Everyone I’ve come across from NZ says it like igg, so there’s that one, too. Aussies have a weird vowel to it that I hear at times, too.

You can’t have it both ways. You’re arguing the Democrats simultaneously don’t care about leftist voters because they don’t show up and vote and aren’t a significant enough chunk of the electorate to be worth catering to, yet claiming that this same group not showing up resulted in Hillary’s loss against Trump. Which is it? Are we the deciding factor in US electoral politics, or a bunch of rabble-rousers not worth concerning yourself with?

The reality is that Clinton lost the election due to extremely narrow margins in a handful of flyover states not known for being bastions of leftism. Leftists of Lemmy in LA or NYC could have all gone for voter fraud and voted for her multiple times, and she still would not have received any more votes in the electoral college from California or New York, because she already got them all! Conversely, she wouldn’t have gotten any fewer votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, which were the decisive states at the level of the Electoral College because of leftists in other states.

tl;dr: Get lost with your ahistorical, left punching bullshit.

Sure, but many people seem to suffer when it comes to distinguishing facts from opinion and interpretation.

For example, it’s a fact that Biden had a very poor performance in the debate. No one is really disputing that, though there have been various justifications offered for it. All good up to this point, but it falls apart when it comes to interpreting what that means for the Democratic campaign. Some are of the view that it’s too late to change the candidate and have Biden stand down, and that to do so would tank our chances of beating Trump. Others, myself included, feel like the hit he has taken is likely terminal, and that our best chance is to have him bow out and spin up a new campaign as soon as possible, in order to have the best shot at viability. Personally, I think the longer the delay on doing so, the more it becomes a situation of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Either way, absent someone with a functional crystal ball or some time travelers that can give us a definitive answer, both stances are subjective and fallible interpretations of what the best course of action would be, based on facts. Yet, in the couple of hours I browsed Lemmy after my post-work nap today, I easily saw a dozen people accusing posters who stated Biden should step down of being trolls, Russian agents, useful idiots, and/or arguing in bad faith for merely stating an opinion. I’ve seen people who think Biden is the best shot get called stupid for holding that view, but it rarely seems to have the same power to kill a conversation dead in its tracks as, “You disagree with me, ergo you must be a Russian shill.”

To deny these disinformation campaigns, both foreign and domestic, are real is to be deluded, yet so is dismissing any and all criticism of the party or views that don’t hew to the party orthodoxy as being pure propaganda. Heck, even for people who have fallen wholeheartedly for such propaganda, you ignore them and dismiss them at your peril. If you don’t successfully reengage with them and manage to bring those individuals back into the fold, they could quite easily make up the margin that ultimately could swing the election. According to this NPR article, the last two elections were essentially decided by less than 80,000 votes each in a few swing states. Unless Democratic strategists have a surefire method that’s guaranteed to juice their votes by millions in those states, they really can’t afford to be leaving anything on the table if they want to win.

I don’t think it’s necessarily being so concerned with integrity as to deliberately self-sabotage, but rather that this was a potentially viable strategy 40-50 years ago, and many of the eldritch horrors in party leadership, Biden included, just haven’t gotten the message that the situation has changed in the interim. Part of Biden’s campaign pitch was that he’s worked in Congress for so long and has the relations that would let him reach out to the other side to get stuff passed, and he just gets taken advantage of when trying to do so. The Republicans have long since moved on to a strategy of “Ram through whatever you can while you’re in power, and obstruct, obstruct, obstruct when you aren’t.” They generally aren’t concerned at all with what non-GOP voters think of them and their actions, which lets them just bulldoze their way through the process while racking up points with their base for being effective at advancing the agenda, regardless of how hypocritical/immoral they are in the process. Just see Mitch McConnell when Obama tried appointing a justice to the Supreme Court near the end of his term versus his response to Trump doing the same.

I would also say there’s just a fundamentally different level of at least the appearance of integrity necessary on the Democratic side, and Democratic voters are less willing to accept that the ends justifies the means. This is clearly illustrated just by looking at the fallout for pretty much any Republican having a sex scandal, versus it happening to a Democrat. In his initial scandal, Anthony Weiner didn’t even engage in a criminal act, having sent a 21-year old woman a sexually explicit photo. In less than a month, Nancy Pelosi had called for an investigation into it and he’d resigned his seat. In contrast, Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case and has had heaps of sexual assault and harassment accusations brought against him, yet the party of family values, good, Christian morals, and law and order is still completely behind him.

For some of their more conservative members, they’ve certainly done so in the past, but I’m pretty sure that @SeattleRain@lemmy.world is just talking about the self-defeating obsession that Democrats have with appearing non-partisan. Yes, they do need to compromise to an extent to get something through the house at the moment, but they have essentially self-sabotaged in the past when they had the majorities to not need to do so, yet insist on negotiating with the Republicans anyway because they hope moderate Republicans will give them credit for not ramming legislation through in a one-sided fashion.

This really only works when the other party is engaging in negotiations in good faith, which the Republicans do not. As a result, the Democrats give the GOP initiative on steering bills and policies as they like, winding up with compromised legislation that doesn’t please their actual base, while also not getting credit from the Republicans they’re hoping to sway in some sense.

For an easy example of this, look at talks about eliminating the filibuster earlier in Biden’s presidency. Manchin and Sinema made it a dead idea, but even before that, Biden has been opposed because of his obsession with reaching across the aisle in an age where trying to do so only serves to stop his agenda dead in its tracks. Rather than get their elbows out and bully the two hold outs into falling in line (which was supposed to be what Manchin was good for, at least. I kept hearing, “He disrupts things, but he falls in line when it counts,” but pretty much never saw evidence of this), they just shrugged and collectively let the agenda die or get neutered, because to do otherwise would not be bipartisan.

There’s a lot of racists out there. I feel like if she’s at the top of the ticket, she’s gonna get dragged down.

This is just preemptive cope to avoid having to reflect on whether the Democratic leadership and its preferred candidates are actually the thing that needs change, and she’s not even an actual candidate yet. Kamala’s biggest problem is not that she isn’t white. Obama was a Black man, but he had heaps of charisma. Kamala has all the charisma of a plate of lutefisk,and people flat out do not like her. She is also irrevocably tied to Biden and his legacy, likely to her detriment amongst the crowds you would most worry about not voting for her because of her not being white.

When it comes to the Democrats and* the left* — from the Biden campaign on down to the activists

What’s with calling out the left on this, when the closest they get to a leftist organization they take issue with is a climate advocacy group. The left has been pretty clear that Biden is not the man for the moment since the go, and for our troubles, we’ve been called everything from stupid and naïve, to privileged white people who don’t care about insert minority group here (and ignore that not all leftists are rich, white people, there are plenty of POC active in leftist politics, though critics, often privileged white people themselves, do love to erase their existence in the same breath they claim to be looking out for them), to either useful idiots or fully cognizant agitators working on behalf of enemy states. Centrist Democrats and liberals have been the ones trying to tell anyone who will listen that the same old play will not just be good enough, but is actually our only option to win, and they’re trying to leave the left to take the fall for their mistake, yet again.

Some of it is political calculation. If the president steps aside, the logical candidate is Vice-President Kamala Harris, but Harris has struggled in office and her poor poll ratings mirror those of Biden. If the Democratic Party tries to sideline Harris and open the door to other candidates through an open convention, they risk alienating her and her supporters and opening up further wounds in the Democratic coalition.

What, risk all four of her supporters? Oh, darn, there go the chances of winning ever again.

Democrats are not going to win with a staid campaign by the usual corporate boot-licking line of candidates they’ve relied on up until now. The sooner they accept that and get behind a candidate who is pushing for systemic changes on issues that actually resonate with your average Americans and the problems they face in their daily lives, as opposed what matters only to their donors, the better for them this time around. Heck, if they actually follow through and make some of those changes, even better.

The kid sounded like he had a plan of his own and was working towards it, so it might just be as simple as mom has a car and he doesn’t, or it’s his first apartment and she knows what to look out for when moving into a new one, which he’s never had experience doing. The article doesn’t make it sound like he’s some totally dependent man-child, but it also doesn’t elaborate enough to really say why she went along.

That it only becomes a topic of popular discussion once every two years doesn’t mean people are sitting on their hands the rest of the time. I’ve volunteered on local, state and Congressional campaigns, mostly translating campaign website and literature/fliers into Spanish. I’ve done this in the lead up to the 2020 presidential elections, state assembly, city council and mayoral races here. If I talk to people about this stuff outside explicitly political gatherings or a presidential election cycle, I’m an annoying leftist who won’t shut up about politics. When the rest of the country gets off their collective ass and pretends to care, I get “Why haven’t you done anything in between election cycles, you’re not serious,” from the same people who didn’t want to hear about local elections the last few years.

Yeah, it’s pretty exhausting having the same liberals disengage between presidential elections and then pretend to be the arbiters of serious politicking once every 4 years to try and punch left and exclude any actual leftist viewpoints. Thanks for doing your part to keep that liberal tradition going strong.

I was under the impression that he was supposed to be handing off the role to Kamala, which was meant to be a shift towards a young(er) leader, woman and person of color that they hoped would check enough boxes for younger voters to make them think she was an actual progressive. That plan seems to have been nixed once they realized she has so little appeal across the board, she could probably lose a popularity contest to any number of infectious diseases, and Kamala 2024 got scrubbed.

They potentially could have found other viable alternatives, but they would have represented an actual shift in party leadership rather than bowing down to the party orthodoxy, so the DNC would never actually support them.

What they really want is another candidate like Obama that is charismatic and can talk in a way that convinces voters who don’t feel represented by the current Democratic party to say, “This is the candidate who can deliver on reshaping the party in line with my views,” while having no intentions of meaningfully deviating from the party line. I think the experience with Obama is still fresh enough in the minds of these voters that they are on guard against the same sort of deception a second time.

Keep a special lookout for pear- or almond-like scents, which can be evidence of cyanide.

Maybe get a few other people to smell it, for this one, bonus points if they’re entirely unrelated to you. Not everyone can smell it, and there may be a genetic component to it.

There’s a reason these schemes are being run in developing countries, and it’s not because Putin wants to diversify the Russian workforce. I could see it being an appealing offer for someone looking to get out of Nepal or most African nations, especially for someone who hasn’t had luck with getting visas to go elsewhere or that hasn’t been able to get a position that didn’t involve leaving their family behind. It’s not as though they’ll be doing this recruiting in all parts of these countries, either, just as I’m sure they’re only showing them the nicest parts of Russia to make it look more developed than et really is in many places.

The article the screenshot is from links directly to a case of an elderly woman being hit and killed by someone on an ebike. It also links to a story of another woman has suffered brain damage and lasting effects after being hit by someone riding a moped.

They don’t really go that fast.

You really can’t say that, categorically. Part of the issue is that when people speak about e-bikes, there is a huge range of vehicles that fall under that category. You have ebikes that hit 80mph these days, yet generally are sold no differently in terms of registration or licensing than a pedal assist bike that cuts out the engine at 20mph or if the rider stops pedaling. A lot of these delivery drivers in NYC are riding illegal electric mopeds that go at high speeds and weigh much more than a normal bike, but are sold as though they were equal to an e-bike that goes much slower.

Even a lighter e-bike, like a Citi Bike, weighs about 45lbs. That’s 15lbs heavier than my regular bike, which will make a difference if you get hit at higher speeds. Something like the Surron bike mentioned in that video is advertized as street legal, but according to their specs page, their bikes clock in at 47 kg, or 103.6 lbs! Sure, that guy could be riding a slightly different model, but there is an absolutely massive difference for a pedestrian between getting hit by a 150 lbs rider on a 30 lbs bike doing 20 mph, and getting hit by the same rider on a bike that’s three times as heavy and going at four times the speed. Heck, there’s a big difference for the rider themselves if they just eat it on their own.

Sure, all other factors being equal, it would be less severe with everyone on bikes, but your initial post read rather dismissively to me. Rather than, “Well at least it wasn’t a car and they didn’t die,” it came across to me like “Nobody was in a car and it was unlikely to kill them, so it’s not a problem.” Perhaps that wasn’t your intent, but it’s certainly how I interpreted it. We can advocate for a safer mode of transit while also calling out dangerous behavior by people using our preferred mode.

Unsafe behavior isn’t made okay just because the risk of death is minimal. The mother could have been concussed or had a broken bone, for all we know. If things go pear shaped and the trailer tips over, you could have the kids dumped out into traffic on one side, or down a ditch on the other, for all we know. This line of thinking, that it’s okay as long as it’s not equally dangerous as it would be in a car, makes no sense.

Yeah, some of the e-bike circlejerk sounds like it’s from people who have never been in a major city where they get used by people with no regard for others. I’ve nearly been run down by app delivery drivers on ebikes and mopeds turning onto the sidewalk going the wrong way down one way streets at 30+ mph, people riding both acting crazy in the bike lanes, running red lights and cutting through traffic with no regard for their own safety or anyone else’s. You’ll have to excuse me when I lack sympathy for the guys on souped-up ebikes doing 30mph over a blind hill with no lights or helmet that get mad and start threatening me because they had to swerve to dodge since they were riding in the wrong lane.

Some of it could be app delivery drivers struggling to make ends meet while being subject to unreasonable and dangerous metrics, along with unlivable pay. I feel for them, but their struggle to earn a living doesn’t give them carte blanche to put other people’s lives at risk. On the other hand, a lot of people I see riding these tricked out ebikes and mopeds are the same people I know that were riding dirt bikes on NYC streets a few years back and moaning about how misunderstood they were and how the cops are picking on them just because they want to ride 40 deep down Third Ave and do wheelies while the streets and sidewalks are full of other vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians.

I’m all for encouraging people to use other modes of transportation, but people are being assholes and demonstrating why there’s going to be a need to regulate the ebike and moped industry more rigorously, and probably introduce some sort of licensing requirement to enable tracking dangerous riders and enforcing safety rules. You have people riding devices rigged up to go at highway speeds, being careless while riding and disregarding pedestrians, riding the wrong way, and just generally being reckless and putting other people at risk. This is also ignoring the issue of people being cheap and buying aftermarket batteries that cause some nasty fires.

If you’re on an ebike, scooter or moped that exceeds 25mph, I don’t think you have any business being in the bike lane. Yes, it’s riskier for those riders to be in vehicular traffic, but even ignoring the mass of the bike, just a person’s body hitting you at 30mph or more can do some serious damage. If you’re riding at a massively higher speed than those around you in the same lane, you’re a safety hazard to others in your lane, whether you’re on a moped doing 40mph in a 15-20mph zone, or in a car doing 70mph in a 45mph zone. People still need to be held accountable for putting others at risk with dangerous behavior, too, whether it’s a car driving erratically, ebikes going down one way streets the wrong way, cyclists taking blind corners at speeds that don’t let them stop for pedestrians, or even just pedestrians doing stupid shit like insisting on walking in the bike lane, rather than using a perfectly good sidewalk or pedestrian path right next to them. That said, they need to be enforced across the board, not just singling out people on ebikes or cyclists, while ignoring others.

I’m not convinced that these problems would be addressed by a smaller population. On average, people today are better educated, more peaceful, and better nourished than they were 100 or 500 years ago. I think this is mainly due to technological progress rather than population size.

I didn’t read it as saying smaller populations would fix this necessarily, but that we should focus on fixing those problems before we worry too much about falling birth rates outside of countries like Japan and Korea that have such elderly populations. Even if letting the population drop doesn’t directly cause the prevalence of these problems to drop as well, I think trying to force the matter of growing the population before addressing these problems would likely only aggravate them. We can’t necessarily count on technological progress to keep up with infinite population grow, so we’ll continue to outpace our ability to find adequate solutions with our ability to generate massive problems for ourselves.

People are wild these days. My wife and sister have both, working in different industries and companies, come home and informed me they were freaked out and a bit repulsed to discover coworkers in the bathroom, audibly having a bowel movement of some sort, with an iPhone on the floor of the stall facetiming their partners. These were both work places that skewed younger, but people have just been going feral. My last job, I walked into the bathroom and heard what I assumed was the Smack, smack, smack of somebody jerking off, only to find out it was a guy near his 60s doing clap push-ups in front of the urinals.

The exam software my uni uses for instance only runs on Windows & MacOS.

I would say this segment of @Iceblade02’s post would be the issue, in that people are locked into these systems even if they prefer to use open source software. For example, my university based in the UK requires I submit my assignments in an MS Word format that supports Microsoft’s annotations for the tutor to do all marking up and correcting/commenting on the paper there. There are ways to do the same thing with PDFs, but at least on my modules so far, it hasn’t been an option at all. That’s just for papers and such.

When it comes to exams where you’re supposed to be answering the questions and submitting them as you go, there are schools that insist on you installing monitoring software so they can make sure you aren’t cheating, which only tends to be available for Windows and Mac. I don’t know how common that sort of software is outside the US, but it’s certainly a thing.

Lack of legal recognition and protections? I’m not really aware of any states that have provisions to recognize a union that only comprises a quarter or a third of employees doing a specific job for an employer. Closest I’ve seen was places where different jobs were unionized and non-union positions, like one job where all the drivers got a union, but not any of the warehouse staff.