Shit! we forgot an election thread for the midterms. Here it is now.

[thebobmaster]

Final results for the 7 ballot measures in California are in.

Passed: Established individual rights to reproductive freedom, including contraceptives and abortion access
Required funding of K-12 art education
Continue/Uphold ban on flavored tobaccos

Did not pass: Expanded gambling in tribal casinos and racetracks
Legalize and tax online and mobile gambling
Add new requirements for dialysis patients
Increase zero-emission vehicle incentives and infrastructure


As for the rest of the results, it's a very predictable blue sweep for all the high-up government positions, with Newsom re-elected and the Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State all being the Democratic candidate. With 16 seats still uncalled, Democrats have won 30 of the 52 House seats, compared to the 6 Republican seats, and the one Senator who was up for re-election, also a Democrat, won.

 

[tstorm823]

So your hypothetical "end-of-nature" scenario is one in which we completely failed to adapt to these challenges in any other way, then. That's a very big stretch. It's not as if the alternative was "never develop other sources of energy"; the alternative was "develop sustainable, clean sources of energy; and maybe curb the rate of expansion to allow us to cope more slowly".

That's not a stretch at all. You live in a nation where the forests were obliterated before they were replaced. How do you imagine people getting wind and solar off the ground without plastics? How are we building nuclear plants or hydroelectric dams without heavy machinery running internal combustion engines? Even if you can sidestep those things in theory, we're still hitting speedbumps developing alternatives with the use of fossil fuels that let us live in comfort and excess. I don't see how anyone imagines a world without the industry and electrical generation we have, where people are stuck making everything for themselves by hand, is going to jump straight to large scale renewable infrastructure. So much progress has been built on oil, you can't just say "we should have skipped that step and ended up in a better place anyway".

 

[Silvanus]

That's not a stretch at all. You live in a nation where the forests were obliterated before they were replaced. How do you imagine people getting wind and solar off the ground without plastics? How are we building nuclear plants or hydroelectric dams without heavy machinery running internal combustion engines? Even if you can sidestep those things in theory, we're still hitting speedbumps developing alternatives with the use of fossil fuels that let us live in comfort and excess. I don't see how anyone imagines a world without the industry and electrical generation we have, where people are stuck making everything for themselves by hand, is going to jump straight to large scale renewable infrastructure. So much progress has been built on oil, you can't just say "we should have skipped that step and ended up in a better place anyway".

I didn't say "we should have skipped that step". I said that "too soon" was over a century ago, meaning that sometime after a century ago-- but certainly some time ago now-- would've been the optimum time (and by extention, now we're late).

But even so: we would've had a great deal of heavy machinery already, considering the industrial revolution was over a century ago. Had we recognised the threat in good time afterwards, and turned ourselves towards transition at that point, we could absolutely have transitioned decades ago without "ending nature" or any other such hyperbolic nonsense.

 

[tstorm823]

I didn't say "we should have skipped that step". I said that "too soon" was over a century ago, meaning that sometime after a century ago-- but certainly some time ago now-- would've been the optimum time (and by extention, now we're late).

Ok. My instinct is to get into a semantic argument about how that's totally not what you said, but that doesn't do either of us any good. If what you would like to say is "sometime between a century ago and now was the right time to move off fossil fuels", I'm not gonna argue with that.

 

[Silvanus]

Ok. My instinct is to get into a semantic argument about how that's totally not what you said, but that doesn't do either of us any good. If what you would like to say is "sometime between a century ago and now was the right time to move off fossil fuels", I'm not gonna argue with that.

You clearly do want to have that semantic argument, considering you've started this post with that gripe anyway.

So go on. But since you made the completely mad statement about nature itself ending if humans had transitioned off fossil fuels too soon, I don't think it's in your best interests to bog yourself down in literalism.

 

[Schadrach]

How do you imagine people getting wind and solar off the ground without plastics?

The oldest, longest lasting and probably most reliable form of solar doesn't require plastics. Big steel boiler surrounded by focusing mirrors. Supposedly the climate in our necks of the woods are even well suited to them. And where I'm at would make for good use of existing labor, as a lot of the same skills involved are used in building and maintaining the chemical plants.

 

[tstorm823]

But since you made the completely mad statement about nature itself ending if humans had transitioned off fossil fuels too soon, I don't think it's in your best interests to bog yourself down in literalism.

I did not introduce that phrasing, you did. I didn't say nature would end, I said it would be destroyed. "Destruction of nature" is a commonly used and understandable description of human activity altering the environment.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Sean Patrick Maloney on His Loss, the Media and A.O.C. (Published 2022)

Mr. Maloney said that he and other New York Democrats were unable to overcome suburban fears of crime. He also had some harsh words for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

www.nytimes.com

Salty mofo upsetti spaghetti that a certain woman still has her seat when he sabotaged another left wing democrat and got ousted for it.

 

[Hawki]

Not my race, but I read a Macbeth comparison to Trump, how he now seems to be kryptonite to the GOP:

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Another big name Republican doing the "it should be harder to vote because if everybody gets to vote we'll always lose" song and dance

 

[Silvanus]

I did not introduce that phrasing, you did. I didn't say nature would end, I said it would be destroyed. "Destruction of nature" is a commonly used and understandable description of human activity altering the environment.

Oh lol, ok. I mean, I think if that had actually been your intention, you'd have said something like "more of nature would have been destroyed", rather than "nature would have been destroyed", which implies something different is happening that wasn't happening anyway. But ok, fine.

And the bit about "none of us would be alive"? You believe the human race would've gone extinct if we'd moved off fossil fuels?

 

[tstorm823]

Oh lol, ok. I mean, I think if that had actually been your intention, you'd have said something like "more of nature would have been destroyed", rather than "nature would have been destroyed", which implies something different is happening that wasn't happening anyway. But ok, fine.

And the bit about "none of us would be alive"? You believe the human race would've gone extinct if we'd moved off fossil fuels?

"Us" is a pretty small subset of people on this forum, though more broadly the events of history would be changed so much that any given individual would likely not exist in anything close to their current existence.

 

[09philj]

Another big name Republican doing the "it should be harder to vote because if everybody gets to vote we'll always lose" song and dance

The Republicans believe they can't possibly be unpopular, the Democrats must be perpetuating a conspiracy through mass voter fraud.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

The Republicans believe they can't possibly be unpopular, the Democrats must be perpetuating a conspiracy through mass voter fraud.

Well I mean, they had boat parades after all, how can they be broadly unpopular?

 

[Dalisclock]

The Republicans believe they can't possibly be unpopular, the Democrats must be perpetuating a conspiracy through mass voter fraud.

I remember certain people crying in 2000 that "Trump got 74 million votes! What about us? What about our rights?" completely ignoring that 81 million voted for Biden, but those people apparently don't fucking count or something.

And of course, the fun bit of "Nobody I know voted for Biden/Other democrat" because clearly they know every person in the US ultimately or the ever present gesturing at a map of which counties voted GOP vs Democrat like this one and "Look at that sea of Red!" like that matters(you can have large red chunks with 4000 total votes cast because of low population density).

And like a certain former member of this forum who would point out that Trump has huge rallies and Biden didn't even do rallies thus proving Trump is more popular or something. This bizarre selection bias some people employ and it seems particularly bad in the GOP.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Every now and then a darkly humourous Snopes headline appears.

Kari Lake Did Not Concede on Twitter, Despite Tweet from 'Verified' Parody Impersonation Account

"It is with heavy heart that I must concede to my opponent, Katie Hobbs," the parody tweet read.

www.snopes.com

The Republicans believe they can't possibly be unpopular, the Democrats must be perpetuating a conspiracy through mass voter fraud.

Well, you see, when so much time and energy is spent confidently telling their followers that their victory is absolutely certain, then what they going to do when proven incorrect...admit they were wrong? Risk their pride?? Like a fragile liberal??? Hell no, you're goddamn right it was fraud, fraud of the greatest defrauding that has ever frauded!

 

[Gergar12]

Once again the amount of money spent on Georgia's special edition will be equal to the GDP of a small country.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

The Republicans believe they can't possibly be unpopular, the Democrats must be perpetuating a conspiracy through mass voter fraud.

Republicans believe that only they are "real Americans", and that the rest of us should have no power or even say over how the country is run.

 

[Silvanus]

"Us" is a pretty small subset of people on this forum, though more broadly the events of history would be changed so much that any given individual would likely not exist in anything close to their current existence.

You have to be joking. You did not mean "we wouldn't exist" in that way, because that's a complete non-statement you could apply to absolutely any possible event of significance.

 

[Baffle]

"Us" is a pretty small subset of people on this forum, though more broadly the events of history would be changed so much that any given individual would likely not exist in anything close to their current existence.

Threatening us all with a good time is it?