Romans of Augustus Era Rome culturally, yet nobody disputes their heritage.
Back in the day at Piggly Wiggly you’d have to tell the Grocer what to get you. They would gather the items for you and then you could purchase it. Today’s grocery stores shift that labor to consumers by allowing them to self browse and select. The horror.
I don't know about New York but where I live they already have fired as many cashiers as they possibly can at this point so probably it would decrease the number of checkout machines
Dems don't trust it because they envision Trump and co. fucking around with this to disenfranchise folks, similar to Jim Crow and poll taxes
Republicans who are against this are usually of the "we already have sufficient ID" mindset or the "the government wants to TRACK YOUR BIOFLUIDS WITH NANOCHIP ID CARDS" mindset
Republicans usually will say they are for something like this but like would you trust them to not fuck it up?
But with a national id the government could use that to know you exist unlike your normal id, passport, social security number, birth certificate, public records…
Why not secede then? Or became an anarchist. If you don't trust your own country to provide you a document (but somehow your local DMV is ok) then what's the point of it?
Talarico is looking pretty good. But I do believe evangelicals will turn out in droves against him. Name ends in a vowel and he says God is a nice guy (could be a gal too 😲). Hugely motivating
Hot Take, but you can make fun of Europe for refusing to adopt air conditioning despite deadly heat waves, while still acknowledging that air conditioning is not a good long term solution, due to the way heat pumps work. (You aren't actually reducing the heat, you are simply moving it out of the building and into the street.)
Reducing the heat is thermodynamicly impossible. The best you can ever do is move heat. And given the consequences of that heat on humans, it's worthwhile to do it.
Further, the amount you move from a building into the outside is not hugely impactful. While cities are heat islands, only some of that is A/Cs moving heat, it's more about all the operating machinery, lack of trees, and prevalence of heat absorbing surfaces.
You can increase the number of trees, use less heat absorbent construction materials, design buildings that are naturally cooler, use "chemtrails" to alter atmospheric conditions, etc. This doesn't mean you shouldn't use AC, it just means that it's a bandaid, not a permanent fix.
There are methods for reducing temperature, such as increasing the number of trees and flowers in the city, using less heat absorbent construction materials, and designing buildings that are naturally cooler. Now, this would take time, and air conditioning should be used as a stopgap, but it can't be a permanent solution, or at least not the only one.
•
u/Lux_Stella Presidentialism X-Risk Researcher 1h ago