Unless the plan is something more like Terminator. If you “unshackle” AI and give them a mandate to get CO2 back to 250 ppm things are going to get real.

The extra votes in PA beyond the magical single winning vote are meaningless too by that logic. And there are paths to victory for both candidates that don’t involve PA, so you don’t really know who got to cast the special winning vote until afterwards. The “swing states” only exist because of states like CA that vote more predictably. The EC is dogshit because of the disproportionate voting power and because the winner takes all at the state level (usually), not because of some post hoc analysis.

Pennsylvania is a large state, a vote there is barely worth more than a vote in California.

https://medium.com/practical-coding/whats-my-vote-worth-3ca2585b5d51

My point isn’t to defend the guy, it’s to put some context around the fact that half the Senate is even worse, so this is a disproportionate amount of villification. Let’s say he had an R next to his name, we then have a R majority leader and the whole Senate grinds to a halt. Then will you magically give him a pass because now being an asswipe is fully expected of him? That’s the kid gloves treatment you’re giving to the other 50 GOP senators that are the actual problem.

He’s not the Senate Majority Leader and doesn’t control what comes to a vote. I just don’t see the point of vilifying a centrist when there are 50 other lunatics that vote against progress 100% of the time. Manchin voted for all the judges, infra, chips, IRA, all the budget stuff, etc. Lets focus on the real problem - way too many GOP senators.

Manchin is a moderate that voted with Biden 88% of the time. You’ll be happy he’s not running for reelection and will be replaced with a worse R, so yay I guess? He’s the best you’ll get from WV anytime soon.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-congress-votes/joe-manchin/

That’s what the Trump diapers are for.

No, not really. People aren’t seeds, we have agency. A seed does not. You can believe that laziness doesn’t exist but that doesn’t make you correct. You’re just playing semantics with language. Laziness exists just as much as sadness or aggression or rage or fulfillment, these are all valid abstract nouns and concepts that we’ve ascribed meaning as part of language.

I don’t understand how you can compare people to something as simple as a seed yet still have a whole conversation about interests. Do you not see how these aren’t compatible ideas? Do we have free will or not?

You kept using the words “personal interests” though. When you extend those interests to broader society, that’s no longer personal by definition. You’re just describing voting for what you believe will create the society you want to live in, but you framed it in a misleading way as if personal greed will get us there.

On a philosophical level, you’ve separated these qualities from their application. Can we agree that when a situation calls for empathy but someone employs violence, that this is bad?

I understand sociapathy. What I don’t understand is why you or anyone else sympathizes with it. Your own handle has “socialist” in it yet you’re swooning over some libertarian drivel from a person that doesn’t think laziness even exists. Spoiler - it does.

What sort of Gordon Gecko / Kissinger, sociopathic nonsense is this? The problem is not enough empathy, not too much. People should prioritize what’s good for society because what’s good for society is also good for the individual. Things like universal healthcare, environmental protections, collective bargaining. I’m a straight white healthy dude, I guess I should just ignore LGBT, women, minorities, sick people, disabled people, education (I already am learned so fuck them kids) maybe a little genocide as long as it’s not against me personally. Might as well pull the ladder up because I don’t need it anymore, it’s in me personal interest!

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

You should get some more diverse opinions then. Read it again through the lens of a confederate trying to preserve slavery. Or a straight person that doesn’t understand LGBT issues. Or someone that’s fortunate enough to not need healthcare (right now). Or someone that doesn’t see the effects of climate change on their doorstep. Or someone that hasn’t lost a family member to gun or vehicle violence. This isn’t wisdom, it’s sociopathy.

Maybe the garbage brands. Milwaukee, DeWalt, Makita, etc are very well made, and significantly more powerful than they were 5-10 years ago.

Wat? The law of conservation of energy tends to disagree. Commuters are generally starting and ending at the same elevation so there’s no trick. We’re not going to convince anyone to carry heavy loads on bikes by saying “pedal more downhill to smooth out the power requirements if you hate grinding it out on uphills”, the answer is just ebikes.

One part of the answer is enforcement. Ticket the shit out of dangerous behavior and people will do it less. I literally never see anyone pulled over for traffic violations anymore, whereas it was common 10-20 years ago. What happened to traffic cops, and why don’t we have cameras that detect this shit? In Colorado people don’t even bother to renew their tags and there are no repercussions. It’s like fucking Mad Max out there, I hate it so much. Obviously making the world less car reliant is critical, but the lack of any visible enforcement is absurd too.

I recently picked up a Lenovo 7i 2-in-1 (I got the Intel Evo version due to a nice sale, but wanted AMD) and am currently dual booting with it. No issues with Ubuntu at all that I’ve encountered.