The only thing that makes it harder is the elections are staggered. They’re all popular vote. You can do that without a senate. Removing lifetime appointments for 9 people and replacing them with a rotating pool has its own advantages, including not locking in control of the court for decades due to luck.

Well, the executive was historically civil servants that persisted beyond administrations, but the project 2025 people don’t believe in that.

That’s how it works now with extra steps. The system doesn’t provide any defense when people are working as a party regardless of their branch.

The judicial is still separate in what I proposed, so there’s still at least two.

I don’t really think the separation of powers really holds up when they’re all elected in the same way, anyway. Not in a two-party system. We have a sort of incidental defense via staggered elections and terms, but as you can see the republicans are happy to collaborate across branches.

It’s shocking (sorry) how rarely these goons stop and go “are we the baddies?”. I guess they’re just thoroughly stupid and or evil

No? It’d be similar to today, except without the senate giving undue weight to low population areas, and the president doing whatever he wants. You’d probably also want to change the voting system to support ranked choice or similar, while you were waving your magic around.

In what way do you think it would be easier?

Vice president doesn’t have much power. Wouldn’t accomplish much.

Should probably get rid of the presidency and Senate, and just have a large house. Also reform the supreme court so it’s like a rotating pool of federal judges instead of lifetime corruption magnets.

Oh unexpected Tess Parks sighting in the wild. Her albums are so good

https://tessparks.bandcamp.com/track/koalas

I’d love to see reductions in car usage because I very much dislike cars and car culture. I don’t personally mind inconvenience - I wait for mass transit when friends are like “just take an Uber lol” (not even touching the labor dimension there). I also always say electric cars and self driving cars are solving the wrong problems.

I’m just pessimistic that we’ll make much progress voluntarily. A lot of people are stupid and selfish, and the rich have power to keep things shitty for their personal benefit.

Yeah, but unfortunately a lot of people are lazy shitheads who are so out of shape they can’t ride a bike. That’s ignoring the horrifying infrastructure that puts you in the middle of cars driven by angry idiots.

It’s a good fact, but I don’t think we’ll get there without the left taking power and forcing the issue, or somehow playing to the emotions of reactionary fuckheads. Facts don’t convince them so it has to be emotions.

Shouldn’t be allowed. Companies shouldn’t be allowed to buy each other. We already know what happens with consolidation.

Desktop: 0. It’s off. I close the browser when I’m done

Phone: the number says 64, but only 25 “active”. I should probably prune.

I think it was heart of stone where I found random soldiers that were like level 40, and were thus inexplicably hard to kill. Kind of sucked. (Tip: setting things on fire does percentage damage, and so scales really well)

Nothing in the game is the kind of execution challenge difficulty I enjoy. It’s not like elden ring where you really have to manage spacing and stamina, consider your weapon, spells, skills. You can mostly just level and upgrade your stuff in witcher3, and win with face rolling.

Which is fine. That’s a valid kind of game. I just lost interest when replaying it because without the story to keep me in, the moment to moment gameplay wasn’t compelling enough

I didn’t really struggle with the controls when I replayed part of it this year. I lost interest because the difficulty starts out a little rough (wolves will kill you) and then a few hours later you’re so strong that even narratively scary things just melt.

Right?

I have someone in the friend group getting some gender surgery and I was like, “that’s great but please don’t tell me any of the gory details.” I don’t want to hear about surgery details no matter what part of the body is being modified.

I would so much rather just have a full timestamp. I can do the delta fine myself.

I expect that’s some people, yeah. Accepting that climate change is real means accepting uncomfortable ideas. Like that they’re responsible, at least a little.

Some people can’t accept that they’re everything less than a saint. You tell them that walking to the store is better for them and the environment than driving and they go berserk. Can’t handle the implication that they’re not perfectly faultless.

Many people would rather everyone suffer pollution and climate catastrophe than those people have a nice life.

Marissa Paternoster made a name for herself as the vocalist and lead guitarist of the punk band Screaming Females.

I’ve seen Paternoster do a guitar solo while crowd surfing, more than once. She’s a beast on stage. Was nice, and surprisingly quiet, at the merch table too. Great band. Highly recommend.

Once again the US is an embarrassment

They want hierarchy. A king, nobles, and an underclass. They don’t care if they’re on top, just so long as someone is below them.