Enjoy your fascist dictator then

Yes? I’m not saying Michigan handed him the election, I’m saying protest votes and no-votes played a big role. We’re fucked due in part to people who say “ooh that will show the DNC”

Look, it’s such an exhausting night, and I really do believe that you want to see a better world. I do too.

I’m just so shattered that we’re looking at four years of chipping away at the rights of women, LGBT, and transgender people. Four years of degrading all the checks and balances against the president. Four years of political retaliations going unchecked. Four years of aggressive anti-climate policy, inhumane border policy, and pandering to a Russia (and now North Korea!) that is also slaughtering innocents in Ukraine. Four years of middle east policy that is at least as bad as Biden/Harris’s, but likely far worse. And four years of slamming our economy with tariffs to “own the Chinese” I guess.

A vote for Harris was a vote to make things better. Not everything. Good lord she wasn’t the answer to so many major issues facing the US and the world. But it was an objectively better vote, by every metric, than a vote for Trump, or a no-vote. I just can’t argue any more on that.

In many elections, that would make sense. But in this election, there was a sizeable group of Nikki Haley Republicans up for grabs, who clearly didn’t want to vote Trump if they could get an alternative. Is there a group of leftists who may have turned out in larger numbers if Harris had swung left? Yeah, maybe. But is that group anywhere near as large as the Haley Republicans, and are they present in swing states? No and no.

One Cheney convert in a swing state is worth a dozen liberals like me in California lol. Swinging right is the rational political move for the leftmost candidate. Swinging left is the rational political move for the rightmost candidate, which is why we saw Trump clumsily try to soften his stance on abortion.

I mean, I do? Trump massively outperformed Harris in swing states, so clearly Harris’s campaign wasn’t able to meet swing state voters where they are. Literally, these were the only people who matter in the US election under the current rules (sadly). Of course Harris swung right, and of course it didn’t work well enough, but not doing it would have been worse…

I hate politics as much as the next person, but god damn. Recognize the game is what it is, play it as necessary, and then move the needle where you can. Sheesh.

Watch an episode of DS9 maybe? Sisko is the literal embodiment of a person who is willing to make the tough choice that he personally finds unethical, but knows will be better for the world as a whole.

So then the logic here is “vote for a candidate who is at least as bad for Gaza, but will also fuck up the rest of the world”. Or “don’t vote for the candidate who will be obviously less damaging for the rest of the world, even though my action won’t help Gaza at all”.

Even if you assume Harris would have been just as bad for Gaza… I mean it’s patently clear that the only choice is to vote for the lesser of two evils and then raise hell that you need better policies from them.

The one thing I’ve learned from experience w/ Donald Trump is that he finds a way to make things worse.

Anybody who failed to vote Harris shares the blame, it’s fairly obvious lol

Florida’s cannabis legalization ballot measure failed…

And thanks in part to Michigan voters, we have a president who will fuck over Gaza even more. Great success.

Yes.

I have an air compressor which is powered by the 12V DC outlet in a car. They are quite cost effective and easy to buy. I use it all the time to refill my tires. Much better than some odd exhaust pressure solution.

Lol

But it’s actually not that bad… It’s not good beer but whatever it is, it’s nice 🙂

It’s not cannon but at least they are somewhat officially acknowledging the absolute dumpster fire that was the ENT finale.

Yeah, but they require somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand pounds of batteries to do so. Some of the more egregious ones need multiple thousands, e.g. the electric hummer whose battery alone is heavier than an ICE Honda Civic. Whereas a dozen gallons of gasoline (roughly 72lbs at 6lb/gal) can power that same ICE Civic for a nearly equivalent range, while causing much less wear & tear on the roads, and likely releasing less tire particulates due to the reduced weight. Of course it still releases CO2 and other nasties…

But yeah, the energy density of EVs is still super bad. It’s just “good enough” that we’re making it work.

It can be both, and I’m not sure I see the distinction. It’s a coping mechanism, and that’s not actually an awful thing.

Growing up in church, nobody was creating hypotheticals and then trying to explain it using religion. It’s just not what it was about. But I guess if you brought up babies with cancer, then yeah the “mysterious ways” argument would have been a prime cop out to avoid challenging faith too much.

Most commonly, people just wanted to know how to handle the (typically less hyperbolic) challenges in their own lives. They believed they were good and faithful and didn’t understand why God would allow bad things to happen in their lives. Ultimately the “mysterious ways” line was just a coping mechanism, that came with advice to search for the silver linings, and think about past challenges and how they resolved, as evidence of the mysterious ways. Of course it also served to avoid challenging their faith too.

At the end of the day, religion has its very bad elements that I won’t defend. But it’s silly to ignore that for most people, they’re looking for ways to interpret life in order to find meaning, or maybe cope with struggles. For myself, I’m not religious, but if I were trying to help a friend dealing with something difficult in life, I would still encourage them to look for silver linings and to reflect on past challenges. Not to use it as evidence for some god working in mysterious ways, but just to give them perspective to realize that they have the strength to overcome challenges.

As I understand it, the big issue is energy density? A tank of gasoline takes you quite far compared to an equivalent tank of hydrogen.

And don’t get me wrong, lithium batteries are super bad at this too, but I do think that has been a limiting factor for H cars.

And then there’s the whole tire dust issue which is definitely a conversation worth having.

We are legion