Any significant injury that results in paralysis would be a potential candidate. These become possible as soon as you become old enough to climb things like trees.

That last line was the funniest thing I’ve read in the past few days, so thank you for that.

I kind of understand Bush vs Kerry. Bush had a vision. It was a crazy neocon vision, but it was a vision and he used it to communicate effectively enough that we still occasionally meme about bombing people into freedom.

Obama had a clear vision, and communicated it well. Hope, prosperity for the middle class, international leadership. Biden had a vision, a less divisive America where we came together and worked on overdue problems. Hilary didn’t really, nor did Kerry or Gore. They were more policy administrator types who focused on specific policies and administration, and the idea of incremental improvement just didn’t resonate with people.

Trump, for all his failings, does have a vision he is capable of communicating to the American people. Harris did too, better than Hilary anyway, but it didn’t really come online until fairly late into the campaign and stayed a little too nebulous. I do think she was hurt in this regard by getting such a short campaign with no real prep time, she was evolving in the right direction.

I think we need a Bernie or AOC, someone with a powerful vision and ability to clearly communicate it, to the point of literally cudgeling people over the head with it. And we need to vote them in during the primary, over any competent administrator types, despite the fact that we are fully aware of how effective and necessary those policy administrators can be. Our valuing of them is a place where we’re out of touch with the broader American electorate though.

edit: MLK Jr was good at this. He had a dream, and it was a simple one that any person could visualize in their head. It didn’t require any policy expertise to understand it. We need that.

Yes, he took all our guns, too. Look, there’s none to be found anywhere.

No, they’ve been getting progressively crazier since 2016.

2000 was fairly divisive, it went to the Supreme Court after all. But it wasn’t even a fraction this dramatic, people mostly shrugged and figured GWB would be like his father, which was unfortunate, but sane at any rate. Nobody was really predicting 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

2004 was pretty dull. John Kerry challenged GWB but felt sort of like an empty suit.

2008 was nice, Obama was a strong and exciting candidate vs the very known quantity of McCain, who was a moderate repub known for bipartisanship. Sarah Palin provided for hours of entertaining impersonations by people like Tina Fey, but since she was the VP candidate nobody really cared.

2012 was dull. Romney was a strong candidate, another moderate repub. But Obama was fine, he hadn’t broken the country or anything. Brought us out of a recession, even if people were upset about bank bailouts and stuff. Lot of people got health insurance.

Then it starts getting spicy.

Well yeah, how are we supposed to enact a Russo-American Alliance without opening ourselves up to more cyber influence operations? I mean, c’mon, how else are they supposed to convince more people to love Russia?

Don’t try for a one-size-fits-all policy. Try to remember they’re all individuals who will have their own opinions and interaction preferences, and calibrate accordingly to the individual reactions you get.

This office could also just have a different overarching culture to your previous one. You should probably be able to figure out the nuances in time if you pay some attention.

Personally I usually interact with whichever one already has more engagement.

Go with people who are willing to use their real name, a lot of times it’ll be in the channel description, or sometimes in a channel trailer or intro video. Sometimes in an interview some other outlet/creator has done on the content creator. Then google that real name and check their work history and education credentials. You can usually find a LinkedIn. If they’re a proper academic, their university will usually have a brief page on them on the official university website. If they’re an alumni, they can sometimes be found in an alumni list, various class lists, or publicly accessible projects they worked on, though not always. Work history often cannot be as easily verified, but sometimes can be if you dig a little. Depends on field.

It’s not too different from what you’d do if you wanted to hire someone to work for you in a small business or something.

Once you have a significant knowledge base yourself, you can start to use the sniff test, though that’s always far from perfect. Less time consuming though.

This gal has a channel devoted to things like this, particularly in regards to career-related settings. Lots of good advice here:

https://youtube.com/@advicewitherin

It’s pretty wishful thinking to think Proj 2025 and all the other MAGAs are going to fade away after the orange man is gone. Did you not see De Santis’ support before Trump entered the race?

People are not all the same, all following one single set of behaviors. All we can do is try to figure out trends, ratios, stuff like that.

Prose is certainly no good indication of anything either. I could write up some fantastic bullshit with great prose if the mood struck me.

It’s pretty rare for the smiling and friendly person to be throwing subtle shade, that stuff usually comes from a more neutral initial presentation. In the event it does happen it can sometimes be difficult to detect, for sure, but I wouldn’t let those rare exceptions bother you too much.

Regarding detection, there’s almost always subtle tone and/or body posture cues that will mark it. They’re circumstantial though, and vary person to person as well. One of those things you learn as you get to know someone. None is surefire, either, the ambiguity is the whole point, after all.

Yes, I would say that is a fairly typical reaction.

Try to get some fresh air, or go out with friends, or whatever, clear your head a little bit from time to time. There’s only so much that can be done at once, and it’s good to try and get a break from dwelling on it too much. Changing your immediate scenery for a short span can aid in this.

Currently it’s a pretty dangerous place. They have been talking about it though. This is from March.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68650815

Generally the cheaper place, imo. One big thing to consider is your commute though. The quality of the place itself has some impact on your overall happiness for sure, but length of commute really has a lot more than you’d expect. If the cheaper place is a lot farther away, not only will that eat up time, but you’ll spend extra money on just commuting, which will eat into the amount it actually saves you.

I think that’s a little sensationalist. For instance, we do find the ruins of ancient cities in archeological digs and can link them to where we do have surviving records of their appearance in stories.

Your point is taken, though. I do, however, remain convinced that people massively overestimate how many people would die in some form of collapse though, unless it somewhat swiftly took down major portions of the Earth’s biosphere.

The people would remain though, and begin to rebuild unless the attacks were extremely broad and sustained for a long duration. No power or water stations in Gaza any more, but they are still hanging on in very dire conditions.

People are resilient. And adaptable. Just because we do things one way that works for us does not mean that one way is an absolute requirement.

Not that there wouldn’t be chaos, suffering and casualties. Just that it wouldn’t be the end.

I think people tend to underestimate human resilience. To use the bronze age collapses as an example, sure, it brought down existing polities, the names drawn on maps changed.

But most of the cities were still there. People still lived in them. Does changing the rulers while keeping a similar paradigm ultimately matter that much? I’m reminded of accounts of the experiences of some Afghanis during the American intervention there. First they paid their taxes to the Taliban, then the govt we set up, then the Taliban again. shrug.

While supply chains could be disrupted, any time that happens it opens the door for another profitable enterprise to rise in its place. People suffer, some die, but life goes on. If the knowledge of how to build those supply chains is still around, it will be done, and swiftly.

The US Constitution gives the Executive official responsibility for the enforcement of all federal law.