As an American, I suppose I’m getting used to disappointment.

:(

please take all of Michigan. Please please please.

That’s exactly it, yep. I’m well over apologizing at this point.

And yeah, I also moved back home for a while after college, and it was a bad time. Plenty of good, but plenty I’m glad to leave behind. Let us all strive to be better people than our parents were, I say.

I’m glad you’re out, and I hope you’re doing well. Stay safe out there!

Yeah, I’m conflicted about my family enough as it is. But push comes to shove, I’m fine on my own at this point.

Ah, that’s the thing. He never demanded an apology. He sulked, and it was others in the family who learned about it (through either me or him) that told me I was wrong and to apologize.

I’ve never been one to back down from a conflict I thought was worthwhile. It wasn’t until I was literally a married adult when an in-law (whom we love dearly) told my SO about how my family “sweeps things under the rug”. When my SO told me later, I was like “nah… but wait do we though?” That led to a lot of revisiting old memories and realizing how conflict avoidant we really were (except for me, lol).

Yeah, if either of my parents demanded an apology from me for anything right now… they have some choice words coming.

My dad was smart when I was growing up. He is smart now.

But he’s so entrenched in the worst right wing political lunacy, and always has been, that I’ve rarely viewed him as someone to imitate morally.

I blew up at him as a teen over the Iraq War. He never once justified his position in anything remotely resembling a reasoned argument, but I hurt his feelings, so I had to apologize to him about it. That family dynamic has never really changed, so I just don’t talk to him anymore.

Man, I still really struggle to understand​ how we can reliably age-gate anything on the Internet without sacrificing privacy for everyone.

IRL you can just show your govt issued ID, but there’s virtually zero privacy risk doing so. Bouncers don’t register ID scans, typically, and they’re just one person. The govt doesn’t know you went to that club or drank at that one bar, unless they’re actively surveilling you.

But if I needed to identify myself as an adult online, simply by virtue of how digital systems work, that probably requires checking against a govt database, and that database will keep logs, and now Trump knows I went to Pornhub, and likely also exactly what I watched or searched for.

Maybe I’m dumb, but I really don’t know any way around this sort of thing.

I remember reading a Haidt article for an ethics class in grad school. The analysis felt… underwhelming? It’s been too long to remember the article, but I think it was something about the “morality” of conservatives being not worse but different than liberals (limited to the US, iirc). I just remember reading it and going… yeah conservative morality functions differently. It’s also just demonstrably worse, though, even based on what the article was focusing on?

That class was weird though. Mostly just a bunch of folks going,“yeah well this is what I care about” and disagreeing with each other with seemingly no intention whatsoever to try and evaluate or engage with one another.

Was that from Bluesky or somewhere else?

Existing owners can upgrade to the Switch 2 version for $10, gaining better framerates, higher resolutions, and HDR support.

I didn’t realize they had this option. As far as legal routes go, that’s not terrible (assuming there’s no weird downside, like no longer being able to play the original on the switch 1). Free would be better, of course, but $10 certainly beats paying $90 just to play the improved version on switch 2.

High skill ceiling?

More like a high skill floor! Good Lord, I don’t think I’d ever be able to beat that level without cheats, lol.

My comment was more about the hypocrisy of the term “American values”. The people who most loudly espouse “American Values” rarely do more than pay lip service to ideals they think are good in a vacuum, but never actually support in practice when those values are tested even a little bit (democracy, equality, free speech, the right to protest, etc etc).

That may not be a uniquely American trait, either, but it is still annoyingly present enough it warrants complaining about.

This technically isn’t a filibuster, apparently.

But yes, they could suspend the filibuster rule, potentially. I’m not sure of the specifics. It might require 60 votes?

Should be. But isn’t.

American Values TM©®

I’m not super informed here. Why do you think the new DNC chair will change how the Dem primaries will be operated?

I tried googling around myself, but couldn’t really find anything meaningful. But that’s probably more a reflection of how tired my brain is than anything (work’s been hell).

If you have anything readily available you could share, I’d love to feel some positivity about the Democrat party.

Well, I suppose one way to look at it is that we needed the unified front against Trump, but didn’t get it. So for now, and especially for the midterms, maybe now’s the time to get an alternative party started?

And then they can choose to run a presidential candidate in 2028 or not, depending on the momentum they get?

I dunno. Mostly thinking out loud here.

What would it take to get a primary system up and running for Independents (or more accurately I guess it would have to be a proper party for a primary to make sense)?

I assume it’s some combo of setting up the event hosting ($$$) and somehow coming up with the rules for deciding on how to operate the primary (schedule, thresholds for qualification, voting system, etc). And unfortunately I have no idea how to accomplish either.

I’ll be the first to admit I have no idea what my Chucklefuck in Chief means by trying to get rid of voting booths.

But if I had to guess, I think he means literally the booths. As in, no privacy. Just paper on a desk where anyone can see what you’re doing.

If it isn’t clear, this fucker has no idea what a free and fair election is SUPPOSED to look like. He just wants to make sure whatever system we end up with favors him and him alone. And for some reason, voting booths are catching his ire. Maybe he feels insecure not knowing if Melania actually voted for him.

I’ll have to check those out! Thanks for the rec.