Sorta. It’s a democracy with the voting and all that at this time. Since the person holding presidency is now above the law, then as long as the current president decides that we get to continue to have a republic, then we’re a republic. The moment a US president decides that it needs to be an official act to end voting, or just stall on voting indefinitely, then we stop being a republic. Basically, we’re living on borrowed time until the “by the people” part of the US nation is taken away by whomever we voted in as president last.

President Biden has the idea that he should respect the Constitution. He’s unlikely to decide to end the republic. If he gets reelected (and the conservatives don’t just kick off a civil war trying to end the election like they failed to do back in 2020), then we buy at least a few more years. Then… we go into a cycle where if benevolent dictators keep getting elected we stay afloat. The moment a populist gets elected president who also doesn’t personally decide to not take over as dictator, the republic ends.

Why that’s easy. It’s the top elected official, of course.

That’s been a continual strategy to try to deter and block RCV. They argued that in front of the courts in Maine when the state moved to RCV.

In the end, I feel there’s one big defense: no matter where my vote ends up, I only get one for the last candidate standing that I voted for.

The other voting systems where you rate candidates on a scale, it’s a bit muddier as to what a “vote” is. A vote should be your voice that’s the same as anyone else’s in the electorate. As long as all humans get the same voice, it should be able to take any form.

Since the only other likely alternative is a fascist, insurrectionist, felon, rapist who couldn’t finish a thought or sentence we’ve got ourselves a tough spot, but a clear better choice of the two: vote for Biden.

Having our government by a gerontocracy is not going well.

It’s a tunnel with electric trains. I volunteer my pasty white ass’s house as tribute for this. My city has near zero rail service and I’ll take it in a heartbeat.

Yes, the US has been using infrastructure to harm minority communities for generations, but so far this doesn’t seem to be the most egregious example of that. The exhaust system being next to a school is the only concern, but only if there’s a fire in the tunnel (which should be rare unless Boeing starts making trains).

Either move the exhaust or move the school while you start digging that new higher speed tunnel! Let’s go for some real modern transit!

Except the Duchy won the war against the US and brought back a hydrogen bomb. They then used that threat to make the league of micro nations. The bomb didn’t work, but the threat of it allowed a tiny nation to gain leverage on the geopolitical stage.

I’m not hugely invested in the 3D printing world, but here’s my setup:

Printer: Creality Ender 3 pro v2 Filament: Mostly Matchbox Upgrades: just stiffer springs for the bed holder to help keep it level longer

Software: Cura for slicing FreeCAD for part design My kids also use Blender for making designs

As long as you check the bed leveling every so often (I don’t have an auto leveler) it does just fine. I make all kinds of technical parts and models along with other stuff for fun.

What can I say? It works and it’s a reasonably low maintenance setup.

Requiring someone to provide evidence to back up a claim is not the same as taking a position that the claim isn’t true. This is the root component of the burden of proof and the stance many people have towards a god claim: they aren’t convinced the god exists due to a lack of evidence provided by the person claiming the god does exist. Until there’s actual evidence it’s rational and reasonable to withhold judgement.

The unicorn (or other mythological beings) are used as a similar case to illustrate to a theist that they have the same kind of attitude towards the idea of a unicorn existing as an atheist does to any gods. They’re both neat concepts, but without evidence showing they actually exist, they’re nothing more than an idea for stories and art.

Germany’s overhaul of their immigration system added 3/5th credit to citizenship for foreign students doing university in their country. If you do a 3 year bachelor’s, then a 2 year masters it puts you only two years working from permanent residency. It’s a brilliant move to help highly educated people get connected then prove their commitment to the nation on a path to permanent citizenship.

The crazy variety of weapons and their interactions was great. Almost everything was dangerous in the right situation.

Blob gun? Charge it up! Blue laser thing? Shoot the ball form and shoot that for a huge boom! Double pistols? Max DPS in the game with no bullet curve!

The best maps too for CTF. Yeah, I loved that game, especially for in person LAN parties.

Then there was the fancy mustard incident… It nearly ended the USA as a world power (at least according to the right wing propaganda channels).

Don’t even get us started on the coffee salute and how it made the military ready to start a coup from the disrespect. /s

WTF is happening to this nation? Somehow our politics has been taken over by Idiocracy grade stupidity as a matter of course.

It sounds like he needs to get the house on the market. Keep shaking those pockets out, you fascist fuck.

Why do you think they buy such ridiculously large vehicles? It’s to make moving the goalposts faster.

To write true haiku

One must practice inner peace

True haiku is calm

Tom’s Root Boot.

One floppy disk, one Linux machine!

That’s not a haiku.

Having one sentence per line.

Does not profound make.

You’re right. The EV companies know it, the power companies are acutely aware, governments at all levels are wrestling with it, and people in older homes with old wiring find out. Many of these groups (not the old wiring homeowners) are actually pretty excited about it. It means infrastructure upgrades, funding for cities, new power company jobs, and reinvestment in old worn out wir s everywhere.

Of course a shift in our oil dependent car shit hole system will require a similar scale shift in the energy infrastructure and that provides lots of opportunities.

I haven’t had time to seriously game in a decade now (single dad killed my free time), so I’m by no means well versed beyond a few things. My kids do game a lot and most of them are on Linux machines. They use a combination of Steam and standalone installs to get things working.

I don’t run into a lot of complaints. They’re well aware that not all games run on their Linux setups, so they pick and choose games a bit more. I’m fortunate that they’re not always jonesing for the latest AAA games, but they’re also getting new ones with some regularity.

Our US city (pop 180k, metro 600k) is just about to lose the last downtown grocery store.

Generations of city councils have allowed (or encouraged!) the demolition of all housing in the city core to replace it with parking lots.

There’s almost no one left downtown so the city itself is dying. It’s just kind of rotting away. There’s currently at least some effort to reverse the trend, but the vice grip that car oriented everything has on people is terrifying to politicians.

It also does it so that you no longer hit the bootloader. My one last dual boot machine is normally a Linux setup, but every so often I have to use the real MS Office tools (some collaborator or publisher demands it), so I boot windows. Then windows patches and stops actually hitting grub so it acts like a windows only machine until I fix whatever Microsoft fucks up yet again.

It’s time to move to a VM for this garbage. I just don’t neet it more than once every other year so I never seem to get around to nuking it.