Zompist Bboard Again

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Fri Nov 11, 2022 11:48 am 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.

My points are that 1° DeSantis would probably be less awful than Trump and 2° Trump would probably try to sabotage a DeSantis candidacy, possibly making him less likely to win than if he hadn't won the candidacy against Trump.

Anyway, this discussion could be shunted into the US Election thread.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Nov 11, 2022 12:06 pm

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Fri Nov 11, 2022 7:33 am 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.

A lot of people who identify as "leftists" these days are willing to sell out workers at the drop of a hat for causes like the environment. Another factor that makes it difficult for the left to build up popular support.

This may be upsetting or triggering to some people so I've hidden it in a "more" block.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:19 pmA lot of people who identify as "leftists" these days are willing to sell out workers at the drop of a hat for causes like the environment. Another factor that makes it difficult for the left to build up popular support.

What do you mean by that? Apart from anything else, we need to take care of the environment simply to ensure our own survival. Filling the air and water with hazardous waste or exhausting arable land will everyone or radically reduce our quality of life at the very least. The left needs to emphasize how protecting the environment benefits us in the long run rather than appealing to the gut instincts of fossil fuel workers for short-term support. One might as well argue that the left would have more success if they appealed to the ethnic and sectarian prejudices of the average worker rather than supporting racial equality and secularism.

malloc wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 9:20 pm

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:19 pmA lot of people who identify as "leftists" these days are willing to sell out workers at the drop of a hat for causes like the environment. Another factor that makes it difficult for the left to build up popular support.

What do you mean by that? Apart from anything else, we need to take care of the environment simply to ensure our own survival. Filling the air and water with hazardous waste or exhausting arable land will everyone or radically reduce our quality of life at the very least. The left needs to emphasize how protecting the environment benefits us in the long run rather than appealing to the gut instincts of fossil fuel workers for short-term support.

MacAnDàil says it's a good idea to support a fascist like DeSantis just because he's been forced to take a soft stance on climate change. Even if you don't care about workers, see his speeches about "woke" ideology.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:57 pm This may be upsetting or triggering to some people so I've hidden it in a "more" block.

More: show

I've been informed that when I was in college, I was sexually assaulted.

Aw man. Sorry to hear that.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 9:27 pm MacAnDàil says it's a good idea to support a fascist like DeSantis just because he's been forced to take a soft stance on climate change. Even if you don't care about workers, see his speeches about "woke" ideology.

I have trouble locating DeSantis on the political spectrum... Is he more or less aligned with Trump, or more like the late McCain (that is, undoubtedly a Republican but an adult nonetheless?)

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 2:29 am I have trouble locating DeSantis on the political spectrum... Is he more or less aligned with Trump, or more like the late McCain (that is, undoubtedly a Republican but an adult nonetheless?)

DeSantis is pretty far right, like almost all of the GOP. He's most known recently for going all-in on the cutlture wars, enacting laws to prevent schools from talking about racism or sexual orientation and banning trans girls from school sports. He's restricted abortion though he didn't implement a total ban. He's restricted voting rights.

He also just won re-election with 59% of the vote-- Florida was the one bright spot for the GOP during last week's election, and that number compares with Trump's 51% in 2020. Naturally DeSantis is thinking of challenging Trump in 2024, and he can point to a recent poll that put him ahead of Trump among Republicans.

I think they're both nasty and dangerous, but DeSantis doesn't seem to be a narcissistic insane idiot, so there's that.

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 4:57 am I think they're both nasty and dangerous, but DeSantis doesn't seem to be a narcissistic insane idiot, so there's that.

So still a fascist but kind of a step up anyway. Ah, politics... Thanks for the answer!

I hope they may tear the party apart from within.

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 9:21 am I hope they may tear the party apart from within.

As do I. The more the Republicans fight amongst themselves the better.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 9:27 pm

malloc wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 9:20 pm

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:19 pmA lot of people who identify as "leftists" these days are willing to sell out workers at the drop of a hat for causes like the environment. Another factor that makes it difficult for the left to build up popular support.

What do you mean by that? Apart from anything else, we need to take care of the environment simply to ensure our own survival. Filling the air and water with hazardous waste or exhausting arable land will everyone or radically reduce our quality of life at the very least. The left needs to emphasize how protecting the environment benefits us in the long run rather than appealing to the gut instincts of fossil fuel workers for short-term support.

MacAnDàil says it's a good idea to support a fascist like DeSantis just because he's been forced to take a soft stance on climate change. Even if you don't care about workers, see his speeches about "woke" ideology.

OK so I misunderstood you in the other thread. Here it's the reverse.

I never said it's a good idea to support DeSantis. I said that he was less awful than Trump. I went back to my last post on the subject and checked it up. Those were my exact words. 'Less awful'. Not 'good'. 'Less awful'. Sure, saying 'less awful than Trump' is not saying much. But let's clarify things because it seems it is not clear: because I agree more with the Democrats than the Republicans on basically every issue they disagree on and third parties have so little space in the American political field, I would vote Democrat if I had American citizenship.

But that doesn't stop me from having preferences among the other side, in the same way as Zompist:

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 4:57 amI think they're both nasty and dangerous, but DeSantis doesn't seem to be a narcissistic insane idiot, so there's that.

I think we should be wary of having the most awful candidate on the other side in the hope that it would be obvious that they lose. After all, many thought the 2016 US election would be a shoe-in for Hillary Clinton. We all saw how it wasn't because Trump backwards-won. I think the best opportunity for a shoe-in does not come from a most awful opposition candidate but from a torn party:

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 9:21 amI hope they may tear the party apart from within.

And the way that most likely could happen, in my opinion, is if DeSantis win's the GOP candidacy and Trump claims fraud, leading his strongest supporters to either abstain or vote a third party. Incidentally, if Trump loses the Republican primary to DeSantis, could he still run for president with another party?

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 8:11 am So still a fascist but kind of a step up anyway. Ah, politics... Thanks for the answer!

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 10:14 am OK so I misunderstood you in the other thread. Here it's the reverse.

I never said it's a good idea to support DeSantis. I said that he was less awful than Trump. I went back to my last post on the subject and checked it up. Those were my exact words. 'Less awful'. Not 'good'. 'Less awful'. Sure, saying 'less awful than Trump' is not saying much. But let's clarify things because it seems it is not clear: because I agree more with the Democrats than the Republicans on basically every issue they disagree on and third parties have so little space in the American political field, I would vote Democrat if I had American citizenship.

You guys seriously prefer The Riddler as president over The Joker?

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 1:48 pm

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 8:11 am So still a fascist but kind of a step up anyway. Ah, politics... Thanks for the answer!

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 10:14 am OK so I misunderstood you in the other thread. Here it's the reverse.

I never said it's a good idea to support DeSantis. I said that he was less awful than Trump. I went back to my last post on the subject and checked it up. Those were my exact words. 'Less awful'. Not 'good'. 'Less awful'. Sure, saying 'less awful than Trump' is not saying much. But let's clarify things because it seems it is not clear: because I agree more with the Democrats than the Republicans on basically every issue they disagree on and third parties have so little space in the American political field, I would vote Democrat if I had American citizenship.

You guys seriously prefer The Riddler as president over The Joker?

Just because one thinks that DeSantis is not quite as bad as Trump does not mean that one supports DeSantis at all. Personally, I think they are both awful and dangerous - but to me Trump is an idiotic narcissist while DeSantis is smart and competent, and as such I think DeSantis has a better chance of getting elected if he were to be the nominee in 2024 rather than Trump were (as we saw how Trump's chosen candidates for the most part got a massive shellacking this past week), and this is why I am afraid of DeSantis.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 1:48 pm You guys seriously prefer The Riddler as president over The Joker?

Nope. I don't have a say anyway! I'm just trying to ascertain exactly how insane, and in what way, the next American president's going to be.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 2:29 pm

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 1:48 pm You guys seriously prefer The Riddler as president over The Joker?

Nope. I don't have a say anyway! I'm just trying to ascertain exactly how insane, and in what way, the next American president's going to be.

Hey, y'all, I posted a prompt to the US politics thread in order to shift this conversation there and away from a thread where it's basically off-topic.

Went to a Christmas market in Germany with my lab group, but, right off the bat, a coworker's bag got stolen (which contained his passport, among other things), so got to sit at a police station for an hour to help write the report with him (they allowed one person in with him; I went in).

While the rest of the trip was good, to top off my interactions with police, they went through the train I was on back from Düsseldorf to the Netherlands, and, of all the people on the train, they do an ID check on me. Not fun.

I learned yesterday that Fred Brooks had died on November 17th of this year. I remember reading the book for which he is best known, The Mythical Man-Month, as a teenager, and it still sticks with me even though it's been ages since I have opened its pages and it is as relevant to today as it was to when it was written. (I wonder where my copy went - it may have been lost in a move.)

I cannot wait for winter break. I am so very tired of having to navigate around self-centred adult-sized children with little or no situational awareness. Every day I get a bit closer to just bodychecking someone on the sidewalk.

I have been working with zeptoforth primarily on the RP2040 because the Raspberry Pi Pico is essentially expendable whereas my other boards are not, and I just made a change to zeptoforth that turns out to change a runtime bug in inheritance (yes, zeptoforth is a Forth with an object-orientation layer) into a compile-time bug on one of my lesser-used platforms, the STM32L476 DISCOVERY board. This code would have never worked in the first place, but because it was previously a runtime bug it was not caught at compile-time, and because I did not exercise the offending code (except by compiling it), I had not found it until now. So I am rather frustrated by this whole thing.

I hate it when platforms implement "upgrades" without ways to revert or get rid of them. For example, the e-mail client I use for work (Outlook) deployed this horrendous top bar that's obstructive and unnecessary, and I can't find a way to get rid of it! (And this came after them implementing a side bar that doesn't want to go away and that's also similarly useless.) They claim it's to make "the application version and the web version look similar to each other", but maybe some of us who use the web app version don't want the extra intrusiveness and unnecessary tools...

Similarly, the work computer updated my one reference manager from a pretty good one (Mendeley Desktop) to a newer version (Mendeley Reference Manager) that's close to unusable, especially compared to the good features Desktop had!