Xhieron

Uh… okay, bro. You know that Donald Trump is also running in this election, right? Biden could be running single digits, and it still wouldn’t change the calculus: If a Biden alternative can’t beat Trump, they’re not going to put an albatross around the neck of their political career just to lose in November.

Newsom was on MSNBC singing Joe’s praises, just like he would have done regardless, because Newsom wants to be president, but Newsom also polls worse than Biden. That’s not hypothetical. Those polls already exist, and a drop in Biden’s numbers isn’t automatically a boost for Newsom. If Newsom thinks losing in 24 hurts his viability in 28, he wouldn’t do it. And who could blame him? It’s five months to the election.

The point is: It’s possible that all of the options are bad. Biden was in the mid-forties before the debate and the thirties after. He went from near toss-up to probably losing if the election were yesterday/today. Newsom might out-poll Biden today, but that’s not the contest.

The contest is with Trump. It’s not good enough to poll better than Biden. You have to actually carry all of Biden’s states and then some. If I’m Newsom and deciding whether to try to cobble together a five-month campaign and limp to November to save the DNC from itself and protect Amtrak Joe’s legacy when I’m starting 15 points in the hole or run my own campaign against the likes of a Haley or DeSantis also-ran once Trump is term-barred, dead, or both in four years, I’m not taking a risk at the convention unless someone makes me very, very confident that I could win.

And there’s the rub. Newsom wants to be president, and he’d love to be president in six months, but he’s not going to take over a campaign that’s already lost. If the party thinks Trump wins no matter what–not an unreasonable conclusion–why on earth would they burn their best shot of a rebound in 28?

Ratings and clicks–same thing they wanted with the debate.

This probably doesn’t work, and it’s probably not as good idea as anyone hopes (genuinely or not). It might happen anyway, but no matter what, we’re coasting toward a second Trump presidency, just like all the Russian agitprops here wanted all along.

If Biden is polling down 10 points or worse at the convention, they could drag someone else onto the stage, but my suspicion is that no one else outperforms him on short notice, even after his abysmal performance in the debate.

A few reasons:

1. Newsom probably doesn’t want it. If he calculates Trump wins either way (not unreasonable), he’s not going to want that loss on his record since he’s already gunning for 28. He would be the best chance at getting an up-and-comer who already has good name recognition and looks and sounds good.
2. Harris. If Harris wants it, she has a lot of leverage to make it hard or outright impossible for the party to push anyone else out in front of her. She’s a poor candidate for a lot of reasons, but she’s also the most attached to Biden. That’s both good and bad for her. If they want to run anyone else, they have to have her playing ball too. Ask yourself, if you were Kamala Harris, would you give up your only conceivable chance at the Oval in favor of another non-Biden candidate? Remember, in any scenario the odds are good Trump wins anyway.
3. The truth may be that the party would rather just let Trump win. That sounds unthinkable, but this isn’t a secret cabal of idealists we’re talking about: it’s a bunch of self-interested rich people who want to put themselves in power. Getting them to do anything for the public good is difficult under the best circumstances. They could easily decide–rightly–that Biden is still their best shot at beating Trump. That was the call in 2020, and it paid off. Don’t forget that many of these same names being batted around now were active in the party four years ago. Newsom loses to Trump, and he’s largely seen as the best alternative. If you’re running the party and looking at those odds, you should run Biden if you actually want the best chance at winning. You might decide it’s just a lost cause and start planning for a four year long nightmare.

As a young teenager: Do not start working until you have to. Once you start, you’ll never stop.

We have not created the heavens and the earth and everything in between except for a purpose. And the Hour is certain to come, so forgive graciously.

15:85 Quran

I’m incredibly fascinated by the ghost comparison. Is the probability that ghosts are a real physical phenomenon higher or lower than the probability that aliens exist or have visited us? That’s an extremely interesting question, and I’m sure someone could do a statistical meta-analysis comparing the incidence of, say, UFO sightings with the incidence of paranormal experiences (if such an analysis doesn’t already exist). Both questions seem like the things that should be generally empirically falsifiable (and indeed, specific instances certainly are), but humanity’s curiosity about both has proven remarkably durable despite centuries of curiosity and myriad efforts to settle (negatively) both questions once and for all.

Oh shit, you’re right. Russia doesn’t want that, so I guess we should just let them have what they want.

What are you on about? This is a war in which Russia, unprovoked, invaded its neighbor to grab land, bodies, ports, and food. Russia is going to share multiple borders with NATO when this is over; the question is just whether the border is the Ukrainian border or the Polish border. If either of those scenarios results in World War 3, odds are pretty good both of them do. There’s simply no universe in which NATO allows Russia to take over all of Eastern Europe (again). Even if the fascists take the US in November, Europe will pour everything it has into stopping Putin’s advance.

Sure, Ukraine probably “loses” in the end, in one way or another. By many measures they’ve already lost. But it’s not a binary proposition. The point of propping up Ukraine at this stage is as much about forcing Russia to spend its fighting ability on Ukraine now, instead of in WW3. This desire is part of the reason that capitulating, conceding some land, and letting Russia regroup for a decade before doing a better job next time is only palatable with Ukraine in NATO. The threat of a world war is the only thing that would stop Russia from repeating this bullshit every ten to twenty years for another five generations.

Really? I’d be very interested in seeing a peer reviewed article in Nature in which someone reputable claims to have disproven the existence of the soul (especially without making a bunch of other ontological assumptions first). Can you point me to one?

As far as I can tell, the existence of a soul, like the existence of God, is inherently a non-scientific proposition–i.e., it is not falsifiable. But correct me if I’m wrong.

Nope. You’re still wrong, but it’s not worth the trouble. I hope you never have to learn the hard way. Take it easy.

None of these are (speaking generally) legal requirements of an agreement in the US.

Source: Am lawyer who writes EULAs for a living.

There are plenty of good arguments for why a particular EULA might be legally problematic, but “no signature, no contract!” isn’t one.

“You look like a good joe.”

Yarr.

Is that realistic? Not a rhetorical question: I’m genuinely curious. I ask because the last time I tried to update a single (desktop) part, it was more cost-effective to replace the whole Pc and migrate the salvageable parts since the only thing I could have held onto would have been the ram, SSD, and PSU.

I suppose with a laptop you have the monitor to also consider, and admittedly I know nothing about laptop boards, but it just seems like 6 years is replacement time anyway, at least for a daily use computer.

Military parade in my capital. Compel my legislature to grant me lifetime tenure as First Citizen. Annex the country. No exit strategy.

Peace in our time.

I can’t believe I’d never read that before despite being a fan of Doctorow in general. Thank you. Exceptional work. Should be mandatory reading.

It’s not abstract at all, but my favorite is the Living God. It’s an old one (Elohim khayyim), but I strongly empathize with the sentiment: if there is a God, God must be alive. She must be able to do things–God must have volition. He isn’t just a product of natural order (e.g., the Sun). He might be a prick sometimes, but His actions are better than chance. If your god is a coin toss, your god may as well be a coin toss. Whichever God demonstrates Her existence is the real One. Everything else is make-believe at best, a long con at worst.

This is very upsetting to me–more as a point of principle than in fact–but I appreciate that it doesn’t bother younger generations at all. I just had a small argument with my 11 year old about how not-a-big-deal-who-cares this is, and it basically ended with us agreeing to disagree since it’ll be his problem and his kids’ problem.

And the problem is normalizing the notion that an OS doesn’t need to include a non-subscription word processor. The entire point of this move is to shift the OS Overton Window in favor of consumers accepting and expecting that features like word processors, spreadsheets, etc., should be installed separately and paid for on a subscription basis despite previous iterations of the same software being feature complete on install and purchased at a set, non-recurring fee.

WordPad hasn’t been anybody’s first choice for a word processor in years, but it was included with Windows and did the bare minimum for unsophisticated users. Now we’re entering an era in which those users will as a matter of course buy off-the-shelf computers that come pre-installed without WordPad, but rather with a trial of Office Fuck-You-Pay-Me Edition. Those users may well discover that after their first six months with their new computer (that has made Microsoft more money selling their data than they paid for it), they suddenly get a pop-up informing them that their trial is up and MS wants $99.99 to release the documents they’re holding hostage.

It’s a step backwards for consumers in general, so even for the sophisticated of us who are least likely to be personally affected by this change, there’s definitely cause for alarm.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

That is to say, the error is to conflate law with morality. They are not one and the same.

Crime. That’s the answer. I don’t suggest or recommend it, but people who genuinely can’t survive or achieve any meaningful quality of life while participating in the social order will violate it instead. Some people shoplift; others engage in elaborate plots to rip off their landlords and creditors, but there’s no squaring the circle. I’m not in the same boat, but I’ve been there, and it’s only a stroke of good fortune that kept me from a very different road.