I am currently meditating in the Detroit airport.
It is 1:41 am.
I was supposed to be home in Chicago at 10pm.
We are now waiting out a storm.
This is not a Baja blast and I am having a crunchwrap supremely bad time.
Update at 3:46 CDT: landed at O’Hare. Probably calling off work tomorrow. Who would have thought the effects of climate change would be so inconvenient?
Sometimes all you can do is hope
¯\_༼ ಥ ‿ ಥ ༽_/¯
What I’d like to do? Play Pente with friends and family in the morning in a cafe. It’s an easy going game that you can have conversations over and it is a family favorite of mine.
Realistically? Forage for mushrooms and be successful at hunting in a post apocalyptic nuclear wasteland.
The twelfth of July, year of our Lord twelve thousand and twenty four.
Twisted a vertebrae and broke a collarbone here.
I get that cramping feeling you get in your neck when you run in crisp cold air and are filling your lungs completely and quickly because you are so out of breath but you are pushing yourself to just get up the hill and down the driveway so you can get home and slam the door behind you, lock the top dead bolt, lock the door knob, drag your prized armoire to block the door, it needs to be firm. Then take all your other furniture to baracade the back door, garage door, and the door to the garden. You desperately begin taking apart chairs and taking cubbards and doors off their hinges. You need any extra piece of wood to hammer into the wall to block the windows. You are panting and heaving, feeling nauseous from exhaustion, but you know stopping is not an option. You cannot slow down, you need to make the most of every second, he who hesitates is lost, but he who rests is dead. You keep thinking “10% faster, 10% faster, please God not like this, 10% faster”. It’s at that moment, when you feel that aching and pulling of your collarbone that you realize you were too late. The pit in your stomach filling like a water balloon, your throat tightening and eyes beginning to water. You were no longer keeping him out, you were now keeping him in. You knew he was faster, stronger, and more cleverer than you, but you had to at least try. Any glimpse of survival is extinguished, your fate was all but sealed long ago. It was always going to be this way, it was always going to be Shia LaBeouf.
Also it feels like someone stabbed me in the back from time to time. Thank God for weed.
Okay, in other words we need to consider our assumptions and definitions of “Free will” and “Determinism” when answering this question?
I really enjoyed this video on Compatibilism, and the view of Patricia Churchland (around 5:50) where she says we should reframe the question away from “what choices we have” to “how much control do we have”.
Oh yeah, we really screwed up the season by not picking Mother Nature in round one of the draft.
“Hi I’m Troy McClure, you may remember me from such films as 'Man vs. Wild; the Road to Victory”
Thank you so much
Oh hell yea that’s the good shit. Keep it coming.
He wants to go to a strip club, let’s see if I can convince him to see how other things get blown (up).
I’m gonna be a good sport, this is my best friend and I wouldn’t go to Vegas for anyone else, and fortunately not much is gonna happen the first night, but still this is a relief to spend one less day in Vegas.
Climate change has already created draughts and food shortages. It has already pushed animals into ecosystems where they don’t belong leading to destruction of those ecosystems. Ocean acidification has been killing fish populations.
These have created instability in countries across the world as people grapple with worsening conditions. This has lead to conflicts that have created massive amounts of refugees, which in turn has been creating populist and authoritarian attitudes in the west as we deal with refugees knocking on our door. This has created massive rifts in our societies and ultimately is the connecting factor for the issues we face.
As my old history professor would say about global conflicts- it’s the bottom of the 9th, the bases are loaded, and it’s always mother nature up to bat.
Took us out of the Paris Climate agreement
Opened up the national parks for drilling
Removed protections for more than half of our wetlands
Withdrew legal justification for factories to limit mercury emissions
Removed carbon caps on power plants
One hell of a symptom
Isn’t she also essentially the same character in the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt?
Lol right? That’s absurd. Mine’s 15" like normal.
Like any proper gentleman.
gestures broadly at the world that has been increasingly crumbling
You sure about that?
I think the reason we are seeing two candidates who are unpopular for reasons of mental fitness has to do with several forces at play, and it comes down to how power is gained and distributed in our system.
First, I am defining power as the ability to make people do things they would not do on their own volition.
In any system, the longer you stay there, the more opportunities there are to amass power. This power comes from connections you make. In my teenage years, I didn’t have much power for many reasons, but one was that I didn’t have powerful connections. All my friends were working retail or fast food or other summer jobs. With age, my connections are more powerful. My best friend works at Oracle and another at Microsoft. As a musician, I’ve been around the block a bit and now know folks who are producers and have some notariety. This is a big reason we are seeing more and more elderly folks in powerful positions. Not only do they have power, they have connections.
The classic cases of corruption we see from the outside, are people returning favors when viewed from the inside. To them it’s common decency. Imagine you were passionate about food and feeding people, and you started a restaurant or maybe a non-profit to feed the homeless. If someone you knew saw your work and believed in what you do, and they could give you a hefty low rate loan or been a donation, the decent thing to do would be to thank them, and if they asked for a favor down the line, you would feel terrible to not return the support they gave you when you were small and starting out.
Throw that in with a first past the post voting system that allows power to consolidate around two parties, and you’ll see the natural trend is for those with the most experience and connections to find their way to the top while closing more and more opportunities for younger folks to make their way in. The connections of the youth simply can’t compete with the connections of the elderly.
One part of your post that struck me was the “why do we allow”. Personally my take is that we shouldn’t make strict requirements of who someone is in order to run for office. There are other ways we can vet those unfit to serve. My concern with something like an iQ test or upper age limit is that we will be disenfranchising marginalized groups from taking power. I don’t mean to go full slippery slope, but I do think this is a dangerous precedent to set. Should an elderly person be barred from running for president? Should someone who has a mental illness like depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, or schizophrenia be barred from holding office? If project 2025 takes place we may ask the question should trans or homosexual people be allowed to hold office? For the last one, the argument from conservatives would be that they are too “morally deficient” to hold office. Personally I find that repulsive.
By limiting demographics of who can and cannot run for office, we would also allow the possiblity of a rogue president to disqualify opponents if they can manipulate a test required to be eligible to run for president.
I think these are reasonable considerations when trying to answer your question. I hope this was helpful.
If you’d like to learn more on power structures, CGP grey made a great video that is a great tl;Dr to my first year of my polisci undergrad.
If you can reword you initial post, that would be great. I was also having trouble following what you were saying.
First- I actually really like seeing AOC not being one of those “burn the house down” politicians as I knew her when she started. It seems like she’s learned what it takes to get a large group of people to do one thing, and outrage politics does not do that. Frankly this is the restraint I would look for in a future presidential nominee.
Second- at a base level I’m very for Biden stepping down and giving us the opportunity to escape this hellhole of an election cycle. John Stewart put it pretty well to the DNC- “Do you understand the opportunity you have here? Do you have any idea how thirsty Americans are for any hint of inspiration or leadership, and a release from this choice of a megalomaniac and a suffocating gerontocracy?”
I always look for reasonable takes from opposing viewpoints, and I did find American Historian Allan Lichtman’s argument for why Biden stepping down would not be the best idea. Here’s the 6 minute video of his 13 keys to the Whitehouse which has predicted 9 of the past 10 elections.
TL;DW:
Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
Incumbent seeking re-election: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
Strong long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
Major policy change: The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy.
No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
No foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
Major foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
If 5 or fewer of these statements are False, then it is predicted that the incumbent will win. His take is that replacing Biden will do nothing but make point 2 & 3 turn from True statements to False statements, and increase the chances of Trump winning.
While crystal balls are everywhere and you could point to other political scientists who would say different, I was looking for a decent take on the counterpoint. I would also say that in political science, we like to have tools to help us make predictions so we can make actions. Just going on deep gut feeling won’t cut it. Having a tool whose measurements don’t always align with how you feel an outcome should be doesn’t necessarily mean the tool is bad, it means it works independently from your biases. If you watch the video, I think he puts it well as the election is a thumbs up or thumbs down on the party more than it is the individual leader. It might be a helpful thought exercise to change the words “Trump” to “Republican” and “Biden” to “Democrat” when discussing the race as charisma and celebrity only goes so far in politics, but that’s what we get caught up in the most.
I’m so tired of people shitting on Bernie for condemning the violence. This is what decency looks like, and I have no idea why people think goading on more violence will make anything better.