This is more of a system issue than bad behavior of an individual charity.

Charities can underpay a little bit, because working for a charity has its own appeal. But if you want a talented, experienced person to run your org, you have to consider what they could make if they worked for someone else. San Diego is not a cheap city, and has its fair share of CEO positions.

If you really want to stretch your dollar though, local food banks are probably a better bet.

They don’t really think it that far through. Policy proposals aren’t considered, it’s more about vibe.

After the election, AOC reached out to her constituents to ask why some of them would vote for both Trump and her.

There’s a variety of answers, but the general sentiment is people want some way to “shake up Washington” without a real understanding of how exactly that would work or what would happen.

It’s modern rocket artillery. These aren’t exactly the top-of-the-line in advanced hypersonic cruise missile technology.

It’s actually between those two extremes. It’s in the name, Chief Executive Officer. They’re essentially there to execute the will of the ownership. They manage the company.

edit: To further expand on that, it’s not too different from the executive of a country. While they make a lot of decisions, one thing they don’t deserve blame for is any laws passed by the legislature. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it captures the basic idea.

Sure, they do make a lot of decisions, no question. However, those decisions are at the direction of a Board of Directors.

In the same way a manager would be fired if they went against their owners wishes, a CEO is similarly subject to their superiors.

The CEO is an employee, a manager. You know how shops have managers hired by the owners to run the place? If that were the motive, wouldn’t owners be the preferred target?

There’s no way to know for sure, I imagine, but I do hope our intelligence agencies are counterattacking. Defense is great and all, but sometimes some offense becomes appropriate.

Depends on platform I suppose. Here, the level of activity is low enough that if you’re reading the comments, you’re usually reading all of them. In a major reddit sub that is seldom the case.

Photos of the protest show they’re pretty large, especially for a country with such a low total population. Maybe people just want to be free?

edit: Photos actually remind me of the cease fire protests in Israel now that I think about it. Also a lower population country with a large contingent of upset people in it.

Those trolls live off of engagement

Not anymore. Back in the day trolling was a recreational activity done for fun. Deny the fun, cut off the troll’s food. Now it’s being done for political purposes, so cutting off the fun no longer functions since it no longer strikes at the primary motivation.

… now that was not on my bingo card.

Kinda, not really.

According to the indictment, Hunter Biden engaged in a four-year scheme in which he chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019 and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns. As alleged in the indictment, to further this scheme, Hunter Biden:

https://www.justice.gov/sco-weiss/pr/robert-hunter-biden-convicted-three-felony-tax-offenses-and-six-misdemeanor-tax-offenses

10 years is about right to clear him of all that, and prevent his political opponents from continuing to use him for their political propaganda going into the future.

Yeah it’s fairly common on the internet for someone to take everything at face value.

Not exactly that rare irl either, for that matter. People even occasionally fall for Onion articles.

Yeesh. I knew the Abrams was outdated and has become really maintenance heavy, but I wasn’t totally convinced it needed to be replaced.

I am now. These boys deserve a better tank.

Obama made this a goal of his second term, and while he achieved some success, the relationship between the west and the other major nuclear powers has significantly worsened since then.

It’s an admirable goal, but I’m not sure it’s going to be feasible any time in the near future.

I do hate to send traffic back to reddit, but there’s a support group back there called r/foxbrain that we don’t have the equivalent of. They can help you out more if you need, this is specifically what they’re for.

Credit to u/ThatDanGuy over there for the following. This is more about people that specifically love Trump, but the conversational techniques can be applied more universally:

Let me give my two strategies:

1. “I Don’t Trust the Guy.”

My current favorite approach is to be as simple and vague as possible. “I don’t trust the guy.” Repeat every time someone says anything about him or any other nutcase. Like a broken record. It gives them no where to go. If they do go into meltdown just cross your arms and repeat it.

Do NOT argue. Do not reason with them. Do not give them anything but those few words. It gives them no place to go. And it does put them in a bind. They and their dear leader will have to bear the responsibility of anything and everything that goes wrong. You bear no burden of proof or responsibly. Their guy won, so you need not defend any of your positions.

This avoids the problem of having to spend time arguing. And if you were to make a prediction, it won’t be proven until it comes true. What if something happens that mitigates your prediction? For example, if Trump only deports a few people, but makes a really big show of it. His voters will be convinced he did what he said he would (he didn’t in our scenario, but they won’t believe that) and then they will gloat over their false reality. So don’t give them anything they can win. Give them nothing.

2.: The Socratic Method.

This can be used defensively during a single encounter. It can be used to shut them up. However, it is intended more of an every time you have to talk to this person approach. Still, it may give you some tools you can use during one off encounters.

First, Rules of Engagement: Evidence and Facts don’t matter, reasoning is useless. You no longer live in a shared reality with this person. You can try to build one by asking strategic questions about their reality. You also use those questions to poke holes in it. You never make claims or give counter arguments. You need to keep the burden of proof on them. They should be doing all the talking, you should be doing none.

You can use ChatGPT or an LLM of your choice to help you come up with Socratic questions. When asking ChatGPT, give it some context and tell it you want Socratic questions you can use to help persuade a person.

The stolen election is an easy one for this. There is no evidence, and they will have no evidence to site but wild claims from Giuliani, Powell and the Pillow guy. Trump and his lawyer lost EVERY court case, and when judges asked for evidence, Giuliani and Powell would admit in court that there was NO evidence.

So, here is my interaction with ChatGPT on the stolen election topic, you can take it deeper than this if you like.

https://chatgpt.com/share/377c8a82-e6e0-4697-a9ae-a0162aa36061

A trick you can use is to ask them how certain they are of their belief in this topic is before you start down the Socratic method. On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that the election was stolen and there was irrefutable evidence that showed that? And ask the question again after you’ve stumped them. Making them admit you planted doubt quantifies it for themselves. And if they still give you a 10 afterwards it tells you how unreachable they may be.

Things to keep in mind:

You are not going to change their minds. Not in any quick measurable time frame. In fact, it may never happen. The best you can hope for is to plant seeds of doubt that might germinate and grow over time. Instead, your realistic goal is to get them to shut up about this shit when you are around. People don’t like feeling inarticulate or embarrassed about something they believe in. So they’ll stop spouting it.

The Gish Gallop. They may try to swamp you with nonsense, and rattle off a bunch of unrelated “facts” or narratives that they claim proves their point. You have to shut this down. “How does this (choose the first one that doesn’t) relate to the elections?” Or you can just say “I don’t get it, how does that relate?” You may have to simply tell them it doesn’t relate and you want to get back to the original question that triggered the Gallop.

“Do your own research” is something you will hear when they get stumped. Again, this is them admitting they don’t know. So you can respond with “If you’re smarter than me on this topic and you don’t know, how can I reach the same conclusion you have? I need you to walk me through it because I can’t find anything that supports your conclusion.”

Yelling/screaming/meltdown: “I see you are upset, I think we should drop this for now, let everyone calm down.” This whole technique really only works if they can keep their cool. If they go into meltdown just disengage. Causing a meltdown can be satisfying, and might keep them from talking about this shit around you in the future, but is otherwise counterproductive.

This technique requires repeated use and practice. You may struggle the first time you try it because you aren’t sure what to ask and how they will respond. It’s OK, you can disengage with a “OK, you’ve given me something to think about. I’m sure I’ll have more questions in the future.”

Good luck, and Happy Critical Thinking!

Bonus: This book was actually written by a conservative many years ago, but the technique and details here work both ways and are way more in depth than what I have above. It only really lacks my recommendation to use ChatGPT or similar LLM.

How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide

https://a.co/d/bqW9RPN

edit because I got the DanGuy’s name wrong.

Guyana surprises me a little bit. The spectre of war is probably pretty unpleasant, but on the flipside that’s one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The economic situation should be, at a minimum, stable for the average person.

It’s not that surprising. Developing software requires a certain skillset, heavily based in logic. Understanding people requires a completely different skillset, and people tend to be more emotional than logical. Our brains just draw connections between different concepts that are, at their core, fundamentally illogical. A big business has the benefit of a marketing department, staffed by specialists who earn their paycheck by studying and manipulating people. Your average FOSS project doesn’t have that advantage.

If you wanted some of that same advantage, you’d want to onboard some talented humanities or marketing specialist and give them the branding responsibilities.

This is an excellent idea. Did you happen to find any?