Venting thread

[Man in Space]

I do not which health problems you are referring to and am not sure how that would be related to voting. In any case, I encourage everyone to vote unless they would vote for the far right.

Mental health is health, full stop. The day I got out of politics on Twitter was one of the best days of my life. My judgment is compromised by my issues and I cannot support either party.

[MacAnDàil]

I do not which health problems you are referring to and am not sure how that would be related to voting. In any case, I encourage everyone to vote unless they would vote for the far right.

Mental health is health, full stop. The day I got out of politics on Twitter was one of the best days of my life. My judgment is compromised by my issues and I cannot support either party.

Sure, mental health is an aspect of health but the problem with politics on Twitter is Twitter, not politics.

[MacAnDàil]

PS healthcare, among many other issues, depends on who gets elected.

[hwhatting]

I agree with Mac here - voting gives you some small chance to influence what's going on. I can understand getting out of political discussions - too often it's either preaching to the deaf or the opposite, preaching to the choir, and in both cases achieves nothing, so if it damages your mental health, not engaging is a wise decision. But even if you don't really like any of the options on the ballot, I'd say it's worth getting off one's couch and trundling to the polling station every couple of years to choose the least-smelling pile of poop.

[Man in Space]

Like I said before—I do not trust my judgment to be correct. I’ve gotten it horribly wrong before. The best thing I can do for myself and the country is to bow out.

[foxcatdog]

I have been through a lot of problems with my health as of lately which has been interfering with my sleep just constant vomiting followed by restless breathing. Now that i have meds to control the vomiting i am experiencing restless breathing without the vomiting.

[Man in Space]

I hope you find some relief soon.

[malloc]

Stressing over the midterm elections has cost me several days of sleep and now I feel really ill. Even if the vote was not the expected blowout for the GOP as expected, they still control the house and probably the senate. That means they will prevent any new positive legislation from passing for the next few years, impeach Biden, and can simply refuse to certify a Democratic election victory in 2024.

[Travis B.]

Stressing over the midterm elections has cost me several days of sleep and now I feel really ill. Even if the vote was not the expected blowout for the GOP as expected, they still control the house and probably the senate. That means they will prevent any new positive legislation from passing for the next few years, impeach Biden, and can simply refuse to certify a Democratic election victory in 2024.

What it does show, though, is that being anointed by Trump does not guarantee election, as very many of the candidates so anointed were not elected or, as of the very moment, are trailing. What I do hope is that Trump is the Republican nominee for 2024, because I think he has less chance of being elected than DeSantis were DeSantis the Republcian nominee.

[malloc]

But if the GOP controls one or both houses, they can (and presumably will) simply refuse to certify the 2024 election results. That would force a contingent election where each state representative delegation casts one vote for the president. Since the GOP will control the house of representatives, they will win that election handily.

[Linguoboy]

That means they will prevent any new positive legislation from passing for the next few years, impeach Biden, and can simply refuse to certify a Democratic election victory in 2024.

can ≠ will. I don't see either of the latter two scenarios as at all likely. Hardcore election-deniers generally did badly in the midterms outside of deep-red territory; some lost even while other Republicans in the same states won by fat margins. And Biden still has plenty of support from moderate GOP politicians, some of whom have worked with him for years. I just don't see the firebrands getting the votes to impeach him, especially given how slim their margins will be.

[alynnidalar]

For one rather pleasant example, local to me: Michigan is a deeply purple state, evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Our current governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has been massively criticized by the right for the past four years, both in and out of Michigan, to the degree that there was literally an assassination plot against her and it's not uncommon in strongly red areas to see signs saying pretty horrifying things about her. Her opponent was Tudor Dixon, a 2020 election denier who Trump personally campaigned for, running on a campaign straight out of Trump's playbook, focusing on all the hot button issues of abortion and trans rights and the like.

Despite all that, Tudor Dixon lost by over 10 points.

Yeah, I don't think hardcore election denial is working very well as a campaign strategy here. (yeah yeah Whitmer was an incumbent, incumbents always win--but not always by THAT much. It wasn't remotely close.)

(hilariously, to me, Michigan Republicans also threw away a sure thing with Peter Meijer's House seat--a moderate Republican who committed the sin of not bending the knee to Trump. He was the incumbent and won by 6 points against Democrat Hillary Scholten two years ago. They kicked him out in the primary in favor of a big Trump supporter, who promptly lost by 13 points to Scholten. If they'd had the sense to stick with Meijer, he almost certainly would've won, and pulled in centrist voters to boot. But now they get a Democrat! Nice going.)

[Man in Space]

UPS has lost my future business. I’ve been burned by them twice now. First I sent a musical instrument that got destroyed and now they lost a package and are telling me I have no recourse to file a claim on it.

[MacAnDàil]

Stressing over the midterm elections has cost me several days of sleep and now I feel really ill. Even if the vote was not the expected blowout for the GOP as expected, they still control the house and probably the senate. That means they will prevent any new positive legislation from passing for the next few years, impeach Biden, and can simply refuse to certify a Democratic election victory in 2024.

While I understand the stress, the results have not been all counted yet even in the House so it's not even sure whether the Democrats will lose anything. We maybe won't know who controls the Senate until December due to the Georgia run-off.

Stressing over the midterm elections has cost me several days of sleep and now I feel really ill. Even if the vote was not the expected blowout for the GOP as expected, they still control the house and probably the senate. That means they will prevent any new positive legislation from passing for the next few years, impeach Biden, and can simply refuse to certify a Democratic election victory in 2024.

What it does show, though, is that being anointed by Trump does not guarantee election, as very many of the candidates so anointed were not elected or, as of the very moment, are trailing. What I do hope is that Trump is the Republican nominee for 2024, because I think he has less chance of being elected than DeSantis were DeSantis the Republcian nominee.

I'm not convinced. To the contrary, the midterm's vindication of De Santis and blowback for Trump is probably good news for the future of the Republican Party and America. Indeed, one major problem is that Trump is into election-denying. At least when Bush and Reagan won, there would be other Democrats after them. Also crucial is the climate crisis which DeSantis acknowledges and does something about it, unlike Trump. Then there's the tactical aspect that a De Santis candidacy would entail a vindicative Trump attacking him because Trump's a sore loser who wants loyalty to himself but would probably never display it to another.

[Linguoboy]

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here, MacAnDàil. You're pretty much agreeing with Travis on every point he raised but your response is couched as a disagreement.

[doctor shark]

Fun fact: Under current law, "accepting" the election has nothing to do with the newly elected House of Representatives or Senate: it would be the House and Senate elected in 2024 and seated in 2025 that would officially count the results.

Minor Vent: experiments with student didn't go as I planned today (the devices failed), which is really unfortunate.

[Travis B.]

I'm not convinced. To the contrary, the midterm's vindication of De Santis and blowback for Trump is probably good news for the future of the Republican Party and America. Indeed, one major problem is that Trump is into election-denying. At least when Bush and Reagan won, there would be other Democrats after them. Also crucial is the climate crisis which DeSantis acknowledges and does something about it, unlike Trump. Then there's the tactical aspect that a De Santis candidacy would entail a vindicative Trump attacking him because Trump's a sore loser who wants loyalty to himself but would probably never display it to another.

My concern is that if DeSantis were the Republican nominee, he would win, whereas I think that at this point if Trump were the Republican nominee, he would lose. Remember, DeSantis is very much right-wing - but he is smarter and more competent than Trump and less infatuated with his own ego.

[hwhatting]

Minor Vent: experiments with student didn't go as I planned today (the devices failed), which is really unfortunate.

At least no explosions (hopefully).

[doctor shark]

Minor Vent: experiments with student didn't go as I planned today (the devices failed), which is really unfortunate.

At least no explosions (hopefully). :-)

But explosions are fun! :P
Anyways, no explosions here: what happened was some microfluidic devices we made sprang leaks, but we found the leaks before starting the experiment (which meant no material wasted!). We can try again, but on Monday at the earliest: at least I had some other things to do today, so it wasn't a total loss on that front.

[bradrn]

Minor Vent: experiments with student didn't go as I planned today (the devices failed), which is really unfortunate.

At least no explosions (hopefully).

But explosions are fun!
Anyways, no explosions here: what happened was some microfluidic devices we made sprang leaks, but we found the leaks before starting the experiment (which meant no material wasted!). We can try again, but on Monday at the earliest: at least I had some other things to do today, so it wasn't a total loss on that front.

Sorry to hear that! It’s always painful when something doesn’t work. On my side, the pump for a cryostat wasn’t working, which meant I couldn’t take low-temperature fluorescence measurements… and then when it was fixed, I was ill. Maybe I’ll get an opportunity to do the measurements next week.