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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • I don’t need to show you statistics to shed light on their intent. It’s not hard to figure out what they’re doing. It’s also not hard to see that what they’re doing is damage control. The result of that would be keeping their polls from going down, not making them go up. You can’t prove a negative, so I don’t know what you want me to do.

    As far as diluting the seriousness of what they’ve done, go turn on fox news. They blast Biden’s “insurrection” and impeachment “proceedings” 24/7. Do you need more proof than that?

    Lastly, if you’re trying to defend your original statement, you’re preaching to the choir here. You don’t have to be an asshole about it. It’s a bit asinine to assert that they aren’t doing it with intent.



  • It’s the structure of our “first past the post” system. Basically, each party gets one representative on the presidential ticket. The two major parties have primaries where the top candidates compete in a vote within themselves, and the winner gets put on the presidential ticket for that party.

    The obvious problem with that is that the party convention picks the candidate, not the voters. So it’s possible to buy a party’s candidate or for the conventions to snub popular choice in favor of not shaking things up too much in the status quo.

    The latter point, the democratic party picking lukewarm candidates that are moderate at best because the establishment doesn’t want to disturb the status quo, has been a problem for a long time and is a major reason democrat voters don’t go to the polls.





  • There is a voice I consciously control, and there is one that I don’t. They kind of intermingle into a single monologue, but I can still hear the one I don’t control when I consciously turn off my monologue. It’s still a quiet presence almost in the back of my mind.

    One way I’ve rationalized it, it’s like when you meditate and your thoughts still flow over you. You don’t actively control those thoughts, that’s kind of the point. I’m finding that those thoughts have a coherent voice for me. They speak through my monologue, but they are still there when I shut my monologue off. Under the surface, quieter, with the rest of the thoughts I don’t control.


  • One of the “constantly” group here. It’s a bit more like having someone to talk to all the time who is also me. I can turn it off, but it has to be a concentrated effort and as soon as I’m not concentrated on keeping it silent it comes back.

    I’ve spent many years wondering at the nature of the little voice, especially after I learned that not everyone has it. It’s not controlling or contradictory, it’s a bit more like a narrator for my feelings and a driving point for logic.

    I’ve come to the conclusion that what it actually is is my subconscious manifesting as a conversational partner. Kind of like an avatar that represents the part of me that isn’t the literal point of consciousness inside my head. Make of that what you will.

    Don’t get me wrong, I still think in pictures and non-verbal inclinations. That doesn’t really go away either. But it’s like having a narrator alongside it that also speaks in the first person.


  • I know you’ve probably heard this about a dozen times by now, but…

    Don’t join Facebook.

    They track everything they can about you, down to how long you spend looking at something on your screen. I’m fairly certain they listen to what’s going on around you if you put the app on your phone. An ad for something I’ve mentioned in passing has popped up on my feed shortly later too many times to be a coincidence.

    They follow you around on your browser, too. They know what you shop for. It’s all specially tailored to sell you their ads.

    I keep an account to stay in touch with my family, and it’s appalling how much more information they get from you than any other app. Not to mention the heavy prevalence of MAGA hats and I’ll-kill-you-before-I-consider-your-opinion conservatives.

    Instagram isn’t much better, but at least the people there are nicer.







  • Let’s go a step further and analyze exactly what this graph is saying:

    There’s only about a 20% distribution difference in the “never” sections between Christians and atheists. So on average, 4/5 atheists would answer the exact same as Christians. All this graph says is that Christians are barely more tolerant than people who identify as atheist. Barely is the key word. If anything, this graph proves that tolerance levels don’t fluctuate that much for the individual between differing religions.

    But Bible thumpers need any win they can get, so they don’t read the data for what it is, they just see one bar longer than the other and declare victory.