TheVat

Panpsychism, biopsychism, radical emergence, clever slime molds, and various empirical approaches to consciousness are explored in this Vox article. Perhaps a useful bit of background reading to the chat. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/353430/what-if-absolutely-everything-is-conscious

If it reached that point without resulting in impeachment then seems like the POTUS would have functionally achieved a junta. Maybe I'm unduly optimistic today but I feel such an order would have a really tough time moving through the chain of command. Armed Forces officers do not take an oath of allegiance to the POTUS, but rather to the Constitution. What is disturbing about this conversation is the possibility we will find out just how far a POTUS can go along these lines.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5118313/2023/12/07/f1-sustainable-fuels-regulations/ F1 currently uses E10 fuel, which contains 10 percent renewable ethanol, while Formula Two and Formula Three used a 55 percent “drop-in” sustainable fuel during the 2023 season. But come 2026, F1 will use 100 percent sustainable fuel with its new era of power units.... One major difference between developing road fuels and race fuel is that F1 is not allowing manufacturers to use co-processing, which is when renewable feedstocks and crude oil are processed simultaneously. This is a critical component for achieving scale while building new plants, Hirsz said, because it’s using existing refineries to produce the low-carbon fuels. Be a shame if that judgemental attitude were directed at your pastimes. Have a seat.

This is key to the whole discussion. Not polls, which have become about as useful as reading sheep entrails. Listless voters must be energized, and that requires the tumult of the Democrats publicly thrashing out what sort of party they want to be. I.e. the healthy admission that politics is a contentious process. And it will mean taking a risk. Too many people are getting their election information by means of short quotes and clips on social media that reduce the competitors to caricatures and reduce governance to single issues (like tooth care, apparently, in the UK). So, as @CharonY and others have noted, all paths are volatile.

Crush some garlic in there.

Good question. Anne Applebaum, a political analyst at The Atlantic, suggested that swing voters need to get interested enough to vote, and that if GOP was forced to actually talk about its policy positions (generally quite unpopular) this would help the Dems. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/07/replace-biden-strategic-plan/678884/ The delegates to the Democratic National Convention don’t need to sleepwalk into catastrophe. They can demand that Biden release them from their pledge to support him. They can tear up the rule book, just like political parties do in other countries, and carry out a cold-blooded analysis.... ...Three states are essential to a Democratic presidential victory: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. All three have popular, successful, articulate Democratic governors. A tactical, strategic political party would pick one of the three as its presidential nominee.... ... Vice President Kamala Harris and any other candidates who stand a chance of winning those three states would be welcome to join the competition too. Everyone who enters should pledge their support to the winner... ...The Democrats can hold a new round of primary debates, town halls, and public meetings from now until August 19... ...the television networks would compete to show them. Millions would watch. Politics would be interesting again. After a turbulent summer, whoever emerges victorious in a vote of delegates at the DNC can spend the autumn campaigning in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—and win the presidency... ...There are risks. The Democrats could gamble and lose. But there are also clear benefits. The Republican convention, due to take place in less than two weeks, would be ruined. Trump and other Republicans wouldn’t know the name of their opponent. Instead of spending four days attacking Biden, they would have to talk about their policies, many of which—think corporate subsidies, tax cuts for the rich, the further transformation of the Supreme Court—aren’t popular. Their candidate spouts gibberish. He is also old, nearly as old as Biden, and this is his third presidential campaign. Everyone would switch channels in order to watch the exciting Democratic primary debates instead....

TFG is a Net initialism which stands for The Former Guy. If TFG were reelected then he would be TPG, The Present Guy. YMMV I feel there's a correlation between the length of time someone gets away with being above the law and the probability they get put up on a meathook Mussolini-style. (the depiction of this at Madame Tussaud's in London, which I saw when I was around 20, was quite vivid, though I thought there should have been flies swarming to make it more realistic)

Trump doesn't always want things that are sound strategy. If Harris or Newsom could defeat him, and Biden could not, then we need that discussion even if it's eleventh hour. No one here seems to disagree with Trump being a lying sociopathic turd - this chat should consider optimal strategies when the margins are narrow. A winning chess player will sacrifice their queen if that is the best path to mate, no matter how much they like keeping material advantage. MINNESOTA! A crucial point of strategy. Thank you.

I am probably more argumentative on this than I really feel, owing to this being a political thread and the inclination to poke at what politicians say. It just seems problematic for a US president to find 12 days insufficient to get over jet lag, given that official duties would rarely put one farther than 12 days from a trip several time zones out of DC. IOW, it is an excuse which plays into the hands of those contending he is not fit for the job. Even if we were to revise our nation's highest office to a Zoom presidency, this sort of excuse-making seems to show poor judgment.

Heh! You don't think there are news outlets than do straight reporting, i.e. factual accounts of matters of public record? I found the 12 day jet lag thing to be factual and somewhat disturbing, for the reasons I gave. Since news organizations like Reuters or the Post can be sued for libel, they do have a fairly strong motivation to report accurately. IIRC the NY Times had a multimillion dollar settlement for libel a few years ago - they fired the writer and I'm sure that taking a hit like that concentrated their minds wonderfully on checking their facts before printing them. I also found this, from BBC, of interest: White House officials have previously said he was battling a cold on the day of the debate. The president did not mention any illness in his remarks on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the White House said earlier in the day that he was not taking any cold medication during the debate. Mr Biden also spent six days at Camp David, the presidential retreat outside Washington DC, preparing for his debate against Donald Trump. The New York Times, citing an unnamed source familiar with Mr Biden's schedule, reported on Tuesday that his days began at 11:00 each morning and that he was given time each day to nap.... (me, again - couldn't disengage the font from the quote passage): These are all facts that seem inconsistent with the shifting narrative of Biden and his press office. (I would personally love to start my days at eleven, and have a nap in the afternoon. I imagine such a schedule, in a verdant retreat like Camp David, would fix just about anyone's jet lag.)

There is no doubt that newspapers, for example, write reports on current events and if reputable try to derive a meaningful story based on facts. Outlets like WaPo, BBC, and Reuters all fact-checked Biden's most recent excuse for poor debate performance, which was jet lag. All checked public records and found Biden had finished his travels on June 15. So, no jets for 12 days before the debate. So, part of the problem is that you can ignore the punditry and opining and there are still things in the straight reporting that do not quite make sense and point towards some rather awkward attempts at damage control. No one should be POTUS who can't recover from jet lag after almost two weeks. To make such an excuse shows a lack of common sense and poor awareness of optics.

Are the crops used for biofuels being grown without using fossil fuels to run the farm equipment or process the crops? The track record for biofuels, in this regard, is not good. Also, arable land for food is not increasing but hungry mouths are.

Much more efficient. Less than half the kwh/yr of a conventional electric WH. Some of the newer ones will run on an ordinary house 120V 15A circuit. The old WH are juice hogs, usually need a 240V and 30 A circuit.

LoL. Wevecene better. Really sorry to hear that. It's like a brain virus.

He can't, because the armed forces and intelligence services are (unlike him) constrained by the law. What he would have to do is either develop mad sniper skills and a cadre of Secret Service agents willing to get him to his best firing position, or somehow peel off enough of the military into an rogue team to replace the Constitutional republic with a junta. I would be the last person to say it can't happen here but I suspect it would be more difficult than some of the doomscrolling would suggest. I think there's a chance that another TFG administration (I guess he'd then be TPG) would result in a bolstering of those C&Bs. I know the "nearly break it in order to fix it" approach can be horrible, but it might be the only way.

Unfortunately Biden is almost as nice as a Canadian ( people so nice that they become incapacitated at 4-way stop intersections ) so will not opt to send Seal Team Six to send Donald to sleep with the fishes. Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, however, might want to watch their respective asses. Indeed.

In a chat like this, appeals to an unnamed poll seem like shouting scoreboard! I agree that questions about Biden competence have potential to play into the hands of GOP propagandists. Still, given SFN is a low-risk environment in that respect, I'm trying to get some sense of how a debate affects perceptions among groups like the fence sitters, the apathetics who always teeter at the edge of staying home, and the Lincoln project Republicans who waver on just abstaining v voting Joe. And if there is a Democrat in the stable who would activate any of those groups and help deliver Trump to the dungheap of history on 11/5/24. I certainly can't rule out that it's Biden who would remain the surest winner, but would like to test some of the hypotheticals here and not be overconfident. My personal concerns about Biden didn't start last Thursday, indeed I was questioning the whole primary system this winter as to its effectiveness in selecting the optimal candidate (just as I did in 2016 when that system produced Hilary Clinton, a competent policy wonk who lacked the code switching skills required to speak to the working class).

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Mission accomplished, Injustices! Immunity for any acts that can be deemed official. The Jan. 6 prosecution will take months to switch gears and determine if any of TFG's actions under the four charges were private or official.

I thought "birth control stunts progress" was the winner, hands-down, in the Stupidest Comment on a Forum contest. But the PlayStation thing was a strong runner-up! I see a future writing speeches for Trump, for this young man.

I am skeptical of that Strong Team theory, which I've heard many times. I feel there are vast tracts of voters who do not cast votes for a competent team. What you describe is a very pragmatic and reasonable way to vote, and I have yet to see most Americans do that. As with MiGL, I sense the presence of a sensible Canadian who gives American voters way too much credit. Voters here do not get fired up by a candidate who will die or become incapacitated. Reagan managed to deflect the age issue, but did so with a famous snappy one-liner and general agility in debate matched by well-publicized woodchopping skills.

While I agree the less national profile options like Klobuchar or Booker would be harder to hit the August ground running, I would guess that those who have been in the national spotlight like Newsom and Whitmer have more capacity to do a whirlwind campaign and are somewhat vetted already. And Michigan is an important swing state for 2024, so Whitmer has a useful edge there, as well as with other midwestern swings where her style might go over especially well. The candidate who has polled highest against Trump (but that as a while ago, I haven't kept up) lives over at the Naval Observatory, and is vetted, but seems to have a "but her personality" liability with some voters, which I haven't quite figured out. My wife says it's a certain way she smirks during a debate, and a sort of lecturing tone, but I just don't see it. I am sure the RW media cesspools would geyser methane on her every misstep, given their fear of strong black women. Honestly I just don't know if a contested convention would be a giant goatf---, or the best thing for a party whose blood is getting stagnant.

I think this is the practical view, where we are talking the art of the possible AKA politics. We are stuck with the deranged bully, his adoring and fact-immune base, and his indelible impression that he is strong, authoritative, and gets things done, no matter what a monstrous fraud that all is. Whatever Trump's cognitive decline, it has not alas affected his grifter powers. Calling for Joe to step down seems like a viable course precisely because Biden is not Trump, but rather a decent and reasonable man. Trump lied his head off. It got less coverage because news outlets cover news, and Trump's bullying and lies are "Dog bites Man." Or "Water is Wet." I agree that Democrats stink at the whole party machine thing, where wise veterans gather in the proverbial smoke filled room and hash out the nuts and bolts of candidate selection. It's a shame given all the potential great pairings out there....Gretchen Whitmer and Ralph Warnock, Newsom and Gina Raimondo, Harris and Sherrod Brown, Andy Beshear and Cory Booker...hell, you could throw the top dozen into a basket and hold a random drawing and get a duo that would reenergize the Dems and leaning Independents.

This is a misunderstanding. I would never vote for Trump, and have posted extensively here on the horrors of Project 2025. But I also want a Democrat to actually win. I am talking about perception of millions of voters who will not make the purely rational choice of Biden based on his track record or how fantastic his brain trust is. Presidents have to project some energy, and many will not vote for someone who they find wanting in that respect. Trump, with his fast and forceful blather, will continue to impress those he has conned, and those people vote.