I don’t know if you know this, but if the US falls, the whole world falls with it. There will be no turning back, no one will be spared. Who knows, maybe evolution will start over with another species, and they’ll do the same shit, over and over again until the sun burns out.

Because it comes down to the Presidential pardon powers. They can defy a blatantly illegal order, be dishonorably discharged, lose their pensions, healthcare benefits, pay, etc. or, they can follow a blatantly illegal order, and receive a pardon for it later.

I ask you, which one would you pick?

Yes, modernize zoning, and also include vacancy taxing. Apartment complexes will keep entire units empty and just jack up rents on the remaining tenants rather than lower rents to fill the empty units, and that must end.

This. I don’t think Miller knows just how much his own side doesn’t like him. He does have people over him with more power who keep him around because he’s useful, and they protect him because he’s useful, but once he’s outlived his usefulness, they’ll wash their hands of him.

There are approx 45,000 denominations of Christianity

Well, obviously that’s where the US Dept of Faith comes in and starts whittling that number down a little, by their denomination declaring the other 44,999 to be heretical. And because they’re with the government, they’ve got authority to stamp out heresy, violently, if need be. As for how it’s funded? Well, since we got rid of the IRS, taxes aren’t collected, but tithes are mandatory!

Oh, it’s not that they think those things are bad, just that they want to be the arbiters of who deserves those things. They’re not against social programs, they just want to put their churches in charge of them so they can police behavior.

I’m enjoying it. It feels like the game that Obsidian wanted the first one to be, but couldn’t quite get there, for whatever reason.

And the richies grab the scientists by the mouth and go, “Shutfuckup! Shutfuckup!”.

I know you’re being sarcastic. It would absolutely destroy their chances of ever holding office, but if Dems don’t win the midterms, that’s it. They may as well close up the Party HQs, retire from politics and IDK, take up knitting or something.

It would make sense, wouldn’t it? It would be hilarious to see how fast the entire Republican party would spin if Democrats started taking credit for all the terrible shit Republicans have done with their power.

But now, I wonder if supersonic flight could work today. We know a lot more now than we did when the first Concordes were built. There have been numerous advances in the fields of engineering, materials science, avionics, and such since the last Concorde jet was grounded.

As Mark Twain once remarked, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”

And is also a sociopath, incapable of feeling or giving love.

True, but they had been riding a wave of Pan-Germanism prior to the Nazis. Germany had many diverse regions that didn’t see each other as equals prior to the Weimar Republic.

grant all 50 states independence, and let the states come back together into whatever new nation or collection of nations they wish to form.

Kind of reminds me of this map from the Unofficial Fallout TTRPG:

Here the 48 contiguous States are divvied up between 13 Commonwealths with Alaska being part of the Northwest and Hawaii being in the Southwest.

But could Germany have ever turned back from fascism on its own, without any help whatsoever? Let’s say the entire continent just let the Nazis have their way and let Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss play out their experimental new form of government out to its horrible logical conclusion. Could Germany ever come back from that? Could the world?

Is that what we said to you when it happened to you?

No, we’re about as far from OK as a country can get. The world needs to unite against us and muster the largest liberation force ever seen. And I mean the entire world literally every nation that can send warriors, send them. Germans, you have been where we are. You know, all too well, where this road leads. You could not turn yourselves back from it, and so you needed the help of 4 allied world powers. Now, one of those world powers is trudging down that same road you walked almost a century ago. And, I don’t think we will be able to turn ourselves back, just as you could not.

One of the things I wish we’d stop doing is treating these guys as if they are rational, coherent political actors. They are not. They are unbelievable weirdos. And not the good kind, either. They’re more like the kind of weirdos that I would not be surprised if came out later that they had a collection of human thumbs in a jar in their basement.

They are not defending conservatism and tradition. They are hard selling accelerationism and the complete breakdown of our world because they’ve convinced themselves that in 5 or 10 or 20 years they will have an AI that can do literally anything, from telling them how to rewire their bodies to survive on Mars to teaching them how to upload their consciousnesses to the Internet and live forever as digital gods, ruling the galaxy.

And I know that sounds like comical hyperbole, but that’s what they very seriously and very literally believe according to Greg Fish, a compsci grad student and popular tech blogger, who, over a decade ago, was invited to be an advisor at the Lifeboat Foundation, one of the many think tanks they set up to convince themselves that this was all possible. He gave them a hard no, and wrote some articles skeptical of them on True Slant, which is now owned by Forbes. Immediately he got calls from the Director of the Singularity Institute challenging him to a public debate. This was all over a decade ago. And since then, because of the hyperventilating discourse around AI and ChatGPT, it’s only gotten much, much worse.

So, yeah, if they seem really weird and like they’ve been marinating in some kind of “WH40K-esque” tech religion, it’s because they are, and they have.

You know, you do raise a valid point, here. Note-taking has become something of a lost art/skill in the smartphone age. Not many people write shit down in notebooks and journals outside of what they are required to do in school, college, university in the US, anyway. I’m personally working on getting my groove back when it comes to taking notes on things, because as much as I love to create content I find it hard not to go into a rambling diatribe without notes. Honestly the dumbing down of America has led to a lot of people not writing shit down and that’s going to be a huge problem down the line.