Dammit, I came up with a Halloween costume too late. The plan would’ve been to dress up as a ‘like’ button, and get drunk.

Parents? My friend volunteered as a poll worker on the University campus here. At his location, 25% of the students voted for the orange fascist.

It’s the perennial coordination problem. Consider these truths: 1. Anybody who stands up alone will get viciously hammered down. 2. If a large number of people stand up together, they can make a difference. 3. People have to trust others to stand up with them, otherwise see #1.

How do we organize a large crowd of people that trust each other without the people in power catching wind of it and viciously hammering down the organizers? It sure would help to have some support from people already in positions of power…

Now, now, remember correlation is not causation. Maybe it’s not the unintuitive design; maybe a disproportionate number of idiots buy Teslas?

“The court’s three conservative justices have accused the liberals of playing politics with abortion.”

It is to laugh!

Yep, interesting how they’re proud of America, they just hate all of the people and things in it.

Is that why quite a few progressive ballot initiatives and referendums also passed?

A friend who worked in D.C. for a while clued me in to the Rosetta Stone of understanding the right-wing mentality: It all flows from a deep, abiding self-hatred. They need constant reassurance that they are good people, because they don’t really believe it.

Furthermore, they literally need an untermenschen (the poor, the homeless, the sick) to be better than, so their own success proves that they are good.

It’s obvious when you look at it this way: America must axiomatically be all good, because they are Americans; with your criticism, are you saying they’re not good?

I don’t think that MAGA is an existential threat to democracy, or to Americans’ lives. If it were, Pres. Biden would do something about it, right? Like, maybe, lock them up. Or at least say so. He certainly wouldn’t be planning to just hand over the reins and walk away.

(P.S. If you can’t tell if the above is serious, then why couldn’t millions of voters actually think this way?)

He’s 78 and displaying moderate dementia symptoms. I wouldn’t worry about a third term.

Heck, people are still producing new games for the Commodore 64.

And Emmett Till could still be very much alive, had he not been lynched.

How’s that tactic of browbeating and blaming voters working out for ya?

There’s a germ of a good idea in there, but they’ve got it backwards: Big cities like Chicago need to “secede” from their states, like the free imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire. “Secede” here being a colloquial metaphor; the real, legalistic action would be declaring Dillon’s Rule void, and taking state-like sovereignty for themselves.

It makes sense on many levels: Cities are where lots of people live close together, and their infrastructure, services, public health, and governance needs therefore are very different than rural areas. They are the economic powerhouses of the world, and we need to let the city leaders nurture that power by responding to their local needs. The political polarization divides largely on urban/rural boundaries, and our antiquated political system dilutes city-dwellers’ votes and influence.

Lastly, our political system is broken, and can’t be fixed entirely within the system. But tearing down the system will definitely lead to chaos. (See: actual secession in 1861.) As I see it, this would be a radical move by the cities, but it would solve a lot of issues in the political system without tearing it down. It’s unlikely they’d get representation in Congress the way that free imperial cities had representation at the imperial diet, but even just getting out from under the thumb of state legislatures would be a huge step.

Watch the Not Just Bikes video, if you have the time and interest. The short answer is: yes. The trucks are enormous because they carry all the equipment for any sort of emergency, so they send the big trucks to every call. Not every fire station has an ambulance unit, so the trucks can get to many locations more quickly.

It’s ridiculous.

Why would they want to be the target of a bukkake circlejerk?

We have a two-party system, and no world government, or galactic referees to appeal to. The repercussions can only come from the other political party, which had many opportunities and strong desire by its constituents, and just… didn’t. Not even things that the President can do without Congress.

Ostensibly because they were afraid of losing elections, but, well, here we are.

Here in 'Murrica, they send something like in the second photo when grandma falls in the bathroom.

Yes, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. The truck in the first photo is smaller than the trucks my city fire department has. There’s a retirement community not far from where I live, and they send a ladder truck for medical emergencies there several times a week. I’m not really sure what use 4,000 liters of water would be when somebody is having a stroke.

The single-dimension left-right paradigm is stupid and overly-reductive. I mean, that’s pretty clear even in this election: Voters gave Republicans the whole federal government, and voted for abortion rights. How is it possible that they could move right and left simultaneously; or, is there maybe some other principle in play?

It’s wise not to share the details, but the broad strokes are important: Information is the game. Getting it, distributing it, analyzing it. Successful authoritarian regimes always strive to keep people uninformed, terrified and unable to act.

Defend the information networks at all costs. Only with good information can we effectively do those things that it’s not wise to detail in public.