sonori

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (32 children)

Every single third party protest vote could have gone to Harris and she still would have heavily lost. She managed to even lose the damn popular vote by five million votes, despite Trump having a lower turnout than 2020.

This wasn’t because people voted third party, this was because at a time when incumbents have seen massive pushback across the globe from Covid inflation and Biden was unpopular across the board she ran as completely the same as Biden but even more Right on the border.

At a time when the politically disconnected working class families that make up the record trunout in 2020 were struggling with wage stagnation, erosion of Covid gains, and greedflation eroding their savings and pensions, four more years of the same but we’ll adopt even more Republican policies and look how many rich Republicans like us was never going to get the everperson off the damn couch.

More of the same is not a good platform for ‘progressives’ during economic hardship, even if it was out of their control and less hardship than most peer nations.

Even though Trump is a disaster for many of us, most people got though his first four years just fine, and don’t understand just how much damage he did or how much more he could do if the guardrails failed.

Getting the general public out to vote requires giving them something they want to vote for, and when the biggest thing you can point to doing or wanting to do more of is some clean energy related tax breaks that is a major problem.

Had the Dems impeached Clarence Thomas for his and his wife’s role in Jan 6, had Biden improved the immigration system like promised, had he provided free National Guard abortion clinics on federal land, had he made the FDA make puberty blockers and abortion medicine available by teleheath and mail, or indeed had any major victories in the last half of his term to show, we would not be here. Had they run AOC, Bernie, Waltz, or anyone at all who could articulate a platform beyond four more years of the same, we would not be here. Had Harris focused on how she could use left wing policy to fight the effects of late stage capitalism, we would not be here.

This election was an unforced error of the highest consequences, and one brought about by a political party that was so confident that until he dies of old age every politically disinterested Amarican would be so scared by the threat of Trump that they would maintain an unprecedented level of voter turnout without them having to actually do or promise anything.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The silver lining is that everyone from Lemmy, to youtube, to Bernie seems to have correctly identified the problem early on this time around, so much of the anger is being directed towards the party establishment for screwing up the easy win as it is towards Trump. The question is whether or not that anger can be turned towards productive action to gain control of the DNC, or will be quashed by the establishment once again.

Time, and agitation, will tell.

 

Mirrors in audio form much of the discussion i’ve seen around here if you prefer that, particularly on how the DNC going right hurt trunout.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Given how entrenched support for Isreal is parts of the base and moreover how conflicted much of the middle ground of the community is, I expect a lot of them would have sat the election out. Of course I think playing both sides of the street did lead to a lot of them sitting it out, but I think the hope was that an week intermediate position would allow for unity and coalition building around issues that didn’t have your party primarily fighting itself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I also wasn’t talking about individual solar. Utility solar is nearly always divided between manufacturing, installation, and the operator. The operator is the only one benefited by solar’s long term return on investment. Everyone else makes their money in construction, which is very much price competitive.

In my experience none of these groups however have even a fraction of the cash of a company like BP or Exxon Mobile, and what piles of cash they do have tends to be investment in rather than profit from. As it’s a lot harder to spend investors cash on buying regulators than it is to spend incoming profit on it this limits the amount that they can spend on such an endeavor.

There are also a lot more places banning utility scale solar and wind than are oil and gas, so delaying renewables rollout seems like an evidently effective strategy for limiting their lobbying power.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

And the Jewish voting population of PA is more than three times that. Now, that hardly means that they’ll all vote for Isreal, but it does mean that how that group breaks has a far more outsized impact and why Haris was focused so much on things that both sides can generally agree with like conditional aid.

I would have much preferred an actual hardline leftist stance of course, but at the end of the day Gaza does not seem to have played a significant part in this election.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Not really, without Pennsylvania Michigan doesn’t matter unless nearly every other swing state goes for her, and they don’t look like that’s even a possibility.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

No, i’m thinking of solar.

Over decades a solar system will pay back itself many times over, but that’s irrelevant to the question of how big of a money pile can business throw at politicians in the here and now.

That’s determined by the profit margin for companies manufacturing and installing them, which tend to be rather thin given the highly competitive nature of the market. No solar installer anywhere near the profit that oil companies are raking in, and the people owning the panels are usually paying off the loan to install them, using the profits to build more capacity, or saving, not buying off politicians.

Without subsidies there would be far less profit for oil companies, which is exactly why it is so important for them to ‘reinvest’ some of their recent massive profits into continuing and expanding said subsidies and slowing down the adoption of alternatives. Buying off the government with its own money is a benefit since it leaves more for them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Counterpoint, Alberta exists and low costs benefit the consumer, not the company. I am fully confident that the profit made by oil and gas is significantly more than the tight profit margins in renewables, which means far less money to throw at politicians. Oil and gas can therefore throw much more money at Trump and still be in the black on their ‘investment’, even if you ignore that Trump has deep ideological and political opposition to renewables.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

That’s unfortunate but I understand, I just didn’t want the thought of working for him to be the only reason. Be safe.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

On the other hand, if all the good people give up the fight and leave it to project 2025 to find their replacement the public as a whole will be in even greater danger.

Obviously it’s not fair to expect you to put yourself in danger for everyone else, but it might just be worth considering of forms of resistance.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

And here I was thinking that my egg cracked too late to be a part of the civil rights movement.

I was planning on moving to Washington, but I really wanted another year or two to get things together first. Looks like that’s not an option anymore.

Speaking of, does anyone know of any good mutual aid groups that could use a hand in the Olympia region?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

2066, the require the run Natural Gas to every building in the state and don’t plan to stop polluting at any point measure, is however still on track to pass through.

Come on King county uncounted votes, we’re all relying on you now.

 

This short bit just made it out of HBO and feels like a pretty good closing argument for things. Also has a bit of a hopeful message at the end.

 

A detailed three hour video essay by Tantacrul on the rise, and soon after numerous privacy and foreign influence scandals, within one of the largest tech companies in the world, and how a website where you could talk with old classmates brought about everything from a vast decline in mental health to ethnic cleansing.

 

If anyone here is interested in a more technical interview, here are two socialists with doctorates in economics talk about why after two hundred years of talking about fixing the housing market haven’t gotten anywhere.

 

Not sure if this fits here given it’s more foucued on prek-12 than Academia, but I figure it impacts the students going into college quite heavily and most of the same points still apply.

 

Evidently the joints on the flaps still need a little work into not letting gases through, but it seemed to still have enough actuation to keep the spacecraft stable until the engines took over for the landing burn.

 

A detailed discussion of the Shuttle program as well as some ethics in airspace.

 

Party of personal freedom everybody.

 

Come for the two hour review of Rings of Power by a guy who has elvish on his wedding ring, stay for the Hbomberguy style twist into discussion of the way the far right uses the appearance of media criticism to radicalize vunrable young men and draw them into the manosphere.

 
  • A video about disposable vapes, and how addiction became the goal of every single company on the planet.
 

It’s their first ever attempt to launch a Vulcan, and their launching an lunar lander. Window opens at 1:53 AM EST. Here’s to hoping for a successful launch.

Edit:

Liftoff at 47:40.

We saw a successful launch, translunar injection, and the Peregrine lander successfully powered on before detaching from the Centaur upper stage, which proceeded to relight its engines and complete a burn into a solar orbit at part of its memorial mission.

The lunar landing attempt is expected to be on Feb 23, and it is expected to remain operational on the surface of the moon for at least ten days.

According to NASA, “-Scientific instruments will study the lunar exosphere, thermal properties of the lunar regolith, hydrogen abundances in the soil at the landing site, magnetic fields, and conduct radiation environment monitoring.”

More on Vulcan and its history.

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