As a midwesterner, it is unethically misleading to suggest this level of efficiency to an outsider. While, yes, the welp-knee-slap is a polite and unmistakable sign that the life of this social interaction is coming to an end, that does not mean that interaction is over. The journey from “welp” to guests pulling out of your driveway can be anywhere from a 5 to 45 minute trek of baby-stepping toward the door, off the porch, down the footpath, to the car, all while tying up loose ends in conversations, corraling children (and toys, diaper bags, electronics, etc.), planning follow up meetings, last minute inquiries into various family members’ health, work and relationship status, discussions over the weather and road conditions, misremembered jokes someone heard from a guy at work, repeated offers of food or drink for the road, and assurances that either they’re not too tipsy to drive or that they “actually drive better with a buzz” while turning down offers to sleep it off… their kids may very well sit belted in the car longer while waiting for the adults to stop talking at the car door than they will for the entire drive home. The Midwestern goodbye may be one of the least efficient goodbyes every devised by man.

Why? Because sometimes the majority chooses fascists? So, of course that is always a risk, though it is a risk without the NPVIC too, clearly, and I think makes it more likely as well. But you also have to remember that the majority of voting eligible people do not vote regularly. There’s any number of reasons for that, but a major reason for it is winner-take-all states make states hard red or hard blue states. People who dont align with their states’ hard political lean justifiably feel like voting is pointless as their vote ultimately wont count towards the final decision. But if the NPVIC were in place, more people would have a good reason to turn out as their vote will actually count. And people who dont live in swing states will have to be given more concern from campaigns too.

But ultimately, it is only a bandaid for a broken system. The electoral college is bullshit and so is Plurality voting. And frankly, voting should be compulsory and accommodated at every level. Make it compulsory, implement the Approval voting system for every election (eliminating the dominance of the two party system in the process), and the competition of ideas will make one party control of each branch, and thus run-away fascism, significantly harder to achieve. But then we seem to be already well too late for that.

So it doesn’t take half the states to pass it. It only takes enough states to make up half of the electoral votes. It could actually be done with as few as 12 states if those with the most electoral votes all agreed (though that requires Texas and Florida to join the compact). But even now, there are only 17 states and DC officially joined in the compact, yet that already makes up almost 39% of electoral votes. They will need some red or purple states to join too, to reach the number of course. There’s not enough electoral votes in all the solid blue states alone. Purple state Pennsylvania, and red states Kansas and South Carolina all have bills in committee to join. Were they all to pass, they’d have 45% of the electoral college in the compact.

It’s to the benefit of hard red states too though. It will make their needs more of a priority for campaigning presidents instead of only Swing States being pandered to. The Swing states are the only ones that have a vested interest in preserving the status quo. And it’s not like Trump wouldnt be president now if the compact was triggered now (unfortunately) so it’s silly to pretend that it would prevent conservative presidencies.

No no, dont even give it that much dignity. The complainants are not asking to “block the map” too close (11 months) to elections. They are asking that the map not be illicit, unethically changed 5 years early, based off the explicit public request of the President who is not meant to have power over state election matters, with the explicitly stated intent of gerrymandering out more seats for Republicans that they “deserve” than they otherwise would have won, only 15ish months to the elections (which is apparently plenty of time). Their “reasoning” doesn’t make sense because it’s not reasoning. It’s blatant full chested support of voter suppression/disenfranchisement to bolster their party and their autocratic President. They’re so full of shit you could smell them talking from the next room over. Fuck those lying, cheating, corrupt, un-American, fascist cunts.

There’s two R’s in “corruption”.

If he isn’t a special government employee acting in an official capacity, but rather a private citizen negotiating with a foreign goverment on behalf of the US, he’s committing a felony violation of The Logan Act. Not that such things matter anymore, but still.

The first is a big deal. All of these boat strikes have been a big deal. The problem is, despite not being at war, and the President not having the authority to declare we are, that’s basically what is happening, and no one with authority is stopping it. However, that makes the nature of these boat strikes “debatable” to some whether they are actions of war, which would make them potentially legal military actions, or whether they are extrajudicial international attacks during peacetime, i.e. murder. They also claim that they have absolute knowledge about who is on these boats, what drugs are on them, where they are going, etc. and are claiming the right to strike them based on these details that privileged knowledge that they arent sharing. This obfuscation makes it harder to call them out on their bullshit even though it really shouldn’t matter anyway, in terms of the legality of the strikes.

However, there is absolutely no legal justification, whether it be an act of war, drug enforcement, border control, etc. of double tapping survivors of a sunk vessel. As has been pointed out plenty, this exact scenario is literally the textbook example of an unlawful order that soldiers should not follow. So this particular situation bypasses that “debate” about whether these strikes are legal in the first place, and bypasses the obfuscation of information about who is on these boats and what activities they are participating in. Those things are irrelevant to the cut and dry fact that this double tap is illegal, full stop, and every level of command and execution of this specific action is culpable for either a war crime or murder. That’s why this is such big news. The certainty.

The 82 year old woman, Rosa DeLauro, is not hot enough? Weird to expect her to be?

As was said elsewhere, the transmitted command will have been recorded. The hard undeniable truth can be provided. Congress just needs to subpoena it, or a soldier with a conscience needs to whistleblow and leak it. Otherwise, we trust the liars’ word and they get away with yet more of what are unquestionably, objectively, war crimes.

They’ll happily lie under oath. Even bold-faced, immediately apparent lies. Because the perjury charge will come with an immediate pardon from Trump. They’ve allowed autocracy to overwhelm all checks and balances and refuse to use their power to overrule it. This is the cost.

For 2 years. Fucking predicatable.

🥲

Sure. There were worse problems to. SQL injection vulnerabilities, dense functions with hundreds of lines of spaghetti code, absolutely zero test coverage on any project, etc. That’s just the easiest to show an example of and it’s also the one that made me flinch every time I saw it.

"".equals() 😨

Joined a new team and one of my first tasks was a refactor on a shared code file (Java) that was littered with data validations like if ("".equals(id) || id == null) { throw new IllegalArgumentException() }

The dev who wrote it clearly was trying to make sure the string values were populated but they apparently A) didn’t think to just put the null check first so they didnt have to write their string comparison so terribly or else didnt understand short circuiting and B) didn’t know any other null-safe way to check for an empty string, like, say StringUtils.isEmpty()

They know what they did…

They know what we all do all the time.

Correlation not implying causation is not the same as correlation not implying relation. When data correlates, that means that there is a liklihood that there is some connection. For any two correlating datasets, there are 3 explanations, 1) coincidence 2) causation 3) relation to a shared casual link. Figuring out which it is just requires more data, experimentation, and/or an understanding of the mechanisms of their relation. We use correlation of datasets as a guide, and even as a proof of theory given enough experimentation and correlating data to show a casual link all the time in science.

I think that the liklihood that leaded gasoline is connected to the rates of serial killers and other forms of violent crime is high not just because of the correlation, but because of that and the fact that we have studies showing how lead poisoning can effect people’s behavior. We know it can effect behavior, and we know that lead levels in the air peaked in the mid 70s before leaded gasoline was banned. It is not a leap to jump to the hypothesis that leaded gasoline causing high lead levels in the air from pollution may have effected human behavior. And then the data of serial killings and violent crime actually showing a correlation with those lead levels strengthens that hypothesis. I wouldn’t say that it’s proof, far from it. But I do think it’s likely the truth.

The internet

Genuinely speaking, low level lead poisoning is linked to increased aggression, criminal behavior and lack of empathy. It may be directly tied to the reason we so rarely see serial killers now, but they were relatively prevalent in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. This is at the height of pollution related to leaded gasoline. It might explain Boomer and Xer MAGA conservatives too.

Was it AI generated or something?

Why would you be worried about that? Did you do incredibly damaging illegal things?