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Xhieron

@ xhieron @lemmy.world

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Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Biden’s debate performance sets off alarm bells for Democrats

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  • This probably doesn't work, and it's probably not as good idea as anyone hopes (genuinely or not). It might happen anyway, but no matter what, we're coasting toward a second Trump presidency, just like all the Russian agitprops here wanted all along.

    If Biden is polling down 10 points or worse at the convention, they could drag someone else onto the stage, but my suspicion is that no one else outperforms him on short notice, even after his abysmal performance in the debate.

    A few reasons:

    1. Newsom probably doesn't want it. If he calculates Trump wins either way (not unreasonable), he's not going to want that loss on his record since he's already gunning for 28. He would be the best chance at getting an up-and-comer who already has good name recognition and looks and sounds good.
    2. Harris. If Harris wants it, she has a lot of leverage to make it hard or outright impossible for the party to push anyone else out in front of her. She's a poor candidate for a lot of reasons, but she's also the most attached to Biden. That's both good and bad for her. If they want to run anyone else, they have to have her playing ball too. Ask yourself, if you were Kamala Harris, would you give up your only conceivable chance at the Oval in favor of another non-Biden candidate? Remember, in any scenario the odds are good Trump wins anyway.
    3. The truth may be that the party would rather just let Trump win. That sounds unthinkable, but this isn't a secret cabal of idealists we're talking about: it's a bunch of self-interested rich people who want to put themselves in power. Getting them to do anything for the public good is difficult under the best circumstances. They could easily decide--rightly--that Biden is still their best shot at beating Trump. That was the call in 2020, and it paid off. Don't forget that many of these same names being batted around now were active in the party four years ago. Newsom loses to Trump, and he's largely seen as the best alternative. If you're running the party and looking at those odds, you should run Biden if you actually want the best chance at winning. You might decide it's just a lost cause and start planning for a four year long nightmare.

  • Biden’s debate performance sets off alarm bells for Democrats

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  • Jon Stewart's Debate Analysis: Trump's Blatant Lies and Biden's Senior Moments | The Daily Show

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  • It was a disaster. Trump lied for 90 minutes straight, but he did it confidently, with a straight face, and without rambling. It was a vast improvement over his stump speeches. Biden mostly told the truth, but he meandered, stammered, got mixed up, and was obviously ill. That's just what happened.

    I'm going to vote for Biden anyway, because the old man stands for policies that actually benefit me personally (and a second Trump term is a threat to the existence of the Republic). But the debate was bad for him, possibly catastrophic. His campaign desperately needs an October surprise, and at this point it's hard to guess what it might be.

  • The Supreme Court rejects a nationwide opioid settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma

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  • Broken clock's right twice a day, etc. A glimmer of light in an otherwise abysmally dark day in US jurisprudence.

  • Supreme Court halts enforcement of the EPA's plan to limit downwind pollution from power plants

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  • This is why we vote blue down the line. Can't start packing if we don't have the majorities.

  • Elden Ring Publisher Addresses Difficulty Criticism of Shadow of the Erdtree, Offers Tips for DLC

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  • Really? Didn't stop me...

  • Elden Ring Publisher Addresses Difficulty Criticism of Shadow of the Erdtree, Offers Tips for DLC

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  • Just cheat? Whatever happened to class cheating? In the old days if the game was too hard and you didn't have a big brother to do it for you, you just put in the godmode code or turned on a trainer or something.

    Some games are just hard. That's what makes getting good at them feel rewarding. The Souls games haven't really been for me either (due to the pking--not so much the difficulty), but it's not like the game makers owe me anything.

  • Hunter Biden requests new trial after conviction in gun case

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  • At a glance this looks like a subject matter jurisdiction objection (as distinct from personal jurisdiction), which is not waivable and can be raised at any time or sua sponte--so you can keep it in your pocket forever and raise it whenever you're desperate, which seems to be the case here.

    Edit: Looked at the motion, and that's what this is. It doesn't necessarily mean the motion is meritorious, but it's timely.

  • Roger Stone Caught on Tape Discussing Trump’s Plan to Challenge 2024 Election

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  • I can think of few things that would restore and bolster my faith in government more than watching the arms of the state rapidly, effectively, and effortlessly put down an active, armed rebellion against the democratically elected institutions of the nation.

    Anyone who marches on the Capitol to unseat the legitimate government of the United States should be met with lethal force, preferably while on camera being broadcast live.

    And that includes anyone who marches on the Capitol to unseat a legitimate Republican government.

    Flowing from the rule of law is the peaceful transfer of power, and flowing from that is the presence of loyal opposition.

    A government that defends the people's ability to select it with the means entrusted to it is doing exactly what it should. The bitch my state sends to the Senate is an utter slimeball whom I despise with the very core of my being. But the people of my state in their wisdom sent her to DC, so anybody who charges that building with designs on her life should immediately eat a red, white, and blue bullet. If the government fails to defend that bitch, then it has failed me, and my faith in it will have been tarnished.

    That's my perception of the government in such an event. I certainly don't speak for everyone.

  • Cloudy With A Chance Of Disaster | As climate change increases the likelihood of deadly landslides, cities like Juneau are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

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  • They decided to sell access to the content in exchange for user information, thereby forcing human readers to choose between surrendering privacy or using other means to access the content, all in order to make up purportedly for a perceived slight by bots. Maybe their motives are pure as the driven snow--and it's their content, so they can wall it off however they please--but I'm confident you don't genuinely mean to suggest that this measure will stop the content from being scraped and fed to LLMs.

  • Cloudy With A Chance Of Disaster | As climate change increases the likelihood of deadly landslides, cities like Juneau are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

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  • Datawalled. >(

  • Indie Dev’s Game Shamelessly Cloned and Released for Free by Grifter. An indie developer has had their game shamelessly stolen and released for free on Steam under a different name.

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  • That's a game of legal Russian roulette I wouldn't want to play. Eventually he's going to rip off the wrong person, and in the meantime all his victims have the option of sitting on their claims (SOL notwithstanding) to find out if he ever makes any money.

  • xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech

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  • It's a broad generalization, but it's not really a matter of opinion. We can scan people's mouths and faces when they talk (and have in order to demonstrate this stuff). I think the last example probably only applies that way in particular circumstances though, since English speakers automatically group, contract, and arrange certain phonemes in certain orders (e.g., I'm not, I ain't, but never I amn't--and in real speech "I ain't" is almost always one syllable). In this example, more frequently my country ass contracts the first syllable of "gonna" away instead of the second, so "I'm 'na head to the store; y'all need anything?"

    The hot potato example just stands for the premise that in real speech the t at the end of hot and the p at the beginning of potato slur together, and if you deliberately enunciate both consonants, you sound like you're reading to a transcriber. Compare the way a normal person says "let's go" to the way you sound if you force separate the words: you sound like you're doing a Mario impression.

  • “No Schoolers”: How Illinois’ Hands-Off Approach to Homeschooling Leaves Children at Risk

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  • I don't know that company personally, but at a glance it appears to be a for-profit corporation that has been the subject of litigation recently. So... not really what we need.

    The funding needs to be going into public schools via taxes, not to private corporations via tuition. We need local oversight by public schools accountable to voters for all education. That company--again, at a glance--seems to be the exact opposite, and kind of part of the problem.

  • “No Schoolers”: How Illinois’ Hands-Off Approach to Homeschooling Leaves Children at Risk

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  • Alternative schooling arrangements need to exist, and the pandemic really demonstrated why. They just need to be subject to oversight by the state public schools.

  • Glad I was too dumb to finish college...

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  • No, sorry. I try to be deferential when talking about this stuff, but this is pretty cut and dry, and I'm afraid you're just wrong here. This is Greek--not theology. πίστις is the word we're talking about. It shares the common root with πείθω--"to persuade" (i.e., that evidence is compelling or trustworthy). πίστις is the same word you would use in describing the veracity of a tribunal's judgment (for example, "I have πίστις that the jurors in NY got the verdict right/wrong"). The Greeks used the word to personify honesty, trust, and persuasiveness prior to the existence of Christianity (although someone who knows Attic or is better versed in Greek mythology feel free to correct me). The word is inherently tied up with persuasion, confidence, and trust since long before the New Testament. The original audience of the New Testament would have understood the meaning of the word without depending on any prior relation to religion.

    Is trust always a better translation? Of course not--and that's why, you'll notice, I didn't say that (and if it were, one would hope that many of the very well educated translators of Bibles would have used it). But I think you can agree that the concept is also difficult for English to handle (since trust in a person, trust in a deity, and trust in a statement are similar but not quite the same thing, and the same goes for belief in a proposition, belief in a person, and belief in an ideal or value, to say nothing of analogous concepts like loyalty and integrity).

    The point is that πίστις--faith--absolutely does not mean belief without evidence, and Christianity since its inception has never taught that. English also doesn't use the word "faith" to imply the absence of evidence, and we don't need to appeal to another language to understand that. It's why the phrase "blind faith" exists (and the phrase is generally pejorative in religious circles as well as secular ones).

    Now, if you think the evidence that convinces Christians to conclude that Jesus' followers saw Him after His death is inadequate, that's perfectly valid and a reasonable criticism of Christianity--and if you want to talk about that, that would be apologetics.

    In any event, if you're going to call something bullshit, you better have a lot of faith in the conclusion you're drawing. ;)

  • Glad I was too dumb to finish college...

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  • The way faith is treated in the First Century doesn't translate well to modern audiences. Having faith of a child isn't an analogy to a child being gullible. It's an analogy to the way a child trusts in and depends on his parents. Trust, arguably, would be a better translation than faith in many instances.

    Faith for ancient religious peoples wasn't about believing without proof. That would be as ridiculous for a First Century Jew as it is for us. Faith is being persuaded to a conclusion by the evidence.

  • Just a reminder we are the future of social media.

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  • Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

  • Mathematicians

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  • Say more about this? Why is it a worse profession? Anywhere I can get a layperson-friendly deep dive on this (that doesn't require a graduate degree in mathematics)? I'm fascinated by the nuance between niche academic disciplines and the "politics" of academia.