The long, drawn out metaphorical explanation was unnecessary and frankly kind of condescending.

I’m not over here trying to be some champion of the electoral college and I’d be more interested in seeing a real push for ranked choice or one of its cousins.

The point I was making was that if you sat at home and didn’t vote at all, your chosen candidate would never see the inside of the oval office and I went into my understanding of why it is the way it is. Ultimately, voting under the current system is not entirely worthless as you seemed to claim in the original post I responded to.

We’ve had something like 59 elections in total and 5 of them involved the winning candidate losing the popular vote but winning the election by way of the electoral college. Only one of those elections - the very first - involved anything even remotely close to your example (but still not42.3% vs 31.6%). The other 4 had a difference of like 2% or less between the two leading candidates.

The electoral college was devised as a compromise between direct democracy and congressional voting and I’m sure it was done in good faith to try to make sure everyone was represented, but this system seems to truly show its cracks when we’re facing an insanely stark national split like we see today and there’s no argument that we should probably shake things up and get rid of it.

I mean, that’s not entirely accurate - a vote for a presidential candidate is a vote for the slate of electors tied to said candidate - effectively a vote for your candidate, albeit indirectly. Electors can, however, be required to vote according to popular vote as required by the state they’re electors in. Or they could have pledged to vote according to specific party. I don’t know for sure, but I assume state elector requirements override party pledges.

My understanding is that when it was devised, it was a compromise between direct democracy (which would honestly be potentially dangerous - how many people do you know where you can’t help but go, “Fuck… This guy can vote.”) and election via congressional vote. It certainly ain’t perfect and I have no bias towards it, but it’s a system like anything else that people tend to point at and blame when things don’t go their way or just ignore or even defend when things do go their way.

- George Costanza

If you’re envisioning a sloppily torn scrap of paper with “KILL EVERY1” scrawled on it with crayon, I could see where you’re coming from, but paper battle maps with points of interest/focus being used by a pretty primitive (comparable to who they’re up against) fighting force makes more sense, though.

If this was planned so tightly that they didn’t let the bulk of their fighters (or large swaths of lower rung leadership) know details until days (or less) before the attack, then it stands to reason they’d hand out infosheets. That seems to be what happened here.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-was-duped-hamas-planned-devastating-assault-2023-10-08/

They’re there… err… the remains are, at least.

Edgy teenager shit, probably.

Like drawing an anarchy symbol on stuff.

I assume the accepted copout is something along the lines of, “You can thank us for making enough noise that they backed down. Sheepdogs, sheep, blah blah something something…”

For real. I still regularly lose the “make my own vs. takeout” battle, but a nice evening drive is better than paying $80 for a $40 2-person meal.

Holy fuck did we finally sell Florida? I wonder what sucker bought it.

PSA: At every Exxon Mobil I’ve been to, when the screen on the pump starts vomiting up ads as you’re pumping your gas, if you tap the 2nd button from the top on the right side of the screen, it mutes it.

Enjoy your peaceful gas station visit.

Sneako and his “I’m a little teapot” lookin ass with those goofy ass ears. Holding a dickhead like him or the Tates up as some sort of goal to strive towards is synonymous with “rock bottom.”

I get it - like I understand the mechanism behind why some younger dudes become infatuated with these figures. It’s the same reason boomer housewives get into the Law of Attraction or why people who don’t have a single fucking clue think Trump is going to fix everything if he could just get one more term in office… but I don’t get it.

Hah, fair enough. I’ve never been there, but I’ve always wanted to try living somewhere in the PNW at some point. This is clearly a him problem and I wonder if being a working stiff would have begun tainting his view of NY with time, too. He doesn’t realize it, yet, but what he’s doing in that regard is looking back fondly on his college days.

I feel bad for this dude, but not for the reasons he wants me to.

Nearing 40 and being pretty staunchly no-kids, I always got along great with all of the devs and admins I work with who have kids and we find plenty to talk about. I always thought what I do for a living is pretty cool, but I certainly never expected that to be my ticket to getting laid or being praised as some big-brain special boy. This dude felt one-dimensional because he is one-dimensional. Maybe he just never really spent the time developing his personality and maybe its time to do that now. It’s one thing to love what you do, its another entirely to make your job your identity - you gotta bring more to the table in social situations than shop talk and Squid Game.

As for complaining about a routine… I mean, that’s unfortunately how being an adult works for 90% of us. We have jobs, we often end up kind of worn out even if we sit at a desk all day, and it can suck - you make the best of it and break the monotony as best you can. If he wanted to be in the remaining 10%, he probably should’ve put in the effort. Those folks he mentions at Y Combinator, or starting nonprofits probably busted their asses to break through. Even content creators who put out quality content often are often run ragged from overworking. Did this dude think staying in NY and taking a 9-5 there would have magically given him extra energy?

Fuck outta here with this garbage, Business Insider.

[…] but subscriptions for software-based new car features will continue, according to a BMW board member.

I wonder what they’re going to try to nickel and dime people over next. I mean, if they’re offering internet service/access or other things that are an ongoing service, fine. That’s mostly fair… but if they’re charging you to flip a bit in the car’s internal database (or even worse, a central database somewhere that keeps your car’s data) but the feature is installed in your car and costs BMW nothing to enable it, then ewwwwwww

Took a deeper look at the article…

[…] BMW says it will continue to offer subscription-based services but only for software options, like driver assistance and digital assistant services, which is completely understandable.

Hahahahahaha no. For the most part, absolutely no.

Instant red flag. Double red flag if it seems like they’re getting something out of it

Probably because most of the people at his net worth are pushing for RTO so he’s the exception to the rule.

Genuinely curious why you think Apple Music is better. When I got my first iPad in years last year, I decided to try to go “all-in” on Apple services partly to consolidate and partly to save some money. After about 14-21 days, the only service left standing was Apple News+ (and only because the only other option was NewsReader which is 3x the price and I just generally didn’t love the UI and the way it worked overall).

Apple Music seemed to have slightly less of the music I searched for (I don’t have specifics, it was a year ago) and also seemed to be slower/shittier overall than Spotify. It was just generally unpleasant to use - this, coming from a guy who has plenty of gripes with Spotify’s user experience.

I’m all for ditching Spotify (I have all kinds of issues with their general business practices and how they stiff artists, among other things), but like @dinckelman@lemmy.world mentioned elsewhere in these comments: “every bit of competition is even more incompetent and greedy than they are.” I’m not going to say Apple is more greedy in this case, but they felt less competent.

Alcoholism will do crazy things to people and their brains.

I keep going back to how the guy who wielded RICO so cleverly to wreck the mob, ran an effective “PR campaign” post 9/11 that dubbed him the “Mayor of America,” and was a serious potential presidential candidate ended up leaking oil out of his scalp in front of a landscaping place, being the mouthpiece for a sort-of wannabe mafia-esque organization and eventually getting bitchslapped with RICO charges himself as a result.

I think it’s one part alcoholism, one part grasping wildly for the glory days, and possibly one part dude just getting wackier with age. You can see the glory days stuff in action during his time trying to get the GOP nomination in 2008 and how everything with him was about 9/11. There’s probably a feeling of invincibility he has from the highest highs he reached in his life and maybe even a bit of smug “I know what’s best for this country, I was it’s goddamn Mayor for the love of fuck!”

Whatever it is, fuck that guy. Time to piss off, Rudy. You’re embarrassing yourself and the rest of us by extension.

I feel like this was a missed opportunity to use Dhalsim for the fire one instead of Sagat.

These dickheads always think they can translate the power they hold in civilized society to the wild post aoocalyptic free for all. Makes you wonder what will be going through their heads when some brutish psycho decides it’s his turn and is about to stomp their heads into the tightly packed wasteland dirt.