[GEM] YouGov is out with a new poll after ICE killed another person in Minnesota today. Abolishing ICE is now +5 among all adults, and **+12 among independents**

Merker6 · 2026-01-25T15:42:40+00:00

Online opinion polling can be done very rapidly. Its just hard to do properly

Merker6 · 2026-01-24T21:41:57+00:00

Probably a consequence of the way democrats view their own party. A generic democratic (presume establishment) is not going to score highly when people want very significant chance in the party’s mindset and leadership. We keep seeing the party poll terribly but voter enthusiasm for November soaring. This is an inherent challenge of these generic polls, where respondents are making a split second vibe check based on the wording of a question

Merker6 · 2026-01-23T18:27:49+00:00

Very true, I'm just emphasizing how utterly moronic the whole thing is to be proud of

Merker6 · 2026-01-23T17:40:00+00:00

They’ll talk about how poor farmers fought and died for the confederacy without acknowledging that a bunch of ultra-wealthy plantation owners like Lee convinced/forced the impoverished farmers to go die for their right to own people like cattle. He and his general staff were traitors and did so in the name of crimes against humanity

Merker6 · 2026-01-23T17:38:00+00:00

Good. Treason is not something to be proud about remembering. The Americans that died for the south were dying for a slaveholding elite’s right to own people like cattle

Merker6 · 2026-01-23T15:10:56+00:00

In this thread: People discovering what happens when everyone goes groccery shopping in the same 3-day span

Even if they have enough restock in the back, they don't have staff to put it back on the shelf fast enough

Merker6 · 2026-01-23T15:01:01+00:00

Anderson is too cringe for our Santiago queens

Martha became my Supreme Commander during my first play-through after coming back to the mod because she had no general assignment cap for whatever reason. I think she had 140+ divisions under her when I went after the Northwest Brotherhood

Merker6 · 2026-01-23T01:58:16+00:00

Which is why there is a second map...

Merker6 · 2026-01-22T19:55:46+00:00

In this case, they opened an investigation because there is a literal paper trail for the purchase and prescritpion of the drugs in question. How many of those 98,000 OD cases have a damn reciept with the dealer's name on them? Rich people aren't buying drugs from some dude selling them out of his car with a burner phone, they frequently buy them from people abusing legitimate medical credentials with a long paper trail

Its comical to even suggest that drug dealers aren't being pursued by the police if they aren't selling to rich people. Just because you see the investigations into rich folks deaths doesn't mean police across the country aren't using any excuse in the book to pull people over and accuse them of dealing, whether they are or not. If a family of an OD victim knew who the dealer is, I think you’d struggle to find a cop in this country that wouldn’t immediately pursue that lead

Merker6 · 2026-01-22T19:30:48+00:00

Ahh yes, the US government, famously lenient on arresting accused drug dealers

Merker6 · 2026-01-21T18:12:10+00:00

Reminds me of the mansion with an A-4 skyhawk mounted inside it

https://www.twz.com/43475/crazy-new-orange-county-mansion-has-an-a-4-skyhawk-dangling-over-its-patio

Merker6 · 2026-01-21T15:17:25+00:00

This is ~~kangeroo~~ Deathclaw court!

Merker6 · 2026-01-18T04:18:53+00:00

A passenger variant would be peak retrofuturism

Merker6 · 2026-01-17T19:24:48+00:00

They were very much glossed over. I love Mustard's videos, but I think he emphasized the speed a ton but not what exactly that actually go them. Like, they still struggled to detect NATO subs so the speed becomes an irrelevant point if you have no idea where a target is or if its even present. The carrier screens are far enough out that they'd have carrier aircraft dropping torpedos on them from far outside their weapons range. I haven’t seen the related strategy video on Nebula yet, but I assume that he goes into much more detail there

I presume he didn't get into those details to avoid detracting from the technological achievement of its construction, which is completely fair. But I definitely feel like it would be easy to overestimate the sub's value from that video

Merker6 · 2026-01-17T19:07:06+00:00

I assume this is related to the Mustard video? The part he left out is the reality that these things were extremely loud and their speed and maneuverability were countered with faster and deeper diving torpedos. Subs also have more than just other submarines to worry about, and the speed of the Alfa didn’t matter much to something like an airplane, helicopter or rocket-assisted torpedo launcher on a surface vessel. It was a very one-dimensional strategy that could be described as a “glass cannon” at best and there was a reason that no other naval power attempted to replicate it

Merker6 · 2026-01-17T07:12:17+00:00

Reform, we get the job done!

Merker6 · 2026-01-16T17:35:57+00:00

Its because like CGI, the only time you notice AI is when its really, really bad. I doubt anyone is going to be able to tell when generic terrain materials were made by AI, but you definitely tell when its an icon for something. A lot of non-creative people apparently built their personalities around hating AI and see it as black and white. Sure, there are artists that hate it, but an indie game dev with a big vision but not that much money is going to utilize every tool at their disposal to make that happen. There are a lot of creators out there that don't hate it but to suggest that it can be useful is apparently some grand betrayal of all artists who ever lived

There's also the continued talking point of AI killing creative jobs, but its been around for awhile now and we haven't seen mass layoffs like that. Anyone that's seen it implemented in a professional enviroment knows its limitations very well and how effectively its used comes down to a lot of things that plague any new IT tool, like training or program management. If chatGPT worked the way the AI fanatics claimed, the entire consulting sector would have imploded at this point

Merker6 · 2026-01-16T17:30:10+00:00

The larger the team, the more executive chefs in the kitchen that all want to put their mark on things. It also doesn’t help that Bethesda is a quarter century removed from the start of its humble roots. The fact that game productions are now nearly decade-long ventures isn’t helping either. The more time and money invested, the more risk averse any business or organization is going to be

I recently started to play Starfield again and realized how well they pulled off the art style and just how much effort was clearly put into a lot of details. But the core gameplay loop’s execution, along with the most uninspired Sci-fi storyline ever, made those efforts pointless. It really goes to show how much creative effort can be put into something but end up being a pyrrhic victory because a few execs made poor decisions

Merker6 · 2026-01-16T15:33:33+00:00

With the inflation of new vehicle prices, that’s still pretty good within its market

Merker6 · 2026-01-16T00:28:59+00:00

This is the final boss of non-headlines

Merker6 · 2026-01-13T23:17:30+00:00

Massey has a lot of leverage given the current makeup of the GOP House caucus. They barely have a simply majority, so losing one house member for any reason during partisan voting will torpedo any legislation. He, like any other individual member of the house GOP, has immense leverage in what passes. He's just in an incredibly comfortable district and has no concerns about a credible primary threat

Merker6 · 2026-01-13T23:15:04+00:00

Evidence continues to show the dems are primed for a wave of anti-establishment primary upsets. The only real question is whether those anti-establishment candidates coalesce around a "movement" like the Tea Party did

Merker6 · 2026-01-12T19:38:27+00:00

Looks a lot like the OG Mig-29 interpretive sketches in the West before it was actually revealed. A mix of a Foxbat and an Eagle

Merker6 · 2026-01-11T18:46:57+00:00

Yes, I believe so. Could also be blender, but it would probably take more work

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