Bonifratz

They should start calling it the Department of Government Efficiency Department.

Luckily, the process of repealing or changing an amendment likely won’t change anytime soon, even with a Republican trifecta at the federal level, as it requires overwhelming public support. As outlined in Article 5 of the Constitution, any such change requires at least two-thirds of the Senate and the House to agree on the modification, with that change then requiring ratification by a minimum of three-quarters of states in the nation.

I wouldn't be so confident. If the majority decides to ignore it, then a constitution suddenly holds very little weight. Remember how the Roman Empire was once a Republic, until someone decided it wasn't anymore? Remember how 1930s Germany was a democracy, until someone decided that had to end?

Trump might argue some weird logic regarding the 22nd and 12th amendment. Or he might just declare a state of national emergency because of a new migrant caravan or some such shit, and postpone elections indefinitely. If he tries anything of the sort, it will all come down to whose side the military is on.

I didn't mean "someone" this literally. In both cases, many people were directly involved or allowed things to happen by not intervening.

My point was the more general one that a system of government only remains in place for as long as those who have the power want it to. (Whoever that may be: an elite, the people, the military, the clergy, some combination...) The US seems to be entering a phase where a big part of those in power wants to move from liberal democracy towards authoritarianism. If they turn out to have a stable majority and follow through with their plans, then the US Constitution won't be worth more than the paper it was written on.

Here was me hoping to never hear from this douche nozzle again.

Trump suggested that restraint would be unfair since his Democratic critics are “getting personal all night long.”

This shows why it was paramount that the Democrats left the "high road". Trump has no clue how to react when someone finally hits back at the bully.

Libgen and scihub have done more for science than any of those shitty journal publishers.

And this is only like, the fifth weirdest headline I've read about the guy.

Lichess.org is the best website to play and study chess on, hands down, and it's entirely Libre/FOSS, with zero ads or trackers (e. g. read here: https://lichess.org/about).

Low energy.

Never have I ever as much as tried anything you can smoke (cigarettes, joints, shisha...).

It seems like more and more internet spaces are being taken over by bots. At some point the internet will just be AI talking to itself, while humans will return entirely to offline communication.

Original art (paintings and sculptures) by local artists. They csn be checked out for three months at a time. It's really nice to have some original art in your home even if it it's not by a big name.

Also, I can easily access most of my country's important newspapers' online articles that are normally behind a paywall.

Voting for the felon and sex offender because the other side is amoral is... weird.

At the debate his (painted) skin was literally a darker shade than Harris's.

Yup, like the time they broke into a house and shot the girl sleeping on the sofa with her grandma.

Why, what did he say?

Billionaires are a scourge of humanity.

Still my unchallenged #1 favourite event of the entire Trump trainwreck saga.

Only interesting if you're romantically attracted to women, though.

From what I've seen of the guy, I feel the only reason anybody knows him is his name.

I think strategically it's smart not to focus on concrete plans too much. People vote according to their feelings more than according to actual policy, and Harris is doing very well right now on the feeling front.

Old School Runescape.

Also, I'm really confused as to why chess doesn't have an active community on Lemmy. Online chess has seen a big boom in recent years, and the demographics of chess players and Lemmy users should have a lot of overlap (i.e. the nerdy IT people), but for some reason the chess community here is more or less dead. Only anarchychess is active, which is great, but I'd love to have an active replacement for r/chess.

Just be aware that Germany is turning more and more right-wing, too...

I can crack the knuckles of my big toes at will (only moving my toes, no hands involved).

• The Village

• O Brother Where Art Thou

• Amélie

• Pride and Prejudice

• Shutter Island

to name a few.

Wait wait, are you telling me the US (the Americas?) don't have hedgehogs??

I know this applies to the French and to Germans, but does the rule hold for Ukrainians?

Lol... That's one way to admit Harris won the debate.

Wait, even as a child? Where are you from if I may ask?

Sounds like you're shadowbanned.

100% this. And it frustrates me to no end because we're having the exact same issue in Germany (although we're still "behind" the US in the timeline). The extremist AfD has been gaining consistently over the past decade because they just present themselves as the alternative to everything establishment, so a lot of voters that are unhappy with the system for whatever reason flock to them (as one AfD politician put it, "the worse Germany is doing, the better for the AfD"). But instead of offering a different, more left-wing alternative to the status quo, all other major parties have been trying a centrist or even right-wing approach (e. g. the current government implementing hilariously useless stricter border controls), hoping to appeal to AfD voters by offering a watered-down version of their authoritarian agenda. And of course the outcome of this strategy is the same as in the US: The AfD just keeps on gaining ground.

Sounds nice enough, but not really like an outsider position among the Founding Fathers. OP seemed to be saying that Paine differed substantially from the others in some way, which I would be interested to learn about (not American either, I only have cursory knowledge of the Founding Fathers).

Pretty much any version we know now has taken very liberal translations to change the meanings.

That's not true. Bible translations differ wildly on the approach they take, but there exist many (at least for English) that are focused on offering a rendition as close to the original meaning as possible. Also, Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic as well as Koine Greek have been deeply studied over centuries and are well understood, so accurate translations are possible with the exception of a small percentage of rare vocabulary. Obviously, perfect translations aren't a thing, but that's a moot point and not exclusive to Bible translations.

Most scholars agree that the translations were not accurate.

Which scholars? Which translations? These blanket statements make no sense. Again, many translations have been made or reviewed/proofread by scholars of the Bible's languages, making your claim dubious at best.

Then on top of that entire books of the Bible were debated and thrown out, the gospel of Mary magdeline is the most famous. They picked and chose what message they wanted.

It's no secret that settling on a canon was a process that took centuries both in Judaism (for the Tanakh) and in early Christianity (for its New Testament), and was never really finished in the latter case, considering the different canons in use in the major Christian churches even today.

That said, I think this process was a necessity. In early Christianity, there were hundreds if not thousands of Jesus-inspired texts floating around, so if the new church was to have any sort of guiding document(s), they had no choice but to pick and choose. Of course, if you think a text (like the Gospel of Mary you mention) is an important witness of the early church, or a more accurate reflection of early Christian thought than are the New Testament writings, you have every right to make that argument. But I don't think it's fair to hold it against early Christians that they "picked and chose what message they wanted", because that's kind of the whole point of founding a new religious movement.

Even if you love couches, you should know who to vote for at this point.

Ok granted, that may be true. I wouldn't be able to tell as I left in June '23 and never looked back. But from what I read about the protests back then, I seem to remember that only few subs had to have their mod team replaced by Reddit. I think if more mod teams of big subs had been willing to call it quits as a team, the disruption could have been bigger.

In the end though, I don't know if any form of protest can be effective in this kind of situation as Reddit holds all the cards, and if they are dead set on enshittifying, nothing will stop them. What mods and users should do is just walk out.

Welcome to the Fediverse! I've been here since the 3rd party app shutdown and haven't used Reddit ever since. Niche communities are still lacking here, but it gets better as more people join. Also Lemmy servers and apps have gotten more stable over the past year. So I hope you'll enjoy it here!

Haha, I see. Good on you!

That's so interesting! Changes my perspective on an animal that has always felt like a perfectly normal neighbour everywhere I've lived (though seeing them is still kind of a rare thing).

You're gonna have to explain that one.

I mean it makes some sense as memes take less effort to post (they can also just be copied from r/anarchychess or similar places) and lead to some quick upvotes. I'm still confused about chess@lemmy.ml having so little activity though.