And natural gas was supposed to be an transition energy source to get America off coal so that we could transition to renewable energy. History has not been kind to the “if we can just implement this greenwashed fossil fuel process, it’ll really allow us to unlock green energy potential down the road” promise

He’s not running for reelection, the Rs are getting that Senate seat this year

Sure, but 23% of LGBTQ voters aren’t voting for Harris, which is significantly less than a third (33%). Still higher than it should be, granted, but I am pretty sure that is what the original reply comment was pointing out.

From memory and a couple quick Google searches

• January 6th, including both the violence at the national Capitol and related, often violent protests outside verious state capitols
• Death threats to election count and poll workers
• Republican legislator invites armed men into the Oregon State Capitol during a protest
• Armed protestors rally around the tallying center in Detroit while the count was ongoing
• Brawl with counterprotestors at the “million Maga march”
• Violent “Stop the steal” protests in Sacramento

I wouldn’t say there was just a little violence after the 2020 loss

The city already settled to pay about $3 per resident for the cops’ bad behavior and to put cops in a training on political violence. If some of the cops in question live outside of the city (not uncommon), they probably won’t pay a dime and the only impact they will feel is sitting through a training session that they will probably not take seriously

short distances in solar radii

I think astrophycisists and I may have a difference of opinion on the meaning of the adjective short

That’s not right wing. Do not allow right wingers to hide in the shadow of your reasonable political views by assuming their identity. Call yourself a market capitalist, a liberal, or even a Reagan-era Republican if you believe that is what your views align to and are speaking in an American context, but don’t let yourselves be used to rehabilitate the image of the right wing. They will only take that as a permission structure to hold more and more heinous views while pointing at you and others like you and saying "see, we are reasonable people with serious political positions that deserve a voice at the table. They don’t represent you, so why give them leverage to claim that they do?

Spending energy to convince conservatives to vote D is not a winning strategy. The idea is to convince those who are convincable, not to create some epiphany moment when all the Republicans stand up and say they were wrong and switch parties. This is naming and shaming as an electoral strategy, not as a punishment

It’s easier to read if you read it as a line spoken by the Silicon Valley TV character Jian Yang

Respect to those folks. A miserable ride is often rewarding because it’s one of those lows that is eminently temporary and gives you an appreciation for the highs, especially if you are dressed appropriately so as not to catch a cold or some such. Kind of like shoveling snow for that sweet sweet mug of hot chocolate on the sofa afterwards. But yeah, also a good city will provide alternative options for its citizens, trains, buses, rideshare even. If a 30 mile bike ride is the only alternative to driving from place A to place B, your government doesn’t want you to have any kind of freedom to choose how you get from place A to place B, if there are no affordable housing options or good job opportunities that change that equation, your government is working on behalf of the big car manufacturers and dealers to keep you enslaved in debt to them, which is pretty fucked up

How quickly do you think these things happen? Billions of those dollars have gone to projects like CAHSR, Brightline West, and the NEC maintenance backlog, among a host of other projects. The fruits of this spending are something we will really see around 2030 for the most part. Also, worth pointing out that subways are usually funded separately from intercity rail, which was the focus of that announcement. Separately, that same act funded 700 million in new rail car purchases for 7 public transit systems (4 light rail systems, 2 subways, and 1 Commuter rail), 1.7 billion for new lower emissions buses for a number of systems across the US, 13 million for a new transit oriented development pilot program, and a number of other programs. It’s not as flashy as the turn of the century subway system build outs in Atlanta, DC, and San Francisco, and there’s just so much room for more because the US is absolutely starved for transit, but calling that an empty promise is just an absurd mistruth

Only half serious, but saying “the highest number is best” next to a plot showing North Korea as second highest has to make you ask yourself if either the metric is flawed or your usage of the term best isn’t in alignment with common parlance. A high density of medals per gdp per capita could be representative of an overinvestment into national prestige projects vs. other areas that may be more aligned to economic and social development. That probably goes for all three of the top three shown on this graph, to lesser or greater extents

Nvidia does not have a strong history of open sourcing things, to say the least. That last bit sounds like pure hopium

And yet the demise of the coal industry accelerated in his administration, with no apparent pause despite Trump rolling back the safety regulations that were protecting the coal miners. He’s pro coal baron, not pro coal miner

Vivian was victimized by her father’s heartless disregard and rejection of her identity. Elon is now going around stating a narrative that her coming out to him is at least a significant contributing reason he is a fascist (“I lost my son to the woke mind virus”), a narrative that this headline plays directly into. You can take the same sequence of facts and headline it as “Musk is going public with the same bigotry that he wielded against his transgender daughter. A lot of trans people have family members like him” that doesn’t make it sound like Elon Musk would have been politely building his rockets and evs in a corner if only his daughter hadn’t come out as trans, and doesn’t make it sound like Vivian indirectly donated 10s of millions of dollars to Trump’s 2024 campaign by coming out as someone that that exact campaign wants to suppress. The headline as written is almost a threat to closeted trans people. “Yeah, your parents may be Schrodinger’s bigots right now, but come out and they will go full scorched earth to dehumanize you and you will be responsible for their shift”.

I’m pretty sure you are agreeing that that isn’t the case, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the text of the article is also aligned against that message, but the headline (probably written by an editor hungry for rage clicks) is solidly aligned to it, and should be called out for that

Dutch=Netherlands Danish=Denmark

Mike Johnson moves one heartbeat closer to the Whitehouse in this hypothetical. And the remaining heartbeat would be on tour campaigning, which we’ve seen can expose someone to high velocity lead poisoning. Plus, Kamala would have to oversee an unplanned administration turnover, taking time and energy away from her campaigning efforts. It’s all painfully obvious why they want this and none of it has to do with the good of the country

Am one of those “assholes”. Kamala was far from my favorite candidate in 2020, but I just donated a hefty (for me) chunk of change and will be volunteering. I didn’t need perfection, just a feasible path to victory in November and now we have it. I’m so pumped right now, project 2025 no longer looks like an inevitability. LFG!

That’s generally true for all VPs. Biden was rarely on the news during the Obama years, same with Pence in the Trump years. She’s not an ideal candidate, but she does have some freedom of motion that is unprecedented. She gets to own the incumbency as the VP but only partially. Time and messaging will tell if she is able to define her candidacy by the positive things the Biden administration has done and the positive things that she can do moving forward or if Republicans will succeed in tying her down with whatever negative aspects of the Biden administration they can latch onto. It will be hard for them to pitch her as some kind of puppet for Biden or the DNC seeing as they spent some much air trying to convince everyone that she was puppeteering Biden from the start. If she can get a solid VP candidate (and there is a deep bench of Democratic Senators and Governors that she could pull from) and inject some energy into this campaign (suddenly Trump is the old man in the race), I think she’s got a really strong shot. There’s an outside chance someone will attempt to contest her at the convention, but as much as my personal views may be likely to better align with a more left-leaning candidate, I think the atmosphere of hesitancy from folks calling on Biden to step down or primary ing Biden in the first place suggests that the likelihood of a strong contender appearing and damaging her candidacy is low. I know there were plenty of folks on here who thought getting Biden to step down was some effort by the elite or the Republicans to steal away the incumbency advantage from the Democrats, but I really have a hard time seeing this as anything but a positive step in the campaign to beat Trump in November

The monkeys paw curls. Texas has implemented more laws to stop minorities from voting