I see your point but again I’d say it’s because of the US’s winner-take-all system, as well as 50 states vs 650 seats

Farage posed enough of a perceived risk to the Tories that they moved in his direction to avoid losing votes to UKIP. UKIP never would have won more than a handful of seats, let alone a majority, but by splitting the right vote Labour could have beat the Tories in swing seats

And yes, that could be broadly true of a ‘spoiler’ candidate in the US presidential election, except that:

1. Only 50 states, and therefore a tiny amount of swing seats compared to the UK

2. more population per state than per British seat. By a whole huge margin. So its not enough to potentially appeal to 8,000 people to ‘spoil’ a seat

3. The above leads to funding issues. Not only is there more money generally in the US elections, but because you have to flip a big state not a small constituency, you have to spend way way more to make an impact. You can’t focus a small budget on one tiny area and win a seat

4. Winner-takes-all means that as long as a campaign thinks it will win a state, and then a presidency, who cares if some counties went to a spoiler candidate?

I’d love to be wrong, and I do think that there’s probably also a cultural/historical element to the US’s two party dominance. But that said, its just a different system, different processes, different outcomes, different challenges than in the UK

There are 650 MPs in the UK, and unlike ind the US it isn’t winner-takes-all; if you win one of the 650 seats you get to be an MP

In the US presidential election, there are 50 states for a bigger population and even then winning one while losing the others achieves nothing

In the senate and house elections, which are more analogous to the UK, independent candidates are viable, right? There’s at least a few. But it’s not comparable to the Presidential elections

FPTP is fucked, but it’s only one element of why the USA is deadlocked into the two major parties being the only contenders. The electoral college, the winner-takes-all nature… all sorts

For anyone who is politically involved and knows the issues, Walz won by having better and more consistent positions; as well as Vance saying some scary fascist level shit

But I fear that most undecided voters aren’t in that camp, and for those people Vance did well just be being coherent and vaguely normal.

Vance lied and twisted the truth a bunch, but if you just tuned in without knowing all the facts and context, that wasn’t necessarily clear

For me though I was pleasantly surprised by Walz actually making a moral case for immigration, you don’t see that nearly enough

Coppola was heavily involved in the production of the film where some of the abuse happened, and during the fallout he allegedly tried to sue the victim of the abuse for breach of contract

I don’t know why you’re being down voted, he is literally a billionaire

‘No ethical billionaires’ apart from this guy apparently

Regardless of the electoral politics, as Chris notes, the important challenge in social policy is helping people who won’t benefit from wealth transfers from wealthy relatives, rather than engaging in fantasies about “generational warfare”. What matters is not generations, but class.

‘Is it bigger or smaller than a breadbox’ was a common question in games of 20 Questions and stuff when I was a kid, although I’m not sure why or where from originally (a game show I think?)

So yeah here instead of a bread box it’s a Bread Box factory and the thing being compared is also really really big

E: yeah a game show https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-is-it-bigger-than-a-breadbox/245317

Right, I was trying to imply that it wasn’t really okay, hence the ‘okay’ in inverted commas and stuff - this obviously isn’t okay

While this prosecution was completely fucked up and was 100% linked to the criminalisation of abortion (and therefore miscarriages and pregnancy in general), the issue was that following the traumatic premature birth she didn’t immediately remove the baby from the toilet

Moving north wouldn’t have helped on paper, as the alleged crime of letting your baby drown is still illegal

That said, possibly a more progressive state might have had the good sense to not prosecute or even treat this as a criminal matter. On the other hand, the DA where this happened was a Democrat according to the article

A grand jury declined to indict her, so it ended ‘okay’, apart from all the unnecessary additional horrific trauma inflicted on a grieving mother and being a harrowing sign of dark repressive times

Honestly looks pretty good as actiony eye-candy

Bit ironic seeing this right after that post about how the fan-service and callbacks ruined the new Alien film though

The Stanford Prison Experiment. But it shouldn’t be taken seriously, it was terribly done, biased and unscientific

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31380664/

Could be interesting to run something similar under actual experimental conditions, if that was doable

There was a really good article on this and unfortunately I can’t find it now to share

But the gist was that Titan exploited a bunch of loopholes, among other things. The paying customers on the sub were in fact ‘marine researchers’ who coincidently made a donation, and things like that

Some of the people who were at one point involved but left due to safety concerns raised the issue with OSHA (? - or whoever the more specific body was) who repeatedly failed to investigate or take any action

So for me, whether or not they are able to charge the company, the industry regulators and government bodies overseeing them need to face some questions and judgements too (though it would take a more knowledgeable person than me to know what exactly that looks like)

It’s just copypasta, yknow. It’s a meme

I don’t know why you are using in person community praxis as a refutation of an online space being toxic

Real life isn’t online, the issue is an online space being shitty

In the UK you start school at 4

I’d like to recommend The Trojan Horse Affair. Its a limited series and a few years old now, but a a really interesting listen

Its about the scandal in the UK in 2013, where an anonymous letter ‘exposed’ an Islamist conspiracy in Birmingham schools to radicalise children.

The investigation in the podcast is helmed by two people; a rookie journalism grad who is muslim, and an experienced white journalist. The contrast in perspectives and emotion between them adds to it

And yeah it’ll probably make you angry, and for those not in the UK it might key you in a bit on the tensions that do and don’t exist with British Muslims, how they’re viewed and treated by lots of parties here (including the Government)

Hey man, he had bone spurs, you ableist (/s)

I’d argue that TERF-ism, especially JKR’s brand of it, has both classist and racist elements ingrained within it

The whole ideology is based around gatekeeping ‘womanhood’ to a single shared demographic experience, denying feminism to those outside of it

There are ways in which trans women have had differing experiences of femininity from cis women. But the same is true of black women of white women, etc

It might be explicitly anti-trans; but it’s implicitly anti-in-group

So you’ve called me an ‘armchair genius’ twice in that comment - I’m sorry that I didn’t fight in WWI, but I am allowed to discuss the definition of Nationalism. You have no idea about my life or my background (or my chair), so leave that out.

Sure, Post-Colonial Nationalism as a movement played an integral role in establishing independence from European powers. That doesn’t change the fact that Nationalism is a European paradigm that contributed to the exploitation of these places in the first place.

The fact that Nationalism opposes foreign influence over ones own country - and therefore is an effective ideology of opposition in regions affected by European exploitation - says nothing about Nationalism’s inherent militarism and codification of heirarichal power.

So yes look at Nationalism as a factor in establishing independence, but then look at where Nationalism leads after that.

Lets take Nigeria in the 1960s. Nigerian nationalism helped oust the British, cool, that’s great. Then the Nationalist government inflamed ethnic tensions until Ahmadu Bello was assassinated in a miltary coup, and the following ethnic violence led to Civil War.

While you wait there for me to talk to “every nation state in the (so called) “3rd World””, maybe do some reading that isn’t an internet definition written by people Just like me (whatever that means…)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/45341491

And if you come back to me, do it with argument and not random personal attacks next time, thanks

Its the only way to make a living thanks to Kalus Schwab and the globalists (/s)