merc @ merc @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

We know he's 6'3" and 224 pounds with a resting heartbeat of 62 bpm. How could he possibly have health problems?

Other places I've seen this story they were talking about "Astronomer CEO". I couldn't figure how how people knew the CEO was an astronomer, and why that mattered. When I found out it was the name of his company, it made me wonder why everyone seemed to know this company except me.

So what? You can wait until the next election and undo whatever they did. Or you can use your power to adjust the system so your opponents can't win.

It would be interesting if someone could take the same game, with the same properties, board pieces, etc. but turn it into a "union vs. management" game. One player started as management and already owned properties and hotels, the others were in a union and pooled their resources. You could have elements like the "union goes on strike" and the "management" player couldn't build any new hotels, but it meant that when the union players passed go they couldn't collect $200. And, for extra twists, allow a player to leave the union if they think that it's holding them back, and see what that does to the rest of the union and to management.

It makes sense if your job isn't very stable. For example, if you're brought into be a consultant on a project that will last a guaranteed 18 months, but probably not much beyond that, it probably doesn't make sense to buy a house. If you're a construction worker working on a major project, like a bridge being built somewhere, or the construction of a data center, but when that project is done there isn't likely to be any major local demand for your trade.

Even if you're hoping that something is going to be a long-term move, sometimes it's smart to start off renting until you can establish yourself. Like, if you're the best actor Wyoming has ever produced, so you're going to move to Hollywood to break into the industry, it might be smart to start out by renting rather than buying a house in LA.

The advantage with rentals is that your maximum commitment is normally a year, and often it's less than that. When you buy a house, you owe upwards of 5% to the agent. On a $500k house, that's $25k that just goes up in smoke as soon as the transaction closes. If you have to sell the house, move, and buy a new house 1 year later, you're spending $25k per year on agents fees. It would be difficult to come up with a rental arrangement that's financially worse than that.

There's a difference between voting in a block, and literally passing/interesting legislation to expand powers of another branch at the expense of your own.

Not really. As soon as people are told they have to vote for what the party wants instead of each person individually voting as they believe, then it's just a matter of where you draw the line. If your party's leader is president then why wouldn't you just fall in line and pass everything he wants. If you're a judge and your party's president is in office, why wouldn't you try to find legal justification for everything he wants. Why should there be party infighting between the president and the head of the house? Surely the house should just fall in line and let the President get his agenda passed.

Just because aol.com didn't exist in 1992 doesn't mean that it's impossible to do research into things that happened before 1992.

For one thing, there are archives of newspapers going back into the 1800s. For example, here's the NY Times from 1865, from the US Library of Congress. Or you can look at the NY Times' own archive for things like Bush Collapsing at a Japanese State Dinner

For another, books exist. People read books, and sometimes excerpts from those books are posted online. That's how you have Wikipedia entries for presidents who died before 1992. It's also how you get all kinds of articles like 14 Presidents who Cheated on their First Lady or Historic Presidential Affairs That Never Made it To the Tabloids or 9 US presidents who faced sex scandals before, during, or after their time in office.

Note that those articles do include George HW Bush, but they don't mention a Japanese person. Instead they talk about Jennifer Fitzgerald. Maybe you got the country wrong, because she was working with him while he was "Chief of US Liaison Office to the People’s Republic of China". So, she was a white, American woman but the affair would have been ongoing while he was in Asia.

To me, it seems more likely that you have a faulty memory, than that the world remembers lots of US presidents having lots of affairs, including George HW Bush, but that for some reason they've censored one particular affair of his.

There are a lot of things that can't be grown at all in Canada that do grow in Mexico and the US. I'd love it if Canada imported more Mexican goods and stopped buying from the US. I know a lot of people in Canada are still avoiding US products / produce too.

I just wonder what Canada can sell Mexico. Mexico is part of the same North American network of auto manufacturing, so Canada technically exports car parts to Mexico and Mexico exports car parts to Canada. But, really, that's just shuffling things around as part of a continent-wide manufacturing chain, with the imports and exports showing up in a country's list for accounting purposes. I don't think Canada is a major buyer of cars made in Mexico or vice versa. Canada's other main exports are petroleum-related, but since Mexico has its own petroleum industry, they probably don't buy much from Canada.

Are you sure about that? He did have an affair with a staffer, but she was blonde. The only Japanese thing he was famous for was puking on some Japanese people in a meeting.

but what if 2/3rds of the government decides to wipe their ass with the constitution at the same time

Or just, "what if a party works together and falls in line under a single leader"?

It should have been obvious not that this was possible, but that it was inevitable.

The only way I can see to do anything about that flaw is to just make it ridiculously easy to impeach any politician, say something like a general vote of the public that only requires a 25% margin to pass

If that happened, seats would be constantly vacant. You'd have 75% D districts with a 25% R minority who would simply remove anybody the other side elected. The D's would retaliate by removing a R. The oligarchs would love that system because there would be nobody to pass laws that stopped their looting.

The fundamental problem is democracy.

Giving every single person a vote, no matter what, is a problem. Weighing every single vote equally, no matter what, is a problem. The GOP won because there were enough people who had lost touch with reality that their lies were believable. And, now that they won, they're going to rig the game even more, and make sure that there are no limits put on disinformation.

Democracy may be the best system we have found so far, but it has some severe failure modes.

I mean, who would think that independent branches of governments would WILLINGLY cede their power to other branches of government?

Anyone with any sense?

This is how political parties work. And, the "founding fathers" were aware of it too. They just thought that somehow the US was special and would magically avoid this problem.

This just reminds me of that old trope:

Q: "Are you a spy?"

A: "No."

Q: "Hmm, that's just what a spy would say!"

It's true that if things are headed towards fascism and you tell people, they'll tell you to stop overreacting. But if things are not headed towards fascism and you tell people they are, they'll also tell you to stop overreacting.

In this case if someone told me that things in the US are headed towards fascism, I'd say "well yeah, obviously". But, if someone else told you to stop overreacting, you couldn't draw any conclusions from that.

Assuming they were being competent and attentive. But, this is an American prison, so you know they're cutting every corner possible, hiring anybody with a pulse, lying about everything when caught, etc.

How many of the other 75% wishes they could eat their meals alone?

The issue is how many "working class" people identify as "working class". How many get all their information from Fox News, Newsmax and wherever Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones are posting from today. Also, how many are completely disengaged from politics and don't even know who's Mayor, let alone who might be running in the next election? The rich may be few in number, but they're engaged and mobilized and have a lot of tools they can use.

Figureheads that stand as tall as Trump

Should they also wear lifts? Or is it important that their height is natural?

I would guess that most of the time when a prisoner kills themselves it's when they don't have a cellmate. A cellmate is probably likely to stop someone or to call the guards, rather than just watch someone die.

It's especially funny that what's finally undoing them is a conspiracy theory. The whole MAGA movement is founded on conspiracies. Just before starting his run for President, Trump was the birther in chief, pushing the conspiracy that Obama was Kenyan. Live by the sword, die by the sword, I guess.

Is there some sinister reason why the low point was 1905 or so?

That's definitely part of it. But, also because it's not part of the building code, they can just lie. So, even if you go look at a luxury apartment building, they might tell you that it's high quality and you can't hear the neighbours at all. Maybe if you get a chance to talk to someone who lives there they can tell you the truth. But, in my experience a lot of real estate agents / rental agents / landlords and the like lie.