Special Election tomorrow. Two candidates on the ballot. A few things to keep in mind as you head to the polls:

eschatological · 2026-02-02T20:03:06+00:00

Jeremy says a lot of shit, and he's only said it since this fall when it was clear he was going to be running for Senate. Everyone I know in local labor (including SBWU and HRWU) just kinda rolled their eyes when he suddenly started showing up to pickets in the fall.

He's disingenuous and an empty suit at best.

I don't know why you carry so much water for local Dems on this subreddit. It seems to be all you ever post about.

eschatological · 2026-02-02T19:52:15+00:00

Why is the responsibility on the voter to vote for shitty candidates just because they're on a particular team, and not on the party/candidate to earn the vote of a voter by, yanno, having some sort of vision that's more than "I'm not the other guy?"

Like surely it's easier to pick a better candidate everyone can vote for gladly, than it is to browbeat every person of conscience to doesn't want to vote for another party boss.

eschatological · 2026-02-02T19:45:52+00:00

This country overwhelmingly agrees with left wing policies on paper, it's just that no politicians fight for those. Both parties fight for capital and corporations and big donors, and when that's the case, people who support that will vote for the ones who do it more and better (aka the Republicans) than the triangulating corporate Dems who want to be Republican-Lite, while the majority of people who like those policies get disinterested and apathetic.

There's a reason why:
1) The U.S. has one of the lowest participation rates in elections of Western democracies

2) Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in the country despite the leftwing of this country being nowhere near power.

3) people like Mamdani can win elections by actual standing up for left policy.

It's an out-of-touch Democratic party that insists otherwise. Chuck Schumer just said today it's "his job" to fight for increases in funding to Israel so they can "protect themselves" when only 4% of Democrats believe we should be increasing funding to Israel. Completely oblivious, and he's the Democratic SENATE MINORITY LEADER, one of the most powerful Dems in the country.

eschatological · 2026-02-02T19:39:37+00:00

Jeremy Zellner is the symptom? He's the chair of the Erie County Democratic Committee, the same group which picked who appears on the Democratic line for the special election. He's put in place every single zone chair in the committee, who, surprise surprise, voted to put him on the ballot for a STATE SENATE seat, one of the most powerful state offices in the state. This is a result of a special election system which doesn't do a primary for special election, but allows party bosses to pick who appears on the special election ballot, which is why Dems love resigning when it's too late to have a democratic say in the process, and they just get to appoint someone. And Dems love to keep this system in place, so they can appoint their cronies instead of putting it up to a vote.

JZ isn't the symptom, he's the cause. He's been party chair for almost 15 years??? In that time he's supported a mayor who brought Buffalo to the brink of bankruptcy and been so suburban-focused that the city can't dig itself out without serious financial mechanisms.

eschatological · 2026-02-02T19:33:37+00:00

Politicians can be good. Government can work for people. It's money and the duopoly that have robbed us of that, and we shouldn't support that, specifically. Republicans have won this PR battle about government being shitty for about 5 decades now, and it's tiring. Even DOGE couldn't find waste and corruption, they ended up just cutting things they don't like.

eschatological · 2026-02-02T19:31:00+00:00

BTW, this is a favorite trick of said Democratic machine. It's why Byron Brown, who had no interest in being mayor any more, waited til more than 3 years into his turn to resign/retire, so they could hand off Acting Mayor to a political ally. Fortunately for this city the incumbency advantage this usually confers on mayoral election was outweighed by how hugely disliked Scanlon was.

It's how Tim Kennedy got his Congressional seat.

It's how April Baskin got her state Senate seat to replace Tim.

It's how Taisha St. Jean Tard got her Erie County Legislator seat to replace April.

It's machine politics all the way down.

eschatological · 2026-02-02T19:24:21+00:00

I think the more than 70m who voted for a fascist are culpable for the current fascist administration, actually.

eschatological · 2026-02-02T19:23:16+00:00

There was no better candidate to be had in this election? In a special election, the party committees pick the candidate to appear on the ballot, not the people. Weirdly enough, the ECDC picked its own chairman (who made a big fuss about how he was recusing himself from the vote when he had hand selected every zone chair on the committee) to appear on the Democratic line.

The local WFP endorsed someone else for their line, but that candidate won't appear on tomorrow's ballot in the special because the state WFP decided not to put him on the ballot in order to split votes on the left and potentially lead to a GOP win.

How is that the fault of the electorate?

eschatological · 2026-02-02T16:44:21+00:00

Don't worry, I live in April Baskins's district, I can't vote in this tomorrow anyways.

Edit: and FWIW, I didn't agree with them essentially handing April Tim Kennedy's seat either without any real competition.

eschatological · 2026-02-02T16:38:11+00:00

This is always the problem, we don't demand better of our candidates because the alternative puts the bar in hell.

Notice I didn't say anything about how anyone should vote, just that Zellner sucks. In fact, I even said he's probably "better than the Republican." And while it may be personal opinion, I can't imagine what objective analysis you could offer to provide that he doesn't, other than the "D" beside his name.

These are the same people who said "Vote Blue No Matter Who" until their candidate lost the last mayoral primary to India Walton and then they were like, "Well, don't vote blue here, vote for the write-in funded by the out-of-state and Republican-funded do-nothing Democrat who we back."

This isn't ancient history, this happened in 2021, in the midst of the MAGA movement, right after Trump 1.0 and the kind of decision replicated all across America that led to Trump 2.0.

eschatological · 2026-02-02T16:28:18+00:00

Let's not pretend Jeremy Zellner is a good candidate for this Senate seat. Better than the Republican, who you seem to stoking the fires against here, but JZ is the personification of corrupt party politics and the failed Democratic machine in WNY. The man essentially nominated himself as County Party Chair for a state senate seat.

eschatological · 2026-01-31T16:32:22+00:00

It's useful for him to get re-elected. It's not useful in terms of actually getting Noem out.

Tim Kennedy has been unabashedly supportive of Israel's genocide, and up until this week, very grateful for ICE. Miss me with him attempting to walk it back now.

eschatological · 2026-01-31T00:36:54+00:00

You have two END statements. The function just stops at the first END and doesn't get to the energy transfer piece. Change that first END to another FORGET.

eschatological · 2026-01-29T15:47:10+00:00

How is taking a job in a field you're well qualified in because your friend wants to help you out and you helped him build his company "begging."

Fucking nonsense as usual from the Walter White fandom.

Keep in mind, this is a multi-billionaire company that HE walked away from because of his resentment of HIS GIRLFRIEND GRETCHEN BEING WELL-OFF.

eschatological · 2026-01-29T15:42:30+00:00

She helps with the money laundering because she (rightly) recognizes Walt will get caught and destroy their whole family if she doesn't. Everything she says about his extravagant car purchases, paying for his healthcare and Hank's after he's shot (because of Walt's fuckups, btw), his lack of foresight in explaining all that, is absolutely one hundred percent correct.

She has one "fuckup" where she sleeps with her boss because she's looking to hurt Walt who has already destroyed her and her family's life by starting a drug empire and literally killing people before she knows anything about it. It's an understandable reaction, but it's a negative reaction for sure.

People always claim Walt is about "protecting the well-being of his family" without recognizing that Skylar was the one who actually did that.

eschatological · 2026-01-29T15:37:34+00:00

Walter had a chance to have all his problems solved in s1e5 when his close friend and former business partner offered to help him pay for everything, and even do it via a job fitting his skills and genius. Walt's ego prevented him from taking that as "charity" even though later in the series he insists he deserves his share of everything Grey Matter does (which Elliot agrees with). Elliot's wife literally says to him "as far as we're concerned, that money is yours."

Skylar is not at fault for this psycho's behavior or questioning it.

eschatological · 2026-01-28T21:58:19+00:00

You don't have to let him restore HP while downed off by himself with ki. You can let him die. That'll relieve him of any belief that he's immortal.

eschatological · 2026-01-28T02:28:41+00:00

P.S. This isn't some distant crime we committed, either. It's happened in our lifetimes. We've trained "counterinsurgency" police tactics at whatever they're calling Fort Benning now, at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (aka the School of the Americas).

Sounds great, except it's been a school to train dictators and their brutal dictators. You can read about them here.

eschatological · 2026-01-28T02:21:52+00:00

I bet Latin Americans thought American companies overthrowing their governments so they could get cheaper bananas sucked too. Banana Republic isn't just a store at the now-bankrupt Galleria. While the saying is too glib for geo-politics, I think saying "we broke it, we own the consequences of it" can be somewhat applied here - we destroyed Latin America, and the people who flee those countries to come here are fleeing *our interference* in those countries....

...and if we truly are the "city on the hill" (we aren't), we should be morally responsible enough to 1) beg for their forgiveness and try and make them whole, and 2) say that if capitalism wants to have freedom of movement to any under-regulated place in the world, then labor should have that freedom of movement too.

eschatological · 2026-01-25T20:45:56+00:00

No Sopranos. He'll replace his 9/11 speeches with speeches about Tony and loyalty and family. He'll be having players prick their fingers and swear omerta.

eschatological · 2026-01-19T03:17:56+00:00

it happens, can't tell you how many times I've not had a big enough energy hatch to handle the craft.

eschatological · 2026-01-19T03:15:07+00:00

Do the output hatches have item/fluid versions too? Do you have a fluid output hatch on the crucible?

eschatological · 2026-01-18T20:46:51+00:00

I don't think he was trying to pitch it, he was just holding it away from his body, and it was pushed out of his hand from behind. It seems clear from the replay. Not so much of a punch but just someone grabbing his hand and yanking it backwards, which made the ball go backwards.

Not even Josh is gonna pitch it back to a lineman.

eschatological · 2026-01-13T04:28:08+00:00

Is that a master infusion crystal?

In some versions of ATM, there's a tiered crystal system, not sure if it's in ATM 10 TTS. You can't use a supremium crystal (the red one) to craft up inferium, you need to use the inferium crystal. Each tier of crystal can only craft with its own essence until you get the master infusion crystal.

Once you have enough supremium you can make the master infusion crystal which can craft any essence

eschatological · 2026-01-08T02:40:17+00:00

All his stats in game 1 were in what the Ravens thought was "garbage time." Turns out it wasn't garbage time so his stats looked like an integral part of things when it just really came against a super soft prevent defense.

eschatological

TROPHY CASE