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.

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.

They rarely have held a clear majority in all 3 branches, and when they do that majority comes with a few DINO’s that hold the deciding votes. It’s dishonest to pretend people that never have power, have all the power to fix things. They don’t carry magic wands, they need 51% of the vote. Or in case of the Senate, 60%. Progressives will never have power if they are punished by the voters for never having power.

It looks like this chick shoots porn and is an “influencer”. I assume she was just advertising herself. Also she publicly seems to like Andrew Tate, weird. I think she just says what she thinks people want to hear for attention because that’s how she makes money.

Well it’s not completely hopeless. One of the primary things keeping those places as Republican as they are is young non-voters. South Dakota is not about to flip parties, but it could improve greatly if people didn’t give up and still voted, especially in off year elections when a lot of Dems stay home.

The key is who you’re lobbying. If you’re in a hard right or hard left district with a rep that is inflexible your lobbying will be ineffective. But every vote has a handful of politicians that have no strong opinions or ideological grounds on that vote and are movable. With proper organizing one can target those districts and call citizens of those districts to then call their representative.

But as citizens who haven’t organized, if everyone contacts their representative at least some of those communications will be with the politicians that can be moved.

I’ve done the former and the latter and been part of bills getting passed that otherwise probably wouldn’t have. Cynicism is the strongest barrier to progress. It doesn’t mean it will work every time, but it absolutely works.

Sure but Steph Curry in his first year got absolutely bullied because he was tiny and weak and still threw up points. I’m skinny and not very strong, I got bullied in basketball, but had I had better handles I could have found a role. I could shoot, rebound, block and guard despite the disadvantage, I couldn’t dribble with a skill level that would get me anywhere though. I played thousands of hours of basketball in my life. I don’t think people understand where value really lies in the game. Plenty of players in the NBA look uncoordinated and weak and somehow carve out significant roles. Because they’re tall, or good 3 point shooters, or talented at rebounding, etc. I fail to see how talented women couldn’t carve out roles in the NBA.

I also think it’s worth noting that most women, even in sports, are strongly culturally discouraged from bulking up. As soon as a woman is strong enough to bully her peers she is accused of being a man. As things change, even though women don’t have the muscle mass of men, some women will bulk up enough to compete as much as they need to. A lot of this stuff is far more cultural than people want to admit.

Height and muscle mass obviously make a difference. But it’s important to note that uncoordinated, weaker, or shorter men all find roles in the NBA. So the argument people make that women can’t match up seems suspect. No one is saying Caitlyn Clark will be able to play like LeBron in a decade, but when she hits her prime she could absolutely fit a role on an NBA team, not as a starter at her size unless she bulks up. I think especially with the newer batch of wnba players coming in it will be hard to argue that at least the top 20 wnba players couldn’t fit roles in the NBA. (But most won’t because they’ll make more money on endorsements as stars in the wnba)