when will the dems learn that the dnc is just republican lite
we need completely new thought to unseat "both" sides of the US government and return it to washington's ideal of "political parties fucking suck" (paraphrased)
> when will the dems learn that the dnc is just republican lite
When will "when will the dems learn that the dnc is just republican lite" enjoyers learn that there's an ocean of difference between dems and republicans, and that most Americans aren't going to throw that away over votes on issues that they're either fine with or, at best, indifferent to? Like it or not, this is unlikely to rank in most people's top five most important issues come November.
> When will "when will the dems learn that the dnc is just republican lite" enjoyers learn
On the bright side, these folks tend to be civically and electoral uninvolved. So they aren’t having any net effect on policy, other than slightly endorsing the status quo.
Eh, while I do think you should go out and vote I'm not sure you can exactly say they're endorsing the status quo.
Take 2024 vs 2020 where turnout dropped 4% [1] and compare it to the 2025 NYC mayoral race where more people in 2025 voted for Mamdani [2] then voted in 2021 at all [3]. IMO, the horrendous turnout is a reflection of the horrendous candidates that run.
> not sure you can exactly say they're endorsing the status quo
That's not the intent. But de facto, they either have no or that effect. Particularly in primaries.
There is also a huge messaging difference between casting a blank ballot and not showing up at all. The presumption is you can safely ignore someone who doesn't vote for several cycles because they tend to keep not voting for novel–but consistently exculpatory–excuses each time around. You have to still pay attention to intermittent voters if you don't want to get caught wrong-footed by a wave.
when the people who endorse the "status quo" (which is itself rapidly shifting if you track the US political sphere before the modern day) number in the millions, it's a bit more than slightly
normalize supporting a proper civics test before the right to vote is granted. you don't have to agree with any political topics, but you have to understand how politics actually work before you can cast a vote
I've voted in New York and Wyoming. In a general election, my Presidential vote does not practically count. As a result, I can typically throw it for a third party as a messaging vote. (If New York or Wyoming are turning out to be contested, the fight was won elesewhere.)
If you're in a swing state and you don't vote, you're about as important for the Presdiential general-election campaign you would not have voted for if you bothered to show up as an actual opposition voter. (Depressing turnout among unlikely voters who might vote for the other candidate is a real, precedented, cosultants-who-specialise-in-this-exclusively social-media-advertising turnout strategy.)
Hillary would've been an excellent president, and I say that with utter sincerity.
> My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.
– Hillary Clinton
That's the kind of person I want in the Oval Office.
Yeah right now the "clearly superior candidate" is (checking notes) crashing the global economy with a holy war against Iran to distract from his criminal conspiracy to hide his complicity in sex trafficking and abuse, posting AI images of himself as Jesus to spite the Pope, sending armed thugs into blue states to harass people and shoot them dead in the street, destroyed America's research and science infrastructure, his cabinet is full of conspiracy theorists, nazis and fascists, he's deranged, senile, definitely bought by Russia... and has in the space of a few months utterly ruined America's reputation and credibility throughout the world.
And yet people still insist Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris were "the worst candidates ever," and that there was simply no choice. They want to turn all of the chaos and stupidity of the current administration into some kind of referendum on how bad the other side is, and they'll even claim that there would be absolutely no difference regardless of who was in charge. Yet even if that were the case, somehow, Trump is still better. For reasons I guess. Other than not being a woman.
Trump literally made a meme of himself lounging at the resort he planned to build on the ruins of Gaza but we couldn't vote for Kamala because she was the Zionist.
"far right" or "slightly left of far right" is a shitty choice, especially when "left vs right" is different comparing the US to the rest of the world
even the smallest-c conservative in the US is probably more right-wing than the furthest of the right in Europe (although they're trying really hard to prove that false)
the ocean you speak of is but a tiny puddle when you look at the whole of human political history
when is the dnc going to come out against genocide? oh, they're not? well then i don't care
i do agree, the complacency of US voters is the true root of the problem, one that the duopoly of politics strongly capitalizes on
i am not advocating violence, but i'm looking at history when i say that this is why revolutions happen
> when you look at the whole of human political history
When you look at the whole of human political history, the vast majority of politican systems have been authoritarian. Anybody who supports a system of government where average people get to vote (as both the Republicans and Democrats do) is part of the super ultra far left.
> "far right" or "slightly left of far right" is a shitty choice, especially when "left vs right" is different comparing the US to the rest of the world
> even the smallest-c conservative in the US is probably more right-wing than the furthest of the right in Europe (although they're trying really hard to prove that false)
This is just more of the same "Bernie would've been right of center in Europe" tripe that Reddit has been repeating since 2015 – it's a tired argument that doesn't take into account things like immigration policies, gender identity, racial justice, stances on abortion, and so on.
> when is the dnc going to come out against genocide? oh, they're not? well then i don't care
This is a non-sequitur. I'm not interested in debating Israel, Gaza and genocide on the internet, or watching you use them as a blanket justification for disengagement.
>This is just more of the same "Bernie would've been right of center in Europe" tripe that Reddit has been repeating since 2015 – it's a tired argument that doesn't take into account things like immigration policies, gender identity, racial justice, stances on abortion, and so on.
When you look at the actual negotiations and implementation of policies that have happened, the Democrats now have a much smaller gap between themselves and the Republicans on the world stage. There are a handful of distinct issues that they are polar opposites on, but in terms of actual governance the leadership of the two parties don't stray too far from the same direction compared to Western Europe and South America. While in relative terms they were very divergent from eachother in the 1920s and the 1960s, they've once again moved closer together and we have not yet hit another divergence point. There is a stagnation and regression that appear very similar because public sentiment has rapidly changed and progressed since 2012. It's very visible in the way many of the same Democrats are around now as in 2008 (and some from even 1996) and still act like they're from that era where we were at "the end of history", while the Republicans have many newer members that have jumped in since 2016 that act like they're from the earlier era of the 1950s and 1960s when concepts like civil rights and second wave feminism were still widely contentious. Regular Americans just sort of view the period from 1968 to 2001 as a relatively uniform era politically because there weren't events that up-ended entire hemispheres in a U.S.-centric way the way World War II, The Cuban Missile Crisis, and 9/11 had. Yet between 2001 and 2012 there were several up-ending events such as the 9/11, the '08 financial crisis, and the rapid adoption of the smartphone and thus instant global communication starting in 2010. Since the normal public have that view what has happened since 2012 makes the stances the Democrats have retained from before that monumental shift appear not only outdated, but harmfully backwards, especially as more people who were not alive during that "end of history" era come to be of voting age. That means the two major parties can seem to be the same face wearing two masks right now because neither have kept up with left wing public sentiment.
You'll have to articulate what you believe those stances actually are. I think there are huge differences between the two parties: expanding immigration, availability of healthcare, widening the social safety nets, racial justice and DEI, fighting climate change, protecting the environment, protecting and restoring reproductive rights for women, trans rights, lgbtq+ rights – the list goes on. These are all things that republicans simply can't touch without getting canceled and primaried.
You're claiming that their governance has stagnated, but this is only evidence of hyperpartisan gridlock increasing since 2008, not evidence that they've become so similar the Dems have nothing left to do when they're in office. Our country's entire culture war is built on these differences, it's not a small gap or friendly disagreement between gentlemen.
The overlap comes in the form of militarization of the police (Republicans give police ridiculous equipment or powers that the Democrats refuse to limit or rescind because they don't want to appear "soft on crime"), the proliferation of punishment instead of prevention (Republicans push policy to criminalize various things which the Democrats then quietly use for the same reason as above), the expansion of the surveillance state (just look at these stupid device age verification laws) privatization of things that need to be public services because they have to run at a loss (many senior members of the Democrats are at odds with younger members over their support for the Republican initiated ideas of partial or full privatization of Amtrak and information services like NOAA), trying to wield the judicial branch against the executive (Republicans raise things to the Supreme Court to make precedent while Democrats try and keep things in the circuit courts and prevent appeals) and others. While their ideas of social reform, bodily autonomy, and worker protections have progressed, in terms of finances, judicial enforcement, and foreign policy the Democrats haven't meaningfully changed their stances since 2008. Much of this is the same as back then when both parties showed support for the ridiculous punishments for digital piracy, the PATRIOT Act, and the plans to replace the Post Office with something like DHL.
The main idea of this stagnation leading to complicity comes from the fact that most often when the Republicans break something or introduce new ways to harm a given group the Democrats never really do anything visibly to reverse that. That idea had been bubbling under the surface since Chuck Schumer became Senate Majority Leader in 2015, but gained a lot of traction after Biden's term because although most of the first Trump era's policies had been implemented by executive order or by appointed department heads most of those executive orders were not nullified. Of the 33% nullified about half of those were inconsequential such as EO14016 revoking EO13801 which was about apprenticeships, and those appointed department heads such as Mike DeJoy were not relieved of their posts despite demonstrable harm. There's a reason we have the joke that the only thing Biden did was make Juneteenth an official holiday and gave people two grand to buy gaming PCs.
There are a lot of things that Democrats have actually done beneath the surface such as strengthening marriage protections for LGBTQ+ people, the carbon tax credit, bodily autonomy, giving aid and leniency to migrants and refugees, and pushing for student loan forgiveness. But all of that was so visibly stripped away in a spectacle, and that makes it hard for people to believe the Democrats are actually doing anything because if they were wouldn't all of those be more robust and defensible? The primary example people point to is Roe V. Wade, where the Democrats had forty nine years to create several layers of legislation to protect what Roe V. Wade had initiated, and yet did nothing. With all of this it creates the perception that the Democrats never really do anything and are thus stagnant.
so use this and then do the opposite of what it suggests if you want to have a cheap, low-effort way to prevent AI from being able to use your content effectively
That's probably better, but also that's not much different on a conceptual level from a "filesystem". Both contain multiple files, and describe where in the overall image those files are. The difference is exactly in the interleaving - a multiplexed media container is somewhat constrained to a packet-based scenario, where individual packets of the constituent files are separated so that video, audio, and ancillary data all reach the decoder at roughly the same time. A pure filesystem is not constrained as such and can put the files anywhere within the container.
A filesystem stored in a monolithic file is not so constrained. I work with Harmonix games as a modder, and they use a bespoke format called "ARK", which is a two-part format. There exists one or more "ARK parts", which in implementation are virtually concatenated, and then the HDR lists a binary offset from the beginning of the first ARK part to tell the games where the individual files are. This could also be called a "container" conceptually. But none of such files are interleaved in any way except for the audio files, which use encrypted multichannel Ogg Vorbis streams plus a bespoke header to aid in seeking.
Plus, the context was explaining it to laypeople, where the specific jargon is less important than imparting knowledge and understanding.
Pedantry alert: you're generally extracting Elementary Streams from a given TS. A Program Stream is basically a variant of a TS that's meant more for files at rest - say, on a DVD, or a PS2 game (which did use MPEG-2 PS extensively in the PSS file format, except storing the audio as XA ADPCM in a data stream) - while a TS is a bit more robust for transmission
Not allowing downgrades is the biggest contributor to smartphones becoming e-waste.
Apple should be forced to do this by law, but only after they discontinue software support. If they're willing to continue making small, incremental patches when necessary (such as to fix this obvious bug) then it's fine that they can still block downgrades. But at EOL? They should be legally required to allow old software to be installed.
This also impacts software compatibility - any 64-bit device that is now EOL that got updated to iOS 11 or newer is forever barred from running 32-bit apps just because people are worried that someone might take that old device and downgrade it as an attack?
The average person should always stay updated to the latest version for security reasons. But the power users should be able to choose which version they run, at least on devices that aren't currently supported at all.
Daily reminder that the first two iPhones and the first iPod touch had zero firmware signing, and you could freely install any supported version at any time, and can still do so today. That being the case has probably harmed 0.00001% of people at most
Any phone that gets more support than it should have, such that the only OS you can install is too slow to make using the device enjoyable, makes it more likely for the device owner to throw that device out, and then it becomes e-waste.
It also harms software preservation. Sure, we have IPSWs for every single public build of iOS that exists (and if you dig around, probably a ton of betas and even internal builds). But you can't really do anything with any of them once you get to the point in the iOS product line where things were sufficiently hardened
I have heard many replace their phones due to dropping them and becoming unusable. But everyone uses a case now and the build quality is generally better that one mishap does trash the phone. Most people I know getting new phones now did so bc their old phone "got too slow to be usable." I believe that's a matter of new OS versions really are much heavier. Both my last 2 phones I had upgraded bc I went one version too far and had a nearly bricked phone.
Waiting for the day when both the Democrats and Republicans are so very obviously shitty to even the most uninformed voter that we get some new thought in office instead of two sides of the same coin that are both beholden to capital and to foreign interests
As long as our voting system is "first past the post", it will be nigh impossible for a third party to make any significant headway. IMO Citizens United and first past the post are the two main issues holding the US back from any kind of significant overhaul or change.
>There's no reason to say that unless you know they're actively committing federal crimes in the present day.
There are reasons. For example, you feel the justice system is going to be misused against them. Protection against future witch hunts basically.
I don't think this is what's happening here, and trump is on record talking very explicitly about weaponising the state against his enemies himself, but it's probably an excuse that will be used.
From what I can gather, Hunter Biden was guilty of tax evasion, possessing a firearm when he shouldn't, and lying about drug use.
He shouldn't have been pardoned, sure, but you cannot possibly believe that's more corrupt than what Trump, his family, and his cronies do on a regular Tuesday afternoon.
Are you for real - apart from almost everything Trump has done? Did you miss how he picked an AG and prevented release of the Trump-Epstein files even though he signed into law a bill requiring full release with only redaction of victims. Did you miss the daily breeches of the emoluments clause?
Did you miss the pardoning of the Jan 6 people who hunted people down, set up a gallows, and those who tried to murder police?
Did you miss Trump sending USA troops into democrat cities to try and intimidate USA citizens, using his militia to murder people in cold blood?
Did you miss all the tariffs used to move the markets so Trump and his cronies could drain money from ordinary folks investments in the markets - he even boasted how rich he'd made his friends. From tariff front-running.
Hunter Biden broke the law, but his crimes look like schoolkid's high-jinks compared to Trump.
How about Trump's alt-coin to take overseas bribes?
Or using the instigation of war to win bets?
There're thousands more such crimes of corruption the Trump regime have done.
> perhaps the greatest example of corruption in us history.
Donald Trump started a war with Iran to distract from the Epstein files, where he is mentioned thousands of times and credibly accused of raping a minor. But yeah, hunter biden. Most corrupt in US history. Sure.
I feel like we need a society where the amount of capital you get to keep is inversely proportional to how much you give back to society, on a percentage level. Have $100 billion dollars? Great. The more you give back in charity and community, the more you get to keep. Care more about "number go brrr" and less about your fellow man? We tax all kinds of personally harmful behavior like drinking and smoking. We should also tax anti-social behavior similarly. Someone like Musk with multiple hundreds of billions of dollars in capital should lose 75% of it unless you give back at least 25 or 30% of it, minimum. I'm not qualified to decide the exact percentage points. But we have to do something to keep the rich from vacuuming up almost every penny that exists.
Daily reminder that to this day, John Rockefeller is considered one of the wealthiest humans in history, despite the fact that today's billionaires dwarf his raw numbers.
Giving back to society means a very different thing to billionaires than it does to ordinary folk. They’d rather spend it on politicians to tear down the society they think is wrong rather than shore up the parts that are failing. I have always blamed the idea that seems to stem from liberal economics (not liberal in the American sense) that equates money with virtue, something that conservatives have taken on as a mantra.
So be careful what you wish for. Ordinary morality or virtue loses all meaning when the world becomes abstract due to your wealth.
Under my idea, spending on lobbying would affect the equation zero. Contribute to charity (which is still a wide range, Dolly Parton has done so much good through her works through self-initiated foundation that I would suggest she is the gold standard).
Give to existing charity. Create your own foundation (although our government should be watching like a hawk in such a scenario to make sure you're not just funneling money back to yourself).
There might be use in considering corporations "people". But that analogy only holds so far before it becomes worse than the disease it's trying to contain.
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