Missionary but with a bunch of kinky German bondage equipment.

An FPGA seems like a lot of effort, but an SNES emulator running on a Raspberry Pi seems like it may have been a better option IMO.

Twitter, available at x.com, the domain previously used for Musk’s now-defunct online bank, …

Visit Tennessee and get back to me. Moving from Tennessee to Michigan I noticed a distinct uptick in the quality of driving.

This is quite disingenuous, as the document offers several things that will help mitigate climate change, including improving energy efficiency of buildings and investing in renewable energy. It also mentions climate resilience (though you won’t find that if you simply Ctrl-F the term).

That’s hard to say. With the current makeup of the supreme court, it’s likely they’d simply declare any law protecting abortion rights as unconstitutional because mumble mumble and get away with it. But what’s preventing them from doing even that is that Republicans (thanks in large part to politicised redrawing of district boundaries) have a majority in one of the two legislative bodies, so the Democrats couldn’t pass that protection regardless.

So likely the minimum that’s needed to codify abortion rights would be a Democratic majority in both legislative houses and a Democratic president.

On the topic of coalitions: The US doesn’t have coalitions in the ways many other countries have, partially because of the way the president is elected. Voters have a separate item on their ballot to elect (electors who will then vote in the electoral college for) the president. The way this occurs is through first past the post, where the largest portion of the votes (even if a minority) gets all the electors in that state (except in Nebraska and New Hampshire, where the state breaks it into districts). I’m in Michigan, for example. In 2016, Donald Trump got 47.5% of the vote in Michigan to Hillary Clinton’s 47.3% and thus got all 16 of Michigan’s electoral votes (out of 538). Had 11,000 more people voted for Clinton (let’s say, by not voting for the Green party), she would have won Michigan’s electoral votes, which is a 3% swing in the electoral college, but given that most states are pretty much guaranteed to go one way or the other (e.g. Indiana is a safe Republican state while neighbouring Illinois is a safe Democratic state), those 11,000 votes would be massively influential. This is why “swing states” are so stupidly pivotal in US elections.

So because of all of that, there’s not an option for the Greens to join a coalition, even if they wanted to (which I don’t think they would, as the US Green party is currently under the control of a Russian asset and it’s well known that Putin wants a Trump victory).

The American electoral system is ridiculously, stupidly backwards and basically designed to empower certain people over others. If there were a parliamentary democracy here the US, and probably the world (given the US’s love for foreign intervention), would be much better off.

As much as I want them to move, I cannot endorse wanting them to come up short because the alternative is so catastrophic. I do, however, truly believe that if we can marginalise the Republican party we can move Democrats somewhat to the left, which is my medium term electoral strategy while working towards a long term where we can actually get real leftists in power.

It’s not just that Harris is going to do things we hate. It’s that Trump is going to do all those same things and more, and playing electoral chicken with the Democrats is quite literally risking the lives of many of my friends.

FPTP is only one problem with the system. But it’s still a problem pretty much everywhere that has it. There are many other things that make it particularly worse in the US, but that doesn’t make it not a problem with it.

I don’t support that path - I just recognise that the only alternative also includes all of that and the subjugation of American women, further endangerment of LGBT folks, etc.

The overturning of Roe vs. Wade was a direct consequence of Trump’s election, as it was the three justices he was able to appoint (including Mitch McConnell’s fuckery about Merrick Garland) who changed the Supreme Court’s makeup to include so many right-wing partisans.

Voting third party is telling the system that you don’t have a preference between the two candidates who have even the slightest chance of winning. It sucks that there’s such constrained communication one can do (and we need a better voting system), but in the short term, the three options I’ve listed are what you have the options to communicate.

I don’t think it’s reasonable at all to say that Trump would somehow be less bad on Palestine than Harris., so I think we can say Trump will be at least as bad on that issue. For the sake of argument, I’ll be willing to accept an “equally bad” framing on that one particular issue.

But Harris isn’t going to enable the genocide of LGBTQ+ Americans, the genocide of Ukrainians, the subjugation and killing (through medical neglect) of a huge number of women, etc. etc. etc.

So even the strongest argument for “Harris is just as bad” that I can view as anywhere even remotely reasonable falls massively short. Trump is going to enable far more genocide than Harris, and I cannot see any reasonable argument that views it even as a trade-off of what bad things are going to happen, because as far as I can tell literally everything that’s bad about Harris (and there is plenty), if Trump winds up back in office it’ll be as bad or even worse. And there simply isn’t a third option.

I don’t like the choices I have either. But I’m not deluding myself into thinking I have a secret magic option that people just don’t realise is out there.

Fortunately, we can have nuance in our views. I can think Ian has done good work in some cases whilst disagreeing with his opinion in others. But regardless, he’s not using right-wing talking points, unlike a collection of about 5 accounts around here that are repeatedly posting stuff on Lemmy trying to discourage people from voting.

Uhh I’m not a mod here.

I’m not sure we’re ever going to agree if you don’t think that more people being murdered is worse.

I’m not trying to justify anything. I’m saying that more people dying is worse, so I’m choosing the path that has the least death.

Pretending more people dying is somehow not worse, however, is attempting to justify the unjustifiable.

Restore what post?

Which of my points have you “debunked?” Lol

I haven’t had to, as all you’ve done so far is repeat already-debunked, faux-leftist points that enable fascists.

You’ve been whitewashing genocide and fascism, without meaningfully backing yourself up.

Ahh, more accusations. Genocide is bad. Fascism is bad. Thus my question: why are you advocating for actions that will lead to more genocide and fascism?

You started directly insulting because you had no points other than claiming that genocide isn’t that bad if the Dems do it.

Lying about what I’ve said in a written forum isn’t effective. Once again, and in larger font:

Genocide is always bad, and more genocide is worse.

So why are you advocating for actions that fall in the “more genocide” camp?

Please provide the specific points they’ve made, in neutral language