Absolutely, North America has a special level of stupidity. To clarify yes, the suburbs in the US mostly don’t even have a real town center, many are just residential, malls, and big box stores. The average property size and spread is also often much less dense than nearly any suburb in the UK. So the infrastructure and environmental cost is much much higher.

Most people suggesting we should densify are targeting suburbs, not rural areas. Suburbs are incredibly expensive and environmentally wasteful per square inch. They have all the utility of a city but spread out with more asphalt, cement, power, sewer, water, gas, cheap inefficient homes that leach heat/ac at an alarming rate, etc.

In rural areas the infrastructure isn’t always as expensive because some residents have their own septic and well, live on a dirt road, heat with a wood furnace, etc. A few of those things are also more renewable. Additionally, rural areas are still required for our way of living (farming, logging, mining, fishing), while suburbs have negative societal value (they take more than they put back into the system).

Geopolitics isn’t a on/off switch with simple choices, every decision you make has lasting impacts all over the world and is also predicated on whether the political capital exists for change. If any US president tried to strip Israel of funding the house and Senate would react to counter that within a week. I’m skeptical that a president can shift Israel policy as quickly as people want, even though I agree that our Israel policy needs to change. People are also not appreciating the fact that she has to become president first either way. No person can realistically become president of the USA on a defund Israel platform.

Kamala Harris is as left as she can be on every issue that politics allows, that signals to me that she is pragmatic, and but would probably move left once elected if she has the political capital to do so. Politicians represent the interests of the country, if she is a leftish authoritarian pragmatist, that’s only because ~51% of people are.

She is to the left of every president in my lifetime, which I get isn’t saying much, but she was the forth most left politician in the senate… Fascism is an inherently right wing ideology, the worst you could call her is moderately authoritarian about a small number of personal freedoms and a ruthless pragmatist about military.

When he was in front of the Senate confirmation hearing he was absolutely embarrassed. He knew everyone was watching while he was accused of sexual harassment. He basically stopped interacting with the media because he was so furious with how he was portrayed publicly. Dude hates being publicly shamed. Doesn’t mean he’s wise enough to stop doing shitty things.

The only thing Thomas likes more than money is respect. He would never take Oliver money because it would publicly embarrass him. He hates embarrassment more than anything.

Most of these places have numerous warnings to trucks to turn back. Anyone looking at several warnings and continuing on, or worse too distracted to notice, sorta deserves the chiding.

That bridge 11’ 8" that always gets posted, has an over height sensor that stops the light to red, a sign warning you that you are over height, hazard lights, and the height bar is in bright yellow. People still hit it regularly.

People can say whatever they want, no one can stop you. But people still have every right to judge your character. Being in a free society works both ways, you can say mean shit and I can think you’re mean.

People use “retard” to compare others or themselves to people they deem lesser than. It doesn’t work as an insult if you don’t look down on cognitively disabled people. You don’t have to use it on someone cognitively disabled, the implication is already there whether you have intended it or not.

For me, I think there are much worse words. While I don’t use it, I don’t waste my brain space judging people who do.

I think you’re missing the point of predictive modeling. It’s probability of separate outcomes is built in. This isn’t fortune telling, there is no crystal ball. Two predictive models can have different predictions and they both may have value. Just like separate meteorologists can have different forecasts, but predict accurately the same amount over time, all be it at different intervals. IIRC, the average meteorologist correctly predicts rain over 80% of the time. They are far over predicting by chance. But if you look at the forecast in more than one place you often get slightly different forecasts. They have different models and yet arrive at similar conclusions usually getting it mostly accurate. It’s the same with political forecasts, they are only as valuable as your understanding of predictive modeling. If you think they are intended to mirror reality flawlessly, you will be sorely disappointed. That doesn’t make the models “wrong”, it doesn’t make them “right” either. They are just models that usually predict a probable outcome.

His model has always been closer state to state, election to election than anyone else’s, which is why people use his models. He is basically using the same model and tweaking it each time, you make it sound like he’s starting over from scratch. When Trump won, none of the prediction models were predicting he would win, but his at least showed a fairly reasonable chance he could. His competitors were forecasting a much more likely Hillary win while he was showing that trump would win basically 3 out of 10 times. In terms of probability that’s not a blowout prediction. His model was working better than competitors. Additionally, he basically predicted the battleground states within a half percentage iirc, that happened to be the difference between a win/loss in some states.

So he has exactly one chance to get it right.

You’re saying it hitting one of those 3 of 10 is “getting it wrong”, that’s the problem with your understanding of probability. By saying that you’re showing that you don’t actually internalize the purpose of a predictive model forecast. It’s not a magic wand, it’s just a predictive tool. That tool is useful if you understand what it’s really saying, instead of extrapolating something it absolutely is not saying. If something says something will happen 3 of 10 times, it happening is not evidence of an issue with the model. A flawless model with ideal inputs can still show a 3 of 10 chance and should hit in 30% of scenarios. Certainly because we have a limited number of elections it’s hard to prove the model, but considering he has come closer than competitors, it certainly seems he knows what he is doing.

All prediction models only give you odds, not flawless accuracy. He has been closer in every election than most everyone else in the prediction market.

He’s not polling, he is aggregating all of the polls into a prediction model. Either way it is just a snapshot in time.

but it does mean that Boeing got something wrong.

Comparing it to Boeing shows you still misunderstand probability. If his model predicts 4 separate elections where each underdog candidate had a 1 in 4 chance of winning. If only 1 of those underdog candidates wins, then the model is likely working. But when that candidate wins everyone will say “but he said it was only a 1 in 4 chance!”. It’s as dumb as people being surprised by rain when it says 25% chance of rain. As long as you only get rain 1/4 of the time with that prediction, then the model is working. Presidential elections are tricky because there are so few of them, they test their models against past data to verify they are working. But it’s just probability, it’s not saying this WILL happen, it’s saying these are the odds at this snapshot in time.

Hopefully you mean ones still in construction… No need to cause an unprecedented environmental disaster after all.

Yeah I’m only 10 lbs more than my wife and she is 5’ tall. I was the last in a long line of tall, usually thin, men for her. It’s definitely a type for some.

I am 6’ 6" and most of my life I’ve been between 145 to 165. So incredibly skinny, always under weight. I never struggled with women as an adult, but I also didn’t chase too many shallow women. When I was young i certainly got told by a few that they weren’t into skinny guys, but it was almost always by people that were incredibly socially controlled people, the type to “keep up with the Joneses” so to speak. Once I stopped chasing after people for the wrong reasons things improved dramatically.

Do you have close friends that are women? I wonder if there is a communication aspect to this if not. Do you date outside your culture? I grew up around mostly white rural Christians and they were more judgy about being skinny than other cultural groups, in my experience. Maybe something about rural people doing a lot more hard labor and it being culturally homogeneous.

I tried… I’ve both worked and volunteered in the party for thousands of hours. Most of the people working in the party want progressive policy, but we don’t live in a country that gets enough votes from progressives, so politicians predictably play it safe. You can’t wave a magic wand and poof, you have all the votes you need for progressive policy. Politicians are paid to represent their constituents. If even 5 percent of Dems won in a conservative district, or a district where only conservatives show up, then those districts wants and needs will not pass the most progressive policy. So people in the party work to pass what they can pass, that makes them practical, not anti-progressive. People with brains do what they can with what they have.

The more Dems we can get into office the more opportunities we have to move the needle left. You don’t move the needle left with constant infighting within the left. You move the needle left, by the left wing uniting and gaining a clear mandate. We haven’t had a real left wing mandate in my lifetime and people act like Dems should magically pass progressive policy without the votes, then they whine and stay home because the party without enough power to accomplish anything, predictably didn’t accomplish anything. It’s and endless self fulfilling prophecy and it’s incredibly moronic. I’m just so tired of seeing your endless doomsaying all overy lemmy, fucking do something instead of bringing everyone down with your lies and toxicity.

Politics is a zero sum game, they saw the money better spent on winning. Your framing of it is dishonest. Again, I don’t agree with doing that, but it’s pretty easy to understand why they did it, it worked.

That would be convincing if they hadn’t spent money buying ads for maga candidates during that same election cycle.

I agree, that was an awful strategy. Even if it helps in the short term, it boosts fascism in the long term. It did mostly gain us seats though… https://www.npr.org/2022/11/11/1135878576/the-democrats-strategy-of-boosting-far-right-candidates-seems-to-have-worked

So your answer is no then? Representatives don’t get as much contact as you think. Apply pressure wherever and whenever you can, even if that legislator does nothing in the years to come, every person applying pressure moves the needle. Doing nothing does nothing. Legislators like to keep their jobs and will suddenly have a change of heart if they feel their job is threatened. That takes hundreds of people in each district making their dissatisfaction known. Be the change you wish to see.

Parties pull funding when it’s clear there is no path to victory, so they can ensure victory elsewhere. That’s not them “rather have a maga chud” that’s strategic. You would be just as angry if they wasted money on a loss. I’ve seen your views all over lemmy, whatever narrative says the party did wrong, that’s the narrative you’ll take. Volunteer for the next candidate that runs, prove to the party that they have support and maybe funding will actually stick around. You’re an open book, no action, all anger.