I love the way you weave in the cultural context, including the culture war parts of modern political and policy debates, the business/corporate trends in entertainment, in your telling of this history. It’s clear you know your stuff, and you’ve helped me understand something new (the influences these slasher films drew from, from Agatha Christie), grounded in stuff I might have already known (the actual movies themselves and the cultural context they were released into, including how people looked at boobs before the internet).

So thank you. This comment is awesome, and you make this place better.

This is a counter to the Democratic party supporters you see everywhere who always get irrationally upset at third party voters, not about Republicans.

Plenty of us Democrats are very much in support of a ranked choice voting schemes, or similar structural rules like non-partisan blanket primaries (aka jungle primaries). The most solidly Democratic state, California, has implemented top-2 primaries that give independents and third parties a solid shot for anyone who can get close to a plurality of votes as the top choice.

Alaska’s top four primary, with RCV deciding between those four on election day, is probably the best system we can realistically achieve in a relatively short amount of time.

Plenty of states have ballot initiatives that bypass elected officials, so people should be putting energy into those campaigns.

But by the time it comes down to a plurality-take-all election between a Republican who won the primary, a Democrat who won the primary, and various third party or independents who have no chance of winning, the responsible thing to make your views represented is to vote for the person who represents the best option among people who can win.

Partisan affiliation is open. If a person really wants to run on their own platform, they can go and try to win a primary for a major party, and change it from within.

TL;DR: I’ll fight for structural changes to make it easier for third parties and independents to win. But under the current rules, voting for a spoiler is throwing the election and owning the results.

Racists would pay quite a bit of money to be able to target certain ethnic groups.

Why do you care if the person you voted for wins?

Because it’s an election with consequences, not an online fandom.

She absolutely is a trash person. I agree. I’m not defending her to be clear.

People who let their dogs off leash in public are assholes and deserved to be confronted and shamed. She was a piece of shit well before their conversation started.

to the downvote brigade I highly recommend go watch the full video and decide for yourself

Yeah it’s obvious she’s weaponizing the police against a guy who she doesn’t like, by knowingly playing directly into the “police will overreact against a black guy” card, and faking panic in her voice. This is violent escalation to a non-violent situation. The faked panic is straight up sociopathic.

People who don’t leash their dogs are assholes, and his response to that was relatively tame.

I don’t see how you can watch this and respond the way you have, unless you’re also the type of asshole who feels entitled to walk dogs without leashes, or generally dislike black people, or are completely oblivious to the social context in which police in New York interact with black people.

“Feminism” is like philosophy in that over time it makes certain wins, and the discussion around that topic gradually sheds the label.

In the same way that ancient philosophers were establishing the disciplines we now call mathematics, geometry, and physics, or early modern philosophers were establishing what we now call economics and political science, and mid-century/postwar philosophers were establishing what is now called computer science and information theory, the history of feminism is notching wins and making them normal:

• In Anglo American law, women were able to own their own property beginning in the early 19th century, starting in the American South (somewhat ironically driven by southern concerns about preserving the institution of slavery).
• Women were allowed to be considered for credit and banking services, equal to men, beginning in the 1970’s.
• Women earned the legal right to equal pay for equal work in the 70’s, even as cultural attitudes in many circles still considered that to be government overreach (even today).
• Marital rape and other forms of domestic violence were outlawed pretty recently. The last state to criminalize marital rape did so in 1993, the same year that Jurassic Park came out in theaters.
• Liberalized divorce rules throughout the 80’s allowed women to leave abusive husbands more easily.
• Most gender segregation in official government institutions were dismantled in the 1980’s and the 1990’s, including the abolition of male-only universities, and laws imposing different legal drinking ages between men and women.

Today, many of us who were alive when these rules were in effect think of them as totally backwards. Nobody is seriously advocating for a return to denying women the right to have their own bank accounts, or giving husbands the right to rape their wives without consequences.

But the cultural understanding of the meaning of feminism rarely considers preserving past wins, even recent wins. People only think of it as fighting for something in the future.

Most men have experienced the stifling gender norms that force them into a box: they’re not allowed to cry or show any feeling other than anger, there’s no such thing as non-sexual touch or romance, women don’t like sex so trying to get close to them is inherently rapey and goes against their desires.

Feminism fights against that trap, that men are only men if they check certain boxes. That’s what’s toxic: telling men they’re not allowed to be certain ways.

So yeah, feminism does have a lot to offer men. Toxic societal expectations are bad for everyone.

I read it in Larry David’s voice.

$83 billion per month is almost $1 trillion per year. That sounds about right.

What are the oceans if not one giant salt lake?

Deseret can have a little coastline, as a treat.

The inspector general of the postal service actually compared this next generation vehicle project with what foreign post offices do, in this report.

One of the big differences is that the US Postal Service wants to keep the vehicles in service for 18-20 years (while purchasing them over 12 years), instead of replacing them every 3-9 years as the European counterparts do. They think that the cost of ownership will be lower with custom vehicles on a maintenance plan and parts supply chain specific to them, rather than relying on commercial manufacturers regularly turning over their assembly lines. And maybe the volume (160,000 vehicle fleet) is sufficient to actually pull that off, economically.

John Oliver sometimes runs random out of context clips of MILF Manor and I’m not sure actually watching them in context would make them any less ridiculous.

No, no, the bigots hate people who speak French too

SNL had a fun sketch about this 12 years ago.

Yeah, I don’t see it.

As a matter of electoral politics, oil production is still popular in swing states like Pennsylvania, and having a noncommittal stance towards domestic oil companies might cause a few oil billionaires not to back Trump (whose own policies are a little bit too erratic and chaotic to allow the business world in general to count on profit/prosperity under a Trump term).

As a matter of policy, domestic oil production is an important tool in countering Russian and Saudi interests. Strong domestic oil production gives the United States more incentive to tighten restrictions on Russian sanctions (without hurting domestic economic interests), and in weakening Saudi price-setting power through OPEC.

Fracking is terrible for the environment. But there are reasons why energy policy looks to more than just environmental issues.

Oh you can remember which one is which by remembering that they have a university named USC.

Haiti’s gonna hate hate hate

why wouldn’t I use my platform to share those beliefs?

I think it’s perfectly valid to say “the system that gave me this platform is unfair and I shouldn’t have benefited from it to the degree that I have, but I have the platform now so I’m going to use it for good.”