Everything Microsoft has been doing for years now is aligned in the direction of jamming as many subscription services down our throat as they can manage, whether we want them or not. They are not alone in this by any stretch. Cloud based hardware definitely fits neatly into the current tech zeitgeist.

I’m going to keep shouting this from the rootops until people get it throigh their skulls: TURNOUT WAS NOT THE ISSUE. Ignoring that people haven’t updated the totals in their head since the Friday after the election, turnout was only down in uncompetitive states. Across the 8-10 swing states turnout was up. More people voted where it mattered most compared to 2020. Find a better explanation because this isn’t it.

I guess this is what happens when you fail to teach an entire generation to read.

For the love of god, please let a couple of elder republican senators decide to make a grand gesture of pretending they weren’t always just shitbag sycophants by claiming Gaetz’s nomination is a step too far and blocking it as a final bow before going back to rubber stamping everything and retiring.

This is my take away too. The top of the ticket underperformed relative to the rest. In Pennsylvania Harris lost by 2 point, but Casey only seems to be down half a point for retaining his senate seat and that is headed for recount. The Pa state house held its single seat democratic majority.

The only explanation that seems reasonable to me is that the election hinged on the large center of mostly low information voters deciding that Trump bringing the circus back to Washington was less bad than their grocery bill(I am NOT saying they are correct to blame the current administration, just that they are).

tl;dr [that Carville quote]

One extremely important thing to note about 2024 turnout—it was only down in uncompetitive states. Turnout was, on average, higher in swing states compared to 2020. Democrats did not ‘stay home’ in the states where it mattered and you should ignore anyone trying to explain Harris’s loss that way.

Pennsylvania resident here—not happening. It’s going to be at least 50 years on this. They only started allowing the sale of booze on Sundays in the last decade. Republicans in this state do not give a shit what their citizens actually want or about losing out on revenue to neigboring states.

If there was dumbest takes on the election contest, this guy might not win but he would for sure get at least an honorable mention.

Try at least a century. Go listen to some of FDR’s campaign speeches, many of them are as relevant today as when they were given.

Absolutely wild, anyone know what part of the spectrum this is in?

Anywhere from very important to not important at all, depending on your specific job.

There is some good news though, you’ve been lied to about sucking at math. Whether by yourself or other people I do not know, but the education research I have seen has been pretty clear that the main difference between people of normal intelligence who are ‘good at math’ and those ‘bad at math’ is how long they’re willing to work on a problem to ensure the correct answer before moving on.

I know ‘try harder’ sucks as an answer but it’s the best one I know of and at least in this case will actually make a difference.

Like I said, be mad if you want. Doesn’t change anything. His vote still counts the same as mine and everybody else’s. You still live in a world where you need that guy to be on your side. You can either shout at the wind that the world isn’t the way you think it should be or figure out how to improve the world that is actually in front of you.

Absolute fucking shitheaded moron fuck who’s screwed us all to ingratiate himself with nazis.

Guy isn’t trying to ingratiate himself with anybody. He just told you what he was trying to do—make the world better for himself and his family. In particular, he wants to spend less on groceries. Low information voters might not be able to connect the dots between supreme court nominations, monetary policy, and broad economic trends, but they will unfailingly notice they’re spending 20% more on groceries than they did four years ago. You want to point out that it’s not the Democrats fault inflation ballooned out of control? I’m right there with you. I voted that way in Pennsylvania. That guy doesn’t care. He voted the other way because he wants cheaper groceries and as far as he can tell, Democrats didn’t get it done. Calling him a moron and Nazi ally isn’t going to change that.

Y’all can be furious with this guy if you want, but he’s probably the most important person to be listening to. The block that determines elections has always been the sizable mass of extremely low information voters who don’t have any strong political affiliations and vote mainly because of some vague sense of civic duty.

They aren’t interested in economic and foreign policy debates. They don’t care about intangibles like democratic norms and the rule of law. They don’t want to hear your class analysis or how qualified you are to give it. The only question they’re considering is “Has life been going well for me and the people in my community that I care about?” That’s it. It’s a vibe check.

Good vibes? Vote for those in power. Bad vibes? Vote against those in power.

This is the voter you need to convince if you want to win.

I don’t think that’s what ‘strict’ means. ‘Strict’ is not a descriptor of the volume or quality of guidelines, but of what the tolerance for failing to adhere to them is.

While this paper is new, the concept isn’t. Investigations into the lowest threshold where exercise still improves health have been unable to find one for some time.

There was a study a few years ago where they split a group of office workers who worked on the second floor of an office building, but all took the elevator, into a test group where they simply asked half them to take the stairs instead with no other changes. The addition of a mere five flights of stairs spread over a week still produced a measurable benefit to cardiovascular health markers.

So the tl;dr of exercise seems to be do literally anything that makes you breathe even a tiny bit harder and it will help.

T

The PSLF is about to go back into a state where they deny as many applications as possible for any reason they can find, just like they did when borrowers first became eligible in 2017 under Trump’s Secretary of Ed.

The executive discretion derived relief programs under suit are gone immediately.

The new bankruptcy guidelines that have dramatically improved access to relief that way are gone too.

If you’re buried in student loan debt, prepare to have another truck dumped on you.

Not to defend the American public, who does not deserve any defense in the slightest, but…

I have a friend in advertising who specializes in Google SEO, and he pointed out this will include searches that contain the phrase as a subset of the search, such as “When did Joe Biden drop out” or “Why did Joe Biden drop out”.

Grinding the DoJ to a halt isn’t the goal this time. He needs someone competent enough to wield the agency like a hammer in order to go after rivals and punish dissidents. He may not be smart enough to pick which candidate can actually achieve that, but failure will be noticed.

No way he makes Cannon AG, that’s a job that requires actual competence to get anything done. See also: Merrick Garland.

He’s going to give Cannon Thomas’s spot on the Supreme Court in 6-12 months when he announces his retirement.