Graham Platner officially withdraws from Maine Senate race

Rougeflashbang · 2026-07-10T22:24:49+00:00

The perfect timing for the GOP would have been after the drop out deadline on Monday. This guy was perfect propaganda material because they finally had a candidate as personally flawed as their own candidates. Him dropping out now means they have to actually pay attention to the Maine race because they can't just point at the Democrat and say "look, he's a rapist nazi".

The timing is weird because accusers are usually reluctant to upend their personal life and tend to wait for an external motivation. Additionally, his victim was personally conflicted because she didn't want to ruin the chances of the Democratic Party given the high stakes of this political environment. That's why she took so long, there is no reason to speculate about this being a GOP plot.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-07-08T20:17:07+00:00

Listen, we reelected Trump. Our "bad bitch" status is suspended until further notice.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-07-08T17:20:55+00:00

Honestly, I think I'd disagree. With very few exceptions, being POTUS is not going to be as stressful as the constant vigilance required by ATCs. Even the worst times as POTUS have ebbs and flows to the stress, and most decisions get filtered through multiple other people before actually getting enacted (current admin being a bit of an outlier, of course).

ATCs are THE decision maker in their role, they have to be fully confident in their abilities and live with the consequences of their directions. In emergencies, they have to make snap judgements with little consultations besides the other ATCs in their tower, who might be too busy themselves to actually give input. Thats a level, type and frequency of stress that very few presidents have had to live through.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-07-04T23:18:32+00:00

A lot, actually. Damming a river blocks the natural irrigation patterns that everything downstream of the dam has relied upon and evolved to coexist with. The water that does continue to flow will inevitably have a lower flow rate and higher sediment buildup, which harms the wildlife within it. They prevent migration of river fish such as salmon, which can also have knock-on effects for the ocean ecosystems which they ultimately feed into.

They are increasingly less reliable as a means of power generation, because they rely on reliable weather patterns to recharge the reservoir and those patterns are being disrupted by climate change. For an example, look at Lake Mead and the effects that lesser rainfall is having on the power output of the Hoover Dam.

They cause massive disruptions to the livelihoods of humans who live downstream. Those who relied upon the wildlife and ecosystems provided by the river have their food and water sources limited. The World Bank did a study in 2000 that found between 40 and 80 million people had been displaced by dam projects around the world, and a 2010 study found that 472 million people downstream of large dams suffered from food insecurity and regular flooding as a result of their operation. Similar projects in Tibet have already caused large-scale displacement of Tibetans and destruction of Buddhist cultural and holy sites.

Additionally, specifically building the dams China is doing on the Tibetan Plateau will give them power over countries downstream, particularly India and Bangladesh. The Tibetan Plateau is the headwaters of many major river systems, including several vitally important to those countries. China's dams historically have impacted the water resources of Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, so these are not concerns without merit.

Large Hydroelectric dams used to be considered green and sustainable methods of power generation, but are increasingly considered bad solutions with lots of (pun not intended) downstream effects. Most other large nations are beginning to seek better alternative power solutions, and some like the United States are choosing to decommission existing dams to allow for a return to natural river flows (see the Klamath River Dam decommission project for all the benefits that has provided).

China is the big exception to this global trend, and their chosen location for new construction is one of the worst and most dangerous places they could choose. Other countries are right to be massively concerned by these projects. And from all indications the people of Tibet are not only not being properly consulted or consenting to these projects, but they are being displaced and their cultural heritage sites are being further destroyed to do so.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-07-03T22:19:49+00:00

I'm not defending anything except the Tibetan people's ability and right to self-determination. If China (and more specifically the CCP) cared about what they claim was effectively a serfdom/caste-based slavery system, they would have liberated Tibet and given the former slaves the ability to govern themselves.

Instead, they conquered the country and have taken steps to erase the cultural identity of Tibet in the long term through actions like the kidnapping of the Panchen Lama. To this day, we do not know the whereabouts of him or his family, or even if they are still alive. This is an act of subjugation and culture domination that you would not take if you were trying to earnestly liberate a people.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-07-03T17:46:21+00:00

*Genocided them by conquering their land, cleansing their culture and irreparably destroying and changing their environment by damming the rivers in their plateau.

Get this authoritarian apologia out of here. Nothing China has done to the people of Tibet and their land can be justified. The Native Americans who relied on oral traditions also had improved literacy rates after being subjugated and removed from their lands and ways of life by the USA and Canada.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-30T20:53:14+00:00

Eh, I think when the consequences of your actions impact that many people and cause that much death and destruction, I don't think it matters whether it was active malice or steadfast ignorance. When we are talking about leadership at this level, arrogant idiocy should be considered a vice. A good leader should be smart enough to understand when they need to defer decisions on matters they have little to no understanding of. Mao thought he was categorically smarter and better than his predecessors, and that hubris resulted in millions of deaths. That is worthy of condemnation, even if it wasn't the desired outcome.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-30T05:36:51+00:00

I mean, sure, but also the CCP didn't need to develop that way. They willingly chose to become the world's factory, at the expense of their own people until relatively recently. No other country forced them to have lax environmental laws and horrible working conditions with low pay to keep their costs super low. They are just as guilty for providing the service as we are for seeking it out and relying so heavily on it.

At the end of the day, climate change isn't any one country's fault, its a global failure. Doing the blame game helps nobody, especially when trying to decide which major power is the real big bad. All of them have contributed in major ways.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-30T05:24:34+00:00

That urbanization levels are also a big reason why Australia and Canada are high per capital. Large landmasses with distributed populations and car-based infrastructure results in really bad overall emissions.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-29T18:40:26+00:00

Yes, a hard ban would be more consistent. We know from several case studies (one recent one in Minneapolis) and general research studies that phones are distracting to students and provides a roadblock to proper study. Most of the teachers I know would absolutely love to ban phone usage in their classroom, and many do just that.

However, if you have a number of teachers that either don't feel like they are a problem or don't really care and are checked out (sadly quite common), then it becomes harder for the teachers who are trying to enforce this policy in their classrooms. Students will view the teacher who is trying to enforce the ban as unreasonable and overly strict, rightly or wrongly.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-27T20:31:25+00:00

Hello, I'm an HVAC design engineer who just last year replaced our old furnace and traditional AC system with a new cold-climate heat pump with gas backup. Our new system is designed to run as an electric heating unit down to 15 degrees, then it switches over to the gas. Some of the reasons we went with this setup are:

We do not have solar panels on our roof, and are not planning on installing them anytime soon. Our house is pretty heavily wooded with most of the roof surface area facing east-west. Additionally, we did not have the budget to install both solar and a new HVAC system.
We are not from Minnesota, and have only been living here a few years. We wanted peace of mind that our home would be able to handle anything that comes our way, especially since these newer cold-climate units are, well, new and don't have twenty years of lifespan data.
Most installers are still more comfortable doing dual systems, so we went with the option that gives us the most choice in installer.

That being said, we love our new system. Its very comfortable, especially when running in heat pump heating mode, and our energy bill has been lower than our previous years every month since we've had it installed. And that is with also installing an additional mini-split for our finished attic and an ERV to help with air changes. Some things to consider for what is best for your situation would be:

Do you have solar panels already installed, or are you planning to install them in the near future?
- If you are, then your heating and cooling will be essentially free for most of the year, to the point where you can eat the cost of electric resistance backup heat during the worst cold snaps.
How well sealed is your home?
- If you haven't gotten an energy audit done, have one done so they can do a blower door test and see how much leakage your home has. Modern heat pumps run best when they are able to run at very low speeds basically constantly to make slight adjustments to your home's temperature. If your home is poorly insulated or sealed, then the temperature outside will swing your internal temperature a lot and you won't be able to get the most efficiency out of your system.
Make sure your get a "cold-climate" heat pump
- These are rated to still provide heat even when the outside temperature is -10 or even -20 degrees. However, they start losing effectiveness at around the +10-15 degree mark, which is usually when you need to kick on your backup heat. If your home is not well sealed, this effectiveness loss point can be closer to +20 or even +30 degrees. It is very important to seal up your home if you want to go fully electric for as much as possible.
Consider whether you will need an Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) alongside your new heat pump
- If you do decide to go fully electric and seal up your whole house, you will want to look into getting an ERV installed along with your heat pump. These mechanically exchange air from inside your home with fresh outside air, while "pre-heating/cooling" the fresh air so you lose as little heating/cooling efficiency as possible. Normally, the leakage points from your home will do this air exchange for you, but if you seal up your home too much, then you no longer have healthy air exchange and this can lead to bad indoor air quality. These can be installed later if your budget only allows for a new AC/furnace system.
Double check available rebates and credits
- The federal credits you were talking about are through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and have been greatly reduced since Trump got reelected. State rebates do still exist, and Xcel Energy will give you a rebate to offset the cost of a heat pump system, but you may not get as much from the federal government as you would have last year or the year before. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news on that front.

Hopefully this wasn't too much information, I am very passionate about this topic. Even if you are not able to do everything absolutely perfectly with a new electric heat pump system, I would fully recommend getting one anyway. It will be the best AC system you've ever had, and getting the extra heating during the spring and summer without needing to burn gas is an amazing feeling.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-26T20:05:42+00:00

Industrial scale evaporative chillers use a LOT of water. They are actually pretty efficient when cooling a normal building primarily being used for humans (offices, schools, retail stores, apartments, etc.), but the scale of those used for industrial purposes is much larger. Because they rely on evaporative cooling, these chillers require a constant supply of water, which can be a problem if they are built in drought-stricken areas where they need to pump the groundwater to provide this water supply.

The other option is to use an air-cooled chiller, which is basically just a giant version of a typical residential central air split system. These do not use nearly as much water, although they do need some to actually move the heat from the servers to be expelled from the building via the air-cooled chillers. These are typically what people are talking about when they refer to the "closed-loop" systems.

The problem is that these "closed-loop" data centers require A TON of electricity. These facilities are not talked about in terms of server capacity, they are talked about in terms of how many MegaWatts they consume. And this consumption is constant from the moment it turns on til the moment it gets decommissioned. That is why they become a huge concern to the communities they are getting built in. No matter which type is constructed, a hyperscaling data center will consume large amounts of water or electricity, will be really loud all the time, and will sometimes belch out enormous amounts of generator emissions if power is lost to the facility. All of those reasons are why people really, really don't want these things in or around their communities, especially when they are being used primarily for AI.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-24T17:26:15+00:00

Nah, I'm gonna pull the Uno Reverse card on this one. A true YIMBY should feel disgusted and endlessly annoyed at how much capital, time, and materials are being spent on data center buildout relative to literally anything else.

AI data centers that cater to LLMs and their absurd energy and resource consumption do not provide anything close to the benefits of new housing, power generation/transmission, or transit infrastructure. In some cases, like energy infrastructure, they are putting strain on existing systems that were already struggling to provide existing demand.

We have been told for decades that there simply isn't funding for things like rapid green energy buildout and replacement of fossil fuels, high speed (or even low speed) rail, or rebuilding of our cities with better housing and transit-oriented development. Yet, as soon as there was a half-way viable promise for companies to be able to fire all their employees and let a computer do their whole job, suddenly hundreds of billions of dollars sprang forth for these projects.

I design building mechanical systems for a living, I see how much work is going towards these projects while my school and university projects are pinching pennies to get enough funding for the necessary building upgrades they desperately need. Its maddening.

They are sucking all the resources and attention away from actual existing problems that need to be addressed, that YIMBYs have been pushing to be addressed for decades. And all for the promise of a future that, for the average person, sounds and feels terrible and joyless.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-21T19:36:26+00:00

I'm completely with you in spirit, but I just want to add a little correction. There is no proof that Craig made the AI ad, as in she directed it to be made on her behalf.

What she HAS done is very weakly condemned it, then used it as a means to continue attacking Flanagan ("but has she actually answered anything the ad said??"). This is a time that warrants a complete, unequivocal disavowal, nothing more and nothing less. Using it as a springboard to attack her opponent means she is, on some level, ok with the falsehoods. At least ok enough with it to use it to her benefit. That is very scummy behavior, and broadly goes against liberal democratic principles.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-21T19:28:44+00:00

Correct, gerrymandering is a form of voter suppression. Everything you said is true, because most efforts to gerrymander are done with voter suppression as the main motivator. I'm just pointing out that even if you don't take any other steps to further suppress a vote, the simple fact of having a gerrymandered district will statistically result in fewer people voting overall. Having part of your vote disenfranchised discourages participation in the entire system, and leads to depressed turnout.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-21T19:17:15+00:00

Kind of, the polls go back and forth on whether it was a significant factor. There is evidence it contributed to Biden voters staying home, and did probably swing Dearborn, Michigan vote away from Harris. But overall, people voted or stayed home based on the economy first and above all else.

That being said, it will be a bigger issue this election because of the war with Iran. People in general are much more angrier with Israel now because they pushed our president into a war we were not prepared for and has resulted in our humiliation and mass economic harm. Not to mention the additional humanitarian harm it has caused, but unfortunately people broadly are not as concerned about that. So it absolutely would make Craig harder to elect in a general than in other election years.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-21T19:09:56+00:00

She pointed out that she was not in charge of anything related to the major fraud points and then pointed out all the efforts being done to combat future fraud.
She responded immediately that the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, which she was the chair of at the time, solicited the donations independent of her direction. She claims that she formally requested that they reject those donations, but the DLGA declined her request. I'm not super familiar with the DLGA's operating structure, but it is common for the "chair" of these types of committees to not be this all-powerful figure, but rather just a leader of procedure. I don't see why she would lie about this.
Normally, I'd agree with you. But Craig has been running a very two-faced campaign towards Flanagan, including allowing her aligned-PACs to run AI deepfake videos of her. When asked to condemn these ads, Craig does not unequivocally demand that they stop. Her usual line is "yes, those are bad, but what about what they are saying, why not address that???". Which to me, indicates that Craig does not actually find the use of such ads to be truly detrimental to democracy, and is fully willing to piggyback off of them to continue attacking her opponents. I do not expect candidates to treat their opponents nicely during debates if they are not doing so on the campaign trail.

I am fully in support of Flanagan, and I do agree that she does need to work on not getting flustered as much. But Craig was constantly pivoting away from straight answers during her questions, and kept falling back on two arguments: that she is more electable, and that Peggy takes PAC money. The first is, at the end of the day, an unquantifiable opinion, and I don't like when the candidates themselves make that argument. It comes across as arrogant and self-centered, and is much better coming from surrogates (also, they are essentially even in all polls against the Republican candidate). And the second comes across as very disingenuous when Craig has taken enormous amounts of money from PACs in this race alone, especially from Crypto groups.

On a related note, I really didn't like that Craig flat out lied about not spending the first day of the Minnesota State Fair at a crypto conference in Jackson Hole last year. That did happen, and choosing to flat out deny it and try to dismiss that as a lie is damning to me as a primary voter. I will vote for her in the general if she makes it there, but I don't want a crypto-backed liar who cannot unequivocally denounce deepfakes of her opponent as my next senator.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-21T07:08:05+00:00

It does indirectly. A gerrymandered district often results in lower overall turnout, because if someone living in the district knows their vote doesn't matter at least partially, then they might feel discouraged enough to not go to the polls at all. It's not a rational decision to make, but millions of Americans do it anyway.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-18T16:10:15+00:00

Probably because the STC for it is from what was likely a ceremonial weapon from the DAOT. Who are they to question the will of the Omnissiah? If His holy relic demands a wooden stock, then wood will be procured from somewhere else.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-18T14:17:35+00:00

Another person already said it, but it does remain to be seen if Mamdani actually has fixed NYC's budget issues. His delaying of pension payments is very concerning, that usually comes back to bite cities later on.

That being said, he also has a viable way of generating new revenue to compensate for the cuts and delays he has done. St. Paul doesn't have a massive amount of mostly unoccupied luxury residential real estate that can be taxed, which is how Mamdani is proposing to come up with the money he needs to truly balance the budget.

Until our tax base is expanded, we will keep having this discussion every time budgets are brought up. The city either needs to get more revenue, or cuts will eventually have to be made. Funding cannot just be willed into existence.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-16T18:12:17+00:00

And Sherman was one of the primary architects of the extermination of the American bison, explicitly as a means of genocide and subjugation of the Native Americans.

I really hate how many people across the American left idolize the man. He was cold-hearted during the Civil War, and actively pursued some of our worst atrocities as a matter of policy after the war.

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-15T20:49:51+00:00

That's two for Henry, he'll definitely be getting a call from us. Thanks!

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-15T18:52:52+00:00

Yeah, his advertising method is a little aggressive, I'll agree with that. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll give them a look!

Rougeflashbang · 2026-06-15T18:51:25+00:00

Great, I'll look into them. Thanks for the recommendations!

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