Notices by Erik Haugen (ech@qoto.org)

@freemo @cobratbq "the 2 dominate parties have been replaced 8 times" – sure, but it was pretty much always 2 parties.

Is anyone arguing that it always and forever must be the two parties we have currently?

I think the claim usually made is that structurally the only stable thing is 2 main parties, and they'll morph as needed to always be ~half the country. There can be (*very* temporary) disruptions like a third party that e.g. replaces one of the others, or a party can change wildly (like Dems mid-1900s) etc.

@freemo I like that silver lining: no matter who wins, you can say at least <X> isn't president.

@freemo @louis Louis, it's part of his charm. If typos bother you subscribe to someone else 😂

@freemo The Ayatollah is more than happy to pay this price, never forget that.

@freemo I don't know, I think Russia was more the one entering that deal out of fear of invasion (from Britain), but I suggest the geopolitical realities are maybe a bit different these days.

@freemo yeah but like come on they aren't going to invade Alaska.

@freemo yeah, think of how much blood is on our hands because of this.

re. Europe: I'm not saying Europe is *responsible*; that isn't my point; I'm just noting there's more at stake for them than for the US.

@freemo @rchusid Yeah, I hope Ukraine can win completely, but US giving them just enough weapons to keep fighting but in inadequate quantities or with too many restrictions to actually win seems like the worst possible thing we could be doing.

Also Trump was right on in saying Europe should deal with this; they easily could if they had the resolve. Follow Poland's lead.

@freemo I don't get the desire to get this last word in before blocking.

@freemo But how about something that doesn't involve ethnically cleansing the victims.

@freemo I would love to read an articulation of what Israel could do instead of what they're doing. I'm vaguely under the impression that they're doing more than anyone else ever has to avoid civilian casualties, but for all I know that is false. And after 10/7 obviously they need to at least degrade (or get someone else to degrade) Hamas' military capabilities and do something to keep them degraded.

Given those, I don't really know what could be done differently here.

@freemo Yeah, this gets at a big part of the problem, I think; failure to apply Bayes correctly.

@freemo @realcaseyrollins Maybe a happy middle ground is higher deductibles. A lot of people don't need insurance for things that cost a couple hundred, they need insurance for something that costs thousands.

In this way, a lot of people would shop around for a lot of medical purchases, but you'd avoid financial ruin for a huge thing.

@GreenSkyOverMe @mattjhodgkinson WWF jumped the shark long ago. Just look at the .wwf file format, lies about nuclear power, etc, etc. Worthless trash.

@flamingofire @freemo oh is this the vaccine thing

@freemo Having had experience in large organizations, it feels like you have a lot of confidence that certain things happen when they just don't. In engineering, we have tons of low-level company-wide procedures that I wouldn't imagine Sundar knows anything about, for example. You think someone like that reviews everything we do? I can tell you they do not.

In this particular example, I can see some mid-managers moving around between his companies and copying processes. I can easily see this kind of low-level detail, especially one you wanted to keep quiet, from being discussed in meetings with more sr. management. Probably happens all the time.

I do have a bias toward not assuming someone is racist without decent evidence, I guess; like I said #rorschachtest

What's the other mountain? I just claimed it was a mountain of trash with some evidence, do you have any other exceptions in mind? (you said earlier to someone else you weren't interested in this argument, so understood if you'd rather not.)

@freemo @mk @davidhmccoy @lowqualityfacts Oh so that's it? ok, well, I addressed that already; I guess agree to disagree #rorschachtest

@freemo @mk @davidhmccoy @lowqualityfacts if they show he clearly knew and allowed the policy to continue (i.e. before the point where he "circled the wagons" that I mentioned in my other post) I'd love to see it.

I'm sort of under the impression that most of the evidence that Trump is a racist is kinda reaching: "he said something bad about someone" or "someone said he said something but he denies it, no witnesses" or "a guy working for him did something racist". You know, garbage. Similarly for Biden, he pushed for draconian drug policies for example, which had an (obvious to you and me) terrible outcome, but of course a lot of people pushed for those with the best of intentions.

So if I'm wrong I'd love to hear it...

@freemo @mk @davidhmccoy @lowqualityfacts if they show he clearly knew and allowed the policy to continue (i.e. before the point where he "circled the wagons" that I mentioned in my other post) I'd love to see it.

I'm sort of under the impression that most of the evidence that Trump is a racist is of a certain... level of quality: "he said something bad about someone" or "someone said he said something but he denies it, no witnesses" or "a guy working for him did something racist". You know, garbage. Similarly for Biden, he pushed for draconian drug policies for example, which had an (obvious to you and me) terrible outcome, but of course a lot of people pushed for those with the best of intentions.

So if I'm wrong I'd love to hear it...

@freemo @mk @davidhmccoy @lowqualityfacts "Thats not what I said..." I meant to ask for whatever this refers to: "he clearly knew as it came up in the civil rights documents from the urban league."