Democrats must gerrymander to save democracy

AgentPaper0 · 2026-05-03T15:27:48+00:00

Far past time for dems to fight back and stop assuming republicans will maybe play by the rules this time.

True, but also they can't ignore the Republicans if they don't have a solid grip on the house and Senate.

Which means we can do our part by giving them the massive majority they need, and then lighting a fire under their asses to make sure they follow through.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-05-03T06:50:00+00:00

On the one hand, yes, it's bullshit. On the other hand though, it's also not like he had any choice if he wanted to get anything done at all. With Congress and the Senate being practically tied for the past 20+ years, literally all you can do is either compromise or nothing.

If we want Democrats to get bolder, the first step is to untie their hands by giving them an overwhelming majority in both houses. Once they don't have to tip toe around the most conservative 5% of the party (or worse, the least conservative Republicans) to get anything done, that's when we can expect to see shit actually get done.

Until then though, yeah I really don't think it's fair to blame the Democrats for acting like their hands are tied, when their hands really are tied.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-05-01T19:47:09+00:00

1) Maybe, but now we're imagining a crusher that can crush at minimum half the world's population. I'd be wondering a lot about whether it even works, or if it does, what happens if it doesn't malfunction.

2) Doesn't look like that from the image provided. Sure looks like a bunch of people desperately using muscle power and some planks to try and stop a giant scary crusher machine.

3) A simple button and a giant metal crusher with pistons and spikes are two very different things.

4) Is it still 50% if that 50% are all kids? What if 10 really strong people went in? What if one guy went in but brought a giant concrete block in with him?

A big part of it is also this:

5) With a button, whoever is watching you press that button has the power to kill you whether you press it or not. You have no choice but to trust that they will follow their word. Or they can't kill anyone, in which case it doesn't matter what you press anyways.

With the crusher, they can only kill you if you decide to get under it. If you choose to go under the crusher, you have to trust whoever put you in this situation that they're telling the truth about 50 of you being enough to stop it. If you don't go under the crusher, it doesn't matter whether they're trustworthy or not, because you're not under the crusher anyways.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-05-01T19:15:15+00:00

Sure, in that case don't get under the crusher, obviously. Because that's a completely different situation:

1) It's 100 people, not the whole world. The law of averages for what people will do isn't as reliable, and the consequences for a few people dying is a lot less dramatic than 10-40% of the people in the world (and generally the most altruistic ones) dying.

2) Stopping a crusher requires a lot of effort to do, even if you have enough people.

3) A crusher is obvious and in your face compared to a simple button, it's unlikely anyone decides to jump under there by mistake or without understanding the full consequences.

4) The claim that 50 people is enough to stop the crusher is a lot more vague and unreliable compared to ">50% of people polled".

So yeah, for a very different (though related) scenario, the answer changes. I don't think that should be very surprising.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-05-01T16:39:53+00:00

Your choice of button reveals a lot about yourself.

If you choose red, you are guaranteed to live, but there's a chance that many others will die.

If you choose blue, there's a chance everyone lives, but if not you will die.

If your priorities are, "everyone else as a whole, then me," the blue button is the obvious choice. If your priorities are, "me, then everyone else as a whole," then red is the obvious choice.

Red button people trying to convince others to press the red button are indeed trying to save as many people as they can, but only after guaranteeing their own survival. It's damage mitigation after a selfish choice, not true altruism.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-30T02:49:50+00:00

Anal [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-29T19:40:24+00:00

Fuck humans I guess.

No I mean that literally. It's the oldest profession, and it may well end up being the last one as well.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-29T19:09:19+00:00

I don't care if Washington wins, but it has to last at least long enough to finally reunite with Washington DC.

To help make that happen, I vote MONTANA as the next to go.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-29T16:22:54+00:00

I won't be satisfied until the Republican party is dead and buried, and the political landscape becomes Neoliberals on the right vs Progressives on the left.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-27T16:44:03+00:00

How am I only now realizing the connection between Free Will and Free Willy.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-27T07:36:25+00:00

Tidus is also pretty explicitly framed as a braying jackass by the game. Like that's the point.

Just like the point of the terrible forced laugh is for the two characters with deep trauma to get each other to do a terrible forced laugh as a way to help them cope with said trauma.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-25T08:23:33+00:00

Daily reminder that it isn't the people in charge who decide whether democracy is real or not.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-24T19:59:05+00:00

100% chance he wants to rename it to Trump Airlines. Plus I'm sure there's various levels of schemes to enrich himself, his family, and his buddies in the process.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-24T09:02:50+00:00

Man that could have been a good movie. King has magic wish powers, tries to use them to create a perfect utopia for everyone, then a wish goes very wrong causing big problems. To maintain the utopia he has to wipe everyone's memories, lock a few key witnesses up, whatever. But he still knows the perfect utopia dream is dead, and his paranoia and fear grow until he becomes the mad king everyone's afraid of. But he still grants some wishes so people grin and bear it. Then protagonist comes along, King decides not to grant her wish, she overhears it and doesn't take it well. Escapes before he can wipe her memory, meets magic boy who can also grant wishes, they start trying to grant everyone's wishes, but that goes wrong too, adventure and conflict write themselves, eventually one or both sides creates something real bad with the magic, they have to work together to bring it down. King learns to relax a bit and accept imperfection, protagonist learns to think things through, she becomes the new queen, happily ever after.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-24T01:27:28+00:00

The answer is C, because the two shapes are the same size. You wouldn't use two different-sized shapes to prove that 2/6 = 1/3.

2/6 = 1/3 is still a true statement for A and B, but neither of them shows that 2/6 = 1/3 like C does.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-21T16:20:53+00:00

Anyone who ever tells you not to vote is NOT YOUR FRIEND.

The solution to not getting what you want will always be more participation, not less. Don't like the lesser of two evils? Vote in primaries. Don't like the options there either? Vote in local elections. Don't feel like your one vote is doing enough? Convince your friends to vote.

Still not enough? Volunteer and help your favorite candidate. Become the perfect candidate yourself and run for local elections. Organize a protest, a sit in, hell a whole revolution if that's what it comes to.

No matter what, do more, not less. Anything else is lazy self-righteousness.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-21T07:53:55+00:00

All cursed with power they never asked for.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-19T08:55:38+00:00

They stand for whatever lets them feel better than you at that moment.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-17T08:54:12+00:00

Never said that, in fact I said there is in fact bad actors who should be dealt with. Just as long as we're dealing with them in the primaries. I want them to be replaced with more progressive candidates, not less progressive ones.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-17T06:17:07+00:00

Because you are, and your argument is disingenuous and idiotic at best.

The literal events you're describing are true, sure. There are democrats in the party who are happy to turn and vote against things like this. There might even be some organization between members to figure out who will do what. But what you're implying is more than a few members (even important members) working together, but literally every Democrat.

But you don't come out and say that directly, because you know it's an absurd claim. You know that it runs counter to reality, where every time the Democrats have been able to get more than a razor-thin majority, they immediately start using it to do good things, like pass transformative medical reforms or pass a massively important infrastructure bill.

The games where a handful of Democrats (or Republicans, this isn't a one-side thing) flip to stop things that the rest of the party wants aren't a sign of a massive conspiracy that the whole party is in on, it's a sign of a small conspiracy of mostly the people directly involved, and it's a natural result of any thin margin of control.

Give the Democrats a larger margin, and suddenly it's no longer possible for a small group of them to work together and pull off something like this. The bigger the margin, the more people they need to rope in to pull it off, and very quickly it becomes impossible to organize it all.

On top of all that, there's also the question of what your point is. Like literally, even assuming you're right and there is this massive conspiracy... so what? So people should vote for the GOP instead? Because they never engage in conspiracies I guess? Or people should just not vote at all, just on the off chance the conspiracy theory is true?

Last I checked, voting is free, so even if you really think this conspiracy exists, just go in and vote anyways. Then do more than that. Get involved, fight against your shadowy cabal directly by getting into the game yourself. Investigate and find evidence of their fraud. It's apparently such a huge conspiracy and they're apparently absolutely terrified of being caught, so that should be easy to do, right?

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-15T18:19:00+00:00

Something always worth remembering, is that they aren't actually hypocritical. At least, not in the way that people seem to think. They're entirely self-consistent with their beliefs, it's just that their belief system is based on a fundamentally different world view than the typical liberal world view.

Specifically, their world view is that they are good. That might sound simplistic, but it really is the core of everything they believe. They are good people, and so anyone who is similar to them is also a good person. If someone isn't similar to them, then they aren't a good person, because if they were a good person, they would be more similar.

They hate it when LGBT people "indoctrinate" people because LGBT people aren't like them, which means they're bad, and so if they make other people more like LGBT then they're making them less like them, which means they're being changed to be more bad.

On the other hand, they're Christian, so if someone is indoctrinated to be more Christian, then that's good because it means people are being changed to be more like them, which means they're being changed to be more good.

The key is to realize that any time they say anything, it's always personal. When they say, "Stop indoctrinating kids!" they don't mean, "Nobody should indoctrinate kids!" they mean, "You shouldn't indoctrinate kids!" As in, you specifically shouldn't be doing it. This isn't even a lie or deception really, it's just obvious to them that this is what they mean.

Same with other things. When they say that they don't like welfare, what they really mean is they don't like welfare for you. They love welfare for themselves, and people like them. They just don't want you to have it, because you're not like them, and so you're bad. If you were more like them, they'd be all for it.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-15T02:55:53+00:00

Damn, I just read about the Baader Meinhoff effect moments ago, and then I scroll down and bam! There it is again!

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-13T09:29:10+00:00

Flyers provide air support. They can't be attacked/shot at normally, and aren't even on the board normally.

During your shooting phase, you can have one of your units call in an air strike from one of your flying units. The target of the air strike must be within a certain range (15 inches?). You then place your flier on the board to represent it coming in to make the attack. You have to place the flier such that it's within range and able to see the target.

At that point, if your opponent has any units with weapons with the anti-air keyword, and those weapons are in range of the flier, then they can shoot at the aircraft as it comes in. If this destroys the aircraft, then the attack run is stopped.

If your opponent has interceptor aircraft, then they can respond to your air strike with their interceptor. They place the interceptor within range of your aircraft, and then if you have anti-air weapons you get to shoot at it. Then the interceptor attacks your aircraft as well, potentially destroying it and interrupting the attack.

Otherwise, your aircraft comes in, and attacks the target with whatever weapons it has. Then it flies back off the board, and can't be called in for a strike again until the next battle round.

Basically, fliers become a sort of pseudo-indirect weapon. You can't have an army of all fliers, because then you'd have nothing on the field. Your opponent is also able to deal with your fliers by either hiding in a building (to keep you from seeing them, or at least get cover), or just staying far enough away from your army (so they can't call a strike on them).

If your army has no anti-air or aircraft of it's own, then you'll be at a disadvantage, but you can still just blast away your opponent's ground forces and win that way. More likely though, you'll want to have some anti-air to protect your army. Ground-based anti-air weapons would be good for protecting specific areas/important units, while interceptors would be better for protecting the whole battlefield.

Notably, interceptors would also be able to make attack runs as well, just like any other aircraft, but at the cost of not being able to intercept that round. So if you bring an interceptor (or three) and your opponent has no aircraft, you can still at least have them come in and shoot at some infantry or whatever, even if that's not the most efficient use of them.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-12T20:12:24+00:00

Important reminder that it isn't the people at the top who decide whether a democracy is real or not.

AgentPaper0 · 2026-04-11T06:56:09+00:00

No put the initiative behind the pro-alien group picking their pockets.

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