And your God emperor is signalling bloodshed if we let you do it.

You don’t negotiate or compromise with Nazis like the Project 2025 people.

Sorta. It’s a democracy with the voting and all that at this time. Since the person holding presidency is now above the law, then as long as the current president decides that we get to continue to have a republic, then we’re a republic. The moment a US president decides that it needs to be an official act to end voting, or just stall on voting indefinitely, then we stop being a republic. Basically, we’re living on borrowed time until the “by the people” part of the US nation is taken away by whomever we voted in as president last.

President Biden has the idea that he should respect the Constitution. He’s unlikely to decide to end the republic. If he gets reelected (and the conservatives don’t just kick off a civil war trying to end the election like they failed to do back in 2020), then we buy at least a few more years. Then… we go into a cycle where if benevolent dictators keep getting elected we stay afloat. The moment a populist gets elected president who also doesn’t personally decide to not take over as dictator, the republic ends.

Why that’s easy. It’s the top elected official, of course.

That’s been a continual strategy to try to deter and block RCV. They argued that in front of the courts in Maine when the state moved to RCV.

In the end, I feel there’s one big defense: no matter where my vote ends up, I only get one for the last candidate standing that I voted for.

The other voting systems where you rate candidates on a scale, it’s a bit muddier as to what a “vote” is. A vote should be your voice that’s the same as anyone else’s in the electorate. As long as all humans get the same voice, it should be able to take any form.

Since the only other likely alternative is a fascist, insurrectionist, felon, rapist who couldn’t finish a thought or sentence we’ve got ourselves a tough spot, but a clear better choice of the two: vote for Biden.

Having our government by a gerontocracy is not going well.

No, the goal is to sleep in silence. When I’m able to put aside my worries and truly rest I don’t need any noise or background hum to be completely out.

I only use a short video (under my pillow at mom volume so I can barely hear it) to get to sleep and then I’m usually out for a long time.

I’ve always felt that much of getting to sleep and what makes it easy to rest is training to some extent. Changing the ambient noise (especially if you move homes) can really screw things up until you get used to the normal noises of the new location. While that happens I’ll use something to fuzz the ambient sounds, but I’ll actively remove the white nose or background video over time so I acclimate to the new normal.

I consider it a worthwhile goal to be able to sleep without aids, if possible. Most of the real trouble is in my head (or a neighbor with fucking loud music at 2am to be dealt with), so when I have control I seek silence and a mental even keel when possible.

As a kid? Nothing. Just silence.

Today? My tinnitus, quietly humming away.

Now,.if I’m in a very weird mental spot and just can’t spin down to rest, I put on The Might Jingles’ World of Warships gameplay videos. His English voice just puts me out in moments.

It’s a tunnel with electric trains. I volunteer my pasty white ass’s house as tribute for this. My city has near zero rail service and I’ll take it in a heartbeat.

Yes, the US has been using infrastructure to harm minority communities for generations, but so far this doesn’t seem to be the most egregious example of that. The exhaust system being next to a school is the only concern, but only if there’s a fire in the tunnel (which should be rare unless Boeing starts making trains).

Either move the exhaust or move the school while you start digging that new higher speed tunnel! Let’s go for some real modern transit!

Except the Duchy won the war against the US and brought back a hydrogen bomb. They then used that threat to make the league of micro nations. The bomb didn’t work, but the threat of it allowed a tiny nation to gain leverage on the geopolitical stage.

Germany’s overhaul of their immigration system added 3/5th credit to citizenship for foreign students doing university in their country. If you do a 3 year bachelor’s, then a 2 year masters it puts you only two years working from permanent residency. It’s a brilliant move to help highly educated people get connected then prove their commitment to the nation on a path to permanent citizenship.

Then there was the fancy mustard incident… It nearly ended the USA as a world power (at least according to the right wing propaganda channels).

Don’t even get us started on the coffee salute and how it made the military ready to start a coup from the disrespect. /s

WTF is happening to this nation? Somehow our politics has been taken over by Idiocracy grade stupidity as a matter of course.

It sounds like he needs to get the house on the market. Keep shaking those pockets out, you fascist fuck.

Why do you think they buy such ridiculously large vehicles? It’s to make moving the goalposts faster.

To write true haiku

One must practice inner peace

True haiku is calm

That’s not a haiku.

Having one sentence per line.

Does not profound make.

You’re right. The EV companies know it, the power companies are acutely aware, governments at all levels are wrestling with it, and people in older homes with old wiring find out. Many of these groups (not the old wiring homeowners) are actually pretty excited about it. It means infrastructure upgrades, funding for cities, new power company jobs, and reinvestment in old worn out wir s everywhere.

Of course a shift in our oil dependent car shit hole system will require a similar scale shift in the energy infrastructure and that provides lots of opportunities.

I haven’t had time to seriously game in a decade now (single dad killed my free time), so I’m by no means well versed beyond a few things. My kids do game a lot and most of them are on Linux machines. They use a combination of Steam and standalone installs to get things working.

I don’t run into a lot of complaints. They’re well aware that not all games run on their Linux setups, so they pick and choose games a bit more. I’m fortunate that they’re not always jonesing for the latest AAA games, but they’re also getting new ones with some regularity.

It also does it so that you no longer hit the bootloader. My one last dual boot machine is normally a Linux setup, but every so often I have to use the real MS Office tools (some collaborator or publisher demands it), so I boot windows. Then windows patches and stops actually hitting grub so it acts like a windows only machine until I fix whatever Microsoft fucks up yet again.

It’s time to move to a VM for this garbage. I just don’t neet it more than once every other year so I never seem to get around to nuking it.

I am by no means the right person to ask about music instruments from a critical eye or critical ear perspective.

The one that picked up I got off of AliExpress and it is pretty reasonable for sound and durability. I’m sure there’such better choices for someone who wants to have a nicer one.

I hear you. I’m a ukulele player at times, so we’re in the same weight class.