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booly

@ booly @sh.itjust.works

Posts
1
Comments
201
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Harris Backs Eliminating Senate Filibuster to Restore Federal Abortion Rights

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  • The filibuster makes a big difference when the president, the speaker of the house, a majority of the House, and between 50-59 senators all support something.

    If you don't have all of those others lined up, the filibuster isn't the only hurdle.

    For example, Biden hasn't been president during a Democratic-controlled House, so everything he's accomplished legislatively has been with the support of either Kevin McCarthy or Mike Johnson, who have been the critical veto point while he has been president.

    Plus with only 51 Senators in the Democratic caucus (and 50 in the last Congress), getting 50 votes through Manchin and Sinema has been a challenge sometimes, too.

    The last time the filibuster has mattered for a Democratic president in actual legislation was the 111th Congress, when Democrats last held a trifecta. The Democrats did abolish the filibuster for presidential appointments, which don't go through the House, during the 113th Congress, when they controlled the White House and the Senate.

    I think it's pretty obvious that the filibuster is gone the next time it matters, the next time there's same party control of all 3. It's just that it's better if it's Democrats in control.

  • World now has five times more photovoltaics than nuclear power

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  • The kinetic energy in that stardust, and the gravitational potential energy of stardust pulling itself into tighter balls, doesn't necessarily come from fusion. There's all sorts of cosmological forces and energy out there, and I don't think they all trace back to nucleii smushing together.

  • World now has five times more photovoltaics than nuclear power

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  • So is biomass. And wind. And fossil fuels. And hydro.

    In fact, I think only geothermal and fission aren't fusion-based.

  • Jill Stein Is Killing the Green Party

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  • Nader 2004: 465,650

    Nader wasn't even the Green candidate in 2004. Nader ran as an independent in 2004.

    That year the Green Party ran David Cobb, who got 119,859 votes, putting him behind the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, and the independent Ralph Nader.

    In 2008, Nader ran again as an independent and beat the Green Party once again, with 739,034 votes, versus McKinney's 162k. In between were the Libertarians in fourth place, and the Constitution Party in fifth place.

    The Green Party has never even come in third place, and several times hasn't even come in fifth place, in our two party system.

  • Young women are more liberal than they’ve been in decades, a Gallup analysis finds

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  • "Feminism" is like philosophy in that over time it makes certain wins, and the discussion around that topic gradually sheds the label.

    In the same way that ancient philosophers were establishing the disciplines we now call mathematics, geometry, and physics, or early modern philosophers were establishing what we now call economics and political science, and mid-century/postwar philosophers were establishing what is now called computer science and information theory, the history of feminism is notching wins and making them normal:

    • In Anglo American law, women were able to own their own property beginning in the early 19th century, starting in the American South (somewhat ironically driven by southern concerns about preserving the institution of slavery).
    • Women were allowed to be considered for credit and banking services, equal to men, beginning in the 1970's.
    • Women earned the legal right to equal pay for equal work in the 70's, even as cultural attitudes in many circles still considered that to be government overreach (even today).
    • Marital rape and other forms of domestic violence were outlawed pretty recently. The last state to criminalize marital rape did so in 1993, the same year that Jurassic Park came out in theaters.
    • Liberalized divorce rules throughout the 80's allowed women to leave abusive husbands more easily.
    • Most gender segregation in official government institutions were dismantled in the 1980's and the 1990's, including the abolition of male-only universities, and laws imposing different legal drinking ages between men and women.

    Today, many of us who were alive when these rules were in effect think of them as totally backwards. Nobody is seriously advocating for a return to denying women the right to have their own bank accounts, or giving husbands the right to rape their wives without consequences.

    But the cultural understanding of the meaning of feminism rarely considers preserving past wins, even recent wins. People only think of it as fighting for something in the future.

  • Young women are more liberal than they’ve been in decades, a Gallup analysis finds

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  • Most men have experienced the stifling gender norms that force them into a box: they're not allowed to cry or show any feeling other than anger, there's no such thing as non-sexual touch or romance, women don't like sex so trying to get close to them is inherently rapey and goes against their desires.

    Feminism fights against that trap, that men are only men if they check certain boxes. That's what's toxic: telling men they're not allowed to be certain ways.

    So yeah, feminism does have a lot to offer men. Toxic societal expectations are bad for everyone.

  • Kamala Harris was great in the debate. Will that be enough to win? by Bernie Sanders

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  • I read it in Larry David's voice.

  • What are your favorite examples of 'media within media' (e.g., shows, stories, or movies inside of other shows or books)?

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  • John Oliver sometimes runs random out of context clips of MILF Manor and I'm not sure actually watching them in context would make them any less ridiculous.

  • Undecided voters give Harris a look — but not a commitment — after the debate

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  • Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris

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  • Haiti's gonna hate hate hate

  • Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris

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  • why wouldn't I use my platform to share those beliefs?

    I think it's perfectly valid to say "the system that gave me this platform is unfair and I shouldn't have benefited from it to the degree that I have, but I have the platform now so I'm going to use it for good."

  • Charlie and the Marvelous Turnip Factory [Hark A Vagrant]

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  • Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills

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  • I didn't know I was learning a life skill at the time.

    The House of the Dead 2 was a really popular arcade game at the time, so adapting the preexisting game into an at-home typing trainer was actually genius innovation.

  • Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills

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  • Typing of the dead

    Still my favorite example of gamification: take a useful task and make it so fun that people will gladly devote hours and hours of their time to it.

  • Ukrainian drones now spray 4,000° F thermite streams right into Russian trenches

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  • If you you blow the guts out and faces off Russian soldiers by more traditional means they are just as dead

    I (and all the people and organizations that have worked throughout the last century to get incendiary weapons banned as anti-personnel weapons) generally feel that the method of killing matters, and that some methods are excessively cruel or represent excessive risk of long term suffering.

    The existing protocol on incendiary weapons recognizes the difference, by requiring signatory nations to go out of their way to avoid using incendiary weapons in places where civilian harm might occur. Even in contexts where a barrage of artillery near civilians might not violate the law, airborne flame throwers are forbidden. Because incendiary weapons are different, and a line is drawn there, knowing that there actually is a difference between negligently killing civilians with shrapnel versus negligently killing civilians with burning.

    There are degrees of morality and ethics, even in war, and incendiary weapons intentionally targeting personnel crosses a line that I would draw.

  • Ukrainian drones now spray 4,000° F thermite streams right into Russian trenches

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  • The moral high ground is absolutely critical in war. War is politics by other means, and being able to build consensus, marshal resources, recruit personnel, persuade allies to help, persuade adversaries to surrender or lay down their arms, persuade the allies of your adversaries not to get involved, and keep the peace after a war is over, all depend on one's public image. There are ways to wage war without it, but most militaries that blatantly disregard morals find it difficult to actually win.

    In this case? The entire military strategy of Ukraine in this war is highly dependent on preserving the moral high ground.

  • Ukrainian drones now spray 4,000° F thermite streams right into Russian trenches

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  • The United States and the UK successfully blocked attempts to outlaw all use of incendiary weapons, and all use of incendiary weapons against personnel, and all use of incendiary weapons against forests and plant cover.

    This is an area where it's perfectly reasonable to disagree with how the US watered down this convention, to push for stricter rules on this, and to condemn the use of thermite as an anti-personnel weapon and the use of incendiary weapons on plants that are being used for cover and concealment of military objectives.

    So pointing out that this might technically be legal isn't enough for me to personally be OK with this. I think it's morally reprehensible, and I'd prefer for Ukraine to keep the moral high ground in this war.

  • Ford Patents A Way To Bring Ads Inside Your Car

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  • Wait is there a way to invent awful things and then patent troll so that nobody can actually bring them to market?

  • I was only gone for a day or two...

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  • The whole conversation from the vegan side has been that those proteins and other substances essential to cats are already commonly synthesized for things like animal feed or even human energy drinks. Your own source says it's impossible without synthetic supplementation, but the deleted comments from that dumpster fire were specifically about synthetic supplementation.

    I'm not an expert in this stuff but I can see when comments aren't actually engaging with arguments from the other side, which is why I think that the vegans have the better argument in this whole saga.