If there were a “no genocide” candidate that could win, making that a single issue would matter. Biden supports Israel despite their actions in Gaza… which he has publicly stated he doesn’t agree with and has taken concrete, if underwhelming, steps to try and stop. Trump has shown us during his previous administration and told us recently that he will support Israel harder and will likely take steps to decrease the resistance to the Palestinian genocide if not outright accelerate it. He’ll also accelerate Russian aggression in Ukraine and likely would ignore our Article 5 responsibilities when Putin advances farther into Europe. I’ll assume you’re familiar with the policy differences on climate and how climate change impacts poor regions (like Gaza) more than it impacts affluent ones like the US (and even we’re getting our asses kicked by climate change this year). You can vote to take a moral stand, or you can vote for desired outcomes. The people trying to convince you not to vote 3rd party are trying to convince you to vote for a desired outcome. There is presently no likely outcome that gives us a non-Biden, non-Trump administration for the next 4 years. Based on that fact, we want to maximize the likelihood of the best availa le outcome. That’s what we’re asking…to think about what the world looks like for the people you care about under Biden and compare those outcomes to what it will look like under Trump and vote based on those outcomes. The time to find the ideal candidate is at the beginning of a presidential term, not the end of one.

You can bet your ass most of us are including the ongoing genocide in our voting decision, we’ve just thought about it enough to know our options aren’t between “stopping genocide” and “continuing genocide”, the choice is between “resisting” (aka, the status quo) or “accelerating”.

And they’ll still be the most experienced combat troops Putin can field. At least they get lots of practice marching up and down the square.

Yeah, this definitely feels like a doctrine and training problem. I can’t even imagine a scenario where the US or NATO lost half of any platform like that. Pearl Harbor, maybe? I remember how huge a deal it was when we found out our body armor and APCs sucked in 2001, and that was nothing like losing every missile ship.

Absolutely. I’ve gotten myself spun up about determinism before and eventually decided that I’m going to believe in free will for the time being. Much like theism is for many, the idea of free will is kinda comforting for me and it helps me cope with reality to feel like I (and everyone else) has agency. Plus, if I’m wrong it doesn’t really matter and I never could have been right at this point in my life anyway.

But we never could have designed it any other way (assuming no free will)

Not for several decades, no.

Guns don’t protect children. They’re the leading cause of death in children.

I have no idea what you’re talking about with protecting food…hunting? Not how most people get their food. Most people get food from a grocery store…where they’re increasingly likely to get shot.

If the freedom line was in reference to the military, there’s hardly a vet alive who’s done that… they’re all dead from old age. The only wars we’ve been fighting were for revenge or resources. I say that as a vet.

If you’re talking about protecting us from our government…as far as I know, nobody has even won an armed confrontation with the police or feds over freedoms. Guns made Waco worse. Guns made Ruby Ridge worse. I guess the Bundy’s protected their “right” to steal from taxpayers by grazing their cattle on public land without paying for it like they should have. That feels like a less important right than “life” to me personally.

Captain Insano shows no mercy

High humidity can cause them to go off as well. Used to use a cool air humidifier in our kids’ room at night and had to stop because it would eventually set the alarm off.

That’s my biggest problem with the whole “burn it all down” mindset so many people espouse on this platform. If we burn down society, we aren’t gonna magically have a utopia. We’re still, at best, the same as folks during the so-called dark ages. Likely, we still basically tribal hunter-gatherers, and the only reason we have any semblance of modern life is because we put so much work into maintaining and improving it generation by generation.

Less good than helping the shooter before they went over the Rubicon…I think that’s the point.

LLMs are not general AI. They are not intelligent. They aren’t sentient. They don’t even really understand what they’re spitting out. They can’t even reliably do the 1 thing computers are typically very good at (computational math) because they are just putting sequences of nonsense (to them) characters together in the most likely order based on their training model.

When LLMs feel sentient or intelligent, that’s your brain playing a trick on you. We’re hard-wired to look for patterns and group things together based on those patterns. LLMs are human-speech prediction engines, so it’s tempting and natural to group them with the thing they’re emulating.

Yeah, I didn’t take it as you trying to bash, just expanding the convo a bit. I think the outcomes are very dependent on why the decision to homeschool was made and how prepared the parents are to actually educate their children. If you’re doing it because you don’t feel public schools are safe enough, I could get on board with that…my kids are in public school, and it’s scary as shit sometimes. Our 7th grader had to deal with multiple lockdowns last year, and we live in a pretty safe area. If you’re homeschooling because you don’t want your kid’s mind “poisoned” by basic science like geology or biology, or don’t want them exposed to different races or religions, you’re probably gonna end up with a young adult who isn’t prepared to exist on their own in the world when the time comes and that transition into adulthood is going to even harder than it already is.

2 of my half-sisters were homeschooled for religious reasons. Both ended up failing out of college because they didn’t even have a rudimentary understanding of science, math, or history.

On the other hand, I know a guy who was homeschooled and, aside from us teasing him a bit about which sister he’d take to prom, he’s perfectly normal and intelligent and had no problem making it as a radiology tech.

Everyone likes to poo-poo regulations as government overreach (and sometimes, yes, it is), but typically, they’re just there to protect those who can’t protect themselves (like kids who deserve a good education)

My guess is you still die in Russian prison, just more slowly and painfully.

They fired 12 employees of a workforce numbering over 216,000. Looks like they fired 1000x more employees (literally…12000) last year just because “that’s business.” What a nothingburger.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have the same fake man and in the sky. They’re fighting over who his message boys were…but that really isn’t very relevant in the current situation.

Started on Friday… still coming in waves. I had a breakdown a few weeks ago… just pushed myself too hard for too long…it was probably building up for at least a year. Went to the VA (veterans affairs, for those not in the US, the VA is the sole source of health care for many veterans in the US), and they started making adjustments to my anxiety and depression medications which eventually precipitated into a ER visit. A few days later, they got me hooked up with the mental health clinic where I talked to a provider about going on short-term disability while we’re messing with my medication doses until I feel normal again. He says something along the lines “sounds like a good plan, sned me the paperwork.”

Queue up to Friday, I get a call from the insurance company saying they got the paperwork from the provider, and it recommends I go back to work. Now I’m out of PTO, disability is denied, and I’m trying to decide whether I lose my job or go back to work on while tettering between “extreme anxiety” and “drug-induced haze” from all the new prescriptions.

I’m almost certain they’ve all decided Jesus was a loser and decided to root for Barabbas instead.

Sometimes, you just wanna punch yourself in the dick. It won’t fix your problems, but it’ll make em feel less important for a few minutes.