Unfortunately, this is not in touch with the reality of our situation.

I find people, when trying to cope with the hard truth that Biden is going to lose, revert to talking about how much he SHOULD win.

He should. He's been a pretty good president (a genocide not withstanding).

That's not really relevant. Because if he loses, we are likely to lose our democracy. And currently, he's going to lose.

He is losing in the polls. He has been losing in the polls and the swing states for the entire election. At some point, this needs to change, or we're going to watch Trump get reelected. And last night made clear that as long as he is the candidate, this isn't going to change. When he applied all his effort to proving he could win the election he failed spectacularly.

I don't just mean flubbing lines. I mean he lost complete control of the narrative. He demonstrated that when trying his absolute hardest, he cannot reliably explain to voters why the vote for him. That isn't a debate problem. That's a fundamental candidate problem that doesn't appear fixable (except with a new candidate).

If he were winning, at least by a little, we could pretend that maybe that's not a big deal. But he's not. He is losing. He has been losing the entire campaign, and if he doesn't step aside, the election result will be the same as every time pollsters have asked in the last year:

President Donald Trump.

No more "it's not that bad". This debate is a clear synopsis of the campaign until now, and the outcome in November. If this debate "isn't that bad", you might as well say losing is not that bad. (It is. It really is.)

We don't have much control over this, frankly. But if we have any, I say we use it.

My personal attitude is that although I will concede that it is possible for Biden to win, if we don't want to have to hope for a prayer, the only way things get better is if we all pop the bubble that Biden and his supporters are in that they can just ignore reality and hope for the best.

It has to be so clear to the Democratic party that not only are they likely to lose this election (and obviously with it, democracy), but they're going to lose their jobs. No one who works in the election industrial complex is going to keep getting invited to cocktail parties and get hired on for whatever Potempkin election follows this one if Trump wins. No LARPing that they're "the resistance!" in their endless fundraising emails while they enjoy being in the minority FOREVER. Rattle the fucking cage. Make it clear we blame them for this nonsense, and will continue to assign them the blame for choosing to run a failing candidate in a time of crisis because no one wanted to be the one to speak up and suggest doing anything else.

People keep getting mad when I criticize Biden, as if doing so is helping Trump win. My take: NOT doing so is helping Trump win. Protest this guy like our lives depend on him dropping out of the race at the convention. (They might).

Oh, this is WAY worse than 2016.

Before, people said that Biden was fine. Now, they're saying, "There's just no way to change, so we have to accept it."

Bullshit. This is supposed to be a democracy, and every volunteer and staffer and voter and activist and voter needs to rattle the bars of the cage that the Democratic party is trying to put us in. Do. Not. Let. Biden. Do this to us.

I think you're out of touch.

Fascism isn't unpopular. It's very popular when people are feeling desperate.

I keep hearing people say stuff like this: He can't win! He's so fascist! He can't win, Biden did such a good job if you actually look at the facts!

That's not how elections work. People vote based on what they think will satisfy their interests, and a lot voters don't see any reason to vote for Biden, and so they'll stay home. People don't need to vote for Trump for Trump to win. They just need to give in, and Biden is a "give in" machine. He's poison to voter hope or enthusiasm, and he's going to lose if he doesn't get off the ticket.

If we want to take the threat of Trump seriously, no more hiding our heads in the sand.

Well that's dystopian and dark.

This is why they should've had a primary.

We could've watched Biden collapse months ago while figuring out who is actually fit to run a good campaign. Now we're going to have to go through it the hard way, because they tried to hide from the obvious for about the last 8 months.

That's true, but I don't think they can do that with Biden at the top of the ticket. He's spoiled goods.

I'm not a Democrat. I left and joined the Green Party. I'm that crazy lefty. But even I can readily concede that I'd like democrats to win, and I think they could with someone like Elizabeth Warren. Or Cory Booker.

I'm not demanding Bernie or AOC or that Ro Khana be the nominee. But don't act like there aren't a few Democrats who have credibly taken a stand once or twice in their career for the greater good. They aren't the majority, but they're not so rare as you couldn't find one.

I am here to gently wake you up.

Biden has been losing the whole time, pretty badly. I listened to Pod Save America to get their read, and one of them pointed out that predicted election outcomes can change in one of two ways: a major event can force a big shift, or you can rise or fall slowly over time. Tonight showed that neither is coming for Biden. At his best possible opportunity, he didn't under perform, he made it far worse. The theory that he could slowly gain ground with media appearances is now popped.

Biden is a nice guy, but he's experiencing a pretty normal cognitive decline, and voters aren't going to magically come around to him when they've been telling pollsters for months that he's going to lose.

That isn't going to change unless the nominee changes. You're right that this isn't the end for Biden. But sadly, that's because it's actually been over for a long time. It's time to pick up the pieces and begin the overdue work of fielding a competitive nominee.

It's weird how many people in this thread are vaguely debating the validity of the historical research into this question when one person has posted a link to a well cited article on this very very heavily studied subject.

There's even a link to a well cited article examining the skepticism of the historicity of Jesus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory

I don't feel compelled to argue an interpretation. The facts are well documented and their interpretations by experts available. What anyone chooses to do with these are of no real concern to me.

This is so backwards. I had to read this a few times to try to make sense of the memo. Apparently, the reasoning is that instead of telling employees that they didn't get a raise because of company-wide cuts, try to convince them that they just did a bad job?

That's stupid. That would obviously have the opposite effect of softening the disappointment. Whoever wrote this memo is an idiot who has no idea what employees do or what they think.

I'm shocked more people aren't already better prepared for this, but it's actually the same thing we should be doing now, and continue to do if Biden actually wins:

Organize locally. Get hyperlocal. Organize your city, neighbors, block, building, workplace, and friend group. Establish mutual aid networks, take back city councils, county boards, and school boards from the stewards of landlords and big employers.

Establish protection for those who need it, and plant the crop of future national leaders who will do the long overdue work of putting government to work for the masses. Make it harder for any president or governor to exercise state violence by getting our people in prosecutors offices and judgeships.

The Democrats are not going to save us. Biden is just planning to go down with the ship. Absolutely vote for the lesser of two evils if you live somewhere where your vote matters, but recognize that the Democratic party is not an ally to the antifascist movement, because combating fascism conflicts with the interests of capital.

That can change, but until it does, don't put faith in them. Anything positive they do will be because power-players were replaced. And that starts in your own neighborhood.

Edit: Since this has been well received, I want to say a quick word on third parties: don't be afraid of them.

Without getting into a lot of details, there are a lot of myths about the risks that third parties present, but before we parrot all of that, we should just acknowledge that there is no harm in listening to their platforms. It doesn't make you a kook to hear ideas that often get suppressed by the mainstream, or to use third parties as a way to network and meet people. I think Jill Stein has a lot of useful things to say, and if a pollster asks me, I will gladly try to bump her numbers up so that she is harder to ignore. Don't be afraid to do that.

That's awesome. Man, fuck that company. Bricking a train? Outrageous.

Oof. I just want to say as a Jew that is constantly trying to dispel the myth of Jewish media conspiracies, Zuck really isn't doing us any favors here.

The phrase "it's official" sits right alongside "literally" for most frequently misused statements.

I was wondering if the article was about a credit rating change or something, but I'm halfway through and there is no specific event mentioned. Just generalized analysis and forecasting.

Ugh, learn to data. Maybe the analysis is spot on, but "trust me bro" is not a valid citation.

It seems to me that they're planning on squeezing the people from the north into the south, then closing off the north from any return. This is consistent with a plan of annexing and depopulating Gaza.

If so, this would be ethnic cleansing. This strategy appears to be genocide.

I'd like to go a bit deeper.

I don't think people invented socially controlling practices because they found religion, I think they found religion to frame the invention of socially controlling practices.

Masturbation is a gratifying act that relives pressure to settle into a rigid domestic arrangement that serves to make more workers and soldiers, and create dependents that need fed, and whose well-being would be threatened if a parent became defiant and provoked the ire of elites.

Masturbation is good for the individual at the expense of the nation and its rulers. So it's inevitable that priests would decry it as an affront against god, as that's historically been their purpose.

Try actively steering your fantasy past the peak of infatuation and into the latter stages of a relationship and on to breakup.

Right now, you have intrusive thoughts about falling in love with them, and probably the excitement of getting to know someone intimately. Instead of trying to hold back, let that fantasy play out in your head further. Imagine moving in, imagine them not getting you when you're explaining your problems. Imagine liking them, but finding their bad habits increasingly intolerable, and never being able to pick a movie to watch. Imagine them not flushing the toilet and clogging the shower drain with hair. And then imagine meeting someone new, and feeling guilty about crushing had on them. Imagine this new person reciprocates, and imagine politely explaining to your dance instructor that you guys can stay friends but, the romance has run it's course.

And there you are. The itch is scratched, and in your mind they're just a friend again.

I've been very cautious to reserve the word "Genocide" because I didn't want to devalue it with hyperbole. For years, I've said that Israel is ethnically cleansing historic Palestine. But reading this article... I think this is the point where it becomes genocide, full and proper.

It's shocking to bear witness to.

Geez. The article doesn't mention until paragraph six of seven:

"Separately, The Associated Press reported that an Israeli shell landed among a group of international journalists killing the Reuters journalist and injuring six others."

It's crazy that it's not even news that Israel is launching shells at journalists.

That's not conspiratorial thinking at all, that's just geopolitical literacy. Your assessment is correct: Iran planned this carefully to avoid causing any major damage. This was pro wrestling.

Which honestly makes it sad to consider that Iran has become the more restrained, rational actor here. The US needs to put Netanyahu on a short leash. He is not worth this.

I haven't had a negative experience, so I checked your post history to see if your communities might provide any clues as to why you're having a lot of negative experiences.

It looks like you post a lot to unpopular opinions and politics. Is it possible that maybe you're inviting debate on contentious issues? For comparison, I checked my own history and it looks like I engage primarily with tabletop RPGs, technology, and memes. I also comment on world news, but it's not my primary form of interaction.

I want to add a word that I never see that needs to enter the mainstream lexicon:

"Pogrom".

Apparently, this isn't a commonly known term, although it's less obscure to Jews. A pogrom is a form of terrorism in which a population decides to get rid of or inflict their hatred on a marginalized ethnic group by routinely rolling through their towns or neighborhoods dolling out unrestrained violence. It is often accompanied by warnings and demands that the population relocate or face constantly escalating barbarism. It's a form of persistent mass terrorism, usually sanctioned by the state.

Pogroms as a familiar concept emerged as a practice in Russia in the 19th and 20th century toward Jews, though they're well known to have been used throughout history. Traditionally, Jews have been the historical target of pogroms for centuries, and it's not a coincidence that Israeli Jews are using these tactics. These are familiar to them. They know exactly what they are doing. This is NOT independent acts of violence, this is a reenactment of atrocities faced by the grandparents and great grandparents of many Israelis Jews.

Pogroms are always horrific and depraved on their own. But the added context that these people are appropriating the weapons of extermination that they know well from the receiving end, it's just... I don't quite have the words to capture my horror.

These are pogroms. They are a relic of the medieval era and of the atrocities of the 1800s and early 1900s. They should stay in history, but they are being dusted off with deliberate intent by Itmar Ben-Gvir and the exterminationist wing of mainstream Israeli society.

These are not "Rising tensions" or "Settler violence", they are POGROMS. We all need to say it.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom

These people are like an adversarial neural network being trained to find the most efficient ways to piss of their own customer base.

I think it's important to note that the entertainment landscape as a whole has been changing, and those changes have mixed with the shitty investor culture that already existed to create a terrible set of incentives that are wildly misaligned with consumer sentiment. I say this because I think that if we want things to change, we need to look at root causes.

The entertainment industry is feeling very threatened. It's hard to make money. That's a reality. And all the solutions to the problem are fucked up attempts to find ways to get players to give more money for things they don't want.

I think we need a better patronage model.

This is so disgusting to read.

I look at her comments -- she doesn't deny that it's ethnic cleansing -- and I am disgusted to be associated with this woman as a Jew. Her vision is just vile. I've known many liberal zionists who seem confused or cowed, but these far right nationalists have a vision for domination that is completely indistinct from any nationalist movement (Nazis included). It's just horrible to watch how gleeful she is to see these people die or forced off their home at the barrel of a gun.

These people cannot be allowed to win.

What a crazy legal defense. 'Your honor, I'd like to dismiss these charges because I privately unilaterally decided while president that silently dissolving the the Constitution, usurping all powers of the other branches of government and asserting the divine right of kings is actually an unenumerated presidential power, which I secretly exercised three years ago but only decided to reveal now. Anyway, because of this, I'm actually the presiding officer in this court. Case dismissed.'

Obviously, I'm aware that it's just a delay tactic, but even so, it's truly bonkers.

I think the news story is not that Tm Gurner apologized, it's that Tim Gurner encountered enough backlash that he felt it necessary to pretend to apologize.

We all know that his apology isn't a sincere recognition of a wrong attitude, or a commitment to change. But it IS noteworthy that he apparently misjudged the public sentiment. What does this tell us? We can say that he probably doesn't give a shit if a bunch of nobodies on Twitter call him a piece of shit. He knew and expected that when he said those things. What changed?

It's not really clear from the article, but my guess is that something almost inconvenienced him. Perhaps he was told that he would be uninvited to some summit where he's on a panel. Whatever got to him, I'd like to know so we can do more of it. It warms my heart to imagine how seething mad he was when he grit his teeth and yielded to the reality that this power dynamic is not exclusively one sided as he so badly believes it should be.

Having worked in neuroscience and synthetic biology I want to give some context.

First, here is the actual paper: https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)00806-6

Second: is this bullshit?

Overall, I think this research was well-conducted and meaningful, although use of the words "intelligence" and "sentience" are deliberately sensationalist. In the context of the paper, they mean that it is responsive to its environment in the same way a sea sponge or Tomagotchi is.

The cells are neurons cultivated from dissolved rat brains (after they were gently euthenized) and reprogrammed forebrain neurons cultured from cells collected from a baby's foreskin after circumcision (which isn't unusual even though it's weird if you don't work in this field).

Then, the cells were transferred to a commercially available plate with thousands of little electrodes on it that can read the random electrical pulses healthy neurons in a dish routinely shoot off, and also stimulate these. The team then used a program to take the input value from a bunch of the readings and map one area of the plate's activity to moving the paddle up and one section to down, and then had another region that was given stimulation of random noise except when the ball hit the paddle. Then they tried to quantify if this loop incentivized the neurons to coordinate to try to increase the number of ball strikes. I don't know if it could read the ball position or just got a "reward" when it collided.

Really, they expanded an existing set of tools elegantly in a way that can improve our ability to study neurons in a dish. Which is great. Culturing neurons well is harder than people like to admit. BUT: nothing about this currently advances computer science in a specific way. It might in ten years, but so might superconductors. There's nothing about a biological network that is inherently superior to other informational networks, except that they're currently the underlying component of the most successful informational networks we know of. And, of course that they get you hot, hot, HOT press, which is certainly nice when you're trying to get money to do research.

I wish the patient, scientists, and doctors success. I'm very concerned about the safety record for Neuralink, but I desperately hope they turned things around and that this patient responds well.

Maybe it's just because I have a deep-seated terror of brain surgery, but this all sounded absolutely terrifying to me.

I also hate, hate, HATE that Musk said that the monkeys were all ill. Not only is this 100% bullshit -- this would completely invalidate the data -- but it also indicates that like most things, he has a 13 year old's understanding of life. He thinks that something that is sick has no right to safety, because, like, they're already on borrowed time or something, right? I'm certain that to him, the stakes of these tests are lower because it's not like, healthy full people like him who will eventually use these to get cybernetic super powers. These are humans with disabilities. They're expendable test subjects. They're lucky to get even a chance at improvement. Plus, serving as guinea pigs gives them a chance to be useful to the great Elon Musk's ambitious. Absent that they're just a waste of food to him.

This is bizarre and macabre.

First, I want to say that I don't care if they find tunnels in the hospital or not. Cutting patients off of electricity and medicine is not justified even if they find the massive bad-guy secret base that they say is underneath the hospital.

But on top of that, if the tunnels aren't there... what then? Do we get an apology? Do they bring back the patients?

I'm shocked that they're touring journalists and showing off rifles and BOOKS as evidence that this was a legitimate military target.

I want a ceasefire. I want the hostages back. And I want Gaza to have the freedom to select leadership that represents them to engage in a peace process that gives them the right of movement, education, food, and safety.

I just want to say that the most disturbing part of this is not that she did this. It's that this is the message and image that she has carefully decided will help her achieve her career and personal goals.

Perhaps what could be worse is if she's right.

I don't think she is. I see a lot of signs of the left failing in ways that make me nervous. but recognition of the senselessness of imperialism is not one of these. I think there is a very strong, clear, growing consensus that our foreign policy is terrible. Many people don't care that it's terrible for people in other countries, only that it's terrible for them, but that's still a win.

I don't love the concept of "isolationism" per se, but between that in empire, I'll choose isolationism every time. I know there is a liberal establishment that finds isolationism more shocking that defunding the police, and I'm glad that they're upset. This whole global domination thing that Haley and Biden and Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi and Hilary Clinton are obsessed with is just fucking terrible.

God, I will freely admit: it can get so much worse than Biden.

I strongly prefer it.

It's a much more organic reflection of older systems. It used to be that there were local newspapers, national ones, and international ones. I want the same thing with my memes. I want a place I go to see what the hot movies and games across the world, and another where discussions are mostly people in my geography or who share a common set of tastes with me.

This idea that the internet should flatten the world into one monoculture has been, in my opinion, both naive and destructive to a lot of tastes that don't align with the dominant tastemakers.

Exactly. How can you track payment but not write them down?

Thanks for sharing this, this is really interesting.

My hope is that when Reddit announces their IPO, more people will start talking about wishing for alternatives. I hope this motivates a few people who checked it out and left and lots of new people to take a first look, and when they do I hope they find an already active community that produces enough content to retain more people and generate more content.

It's Mr. Freeze. Saved you a click.

I feel like there's a real focus on the forest instead of the trees.

What exactly does this tell us?

Republicans in congress relied on obviously uncredible evidence in their pursuit to prove a crime that they wanted to prosecute regardless of whether it happened. A professional international shill shilled professionally, internationally.

Russia and other countries tell people to say and do things to spread propaganda and misinformation to influence politics in the US.

Sadly, none of this, we must acknowledge is new information. And honestly, it's so terribly pervasive. The bad guys do this stuff, but most of the "good guys" kinda do too, just usually with a bit more restraint. So what do we do with this?

I think the main issue, the reason we should be pissed off when we learn that a guy lied to law enforcement to try and convince the media and the public that a political rival is a double-crossing criminal, is that we don't want our system of government constantly being manipulated by unscrupulous manipulative assholes.

And so we should turn our attention to REAL democratic reforms. Ranked choice voting. Ending the electoral college. Curtailing political gerrymandering. Converting our two-party duopololy system into an actual multi-party system.

There's no real use in being mad in the folks who do all this stuff. We need to just stop expecting otherwise and make systems that don't reward this kind of outlandish bullshit.

This is a great point.

The technology that excludes transwomen from the app is the clear warning that the app is populated exclusively for transphobes. It's obviously wildly dangerous for a transwoman to be on the app.

The notion that AI is going to clock them is absurd AI hype. There's no reason to expect AI to be capable of this kind of discernment, and that assumes you even had a training set. Where in the absolute fuck would someone find a training set like that?

Edit: I didn't read the article. It seems it's a lesbian dating app. Well, probably less dangerous for transwomen, but still not technically sound.

Hi. I'm not a doctor, but I can opine as a biologist.

The transplanted cells have blood vessels, because all cells need a supply of oxygen to avoid expiring. If they didn't have a supply of blood, they'd quickly turn necrotic.

When you deplete your short term energy stores, the body converts fat molecules within fat cells into sugar, then shuttles those through the body in the blood stream.

The body doesn't draw on fat stores within the body in a totally even way, so I don't know how quickly it would draw from the transplanted cells, but it works presumably still burn fat from these cells when needed.

And the reverse is true as well: when excess sugar is available, the body would generate new fat molecules to fill those cells, and if necessary make new fat cells as well.

This article is missing some very notable context.

First, this battalion is a Haredi battalion. The Haredi are Orthodox Jews: they're very far right, and also highly unpopular within Israel because they're exempt from the draft. Every other Israeli is required to serve, but the Haredi get exempted and supported by government incomes to just study torah full-time. They are not even allowed to work.

Anyway, the court just ruled that IDF can't keep exempting them from military service, and they are pissed. They are threatening to collapse the governing coalition over this, and Netanyahu cannot stay in power without their support. Against this backdrop, there is this battalion in the West Bank that is set up to accommodate Haredi volunteers' ultraconservative lifestyle which is supposed to be the model for integrating them into the army. However guess what? It turns out that a military regiment staffed entirely with far right religious zealots who volunteered to "secure" occupied territory is liable to do exactly what their religious education dictates, and the old testament does NOT conform to modern rules of war. Back then, rape and genocide was de rigueur.

However unlike sanctions against random settlers, this means something: Antony Blinken has been bending over backwards to bury any requests for investigations into war crimes by the IDF, because it's actually against the law for him to supply them with weapons if he knows about atrocities.

If the US sanctions a battalion... that opens the door to some big shit. Once you recognize that SOME of the IDF is violating international law, it gets much, much, harder to legally justify arming them. Restricting weapons to a single battalion is not unusual within US military aid, but in this case it's not a small step. It's a potentially seismic shift in US policy.

I will say something I haven't said in months: this is good news. This is the first time I can think of that Biden is actually doing something that could make a difference. It's not enough. We need far more. But this is actual, serious progress.

Oh fuck.

This kind of news feels like it just keeps coming. I don't know quite what there is to say. I think most Americans adding "I stand with Israel" to Facebook profile pics don't know that the people in charge of Israel are authoritarian ethnonationalists.

Jailing people for sharing truthful information that is critical of the government is just miles away from what anyone considers acceptable, democratic behavior.