IIRC two states and several major cities have also successfully implemented rank choice, and in every case it’s been because of Democrats.

As more and more local governments make the change, it’ll become more popular and gain more support on the national level.

The problem is that any third party that manages to eventually displace a member of the duopoly immediately replaces that party in the new duopoly.

Because the duopoly is a result of First Past the Post (FPTP) voting. As long as we use FPTP the duopoly will persist, just with different parties filling the two roles.

Anything short of switching away from FPTP for some form of Rank Choice is going to be a band-aid, mere temporary relief, and not even a very good one.

The author assumes the Court doesn’t understand the consequences of what it’s doing, but I really don’t think that’s a reasonable assumption. It’s entirely possible they know exactly what they’re doing.

Democrats are not “so called progressives”.

Some progressives are Democrats, but not all Democrats are progressives. Most Democrats are not progressives, in fact. Things make a little more sense once you accept that.

But only a little.

I’m starting to wonder if they’re putting her in the limelight as setup for her being Trump’s VP pick.

These people stopped looking in the mirror a long time ago.

Congress would impeach Biden SO FAST so he could then be prosecuted.

… Unless Biden also made it impossible for Congress to meet to impeach him. Which is obviously against the Constitution, but there’s nothing to be done about it as long as Congress can’t impeach him.

Checkmate, fascists.

… wait

Can’t be prosecuted unless Congress acts first? Detain Congress before they can act. Easy peasy, dictator for life.

because it will just give his GOP opponent ammo to claim “see he’s radical too”.

But they already do that, so why care?

Remember, it isn’t that Trump supporters don’t know what he’s done, it’s that they don’t care.

The thing is that the study with the mice was seriously flawed. There’s been more research since then, which is why we’re getting this announcement now (even though the announcement itself is little more than “oh hey there might be something to this? We definitely need more research before we can know for sure.”)

Well that’s one of the more fucked up and asinine things I’ve heard in a while.

You know countries can refuse aide, right? Nobody is forcing them to accept the money. Because, you know, they’re a sovereign nation with the authority to make decisions for themselves. You even said it yourself

Would our government accept aid from China

China offering us aid doesn’t “usurpe our authority”. How the heck did you even come up with that nonsense.

But hey, believe whatever you want. Me, I think we should take responsibility for the harm we’ve done to the world and offer to make amends in some way or another. I don’t think it’s right to take a shit in somebody else’s yard and tell them it’s their problem. But again, that’s me.

Are you suggesting that we shouldn’t try to solve problems that we created? That if we create a problem, intentionally or not, that we should just say to the world “ok you deal with it now”?

Because that sure seems like what you’re saying here.

You’re painting a false dichotomy. We can take care of all these domestic issues, and we can give foreign aide. It wouldn’t even be hard, it would require a small fraction of the military budget or a slight to most increase of taxes on corporations and the ultra rich.

But some people don’t want to give money to poor/starving people, regardless of how much it costs. You could end all foreign aide and all the money would just go… somewhere else that isn’t poor people’s pockets.

I think you missed the point where I said “it’s not about nuance.”

I’m not claiming my examples don’t have nuances, I’m claiming that many (most) people have things on which they won’t compromise. Standards, if you will. Those standards may have nuance, but they remain uncompromising.

To use your examples, if “not trimming their toenails enough” is a deal breaker for someone, then the nuance of “but they shower ever day” doesn’t matter.

Because it’s not about nuance. It’s about deal breakers.

Oddly, I thought that was one of the worst parts about Google+. I get your point though and I respect your opinion, I just thought it was interesting how we disagree 😄

You’ll notice that on the list of things that are illegal to discriminate against, everything is either an immutable part of the person (national origin, race, gender) or is something that is unethical to ask a person to change about themselves (religion).

Political beliefs are nowhere on the list, because they’re not immutable and it’s not unethical to ask somebody to change them.

Discriminating against somebody for their political affiliation or political beliefs is legal and, in some cases, moral/ethical.

(As an aside, this is what makes all the people wanting to discriminate against LGBTQ people on religious grounds so egregious; they always had the right to discriminate against LGBTQ people on political grounds, but that wasn’t enough for them. They had to do it “in the name of God.”)

they aren’t

You just haven’t seen it yet. Try coming out to them as trans, see how that goes for you.

It’s not about nuance. It’s about deal breakers. For some people, a deal breaker might be something like poor hygiene. For other people, it might be voting for or otherwise supporting politicians who belong to a party that’s actively trying to curtail human rights for anybody who isn’t a white cishet man.

That you or anybody else would find the first example acceptable, but not the second, is ridiculous.

I think the critical difference is “Meta pushes for changes” vs “Meta pushes for changes with the support of thousands/millions of users”.

If Meta convinces Thread users that a certain change is good for them, it’s going to be that much harder for the people developing ActivityPub to push back on those changes. And even if the developers succeed, Meta can just use that to say “fine, we’ll fork off and make our own ActivityPub with data collection and advertisements” and if enough instances in the Fediverse are reliant one Threads for engagement they may just switch to the Meta version of ActivityPub, taking a chunk of our community with them.

And maybe that’s alright for some folks, but a lot of us don’t want any of that to happen, even potentially. I think it’s pretty unethical to deliver people into the maw of the beast like that, so to speak.