It pressures the system in those cities or states, which is actual pressure to the system, just not direct pressure on the federal government. History shows you can mount pressure through local and state changes until it gets overwhelming support on a federal level.

You can make the argument there might be more effective or quicker solutions, but this is unquestionably one path toward it.

IANAL, but my understanding is entrapment is when they convince you to do something you might not otherwise have done. So if the cops create an account of a minor and message an adult asking if they want to fuck, and the answer is like “uh no, absolutely not,” and then the cops follow up by repeatedly sexting, and the adult blocks their account, but the cops relentlessly keep sexting from burner accounts, and plant people in the adult’s work and social environments who keep talking about how normal it is to fuck minors who sext you out of the blue, and then the adult is finally like “oh whatever, fine” - that’s entrapment.

Now, most people still are literally never going to take the minor up on the offer, no matter how relentless they are or how normalized it is in their environment. That’s true about most crimes. The question is how many people wouldn’t have committed that crime unless this very specific police-created situation came up, and that difference is what falls into entrapment.

I’d argue this isn’t even close to entrapment, because all they did was set up an account much like all the others that exist, and waited for others to find them. It’s no different from leaving a bike unlocked, then catching somebody who steals it. There are unlocked bikes everywhere, and people don’t suddenly decide to steal the only bike of their life because they happened to find that unlocked bike.

Of course, they could also be spending this time and money getting to the root of societal issues and fixing the core problems instead of catching a small percentage of active pedophiles and letting the rest of them continue to cause irreparable harm.

I don’t think that’s true. Cheney’s just not part of Trump’s in-crowd. Cheney would go full fascist if he were at the top of it.

I don’t think society on a local, national, or world level is past persecution for stupid reasons, and I fall into a number of categories that certain people might go after me for if they got into power. I want to make that difficult for them.

But, perhaps the part I like most is the struggle sessions. The entire community will heavily focus on a current topic, then hash it out with good faith discussion.

I’ve never seen this - not just from that instance, but literally anywhere on the internet, even back in the forum or bb days. But I’ve been looking for something like that for years, and I’d be interested. Do you know of any specific examples of this happening?

He’s unquestionably getting pardoned. I disagree that we should feel good about another rich asshole getting off the hook because some other rich asshole wouldn’t like it.

Assuming by “economy” we mean “wall street’s ledgers,” there could easily be a massive correction/recession/depression coming up, and the president wouldn’t make much of a difference there. What they do to recover from it could differ a lot, as seen with Trump/Biden, Bush/Obama, or any number of older examples.

Okay, am I the only one who just sees this article as “U.S. government steals a plane, pats themselves on the back”?

Today, the U.S. Department of Justice took action to enforce U.S. sanctions – seizing an aircraft used by Maduro and his representatives.

He wasn’t on it. There’s no report of them finding anything useful on the plane. Are we supposed to assume he has no other planes? That this will have any significant impact on him whatsoever?

Whatever your moral stance is on Maduro, or stealing, or U.S. intervention, this feels absurd. Even if the dude were literally Hitler, this just doesn’t accomplish anything. The time spent inspecting and stealing this plane could’ve been better spent on so many other things.

As the conservatives would say, my taxes paid for this and I want them back.

Wet-bulb weather is when, because of a combination of humidity and heat, you can’t naturally cool off with things like sweat.

This isn’t quite right, even though the gist of it ends up being right. This is one of very few things I’m legitimately an expert in, so I don’t want to let it go uncorrected not because it makes a big difference, but because it just feels weird not to and maybe somebody will be interested.

Dry bulb temperature is what you typically read when you’re looking at a thermometer. The bulb, the thing that’s checking the temperature, is literally dry. To get a wet bulb reading, you essentially put a wet sock around a thermometer (to get a “psychrometer”) and swing it around for a while, because you get a different reading when the water is evaporating off it. So when the air is fully saturated (100% humidity, standing in a cloud), your wet bulb and dry bulb readings will be the same. In all other cases, your wet bulb temperature will be lower.

“Wet bulb weather” isn’t really a phrase people use. High wet bulb, high relative humidity, high absolute humidity - all the same thing (and in fact, if you have just one of those and the dry bulb temperature, you can calculate the others). They just measure how wet the air is in slightly different ways.

Yeah, his alternative energy push was definitely positive, he just didn’t have the political capital or savvy to make anything of it. He admittedly walked into a pretty raw deal with stagflation and an energy crisis, but he handled them so poorly it’s hard to justify cutting him any slack. Telling the public energy is in short supply so they’re going to have to make sacrifices is a losing strategy no matter what you’re advocating for.

He’s referring to this cover from April 14, 1980: https://content.time.com/time/magazine/archive/covers/1980/1101800414_400.jpg The full article is here: https://time.com/archive/6857830/key-to-a-wider-peace/

It’s not hard-hitting journalism by any means, but it recognizes the idea that maybe not everybody loves the idea of Israel wiping out the Palestinians. That’s progress to some degree for US mass media 44 years ago.

The AP article for those that don’t want to listen: https://apnews.com/article/raiders-nfl-vegas-police-allegiant-stadium-5239b9962c23a6512fa2f694add9b9ea

The highlight for me is this:

The Las Vegas Police Protective Association, with the backing of the department, said they are concerned such technology compromises the officers’ privacy.

It’s worth noting they’re only doing this for workers, not for attendees. The police would presumably by fine with it if it were just attendees and not workers, because it wouldn’t include them.

It worked out pretty well for Carter’s policies, even if he only got one term. Carter ran openly as a centrist, and his fiscal conservatism was very popular. The left-ish wing of the Democratic party started an “Anybody But Carter” campaign during the primaries for exactly that reason. Lots of policies he advocated for got passed during his presidency: he deregulated the airlines, the trucking industry, railroads, banking - and that was a great trial run for Reagan’s followups (and Bush, and Clinton, and W).

But Carter was both too conservative and wildly incompetent for the job. With somewhat liberal Dems having the majority in both houses and universal health care being a big issue at the time, and with Ted Kennedy as majority leader trying to push it through, Carter still opposed it on the basis of cost. Of course it died, as did any other progressive or even moderately liberal ideas that cost money.

What I’m saying is fuck Carter. He’s done a great job rehabbing his image but he was a bad president his presidency is rightfully maligned by both the right and the left. But he got a lot of policies through that he liked.

I actually really hate NPR for this article because they waffled so much.

After confusion over his stance on abortion rights, former President Donald Trump is clearing things up.

His stance was not confusing and was abundantly clear, as they state later in the article:

On Thursday, Trump indicated he would vote in favor of abortion rights in his home state of Florida, where it is on the ballot. Saying he thinks the “six week [ban] is too short,” he said he favored “more time.”

When asked explicitly, “so you’ll vote in favor of the amendment?”, Trump seemed to affirm that he would.

“I’m going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” he told NBC News in an interview, before saying he favored exceptions in abortion law for the life of the mother, rape and incest.

They don’t even give that part straight. Saying he “indicated” makes it sound like there was some wiggle room, or miscommunication, possibly on the part of the reader/listener. There wasn’t. He plainly said in no uncertain terms that he was voting for the amendment. Then his campaign said WAIT NO DON’T SAY THAT because they think it’s a dumb move given his base. So he reversed his position.

He didn’t “clarify” shit. He said one thing and within a DAY he said the exact opposite.

Being in a position where the entire country hears his very reasonable, very easy to understand words over and over again would eventually have an effect. Even the die-hards would eventually be asking themselves if it is in fact reasonable that corporations are assfucking each and every one of us every single day. Some of them would vote in a more progressive representative.

Would he get everything passed? Absolutely not. But he would get some good stuff through.

Most things are pretty easy. One problem is having the time to do literally everything yourself. The other is deciding whether that time spent doing optional tasks is worth the time not spent doing more meaningful activities.

Seems bizarre that people are okay with public opinion being explicitly manipulated by a very small group of people with very little overlapping interest with the public, but not okay with public opinion being explicitly manipulated by a very small group of people with very little overlapping interest with the public from a foreign country.

Salmon (although there are pockets of people who still pronounce the “l”)

See, this is a weird one, because I don’t know anybody who pronounces the “L” here, but calm, balm, or psalm you would.

Prevent substantial wealth differentials in the first place.

This article presumably intentionally totally fails to address the fact that you could prevent this by stopping further climate change. It takes continued global warming as a foregone conclusion and is just like, “Welp, how can we deal with the impending hellscape the wealthy and powerful are creating?”