Not that bad, to be honest, but those Oklahomans are kidding themselves.

Dr West is already running independent, so I doubt it makes much of a difference. How many potential RFK voters would have voted for Biden over Trump or West?

The prompt just says the revolution was successful and that now it’s time for a new constitution. It’s not even US-specific, so there’s no reason to assume that state governments even exist in the context of the prompt, much less need to approve this new constitution. There’s no need for such niceties if we’re in a world where a revolution has destroyed the old regime in its entirety.

Frankly, that’s a ridiculous scenario. States are an artificial construct. There’s no reason California couldn’t be split into five states so they can get more senators, and there’s no reason tiny east coast states couldn’t be merged together. It’s just a matter of political will. States rights do nothing to benefit the individuals living in those states. Often when we talk about states rights, states are imposing some kind of oppression or restriction on their citizens, abortion being the most recent example. The Supreme Court threw it back to the states, many of which banned it immediately.

The states don’t matter! They’re overgrown, glorified municipalities. If we are going to redesign the system, we need to reduce their power all together. States are a relic of a colonial system founded by the British, where each colony was individually granted a charter, and a of a constitution written at the same time the Holy Roman Empire was alive.

What stops ridiculous, punitive laws from being passed? What stops them from being passed now? The courts, for one, and the federal government. Often it’s the states that are trigger happy in committing some kind of mayhem.

We’ve lived with states for so long that we’ve been gaslit into thinking that their existence is in our best interest. While states might be useful in some form, like in organizing regional infrastructure projects, their power should be diminished, and they are not deserving of house on par with the house of the people.

Of course, Congress is in need of other dire reforms as well. It should be bigger, for one, and first past the post should be replaced with some kind of alternate system (perhaps California-style jungle primaries?).

Should we care about the states or the people in the states? There are less people in Rhode Island than California. Are those people so much more important that they get more representation, proportionally speaking?

People have locational representation in their local governments. Let them rule over themselves if you want, but don’t give them disproportionate authority over the rest of us.

Occupy and commit war crimes in the name of “nation building.” Do this until political winds change at home and force us to pull out.

What was the question, again?

A bit of both. It dries out your skin to shower every day, and I honestly don’t feel like I need to shower every day with not-particularly-active lifestyle. Saves water and electric, as well, but not enough for that to be the reason why.

Every other day, but sometimes more often depending on what I’ve been up to

I’ve heard this before, but more in the context of a proverb than a proper joke. As far as meaning, I think it’s along the lines of “correlation doesn’t equal causation,” but not exactly.

CIA blew up the Nordstream pipeline.

Yeah, hard to say the exact nature of the scam. It could be some kind of ponzi, paying out the teeny “wage” from the fees coming in from new recruits.

Hot

But at the same time, this meant companies didn’t have to be profitable, because they could pay out investors from money that other investors gave them???

Few, if any, of the big tech companies were playing out any kind of dividend to investors. It was more that they were content for companies to maybe someday make money as opposed to actually making money,

Yeah, I had missed the $5 per month per community part, which does basically boil down to that.

Glanced over it. Complete word salad. Corporate nonsense: baffle them with bullshit.

You get points from communities. These points are stored on the block chain, because why not? The points themselves come from reddit, but the communities distribute them. Since they’re on the block chain, reddit can’t take back your magic bean points or whatever once you get them. Nevermind that they’re worthless and that reddit controls the only platform that they’re even remotely useful on.

For now, Reddit will cover gas costs for distributing Points to users and allowing them to spend Points on features such as Special Memberships.

Emphasis mine. Someone has to pay for it, because that’s how the block chain works. For now it’s Reddit. In the future? Who knows!

How does this benefit the consumer? It doesn’t, really. Potentially it gives posters more control over a subreddit, but looks like mods will still hold essentially all the power when it comes to a subreddit, which is how it works now.

How does this benefit reddit as a business? It doesn’t, really. They’re handing out magic beans with the selling point being that they can’t take them away from you once you get them. It costs them money to do this, because it’s on the block chain as opposed to some in-house database. This replaced coins, right? They killed an income stream and replaced it with an expense.

They get to tell investors that they’re into the block chain when they launch their IPO, I guess. All I can say is buyer beware. Chances are high the powers that be unload their stock options in the IPO hype and then get the hell out of dodge. They might have waited too long, though. The tech bubble deflated, and I don’t know if the books are impressive enough to draw in the big bucks from investors.

If you want genuine control over your community, start one on the Fediverse and self-host an instance. No admins will kick you off since you’re your own admin and head mod rolled into one.

Is it true that the Big Bang asserts that the universe had a beginning? True, we don’t know much about the pre-Big Bang universe, but we don’t have a reason to think that it didn’t exist.

real-estate

Exjw?

Atheist, if you consider that a religion. I view it more as a lack of religion or belief, but that’s just pedantry. I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, but eventually became disillusioned with their teachings as I grew older and realized that they were out of touch with the Bible and (more importantly) reality. After a period of self-reflection, I examined what I believe and came to the conclusion that I didn’t really believe in much of anything anymore.

I don’t believe in the Bible. It’s a great work of literature, in an academic sense, but it’s not something to model your life on. You can tie yourselves up in knots trying to come up with a coherent interpretation or you can take everything so figuratively that you might as well ignore the source material all together. I didn’t see much point in either and just view it as a product of the wide range of people over the millennia that contributed to it.

I don’t believe in God either. For me, I don’t see a reason to think that there is a God. It’s essentially impossible to prove that God doesn’t exist. If you disproved one, people would just come up with either excuses or another God entirely. Some might argue that Earth’s existence implies the existence of a creator. Assuming that was true, wouldn’t the existence of this creator imply the existence of a second creator for the first? Why should we accept that God had no creator but that the universe had to have a creator?

There are other arguments, sure, but my lived experience has shown me no reason to think that there’s a God or specific meaning, plan, scheme, or rhyme and reason to life on Earth. That doesn’t mean we can’t find meaning in our own lives, but it does mean we have to work to make it.

Nobody is coming to save us. Nobody is going to hand us an answer or salvation. We have to save ourselves.

Paradox Plaza. I haven’t posted there in ages, though.

At the end of the day, all our three-letter and military agencies should be accountable to the civilian government, even if we do have some crackpots running around. They should say what they know, whether it’s what we want to hear or not.