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05:00
Hmm.
Well, you asked. :-)
So what is now possible because this Voting-Rights Act was "gutted"?
There's plenty more but please not tonight.
Yes.
The law was declared unconstitutional?
Or certain provisions?
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. Designed to enforce the voting rights protected by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act sought to secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department...
@Cerberus that
05:01
I skimmed that already.
OK.
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices; and subsection (b) of Section 4, which contains the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subject to preclearance based on their histories of racial discrimination in voting. On June 25, 2013, the Court ruled by a 5 to 4 vote...
Well, I mean, these measures are indirectly anti-democratic, but I wouldn't say they would prevent an unpopular president from being voted out of office next elections?
That's what we need back.
@Cerberus Oh that's different. That's just Trump who works towards that end.
Not people like Giuliani?
And the Breitbart man, if he had still been with Trump.
Well yes, they're both his cronies.
05:03
I mean those are truly dangerous for democracy.
The justices and the judges, they are not his cronies in that sense.
And the monarchist Alphabet mentioned.
But Judge Cannon? Gosh.
We need the restoration of: "certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices".
05:04
@tchrist And how about the people on the big list?
@tchrist Stuff like this is not irreparable.
@Cerberus They've been very carefully vetted by the Heritage Foundation to make sure they align with their principles. They've been grooming the judiciary for this purpose for decades now, playing the long game.
Yes, but you know my question by now.
Or does nobody know who would be on the list?
No, I'm deliriously exhausted, a feeble old man.
@Cerberus The list will not be known to the public.
Trump will probably leak names off of it by accident.
@tchrist I'd guess 2½ years.
They've been working on this for a long time.
@think_meaning_builds Oh so following midterms then?
05:07
Yes sir.
@tchrist OK but what do experts expect this list to be like: will it contain people like Pence, or people like Bannon?
๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ฒ๐Ÿ‡ป๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ
Yes, he becomes a lame duck then unless he twists his supremes into granting him a third term or president for life or whatever it is he wants there. Maybe the can give him president for life but not a third term: his second term last forever.
@Cerberus Pence.
Ok that suggests to me that most damage such people would do can be reversed by future governments?
Bannot is from a different branch of crazies, but he's not wholly unconnected I suspect.
I don't think they want us to be a democracy anymore.
05:13
Unconnected as in insane?
Who are "they"?
Heh. No.
People like Pence, people in the list?
The people behind Trump and Vance.
Who are they?
Pence respects the Constitution.
You know.
We've been through this already tonight.
05:14
@tchrist That is why I am asking this question.
There are also very very wealthy people involved. Musk. Thiel.
Right.
How bad are those really? Do we know?
You always think it's not going to be very bad in the end. You have often underestimated how bad it would get.
I mean, if Trump mainly has Pences around him as his officials, the essence of government can be protected?
No, they are making sure he will not have those people around him this time. Nobody who has any loyalty to ANYTHING beyond Trump'
s
word.
05:15
@tchrist I am just asking questions, trying to know what kind of people Trump might appoint, because I think therein lies the crux.
@tchrist So then he won't use the list?
He will never appoint anyone who will say no to him.
The list is more for judges and lawyers, like the White House Counsel who got in his way last time.
But he won't know that in advance.
Oh I think he will.
@tchrist This is confusing.
He has always wanted loyalty oaths. See Comey.
05:17
Would seem to be the opposite of what you're saying.
Well, maybe this is better for another time.
Let somebody else be your target for all this.
I don't feel I am getting closer to what I wanted to know.
Trump has an agenda. The Heritage Foundation have another, longer, and more wide-reaching agenda.
They are working together but each has their own priorities.
Well I'll stop asking my question for now.
@Cerberus That is probably because you are asking questions that I cannot possibly know the answer to.
05:19
OK I haven't heard you say that.
Gosh.
I'm neither Eliza nor Delphi; try ChatGPT.
It's OK.
"I don't know" is a clear answer.
@tchrist I'd say ideologically more like Bannon, but they'll need to be at least slightly competent at their jobs, so probably not at his level of crazy.
@alphabet The people from the list?
Perhaps there's some university grad course somewhere that explains these various power groups and their motives and actions. I have no idea.
Dude.
05:23
Yes, I mean the people on the Project 2025 list. Trump's actual employees won't be like Bannon--i.e. believing more in some sort of ideology. His real picks will be people he sees as personally loyal to him, regardless of what they believe.
Remember, Trump fired Bannon.
@alphabet So you are now making a distinction between different groups of officials?
I'm sure it's all very complex.
I'm just trying to find out what people expect to happem.
Anyone who interacts with Trump will be people who praise him no matter what. The people they hire will be Project 2025-type MAGA-adjacent ideologues.
We expect him to have learned what got in his way, what kind of people and why, from his first term to make sure that cannot happen again this time around.
We'll see which of those factions wins. Hopefully the former; they're less likely to achieve anything.
@alphabet OK so two groups. And how will the second group be, with respect to damaging democracy and being impulsive and possibly traitorous?
05:28
Cabinet secretaries require Senate approval and confirmation; many other positions on his staff do not.
And just wait till you see whom he'll nominate for U.S. Attorneys!!
There is only one person he cannot fire.
We'll see how long he enjoys that.
@tchrist Is he smart and organised enough for that?
The National Security Advisor is staff; no Senate needed.
@tchrist Whom?
@Cerberus He knows what "hurt" him before and will be especially attuned to that.
He is easily hurt.
05:31
@Cerberus Shills from the Heritage Foundation.
@tchrist But it will be difficult to judge this in new people / people he hasn't worked with yet.
He has people to cover that part once he makes it clear.
@tchrist One person, shills?
Sigh.
I feel like one of us has forgotten English.
It may be me.
3 mins ago, by tchrist
There is only one person he cannot fire.
05:32
Oh him.
1 min ago, by Cerberus
@tchrist Whom?
@Cerberus Hard to say. Probably about equal.
I misconnected the linking.
Vance.
He cannot fire Vance. Ever.
The only one.
@alphabet What do you mean? Equal to what/whom?
@tchrist Perhaps you mean Vance?
He's a constitutional officer who does not serve at the pleasure of the president, unlike every other member of the Executive Branch (civil service possibly excepted; for now).
@Cerberus Did I not say Vance? :(
Yes, I said and meant Vance. Vance was elected on the ticket. That makes him super special.
Trump might be able to get him hung though, if he tries hard enough. Didn't quite work with Pence, but only barely. He just can't fire him.
05:36
@tchrist I don't see that you did. But I figured it out.
wtf
I'm beginning to think that some of my messages you are simply randomly not receiving.
Look up at that screen shot.
I kept saying Vance again and again, but you thought I never said it.
I see a lot of Vances above.
Indeed.
Do you see my screenshot?
HOLY SHIT!
Stupid fucking thieving magpie lurking in the chat software.
Have you recently refreshed? I have not.
05:40
No. You did not get what I sent and which I can see and which others can see.
So strange.
This also explains why you were driving me nuts with questions I kept answering but you thought I had not.
When I refresh, it will probably appear.
Yup, there it all is.
I'm going to bed. You can do battle with the ghost in the machine.
I will slay that foul beast.
Who knows what other carriers pigeons it has picked out of the air.
05:51
@tchrist Don't blame me. If raccoons are known for anything, it's for never stealing anything and constantly upholding you humans' property rights.
(Obviously I had nothing to do with this, but I suspect it may be some sort of bug related to the "ignoring" system since this doesn't seem to happen to anyone else.)
You had nothing to do with this?
I don't believe it.
Otherwise, why would you say that.
Perhaps tchrist could fix this problem by, say, not securing his trash bins so carefully. Jussayin.
 
3 hours later…
08:26
@Mitch It's smaller than caffeine.
 
4 hours later…
12:37
@alphabet I only remember Hank Green and George Soros
13:36
#travle #694 +1
โœ…โœ…โœ…🟧โœ…โœ…
https://travle.earth
Hi pal, ๐Ÿ‘‹ how's the shell shock ๐Ÿ˜ฒ
@think_meaning_builds The shell shock has worn off. Now comes the pain.
My ears are still ringing ๐Ÿ˜ญ
Does anyone know of a browser extension that can be used in dark mode to put a thin colored border on the window so that it makes the window distinguishable from other apps? Or that works on all windows? I really can't distinguish where the overlap starts.
13:53
Lucky I prepared myself by rewatching Patton with George C Scott
Heh.
#WhenTaken #254 (07.11.2024)

I scored 632/1000 🎉

1๏ธโƒฃ 📍 2 km - 🗓๏ธ 8 yrs - โšก 189 / 200
2๏ธโƒฃ 📍 1051 km - 🗓๏ธ 26 yrs - โšก 100 / 200
3๏ธโƒฃ 📍 6393 km - 🗓๏ธ 19 yrs - โšก 72 / 200
4๏ธโƒฃ 📍 9157 km - 🗓๏ธ 15 yrs - โšก 73 / 200
5๏ธโƒฃ 📍 206.3 metres - 🗓๏ธ 2 yrs - โšก 198 / 200

https://whentaken.com
Some of those are impossible to guess unless you knew them first.
He turned down the academy award for his acting in that movie.
@think_meaning_builds I remember that.
Wordle 1,237 4/6

โฌ›🟨โฌ›🟨🟩
โฌ›โฌ›โฌ›โฌ›โฌ›
โฌ›โฌ›โฌ›โฌ›โฌ›
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
> Fighting and winning is what being an American is all about.
I take a broader view.
Daily Octordle #1018
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6๏ธโƒฃ8๏ธโƒฃ
7๏ธโƒฃ5๏ธโƒฃ
🔟🕐
Score: 64
14:03
Even after those "pet eating immigrant" remarks he wins ๐Ÿคฏ
14:19
@think_meaning_builds It's the Dems' fault for not showing up to vote.
Daily Sequence Octordle #1018
5๏ธโƒฃ6๏ธโƒฃ
7๏ธโƒฃ8๏ธโƒฃ
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Score: 68
@think_meaning_builds Thus paving the way for the upcoming requirement that all legal immigrants sign a binding oath: "Yes, I'm really a vegan and shall remain so for howsoever long I remain within the sovereign boundaries of the United States of America, so help me God." Oathbreakers will be summarily and immediately deported with no right to appeal nor return.
Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Nov. 7, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
โœ… โœ… โœ… โœ… โœ… โœ… โœ… โœ… โœ… 🎉

My Score: 2120
Enabled by the Pigeon and Pet Potroast Prevention Act of 2025.
0
Q: Which is correct grammatically ? "Give in your will." or "Give, in your will"

Alan Eddie"Give in your will." or "Give, in your will" The context is one of giving money in your will, rather than handing in your will to someone. The sentence is an instruction, so I feel, the the word Give should have a comma or a colon after it. Give, in your will Give: in your will There is an od...

I'm too lazy to explain this.
no kidding
14:31
Commas are a matter of taste, expediency, and clarity. Not necessarily in that order.
Crypto spent big ... I'm excited about seeing more crypto scams un-ravel after these short messages.
What writer said, "I spend the morning putting in a comma, and the afternoon striking it out"?
In Hindi, position of a comma can make the meaning of a sentence opposite.
Too much thought about commas can put one in a coma.
Then you cannot speak the language?
It can only be written?
What happens if you invite your parents, Peter, Paul, and Mary, to your pretty pesky pet potluck?
14:35
Because it blurs into the thorny issue of thought groups.
@tchrist No peeing in chat.
@tchrist We got a couple inches last night, and it's continuing today but melting pretty fast. The high will be only a few degrees above freezing.
@Robusto Apparently there are some power outages around Albuquerque this morning from down trees.
@tchrist "Come, Fathers and Mothers, throughout the land; and don't criticize what you don't understand!"
> Don't stand in the doorway; don't block-up, the hall.
@Conrado The times, they are a-staying the same.
All fucked up and nowhere to go.
Yeah, just what I was thinking.
Same theater, only new actors.
And the spectators pay the ticket, and the popcorn is still expensive.
14:45
#travle #694 +0 (Perfect)
โœ…โœ…โœ…โœ…โœ…
https://travle.earth
> Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.
@jlliagre nice new avatar
Why are words like bluffer, buffer, coffer, differ, fluffer, gaffer, heifer, hoofer, proffer, puffer, quaffer, scoffer, sniffer, staffer, stiffer, stuffer, suffer, zephyr so much more common than words like cipher, gopher, wafer are?
@tchrist That's so effing hard to say.
I think it's either about "long" vowels or about a lack of phonemic voicing/devoicing of fricatives originally in English, or both.
given, riven, Stephen, giver, sliver, shiver
Not many fivers.
14:59
@think_meaning_builds Thanks. Not completely new though, just jigsawed and "re-hued" due to popular demand.
The people have spoken.
@tchrist But a lotta drivers.
A few divers.
But what the hell happened to rivers?
@Robusto Most of which were formed via derivative morphology. They are not "original" base lexemes in their own right.
Originality in lexemes is overrated.
@Robusto It used to have a long stressed vowel.
> From Middle English ryver, from Anglo-Norman rivere, from Early Medieval Latin rฤซpฤria (โ€œlittoral, riverbankโ€), from Latin rฤซpฤrius (โ€œof a riverbankโ€), from Latin rฤซpa (โ€œriver bankโ€), from Proto-Indo-European *hโ‚reyp- (โ€œto scratch, tear, cutโ€). Unrelated to Latin rฤซvus (โ€œstreamโ€) (whence rival, derive). Doublet of riviera and rivière. Displaced native Old English ฤ“a.
At least in Latin. Unclear what the Normen were doing.
15:07
Current weather. It was minus 10 °C today
Oh my, Tolkien stealth-resurrected Old English ฤ“a for river: ëa was the Quenya noun for the entire universe, meaning all that "is", itself a nouned version of the verb ea meaning to be, the very first word spoken by the Creator from which all creation flowed, as in "let it be".
@CowperKettle Same here.
@CowperKettle We had 6 below centigrade early this morning. It was supposed to get colder but did not.
Mar 31, 2017 at 18:51, by Mitch
Dec 24 '12 at 3:53, by tchrist
Those ones we call a comma chameleon.
@tchrist Nice!
I'm thinking of buying a ski/snowmobile mask with electric heating, it has a small powerbank attached to the strap.
That might make it more comfortable at temperatures below minus 10 C compounded by winds
@CowperKettle I strongly encourage cold-masking for those reasons. I have no opinion on emasking tech.
The heating prevents the mask from fogging up, because all other masks I've tried on bicycle get fogged up
15:14
@M.A.R. OK now my non sequitur to start off the morning... how about instead of caffeinated coffee we selectively breed some plant to have excess methamphetamine.
"This coffee is really really good."
Excess?
The International Fixed Calendar (also known as the Cotsworth plan, the Cotsworth calendar, the Eastman plan or the Yearal) was a proposed reform of the Gregorian calendar designed by Moses B. Cotsworth, first presented in 1902. The International Fixed Calendar divides the year into 13 months of 28 days each. A type of perennial calendar, every date is fixed to the same weekday every year. Though it was never officially adopted at the country level, the entrepreneur George Eastman instituted its use at the Eastman Kodak Company in 1928, where it was used until 1989. While it is sometimes described...
A great idea.
Heaven forfend that we should add a thirteenth Judas month to the divine calendar!
@CowperKettle It's been suggested to me, by the owner, that I try out a goiter-gaiter one of those loose lycra neck things that I can also pull up to cover my nose. I've been told (by the owner that they are really really warm and somehow make your whole body warmer.
> In 1849 the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798โ€“1857) proposed the 13-month Positivist Calendar, naming the months: Moses, Homer, Aristotle, Archimedes, Caesar, St Paul, Charlemagne, Dante, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Descartes, Frederic and Bichat.
I don't know who Bichat is.
15:17
But to be clear, you should wear shirt and pants too just in case.
@Mitch I wear a couple of these
And a kind of baseball cap on top of them.
And a bicycle helmet to top it all.
The baseball cap is to provide some protection from the sun and snow/rain
I should buy a full-face bicycle helmet, might help protect from the wind.
For in the heavenly pantheon there are but twelve houses to house its gods, so to add a thirteenth divinity would trigger a housing shortage and ensuing theomachy.
@tchrist Yeah...all those chemical cycles like ATP<->ADP and fatty acid cycle and Krebs cycle et al. are a tiny bit lopsided in different organisms and while on average they usually metabolize every lost drop of everything from one step to the next, some organism leave a little on the table, eg fruity plants tend to overproduce sugars in the Krebs cycle.
@CowperKettle Parisians would say Bichat is the name of an hospital.
All I'm suggesting is that somewhere in our metabolism there is some natural methamphetamine or amphetamine analog which we can prod a coffee plant, through plant husbandry or CRISPR, to produce a little more meth than it can use.
15:22
@Mitch Please stop using pejorative hate speech on the poor plants. Unless you hates peaches.
@tchrist It's been a few thousand years, needs some new blood.
@tchrist Peaches are pretty good. It's the figs that are on the chopping block.
@CowperKettle I should have figured it was an option you had already considered.
Best call them sweet plants not fruity plants, or risk the wrath of the righteous overfruiters.
Gentle plants and fair.
@CowperKettle that would put more than one function in one piece of apparel. But a full on helmet might be a bit heavy?
@tchrist Plants will choke you to death without a second thought.
Not even a first thought.
@Mitch Peaches and chokecherries are both just Prunus babies. If the choking don't getcha the cyanide will.
0
A: Meaning of "raised the gratitude of her young vanity to a very good purpose" in Jane Austen's 'Emma'

RobustoMy wife, who is something of a Jane Austen expert, says that what is meant by "gratitude" there is more like "gratification." To quote her directly: Emma is kind of a snob, valuing good looks and so-called refinement over authenticity. She is nudging Harriet to that way of thinking rather than r...

15:30
@CowperKettle On an entirely different note, I was talking with someone the other day (you know in real life), and they said that they had taken the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Vladivostok...
Marie François Xavier Bichat (; French: [biสƒa]; 14 November 1771 โ€“ 22 July 1802) was a French anatomist and pathologist, known as the father of modern histology. Although he worked without a microscope, Bichat distinguished 21 types of elementary tissues from which the organs of the human body are composed. He was also "the first to propose that tissue is a central element in human anatomy, and he considered organs as collections of often disparate tissues, rather than as entities in themselves". Although Bichat was "hardly known outside the French medical world" at the time of his early death...
and I asked them how the food was...
and they said it was really good...
@Mitch I think it was delicious
and I asked to clarify if that was the onboard food and they said with a bright smile, 'Yes!'..
and then I go all suspicious he was being polite and said 'Really?' (because from the online menus I've scene, it doesn't look -that- good)...
also the guy was Italian and they have high standards for food...
So then he went on to explain they got to Lake Baikal and took the train south to Mongolia (Ulaan Bataar)...
And that on that train...
the food wasn't so good.
I don't think he said it was horrible.
Maybe he was being polite to them and actually thought it was really horrible.
So many African students are working in food delivery here. I came across one, wearing an ushanka hat. I wonder how many are there in Yekaterinburg. Feels like a true explosion in numbers. I'm too shy to ask them directly, because they must be all tired from answering this to other students.
To see any person with a really dark African skin was something extremely rare just several years ago.
15:33
Anyway, the point being, I am now convinced that he was being truthful about his assessment of the food on the Trans-Siberian. So now maybe the sfor thplanat trip have moved a bit higher on 'the list of places to go'.
The Baikal is a great destination to visit. I never did.
"the sfor thplanat trip " I have no idea what I meant by that.
ahh "the plans for that trip"
> "Such is the mode of existence of living bodies that everything surrounding them tends to destroy them." (Bichat, 1800)
I think there is some background process on my macbook air that is mixing up the packets from the keyboard, because, sure I make typos and mix adjacent letters, but not entire words parts.
> Bichat's figure was of great importance to Arthur Schopenhauer, who wrote of the Recherches physiologiques as "one of the most profoundly conceived works in the whole of French literature."
Interesting.
Dostoyevsky was at times immersed in reading heaps of anatomical and medical texts, trying to understand what caused his epileptic seizures.
15:40
Do macbooks use bluetooth? I have a plain office store logitech bluetooth keyboard that sometimes does something similar with Linux on a PC; it almost makes me see blue spots when it acts up (sometimes for several seconds at a time, without echoing anything and then suddenly spouting random letters from the string I typed meanwhile).
I'm using an old Microsoft Natural, which has a PS2 connector (the round one); and is connected to my laptop via a PS2-USB adaptor. And it acts up too.
Sometimes it produces a long line of keypresses when I had only pressed a button a single time.
Like thissssssssssssssssssssssssssss
At such times, I had to delete the extra symbols.
@CowperKettle These are the things that make one wish to break the keyboard. But it is too expensive.
15:58
#WhenTaken #254 (07.11.2024)

I scored 772/1000 🎉

1๏ธโƒฃ 📍 605 km - 🗓๏ธ 3 yrs - โšก 179 / 200
2๏ธโƒฃ 📍 401 km - 🗓๏ธ 28 yrs - โšก 111 / 200
3๏ธโƒฃ 📍 355 km - 🗓๏ธ 15 yrs - โšก 159 / 200
4๏ธโƒฃ 📍 435 km - 🗓๏ธ 9 yrs - โšก 174 / 200
5๏ธโƒฃ 📍 1298 km - 🗓๏ธ 10 yrs - โšก 149 / 200

https://whentaken.com
16:48
@Mitch The warmer ones are usually made of acrylic or fleece or wool.
17:20
@Mitch that looks like a touc typohpad.
17:41
@MetaEd You misspelled "tyophpad."
@Robusto You are virtually correct.
18:08
@alphabet ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿฝ
@MetaEd It's a laptop that Ive had for a few years, but this behavior is only the past couple months.
@Mitch I use one of those to ride in the winter. It works well, and it's not warm exactly, but it takes the edge off and when you're riding that's enough.
@tchrist Well, that sure sucks.
It does.
I am astounded that so many Wisconsinites split their vote between Senator Tammy Baldwin and Trump.
> A New York Times analysis of reported county-level results shows a uniformly red shift across the Eastern, Southern, and Midwestern United States, permeating across urbanity, age, race, and education.
Pretty sure those are all "eastern" designations.
In any event, that this apparently occurred only in easterners but not in westerners is curious enough to raise questions whose easy answers elude me.
18:28
@tchrist What do you think about the easy answer, "The economy, stupid" ---James Carville
@MetaEd © 1992 James Carville.
Apparently the greatest Trumpward shifts were from counties who were >25% Latinx + >%50 Whitx which were also more Urbanx while those with the least shifts Trumpwards were from counties over >90% Whitx + >50% Collejx which were also less Urbanx.
@tchrist Still, we're missing at least 10 million votes from last election.
@Robusto Dominion ate my homework.
@tchrist Toxic masculinity that wouldn't permit voting for a woman?
Stupid minions.
@Robusto Mostly. And a Blax one, are you kidding me?
18:34
@tchrist Yeah, which was why Obama specifically tried to address that.
@MetaEd I've seen some analysis that no presidential incumbency has ever survived with so great a cost-of-living change across their term, that this "always" triggers a partisan flip.
@MetaEd There's also Sanders's charge of the Democrats having abandoned the working class.
These might not be unrelated.
@tchrist familiar with the Lichtman Keys?
@MetaEd That's the guy who predicted all those elections based on those keys?
Yeah.
Yeah, he sure screwed the pooch this time.
18:48
yes and I think on the economy.
The economy is pretty good lately if you own stocks.
also on the primary contest key, but the key is right, he didn't follow his own system there.
on the economy, "no recession" is his proxy for short-term economy. And that's inadequate.
however I recognize the Lichtman keys are analyzed against all presidential elections since 1860. so that's just me saying something without having gone back and re-examined.
the Democrats would have had a better shot at retaining the presidency if they had not renominated Biden.
@MetaEd They're so subjective that you can use them to generate any "prediction" you want, making it easy to "prove" that they worked for all past elections.
@Robusto My suspicion is that it's mostly because of the two issues voters said they cared about the most: inflation and immigration.
19:21
@alphabet they appear to have clear, objective definitions. For example key 1 is "After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections." That's either true or false, taken from the public record, nothing subjective about it.
20:07
This seems to be the paper that shows how the Lichtman model was developed: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/instance/349231/pdf/…
Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Nov. 7, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
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My Score: 2340
Strikle 2/6

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20:34
@MetaEd Yes, but another is whether the candidate has "charisma," as I recall.
@alphabet Right. Most of the keys are quantitative, but a couple are qualitative.
"Charisma" is apparently defined as having "an extraordinarily persuasive or dynamic personality that gives him or her broad appeal that extends to voters outside their party's base." That requires a qualitative judgment. If memory serves, Lichtman characterized neither Trump nor Harris as having that sort of broad appeal outside their base.
A lot of people voted Trump while holding their noses. Whereas a lot of people who voted Reagan or Obama were kind of in love.
20:55
Do many politicians have charisma? I think Obama did, as does AOC in droves, but Biden not so much
@Laurel IS there such a thing as negative charisma? If so, that's what Trump has.
I would call it sleaze
@Laurel That's just part of his vileness.
21:21
@Robusto I would say he's quite charismatic, given his effect on crowds. Charisma can, of course, be used for evil.
@Laurel Remember the halcyon days of the Obama administration? I feel a bit nostalgic.
@alphabet Yeah, if you like lies and bullshit.
Incidentally: something recently reminded me of the Elena Kagan softball controversy. I wonder how that'd've played out today. Better? Worse?
What do you call a deer with no eyes thatโ€™s not moving?
@alphabet Yes, but not with "broad appeal that extends to voters outside their party's base".
He has a narrow base that loves him, not a broad base.
@CowperKettle Still no idea.
22:15
@Criggie What does je ne sais pas mean?
@Criggie dialick jokes ainna gonna work worldwide doncha know heh
The Immigration Oracle at Kuber-Delphi must be annihilated before its hot take can spread!
@tchrist The idea that Americans won't do certain jobs -- I don't buy that.
My high paying IT/programming job moved to India the year of, and because of, the dot-com crash and 9/11. I repaired printers and did yard work for a living for I think 20 months until I could get something better. You do what you have to do.
@MetaEd Maybe it's that they won't do it for illegally low unreported wages?
Just like forced prison labor.
I think you do what you have to do. And as soon as you can do better, you don't continue to do slave wages.
The normal argument against unenslaving them and paying them the minimum wage is that it would be too expensive. I've never had any respect for that argument. And I don't mean to change the topic to something that doesn't apply here.
22:28
Right, that argument doesn't hold water. The economy would simply adjust to new levels of labor supply and demand.
Mostly it's that I'm really tired of rabid anti-immigration rhetoric from politicians stirring up trouble and hoodwinking the impressionable. They're making almost all of it up, and doing so in coded signals from the very worst historical contexts, too, and not just spitting on the Irish, either.
We can't solve the problems of this country when we're fighting among ourselves. This is exactly what some politicians want though.
Is Putin a politician now? :)
As a South Korean, I'm worried whether Trump will neglect my country.
danny: that's a fair concern.
22:41
Understandably, Kim will need to rattle his sabres pretty loudly to steal some of Trump's attention away from being constantly otherwise occupied by catering to and furthering the interests of Putin, Xi, and Khomeini, as well albeit to a lesser extent as those of Lukashenko, al-Assad, MBS, and Orbán. The quisling has already begun.
Trump doesn't have the attention span needed to mentally juggle three pins at once, let alone the seven or eight I just listed above.
22:57
This from Bernie Sanders:
> It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well.
> Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.
2 days ago, by alphabet
@Robusto Dunno, but it'd be nice to if we had a pro-democracy party instead of one that's pro-oligarchy and one that's pro-tyranny.
23:36
Making an observation from external - I do wonder if the democrats made an overly optimistic choice.
Imagine having to choose between something new and something you've had before.
Sadly the something "new" is a female potus, and the vast "middle ground" has chosen something that they've had before.
Sexist? yes
Accurate? I think there's a definite element of truth there.

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