Don’t even have to be that egregious. Increase the total seat count a little and strictly require a maximum 5% population difference between ridings

Combine that with even ranked choice voting reform and you’d break the rural crazies influence permanently

Tracks for me. He’s basically a politician created in a lab to get the entire Edmonton-Calgary corridor to shrug and go “he’s OK”.

Sofa king good!

See also: Canada

Whatever video this is will not load for me, which makes me sad because I’m sure it was devastatingly snarky

Ethnic majority politicians who pursue authoritarian immigration policies are bigots. Ethnic minority politicians who pursue authoritarian immigration policies are idiots as well as bigots, and are more harshly judged accordingly

No, the Spanish Flu actually originated in the USA and was spread by US soldiers

It was called the Spanish Flu because WWI was still on. The media of both the Allied and Central powers were banned from reporting on their own outbreaks. Spain was neutral, so everyone reported their pandemic instead

Or the “drone” sightings in New Jersey a couple years ago.

Or, on a more political bend, every minor memory issue Biden displayed got urgently reported. Where as the media actively cleans up Trump’s rambling. If you ask which of them has more severe dementia public perception reflects that

If all the news is saying the wildfires in California are really bad this year, if you ask me what the fire situation is like I’m going to say “bad”, even if they haven’t impacted me directly.

I don’t think it’s that deep. The media told everyone the economic situation sucked, and people reacted accordingly. People don’t magically know the truth independently from their information sources.

Why the media narrative was so disconnected from reality is a different discussion.

Particularly because it’s baffling trying to figure out why he’s not.

Like, what has even compromised himself for? What possible downside was there to just keep being the person he’d acted like for years? What alternative goals has he focused on instead?

Completely senseless

And I think part of the problem is that everyone remembers him as a “dreamy” progressive. Heavy on the talk and light on the follow through

Depends a lot on who does or doesn’t drop out. If Mahan, and everyone below, drops out you could plausibly get two democrats. if Porter can be persuaded to drop out I think it gets very plausible

Was a department store

I think “we should be vocally left wing and progressive“ and “being vocally left wing and progressive will get us a lot of votes and influence” are arguments that have less natural overlap than we might hope. Having complicated thoughts about one isn’t dismissing the other.

This is a swing that is perfectly in line with a bunch of the special elections over the last 12 months. Doesn’t mean it will happen, but the polling is plausible based on recent actual results

I strongly suspect that human shape is going to turn out to be an optimum shape for interacting with a world already designed for human-shaped humans

And then it becomes self reenforcing. No matter how popular robots get there will never be a time that replacing all the infrastructure makes sense

The more I look back on them the more I wonder if maybe it was everyone else who missed the point.

“Around 2000 I discovered that I could avoid getting kicked out of dinner parties no matter what I said as long as I said this afterwards. It has continued to work reliably well in the two decades since”

They clearly imagine that whatever mid-level sacrificial lamb they have picked out will magically make it all disappear. Get everyone to agree that the appointment was a mistake, sack some functionary, and wash their hands

I believe that due to the long-term sanctions they‘re self-sufficient for that sort of infrastructure. It’s all internal to the country.

They’re cut off from everyone else’s internet, but not necessarily their internet.

The same way 2/3 of our cultural view of Hell and the devil can be traced back to Dante’s Inferno more than anything actually in the bible

Religion is culture, and culture is religion

Naomi Kritzer has done some excellent works exploring people coming together to build community in the face of existential disasters. In particular “So Much Cooking” and “The Year Without Sunshine” are tightly written. Hopeful while treating the subject with the seriousness it deserves.

Given how much of an air hub Dubai is, I wonder if it’s simply the departure point for a whole bunch of cruises?

This is a great one. My spouse worked in a care home, and those digital photo frames that cycle through the pictures could keep some of the residents engaged all day. Load them up with a thousand pictures.

Also means you’ll already have an established relationship with some level of care aids and organizations when things inevitably come up where you need emergency coverage

Exactly like having a relationship with the neighborhood babysitters just in case, even if you don’t need them yet fur your kids

If at all possible get some help. Establish a help routine now while they’re still in the early stages of dementia. Even if it’s someone coming in for a few hours twice a week to do basic healthcare tasks and a bit of a tidy, or take them to appointments

Makes it much easier to transition later

It’s the classic asymmetry between people who think building institutions is valuable, and people who are willing to tear them down to get what they want

I think Trump will smash the system to try and win. That it won’t work doesn’t un-smash it when he loses

Also makes sense that he thinks it’s pervasive if it part of documents crossing his desk every single day