D.C. isn’t a state, and capitol police are Federal officers. It’s a legally weird place.

His district was 65-35, so not very purple.

What’s any of that have to do with knowing that 9/11 happened? Standing on the Arizona Memorial, asking “What’s this all about?” isn’t asking for a dissertation on US-Japan relations, or nuances of 1940s US politics. It’s asking why there’s a big white building in the middle of the bay.

Donald Trump was born 13 months after the end of WWII in Europe. 9 months after the fall of Japan. WWII isn’t “history” for him: he should know as much about Pearl Harbor as you do about 9/11.

The sycophantic media must be so sick of desperately trying to sanewash whatever salad issues from Trump’s face that Musk, however dishonest and wrong, is like a swimming pool bar after 40 years in the desert.

That’s my point: fusion is just another heat source for making steam, and with these experimental reactors, they can’t be sure how much or for how long they will generate heat. Probably not even sure what a good geometry for transferring energy from the reaction mass to the water. You can’t build a turbine for a system that’s only going to run 20 minutes every three years, and you can’t replace that turbine just because the next test will have ten times the output.

I mean, you could, but it would be stupid.

If you’re not sure how the fire works, it seems kind of stupid to build a turbine for it.

Solar is definitely not a panacea. Near as I can tell, no ‘green’ alternative is - they really depend on making use of local conditions and resources in ways that are not compatible with late-stage production-line capitalism.

In my area (US southeast), between weather and tilt-of-earth, the solar models predict about half as much annual energy as an identical installation in California or Arizona. Tack on that our electric rate is also about half California, and rooftop solar is a pretty iffy proposal.

Wind might be better here, if there were any residential/suburban options. Hydro, if you happen to live on a stream. Basically, the useful local resources all require massive scale to utilize, and nobody wants to do that when gas is cheap.

Of the 5 current US reps with DSA history, DSA only endorsed 1 in 2024. They don’t even support AOC anymore. Maybe they’ve just refocused their efforts on state level races - which are definitely more ‘winnable’ and definitely an important part of building a pipeline to national office - but far less visible to people who don’t live in any targeted districts. To my view, they’re not the national joke that the Green party is, but they’re much harder to see than they were six years ago.

Democratic Socialists had a pretty serious recruiting campaign for the 2018 midterms. Cold-called potential candidates, offered training for both speechifying and organizing. Put up actual progressive candidates against incumbent dems in carefully chosen districts. That’s where “The Squad” came from.

Then they just kind of disappeared.

My point is that there are people out there willing to step up, but probably not thinking that they could be a “real” candidate and win, put up with the hassle and harrasment. People who would answer if called, but aren’t ready to jump in unasked. Bernie’s asking.

Yup.

Listen, I understand that numbers are scary, but the difference between ‘ordinary rich’ and ‘problematic rich’ is entirely in the numbers. I’ve probably got 10x as much cash in bank as you, but I’m not rich. My grandma, retired with a paid-off house and a bit of 401k, probably - technically - a millionaire, but still not rich. Billionaire who gets stopped for speeding or DUI can drop $100,000 on lawyers, the way I might drop a penny in the Take-a-penny dish, not just fighting his ticket but investigating and suing the PD that stopped him. That billionaire can pay a politician $1M for special treatment the way I might buy lunch.

Your grandma with $1M ain’t problematic rich. Billionaire is problematic rich. The threshold is somewhere in between, and probably closer to $100M than $10M. Estate tax starts at $14M. Most of the proposals for wealth tax start somewhere around $50M.

$14M is almost exactly the top 1% of US households by wealth, around a million to million-and-a-half of them. There’s only 750 billionaires. The billionaires are less than 0.1% of the US 1%.

$14M is plenty to live very comfortably, but it’s little enough that you still have to consider costs of big purchases. You’re not going to own a jet. You can have multiple houses as long as you keep them normal-sized. $14M is rich, but it’s not Rich-rich.

I remember hearing the same thing about Covid.

Physical violence? Did I miss where the dude got dragged from his vehicle and beaten?

Go out in public proudly displaying political symbols, and you should expect people to answer back with a yell or a finger. A sticker about how your car sucks. Maybe even a blast of coal-rolling exhaust. Words invite words; symbols invite symbols - no one’s throwing hands, so I’d say this is just about how I’d like culture war to work.

Trump 45 was happy to let his appointees work as interim this-or-that or acting whatchamacallit, and those people seemed to have exactly as much authority as confirmed appointees. Maybe they didn’t get the full paycheck? but senate confirmation seems to be completely unnecessary to the exercise of power when everyone just goes along anyway.

I’d be pretty happy to see Dems grind congress to an halt with investigations of absolutely everything, filibusters of everything else, and red card holds, or whatever other magical Senate traditions allow single Senators to completely stifle government activity.

It’s implicit. Biden is the one who invited all 25 million undocumented gang members into the country. Biden is the one who failed to renegotiate the 45th President’s disastrous Cal-Mex trade agreement. Trump’s bold new policies will fix decades of Democrat evil - you’ve made him hurt you. You deserve this, until you learn to behave.

Straight out of the domestic abuse handbook.

Normal eggs are $4/doz for me, too. I see that box labeled ‘cage-free’ with ‘organic’ & ‘pasture raised’ nearby. Those are super bougie eggs, and I think they’re around $10/doz where I shop (and have been for years).

Next they’ll come for Mr. Ms. and Mrs.

You know, I just noticed: there’s no “r” in missus, so abbreviating it “Mrs” doesn’t really make sense. Maybe it’s supposed to be a possessive, like Mr’s, rather than an actual gender signifier.

Canada and Mexico account for about a third of US exports. US businesses may be able to survive without them, but they sure won’t make the shareholders happy.

I’ve gotten the impression that the major gains in the 5xxx line are from DLSS and frame generation going from 1:1 extrapolated frames to 3:1, and it looks like this review was just comparing straight rendering.