Gabriel Bodeen @gabe@qoto.org

@freemo I'd say those who have expressed satisfaction at the death are expressing anger rather than hatred. The anger is not at others merely possessing money, but at the system that gave it to them and which they heavily supported, and at the good they failed to do with the money.

@henryfarrell
Whenever I waste time on Twitter and see the trolling blue check responses there, it does create doubts in me about the competence as voters of some folk at least, heh. That's mere anecdote of course, but the book 'Myth of the Rational Voter' does seem to me like it addresses that kind of concern and brings a lot of compelling statistics to bear, even if its conclusions are highly overstated.

(e.g. it seems to me that democracy in practice only needs a few people to be paying attention to each big issue as long they talk to each other and know who they trust. But that kind of collective social process is often invisible to right-libertarians.)

At home we've slowly been watching Mrs Davis, a new comedy about a nun trying to kill a powerful AI. 😁 There have been many surprises within the show, but one of the chief surprises of the show to me is how deferential it is to Christianity.

I would have expected a popular show so close to the "bad nun" trope to lean into the dark side of religion & spirituality, and especially the dark side of the church. But Mrs. Davis does not. The protagonist Simone is an unconventional nun but her faith is straightforward and realistic.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt14759574/

The future could be unbelievably full of life. 🙂

> Our familiar, warm, yellow sun is a relative rarity in the Milky Way. By far the most common stars are considerably smaller and cooler, sporting just half the mass of our sun at most. Billions of planets orbit these common dwarf stars in our galaxy.
>
> To capture enough warmth to be habitable, these planets would need to huddle very close to their small stars, which leaves them susceptible to extreme tidal forces.
>
> In a new analysis based on the latest telescope data, University of Florida astronomers have discovered that two-thirds of the planets around these ubiquitous small stars could be roasted by these tidal extremes, sterilizing them. But that leaves one-third of the planets -- hundreds of millions across the galaxy -- that could be in a goldilocks orbit close enough, and gentle enough, to hold onto liquid water and possibly harbor life.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230529171755.htm

FWIW, you can collect an online community of the people you're interested in regardless of which instance they're on! Your tags are a good start

Banned on qoto:
"Any account setup to advertise a product or service"

What's wrong with 85°F? 🌞
After living in Phoenix for a few years that temperature feels pleasantly cool, heh

A: “The design resists attacks!”

B: “How?”

A: “It’s not M4A!”

B: “OK but how does the design resist attacks?”

A: “The design resists attacks!”

B: “Seems like you’re repeating a slogan…”

A: “blocked!”

@TruthSandwich
I literally did nothing but ask you for examples, and you ignored the question.

@TruthSandwich
OK. Since there’s apparently (based on this conversation at least) no content backing it up, I’m going to assume the “it was designed to resist Republican attacks” line of argument is just empty slogans.

@TruthSandwich
hm? That’s not an answer to the question (unless you mean to imply that ACA defended itself without human intervention due to the metaphysical property of not being a different law 😁)

@TruthSandwich
Well now we’re repeating ourselves. In what sense did the design of the law resist repeal, separate from being defended by people?

@TruthSandwich
I’d say rather the GOP tried to repeal it but found that doing so was too politically costly. (The law itself was passive, it’s not what resisted them.)

@TruthSandwich OK.

Regarding the point that the GOP would aim to break it so we shouldn’t have it at all, the same can be said of other programs like the post office, public education, EPA, FAA, CDC, FDA, etc, and most relevantly, the same can be said about a public option. There might be other reasons against a policy, but it seems like hamstringing ourselves to pre-emptively avoid building things the other side can break.

I’d say instead as a political guiding principle: We should build things the overwhelming majority will want to protect.

@TruthSandwich
What do you mean by “suicide pact”? I googled the phrase alongside “medicare for all” and got no relevant hits.