Watch him try to open this truck door. He looks frail and uncoordinated.

was in charge of the prison where he died

Technically the president delegates that to his Attorney General, who in this case was the son of the guy who first hired a totally unqualified Epstein (21 years old, no college degree) to be around high school age kids, where he was known for ogling girls and somehow showing up to student parties where there was underage drinking.

And some blame lays with the prosecutor back in 2008 when Epstein was first charged for sex trafficking and sexual assault, who decided to let Epstein agree to a secret plea deal for only 13 months in county jail (which is really weird for a federal prosecutor to let happen), who, oh wait, was then rewarded by becoming a cabinet official for Trump.

Yeah, evolving lungs ended up clearing the way to make use of the much more plentiful oxygen in the air compared to what is dissolved in water. Amphibians and reptiles have pretty low metabolisms, but birds and mammals basically evolved endothermy (aka warm bloodedness), probably in support of much higher muscular power output. Ectotherms (aka cold blooded animals) have metabolisms that are correlated to temperature, which means they can’t exert themselves as well when it’s cold. Endothermy allowed animals to be warm all the time, and therefore use higher muscular power output in any environment, especially sustained.

That means mammals and birds were able to cover more distance, and survive in places where reptiles and amphibians can’t, and all the advantages that carries.

This article estimates at a 40kg sailfish uses about 2.7 megajoules per day of energy when hunting. That’s about 650 kcal.

An 80kg human weighs about twice as much and needs about 3 times the energy, without even exertion.

Warm blooded animals spend a lot of energy just maintaining body temperature. Plus water doesn’t have very much oxygen in it, compared to the atmosphere.

There’s not enough oxygen in water to support our metabolisms, even if we had gills.

Fish are adapted to conserve and use less oxygen, from slower metabolic rates to more options for anaerobic respiration that doesn’t poison oneself from within.

Bottom line: There’s no data right now that suggests a significant shift in the electoral college advantage for 2024.

There’s a ton of uncertainty in the data now.

2016 and 2020 polls missed Trump popularity, and about 2/3 of pollsters have decided to use recall vote weighting (that is, making sure that their sample is representative of the vote ratios in the actual 2020 results). Historically, that method has overstated the previous losing party’s support (people are more likely to remember voting for the winner, so reweighing the results the other way ends up favoring the loser), but 2 presidential elections in a row have caused some pollsters to try to make up for past mistakes. Then again, does Trump himself being on the ballot change things?

Throw in the significant migration patterns of the pandemic era where many voters might not be voting in the same state that they were in 2020, and increasing difficulty at actually getting statistically representative poll respondents through spam filters, and there are real concerns about poll quality this year, perhaps more than previous years. Plus ballot access being uneven also might translate to actual voting biases that aren’t captured in the polling methods, either.

I just wouldn’t trust the polls to be accurate. Volunteer and vote.

I agree with your general view that it’s not actually time to relax.

But I will point out that you can’t just assume the electoral college advantage stays the same from election to election.

Biden won with 4.5% more of the national vote. Harris currently is polling at about half that. In the EC, Biden won by only 78,000 votes despite his large +4.5% popular vote lead.

In 2020, Biden won by 4.5% in the popular vote, but he won the tipping point state of Wisconsin by 0.6%. In other words, the electoral college was worth roughly a R+3.8% advantage in 2020 (yes, 4.5% minus 0.6% is 3.9% but when you use unrounded numbers it’s closer to 3.8%).

Is 2024 going to be the same? Probably not. The New York Times ran an article about this last month, and the tipping point state in the polling was Wisconsin, where Harris was polling at +1.8%, only 0.7% lower than the national average at the time of 2.6%. The article noted that national polling has Trump shrinking Harris’s lead in non-competitive blue states like California and New York, or expanding his lead in places like the deep south, while not gaining in actual swing states compared to 2020.

Note, however, that as of today, Harris’s lead in Wisconsin has shrunk to just under 1%, so we are seeing a shift towards Trump in the actual electoral college.

Right now, Harris is showing a lead in the national polling averages, by aggregator:

• 538: Harris up by 2.4%
• NYT: Harris up by 3%
• 270towin: Harris up 2.5%
• Nate Silver: Harris up 2.9%

It’s a close race, according to the polls. But whether the polls are actually accurate remains a huge unknown. So everyone should vote, and those with the means should volunteer.

If Republicans are that scared of turnout, they could legislatively overturn their own abortion ban.

The filibuster makes a big difference when the president, the speaker of the house, a majority of the House, and between 50-59 senators all support something.

If you don’t have all of those others lined up, the filibuster isn’t the only hurdle.

For example, Biden hasn’t been president during a Democratic-controlled House, so everything he’s accomplished legislatively has been with the support of either Kevin McCarthy or Mike Johnson, who have been the critical veto point while he has been president.

Plus with only 51 Senators in the Democratic caucus (and 50 in the last Congress), getting 50 votes through Manchin and Sinema has been a challenge sometimes, too.

The last time the filibuster has mattered for a Democratic president in actual legislation was the 111th Congress, when Democrats last held a trifecta. The Democrats did abolish the filibuster for presidential appointments, which don’t go through the House, during the 113th Congress, when they controlled the White House and the Senate.

I think it’s pretty obvious that the filibuster is gone the next time it matters, the next time there’s same party control of all 3. It’s just that it’s better if it’s Democrats in control.

Nader 2004: 465,650

Nader wasn’t even the Green candidate in 2004. Nader ran as an independent in 2004.

That year the Green Party ran David Cobb, who got 119,859 votes, putting him behind the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, and the independent Ralph Nader.

In 2008, Nader ran again as an independent and beat the Green Party once again, with 739,034 votes, versus McKinney’s 162k. In between were the Libertarians in fourth place, and the Constitution Party in fifth place.

The Green Party has never even come in third place, and several times hasn’t even come in fifth place, in our two party system.

“Feminism” is like philosophy in that over time it makes certain wins, and the discussion around that topic gradually sheds the label.

In the same way that ancient philosophers were establishing the disciplines we now call mathematics, geometry, and physics, or early modern philosophers were establishing what we now call economics and political science, and mid-century/postwar philosophers were establishing what is now called computer science and information theory, the history of feminism is notching wins and making them normal:

• In Anglo American law, women were able to own their own property beginning in the early 19th century, starting in the American South (somewhat ironically driven by southern concerns about preserving the institution of slavery).
• Women were allowed to be considered for credit and banking services, equal to men, beginning in the 1970’s.
• Women earned the legal right to equal pay for equal work in the 70’s, even as cultural attitudes in many circles still considered that to be government overreach (even today).
• Marital rape and other forms of domestic violence were outlawed pretty recently. The last state to criminalize marital rape did so in 1993, the same year that Jurassic Park came out in theaters.
• Liberalized divorce rules throughout the 80’s allowed women to leave abusive husbands more easily.
• Most gender segregation in official government institutions were dismantled in the 1980’s and the 1990’s, including the abolition of male-only universities, and laws imposing different legal drinking ages between men and women.

Today, many of us who were alive when these rules were in effect think of them as totally backwards. Nobody is seriously advocating for a return to denying women the right to have their own bank accounts, or giving husbands the right to rape their wives without consequences.

But the cultural understanding of the meaning of feminism rarely considers preserving past wins, even recent wins. People only think of it as fighting for something in the future.

Most men have experienced the stifling gender norms that force them into a box: they’re not allowed to cry or show any feeling other than anger, there’s no such thing as non-sexual touch or romance, women don’t like sex so trying to get close to them is inherently rapey and goes against their desires.

Feminism fights against that trap, that men are only men if they check certain boxes. That’s what’s toxic: telling men they’re not allowed to be certain ways.

So yeah, feminism does have a lot to offer men. Toxic societal expectations are bad for everyone.

I read it in Larry David’s voice.

$83 billion per month is almost $1 trillion per year. That sounds about right.

SNL had a fun sketch about this 12 years ago.

Haiti’s gonna hate hate hate

why wouldn’t I use my platform to share those beliefs?

I think it’s perfectly valid to say “the system that gave me this platform is unfair and I shouldn’t have benefited from it to the degree that I have, but I have the platform now so I’m going to use it for good.”

Prosecutors are generally somewhat accommodating of victim/witness preferences, because being subpoenaed to testify in open court can be intimidating in even low profile cases. And forcing a person to testify against their will generally isn’t a good trial strategy for winning cases.

something horrible happening to women & children

The closest I’ve seen to genuine happiness is the video of him laughing with Jeffrey Epstein, so yeah, that checks out.

Kicking off the list with Whitewater, a fraud where the Clintons were victims, shows just how persistent these beliefs are.