One’s “own best interest” can take a lot of different forms. Especially when the number and variety of plausible candidates are finite. Your preferred candidate for a given office will rarely line up perfectly with your own values. There’s a compromise there.

If I vote for my own finances, it may come at the cost of my morals. It I vote for my own moral interest, it may cost me more. If I vote for my own power, it may cost someone else their freedoms. How heavily do I weight my own interests against those of a wider society? Political identities and philosophies are complicated, and can’t necessarily be reduced to a single binary choice that is “best” in every scenario.

(not a tech expert, but I’ve been following it for a while, so I hope this is mostly correct)

Bluesky the app is currently the only (major) app running on the ATProtocol. The protocol itself is open source, and it is technically possible to run your own “federated” version (it’s not called that in the ATProto ecosystem, but that’s the rough equivalent in activitypub-speak). The protocol is still being developed, so it’s not as feature-complete as some people are hoping for, but it’s getting there.

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/10/29/some-slightly-biased-thoughts-on-the-state-of-decentralized-social-media/ for a more professional write-up on the differences, similarities, and criticisms of the major twitter alternatives.

I’m looking forward to a few negative moochies as his picks get dumped even before the confirmation hearings.

Back in the day, Norton actually made some useful tools. They’ve been coasting on that 90s reputation for decades, though. It’s all unnecessary bloatware now.

That cat has a quest for you.

Probably involving fetching some treats.

That’s going to go on your Permanent Record!!

Pro: a handful of my state’s absolute worst officials are set to quit their jobs and we get a do-over.

Con: they’re quitting to join the administration and they’ll be way more powerful and everyone else will suffer.

Sorry. I did what I could.

RobCo

Military contractor and aerospace giant obsessed with autonomous AI.

Replace Robert House with El*n and it’s halfway there already.

For federal stuff, yes … probably, it’s never been tested, but the current SCOTUS won’t stop him.

Not for state crimes. Like the 34 felony counts in NY. But enforcement of any sentence (probably financial) is unclear. Also unprecedented.

Name one of the ten commandments Trump hasn’t broken challenge [impossible]

The conventional wisdom is that Social Security is a so-called “Third Rail” of politics. Nobody is going to touch that and live to tell the tale.

Of course, we would have had a similar thought about non-controversial stuff like “cooperating with the World Health Organization,” so there are no guarantees, but wholesale restructuring of the program would (hopefully) cause more backlash than any politician wants to deal with.

The blueprints he’s working from doesn’t say anything about SS by name: https://www.newsweek.com/what-project-2025-could-do-social-security-1923892

Despite being over 900 pages long and spanning most of the departments of government, including defense, homeland security, agriculture, education and energy, the mandate text does not provide direct policy positions on Social Security or its government agency.

That’s not to say the program will be entirely unaltered, but that page suggests the extent of the (public) policy proposals seems to be raising the retirement age by a few years. Not great, but nobody seems to be loudly advocating for slashing existing benefits.

deleted by creator

It can happen, but it’s hard to imagine that it could change the outcome.

https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/12/14/946080856/who-are-electors-and-how-do-they-get-picked

Generally speaking, the parties send a slate of names to be electors. If Trump wins a state, the electors sent by the GOP are sent to Washington. If Harris wins, the Dem electors are sent. Many (not all) states outlaw faithless electors.

When it does occasionally happen, it’s a useless vote that wouldn’t have changed anything anyway. For a group of party loyalists to all work together to flip the outcome would be … unimaginable, frankly.

Actually explains a lot of decisions by game publishers the last 5-10 years if their official position is that games are meant to collect dust on a shelf rather than being played.

Undocumented Immigrant Offending Rate Lower Than U.S.-Born Citizen Rate

This study offers one logical conclusion: if you want a safer country, deport native-born Texans.

I can still put together a plan for success.

Step 1, become a dark lord of chaos…

Hanks larger point is that you can answer a lot of questions in life by being more curious than suspicious.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/08/being-the-first-name-on-the-ballot-has-a-huge-effect/

https://www.khou.com/article/news/verify/do-candidates-who-appear-first-on-ballot-have-advantage/285-fd2626f2-633d-47a6-aef8-9ae45fa29ff4

https://www.npr.org/2016/07/27/487577930/why-the-first-name-on-the-ballot-often-wins

Is my Dax machine broken? I know what you’re sending, but I keep getting

Something like 63% of the US population identifies as Christian. That number is over 75% in Latin America.

If they really wanted more Christians, they’d welcome the immigrants. But that’s just an excuse to cover for the racism.

I know this isn’t what you’re asking, but there are two Mount Olympuses (?!) in the USA.

The one in Washington has a similar prominence to the Greek mountain (2,389 m to 2,353 m).

The one in Utah has a similar peak elevation (2,752 m vs 2,918 m).