I liked the character’s from Project Hail Mary perspective. The fact that we experience less time the closer we are to the speed of light is almost like an invitation to explore the stars.

Another things that gets me is the time experienced by black holes. We would think of the black hole at the center of the galaxy as some enduring, permanent thing, but with so much gravity, from the black hole’s perspective it may only exist for a fraction of a second.

If only the media would cover epstein the way they covered this…

I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying here, but yes there are lots of oppressed people all over the world. There are lots of people fighting for a better world. I just meant to plead to the ones who are not. Authoritarians have power because a not insignificant amount of people support or at least tolerate them. I used to think that everyone could agree that anyone who wants to be a dictator should be held far away from positions of power, but now there are too many people that tolerate it when their leaders go too far.

Well if we are able to get out of this shitshow and get competent people in charge again maybe we can use whatever loophole they use for this to enact some actual gun regulations.

That’s a little bit of a different issue. Not so much a dictator taking power from within but an invading neighbor. My appeal would be to the Israelis. Netanyahu should have been gone a long time ago. If I remember right he was under a lot of pressure before Oct 7.

Every country is a democracy in a sense. Its just a matter of the amount of effort needed for the people to make their voices heard. Under dictatorships, to make your voices heard, it usually requires a significant threat of violence. Its much more stable in the long term to just have elections. Not fighting for a better government is, in a sense, allowing that dictatorship to continue.

The fact that they are serious just shows how dumb they really are. We are not even close to that. The stress from that many transplants would probably reduce life expectancy. But let’s just imagine it works, you would still have to deal with brain degeneration and dementia. These are not serious people. Can we please stop allowing arrogant psychopaths to take top positions of power

Any law against gerrymandering passed by this congress will only target democrat states. I live in Missouri, a state completely run by Republicans, and in the last decade we have passed referendums on independent redistricting only for us to pass another referendum that gave the authority back to the governor before any independent redistricting could happen. We also recently had a referendum on banning ranked-choice voting. It had a provision that said only citizens can vote, something that was already a law, but because this state is full of fox news addicted morons it passed. Republicans have no interest in improving elections. They’d get rid of them entirely if they could, which they’ll be able to soon the way things are going.

The comment I responded to is a picture of Washington.

Washington reluctantly became president and then left after two terms, so no I don’t think using the presidency for tyranny was what he had in mind.

Theses people think way too highly of themselves. All of them are easily replaceable.

Passing an exam sounds good to me, but the paranoid part of me thinks that requirement could be manipulated and corrupted. Even so, that would only give you a pool to select from. It doesnt decide who gets which position. As far as having peer selection, that would be very vulnerable to turning into a good ole boy network.

What are the other options?

Edit: why would someone down vote a question? It’s not like it’s even a leading question.

I’ll try to answer myself. Options for how a judge is put in their position:

Elected or appointed. Are there any other options?

If they are appointed then you better really trust whoever does the appointing because you will have no recourse if they are a bad fit.

That’s why they got rid of all the military lawyers, so there is no one to tell them that the orders are illegal. These soldiers better read up on the law themselves because they will be vulnerable.

That’s a good quote democrats should use if they’re ever back in power.

As good as admitting that the US is no longer a superpower. You can’t be isolationist and a superpower at the same time.

Maybe don’t rely on rt for news… zelensky’s popularity shot up after Trump and Vance’s oval office disgrace. Trump then sent people to try to convince zelensky’s opposition to push for elections, and even the opposition told them to fuck off.

My favorite joke after communion was asking for a toothpick because “I’ve got some Jesus stuck in my teeth”.

I’m not saying that the stock market will end. I’m saying that we will never be in as good of a position ever again. The post ww2 world order is being rewriten right now. We were at the top because we were more or less trustworthy and had significant influence throughout the world. We didn’t have much competition. Now that no one trusts us and our influence is being dismantled our trading partners will seek out our competitors or start their own industry creating even more competition. I hope I’m wrong, but i just don’t see how we will ever be trusted again.

Why would you think stocks will go back up? The tariffs have proven that we are an unreliable trading partner, and countries are starting to look elsewhere. In addition, the outrage from abandoning our allies has caused a large part of the world to boycott our companies. I don’t see how things could possibly go back to what they were.