There are a lot of good answers already but I want to add that this changes the situation for any Hispanic people swept up by ICE. If officials feel like they can connect a person to the cartels in any way whatsoever, that individual can now be accused of being a terrorist. This changes the legal process they face, and that’s not good news for them. It’ll be easier to send the person to Gitmo. It’ll be harder to fight for that person’s freedom. They’ll likely be tortured, and anything they say can be used as pretense for further aggression by the Trump administration, both domestically and foreign.

not voting is voting

I like to be more nuanced with ideas like this, because I like to acknowledge the widespread voter disenfranchisement that happens in our country.

If a person could have voted and didn’t, then I agree; they made an active choice and that counts.

If a person is eligible to vote but can’t–maybe their voter registration was wrongfully purged, or they genuinely can’t afford to take time off work, or something else valid I dunno–then that’s not an active choice to not vote and I don’t think “not voting is voting” can be applied.

Wasn’t the stated goal to eliminate 2 trillion in spending? So, he’s destroyed the government’s ability to function and compromised the security of the government’s computer systems he’s only reached 2.75% of his stated goal? But not actually?

I want off this ride

In comparison, Reyes said, Trump needs only to provide Congress with 30 days’ notice and a written explanation to remove an inspector general.

She cites the legal procedure in her comments declining the motion. If that’s not an acknowledgement of the illegality of what happened instead, what is?

So putting a stop, even temporarily, to plainly illegal actions by government official(s) is unreasonable if the illegal actions aren’t illegal enough? And “illegal enough” doesn’t include “taking one of the biggest ever steps to remove one of the largest barriers to corruption”

And that’s… Reasonable?

Allowing any treatment under any circumstances is an admission that the condition is real and needs treated.

The cruelty is the point.

Nice pun, I think you railed it

Yeah but people who don’t actually care about saving lives in Gaza “sent a message” to the DNC that the DNC was never going to listen to in the first place. So, worth it. /s

Leftists: Elon is a fascist

Centrists: No he isn’t, it’s not ok for you to say that.

Elon’s Dad: Elon is finally the Nazi we wanted him to be.

Centrists: Uh…

I wonder how many things they’re going to try before they decide they need a solution that’s a little more final

I don’t think that’s quite the strategy we need.

What we really need is a genuine grassroots movement with significant movement, like the Tea Party but not astroturfed, today gets more progressive in the Democratic party.

BUT

We need them locally, not on the federal level, because locally is where voting rules are established. The Progressives can then push for Rank Choice Voting. City by city, county by county, State by State, we get RCV implemented everywhere possible. This in turn breaks the Two Party System by allowing voters to pick third party candidates without fear of their vote being wasted.

The only problem is that the best time for this strategy was fifteen years ago, and not enough people cared back then to do it. The second best time is now, of course, but…

same way an LLM is able to produce coherent and convincing sentences by statistically determining what word is likely to follow another

To me this implies that the navigation AI is going to hallucinate parts of its model of the world, because it’s basing that model on what’s statically the most likely to be there as opposed to what’s actually there. What could go wrong?

I really admire your optimism.

Oh, we definitely have a legal system. It’s used against poor people every day.

It’s a justice system that we’ve never had.

Why do you think his first order of business is to court martial anybody who he thinks won’t do his bidding?

Fascists love the notion of a natural order, because it gives them license to hold power over people “lower in the hierarchy.” They’ll use anything and everything to establish whatever “natural order” serves their purpose at any given moment, and IQ works quite nicely in a lot of situations.

You know how long Caesar was dictator for life before he was assassinated? Less than a year.

But the damage was done, and Rome had a civil war over whether it would go back to being a Republic like it had been or if it would have an autocratic ruler. Obviously, the latter won out.

A lesson from history.

Ah yes, Hanlon’s razor. Genuinely a great one to keep in mind at all times, along with it’s corollary Clarke’s law: “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”

But in this particular case I think we need the much less frequently cited version by Douglas Hubbard: “Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system.”

I thought of that too, but I don’t think Trump’s ego allows him to consider that he might die some day.

I was thinking about this. How funny would it be if Trump just… Did nothing? Refused to sign legislation, made zero executive orders, just golfed for four years straight? It’s not like he needs to keep people happy so they’ll re elect him, he’s no longer eligible to run.

The problem is that winning only postponed his problems for four years, and he certainly is already worried about when that time comes. He’ll be looking for a solution, and for that he’ll need the favor of people in power. So it’s amusing to think he might just chill, but I really doubt he will :(