It actually sounds like he and Tolkein would get on really well

Absolutely

Global warming’ gave us that senator with the snowball

In an ideal world we wouldn’t have to moderate accurate terms to prevent bad actors making dumb arguments

But this is clearly not an ideal world

Those clowns in Congress have done it again. What a bunch of clowns

Individual politicians and political parties routinely use count a vote as approval. In that way, if no other, voting does serve to support the existing system.

I don’t think that tracks.

The highest turnout in any US election since 1908 was 62% in 2020, and at no point has a party won an election and been like ‘look at all the people who didn’t vote, I guess we don’t have a mandate to govern’

Parties win elections and govern in power with less than 50% of voters backing them all the time, it’s literally the standard. A low turnout will not change the way any party acts once in power.

I love them all*, but the IT Crowd is at the top for me

(*Graham Linehan is a prick)

I never actually watched dead set, but I remember it was airing at the same time I had a Media Studies project at school about zombies so the tutors kept bringing it up

“It’s been going back and forth around the 270 line,” he told Fortune. “Right now, it’s a tossup according to the PredictIt numbers. The big question in my mind is, how much Republican bias is there in the prediction markets?”

According to this data person, Trump blew a huge lead to make it evens. Please vote

God said to Abraham ‘Kill me a son’

Abe said ‘Man you must be putting me on’

God said ‘No’

Abe said ‘What’

God said ‘You can do what you want Abe, but the next time you see me comin you better run’

• The Bible

Putting aside questions of ecosystems etc, I think the main reason is that we just can’t - ironic since we seem to be extint-ing all the other animals

In South America they tried in the 50s and 60s, and more kept cropping up. They breed so quickly, if you miss an area they can just rebound. Then more can come in on ships and stuff

So you couldn’t really localise it, it would have to be a huge global undertaking. And it would likely require widespread use of pesticides that are at best tricksy and at worst illegal, not to mention environmentally shitty

Bill is the pony that travels with the Fellowship from Bree to the Mines of Moria. I hope he has a good birthday

This book was funded and published by Uri Tzafon, an extremist fringe group that even the Israeli Government distance themselves from

I’m not pointing this out to try and downplay the genocide in Gaza or ignore illegal settlements, and of course there’s a discussion to be had about the extent to which small radical factions can reflect and influence the political mainstream

But its a bit disingenuous to present this as just an ‘Israeli Children’s Book’. It’s kinda like calling Nick Fuentes an ‘American Journalist’

To be fair it’s an exaggeration but based in truth - although of course it’s a result of selectively breeding dairy cows and removing the calf, so as an argument against veganism it’s somewhat self defeating

But yeah not milking a dairy cow will result in excessive pressure in the udders, which causes pain, infections, and sometimes the rupturing of the udder which i assume is where the ‘explodes’ comes from

I see your point but again I’d say it’s because of the US’s winner-take-all system, as well as 50 states vs 650 seats

Farage posed enough of a perceived risk to the Tories that they moved in his direction to avoid losing votes to UKIP. UKIP never would have won more than a handful of seats, let alone a majority, but by splitting the right vote Labour could have beat the Tories in swing seats

And yes, that could be broadly true of a ‘spoiler’ candidate in the US presidential election, except that:

1. Only 50 states, and therefore a tiny amount of swing seats compared to the UK

2. more population per state than per British seat. By a whole huge margin. So its not enough to potentially appeal to 8,000 people to ‘spoil’ a seat

3. The above leads to funding issues. Not only is there more money generally in the US elections, but because you have to flip a big state not a small constituency, you have to spend way way more to make an impact. You can’t focus a small budget on one tiny area and win a seat

4. Winner-takes-all means that as long as a campaign thinks it will win a state, and then a presidency, who cares if some counties went to a spoiler candidate?

I’d love to be wrong, and I do think that there’s probably also a cultural/historical element to the US’s two party dominance. But that said, its just a different system, different processes, different outcomes, different challenges than in the UK

There are 650 MPs in the UK, and unlike ind the US it isn’t winner-takes-all; if you win one of the 650 seats you get to be an MP

In the US presidential election, there are 50 states for a bigger population and even then winning one while losing the others achieves nothing

In the senate and house elections, which are more analogous to the UK, independent candidates are viable, right? There’s at least a few. But it’s not comparable to the Presidential elections

FPTP is fucked, but it’s only one element of why the USA is deadlocked into the two major parties being the only contenders. The electoral college, the winner-takes-all nature… all sorts

For anyone who is politically involved and knows the issues, Walz won by having better and more consistent positions; as well as Vance saying some scary fascist level shit

But I fear that most undecided voters aren’t in that camp, and for those people Vance did well just be being coherent and vaguely normal.

Vance lied and twisted the truth a bunch, but if you just tuned in without knowing all the facts and context, that wasn’t necessarily clear

For me though I was pleasantly surprised by Walz actually making a moral case for immigration, you don’t see that nearly enough

Coppola was heavily involved in the production of the film where some of the abuse happened, and during the fallout he allegedly tried to sue the victim of the abuse for breach of contract

I don’t know why you’re being down voted, he is literally a billionaire

‘No ethical billionaires’ apart from this guy apparently

Regardless of the electoral politics, as Chris notes, the important challenge in social policy is helping people who won’t benefit from wealth transfers from wealthy relatives, rather than engaging in fantasies about “generational warfare”. What matters is not generations, but class.

‘Is it bigger or smaller than a breadbox’ was a common question in games of 20 Questions and stuff when I was a kid, although I’m not sure why or where from originally (a game show I think?)

So yeah here instead of a bread box it’s a Bread Box factory and the thing being compared is also really really big

E: yeah a game show https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-is-it-bigger-than-a-breadbox/245317

Right, I was trying to imply that it wasn’t really okay, hence the ‘okay’ in inverted commas and stuff - this obviously isn’t okay