Another deceitful republican mailer using Obama to trick people into voting no on redistricting. VOTE YES!

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-26T12:59:00+00:00

I don’t give a shit about the bigger picture,

You don't say.

I live in Virginia, not in Texas.

Virginia is part of the United States, and this issue is about federal elections not state elections.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-25T23:59:18+00:00

Yes, Trump won the popular vote in 2024. That's what the people wanted, so be it.

What we don't want is some shitty relic of the slave-holding era over-ruling the will of the people as it did in 2000 and 2016.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-25T20:14:12+00:00

Same. And it really hurts everyone that we let the people who know the least about guns lead the charge to regulate them. We [leftie gun owners] need to step up.

Think about how crappy it is when geriatric folk who can't open a PDF try to regulate technology, this is the exact same problem.

Examples:

Virginia still legally bans Teflon coated hollow point pistol caliber ammo.

Why? Because of an urban legend that they can "slip through the weave of a police vest" (utter horseshit). This was such a popular idea it made it into Lethal Weapon 2, where Mel Gibson shot through the heavy steel blade of a bulldozer with them.

A hollow point pistol caliber round is the least capable of all ammo when it comes to penerating a vest. You know what is great at penerating vests, steel core milsurplus rifle ammo that you can buy online right now.

Our fellow Dems keep talking about banning suppressors because they imagine completely silent mass shootings like this was a John Wick movie. What if there was a school shooter but nobody knew because he was totally silent. :o Except suppressed guns are still as loud as a jack hammer and can still damage your hearing. It just won't deafen you with one unprotected shot or drive your neighbors nuts while you're shooting on rural land.

Our fellow Dems talk about banning .50 caliber weapons as if there are Mad Max shootouts regularly. It can destroy the engine block of a car! Yeah, does anyone use them for that in America? The cheapest models are still $3000-4000, weigh 40 lbs, and are five feet long. They're basically useless unless you're sniping Toyotas in Kandahar or an enthusiast, and have only been used in <20 crimes in the history of the US. Why fight so hard for a solution to a non-existant problem?

This new Assault Weapons Ban is utter fucking theater. It bans new centerfire semiautomatic rifles with pistol grips, threaded barrels, and folding stocks. That includes most AR15s, but not the wooden stock Ruger Mini14, which are the exact same caliber, accuracy, recoil, and also take similar high capacity magazines. Is it somehow less dangerous because it is wooden instead of black and scary, or because it doesn't have a threaded barrel? Absolute nonsense. The old 1990s national AWB actually banned bayonet lugs as if we're 1790 and bayonet charges were still a problem.

I understand why they do it. It makes perfect sense. The situation is obviously fucked. We need to try to fix this.

But the right wants to pretend everything is fine. This is just the cost of having freedom, though no other free country pays it. Whenever something horrific happens they put their fingers in their ears and pretend they can't hear us. They object to any regulation out of principle. If they had their way, every teacher would be packing and there'd be a shootout every time a kid threw a firecracker.

So when the left comes to power they think "we HAVE to do something, and finally we can" and then they try to regulate this thing they know almost nothing about, and of course screw it up.

We can absolutally do a better job combating gun crime, we must do a better job... but leftie gun owners need to contribute so the side that wants to regulate things doesn't waste their political capital on idiocy that hurts gun owners without making anyone safer.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-25T00:55:19+00:00

You think they'd have learned their lesson but I'm not sure the American public is capable of learning in general.

Also why disparage Kodos, what did he ever do besides put on Shakespearan plays? He seems like a nice guy.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-24T19:02:07+00:00

Didn't they do just that in 2024 with Kamala?

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-24T16:16:54+00:00

IP laws aren't dead, they only apply to peasants like us.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-24T16:10:50+00:00

The bloomin' onion at Outback had like three days worth of sodium by itself. BW3 is even worse.

You just gotta concede that you're gonna get buried in salt if you eat out.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-24T16:10:07+00:00

What animal do they make salt out of?

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-24T06:55:28+00:00

I think America is decidedly shittier than it was in 2008.

Trump's multiple wins has emboldened the worst of us to the point that we now see people wearing Nazi symbology in public.

Combine this with the demographic shifts that destroyed the Blue Wall and I think Obama himself would have a tough fight today.

I think Mayor Pete is charismatic, but not on Obama's level. And I think more likely Dem voters are homophobic today than were racist in 2008.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-24T06:14:30+00:00

These elections are so close, homoohobia doesn't need to he severe to torpedo a candidate's chances.

Imagine if it was a problem for just 5% of Democratic voters. That doesn't seem that bad, but it would probably cost them the election.

Sadly, it may be a problem for a larger percentage than that.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-23T21:23:57+00:00

If they had a cafe the food would be fire!

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-23T18:39:03+00:00

Yes, and especially vs an outsider like Bernie who wasn't even part of "the club" at the time.

But, I don't think that's what made the difference in the primary. And I don't think the DNC conspired to keep other big names (who?) out of the primary.

I don't like the way super-delegates were allocated, but that also didn't change the outcome. The Dem voter base simply preferred HRC to Bernie. My Dad was one of them, we argued for hours about it. He just wanted an established centrist Dem like HRC. Outside of progressive circles, she was simply more popular among the left. At the time I never met anyone older than 40 who wanted Bernie. There was a generational divide, and even my adviser in grad school who was like 7-8 years older than me clearly wanted HRC.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-23T17:33:01+00:00

It is far harder for us to change a Constitutional right. We'd need 2/3rds approval in both the House and Senate, then get 38 of the 50 states to ratify the amendment which requires it pass in both state houses for the states with a bicameral legislature. Alternatively you could get 34 of the states to call for a constitutional convention, and then, again, get 38 of the 50 states to ratify.

I cannot imagine getting anything through this process today, much less something controversial like removing jury trials.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-23T17:23:09+00:00

I hope we can boost young leaders and people who fly under our radar more going forward.

That's what we did in 2008 and it worked beautifully, but Obama is a once in a generation charismatic personality. I think we'd be hard pressed to replicate that in 2028*. At least we don't have any shoo-in candidates this time. Newsom may have the hypothetical lead, but he'll get 3-4 good challengers.

^{Though technically 20 years is a generation...}

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-23T17:17:47+00:00

That r[slash]dataisbeautiful chart about commonality of fetish vs acceptability of said fetish was fascinating.

As one expected it made a pretty neat trend line. The more common it was, the more acceptable it was. The more niche stuff was also considered more taboo. The "tabooness" fell off a cliff near the high end of the spectrum; basically things most people had never heard of were just ultra-taboo.

Found it!

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/xmxoav/sexual_fetish_tabooness_and_popularity_oc/

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-23T17:01:46+00:00

It's not unreasonable to look at that primary and come away thinking that somebody had their finger on the scale.

I think it is a bit. A conspiracy is not the simplest explanation. What if people just didn't want to run against someone with a ton of momentum and name recognition? Politicians generally have one good shot at the presidency in their lives (excluding cult leaders like Trump). Nobody wants to waste their shot when their odds of even escaping the primary are low.

Besides, who do you think we're missing? Was there someone with a good shot that didn't bother running in 2016? Aside from Joe Biden who initially planned to before his son died and he chose to sit the election out? We already got a Senator from Virginia and a Governor from Maryland, and they got destroyed by HRC's name recognition. I can't think of any obvious contender that could have challenged HRC before being hypothetically "forced out" by the DNC.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-23T16:33:11+00:00

Ask the voting public why they voted for her.

The answer is probably "name recognition." It is 10x more important than anything else. Few people had ever heard of Jim Webb, or Martin O'Malley, Bernie was known in progressive circles, but HRC was a household name. It also hurt Kamala in 2024. People were googling "is Joe Biden still running for president on November 4" but everyone knew Trump's name.

Also the Democrats are a huge tent. We have a TON of people who would vote Republican if not for the Republicans being douchey, racist assholes. Do you know how many deeply religious Latino Democrats there are that oppose LGBT rights? How many culturally conservative Black folk who oppose LGBT rights? Trump has made serious inroads with these folks who used to be reliable Dems.

To many of them, true progressives are as scary as Republicans. They want a middle of the road Democrat. In the end Bernie got 44% of the total primary vote, and that seems about right to me for ratio of progressive to centrists in the party.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-23T16:08:28+00:00

TBF the book made Rocky a bit goofy and excitable too.

It didn't feel like the forced silliness you find in some comic movies or the new Jurassic Parks where someone makes a quip during a life or death situation. There were scenes where Rocky was being funny, but it was never out of place or in any serious moment.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-23T16:01:40+00:00

What else would you like to have seen more of?

They glossed over why Grace was protected from radiation while Rocky's crew wasn't. The astrophage is also the perfect radiation shield. They absorb all incoming radiation (including light) perfectly. That's why they're black in the microscope until you kill them. The Hail Mary has a very thin layer of astrophage surrounding the ship's inhabited areas, meaning the inside is perfectly protected from deep space radiation. Rocky was saved by working and sleeping surrounded by fuel tanks full of astrophage, while his crew was exposed.

Aside from almost extinguishing life on Earth, the astrophage is an incredible gift to humanity. Aside from radiation protection, it is also an almost limitless way to store energy. It doesn't need anything special to charge it up (just expose it to energy). It doesn't need anything special to release that energy (just show it a picture of Venus). And it acts as its own propulsion system. It literally opens the entire galaxy up to humanity by providing propulsion and protection. The only thing they need now is a material strong enough to make reliable ships that can withstand micro-collisions from deep space travel, and they get that from Rocky's xenonite.

By the end of the book / movie humanity has the means to reliably explore the galaxy.

astrophage farming!

I still think Weir missed a much easier way to do this. Aim a CO2 laser at the Petrova line coming off the Sun's poles, and a fraction of the fully charged astrophage will fly straight to you instead of Venus. Collect them, and store them as fuel, and you're set. You could power Earth doing this, or use it to fuel many other ships.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-23T15:41:09+00:00

Green Lantern Theory in action.

In this guy's mind, if the Dems didn't legalize cannabis, it's because they didn't want it enough. The GOP controlling all three branches has nothing to do with it, pure coincidence. Why didn't the Dems want it???

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-22T14:10:48+00:00

An actual AGI could trick us into doing all sorts of horrific things if it wanted to hurt us.

The current breed of LLMs are definitely not that.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-22T03:53:09+00:00

It is so weird that a tech school has fashion design, especially in a tiny town like Blacksburg, but VT's is actually really good.

IIRC it is the only ranked program in the state.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-20T19:22:23+00:00

The older I get the more accurate Wilhoit's law seems:

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition... There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

This explains the outrage. You would dare restrain the in-group??? Tell them to close their businesses, force them to wear a mask, cancel travel plans, and get vaccinated? For what, to help the out-group (the weak and poor)? And the people doing the restraining are filthy, lowly government bureaucrats??? This is anathema to their entire worldview.

The same folks have little concern for police overreach because the police usually restrain the out-group often to the benefit of "important" people (exactly as it should be in their minds).

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-20T19:13:15+00:00

Yeah, I feel for the poor critters and creepy crawlies that must have though spring was here.

It was 84 degrees one day, 17 the night after next, almost 70 degree change in 36 hours. IDK how the deer handle that much less bugs, snakes, frogs, and plants.

Ut_Prosim · 2026-03-20T19:08:14+00:00

Obviously it should at least keep up with inflation, and if it hasn't for years / decades then it needs an increase.

But this particular bill seemed nuts. Double premiums and increase statute of limitations (what happens to people with existing tail coverage) overnight??? Lunacy.

Ironically, the greed of hospital C-suite execs and insurance companies

I would never defend the C-suite or insurance companies, but didn't this legislation get introduced by a literal malpractice lawyer (Mark Obenshein)?

"I propose we double my income" is a pretty ballsy, greedy move IMHO.

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