I’ve seen this year push people I’ve long known to unexpected positions.
I have relatives who went 70 years without a gun, and this year they have bought 6, as they think the circumstances may demand it…
I have a coworker who I’ve known for years, never so much as said a profanity and very mild mannered, openly talking about how it’s probably time for violent insurrection…
Going by inflation adjusted market cap values, it certainly looks like the financial facet of the AI companies alone are bigger than both those events… This is going to be beyond messy…
The issue is that as dumb as it is, SATA ssds are still a big part of the consumer market.
Even though nvme isn’t appreciably more expensive to make, it’s still used as a “premium” product., and SATA is a product tier to capture budget market whole protecting their more premium market.
This move is a clear symptom of the real issue. Manufacturers shifting as much capacity as possible towards big datacenter buildouts at the expense of starving every other market for these products. Trillions of dollars that will pay whatever it takes competing with a more rational market
One things was clearly rooted in evidence, the reduced participation on voting.
I feel like the rest might have been a bit more Shakey ground.
In 2020, the working poor were largely not going into jobs and also had easiest access to voting. They were both easiest to vote and everyone was pissed that the pandemic sucked, so they were able to and motivated to vote.
Nah, this is about the people lacking the opportunity and/or motivation to bother to vote, more like apathetic rather than the much more active tankie. They may be loud here, but they are relatively rare.
Well keep in mind those “losers” might have a job that conflicts with their polling hours and have restrictive absentee ballots. It’s much easier for, say, retirees to vote than working poor.
Problem is they know millions of votes are happening, and so how much does their vote really matter? Taking the time out of their life to stand in a long line to cast a single vote among millions… Doesn’t seem like it matters and other people will take care of it for them.
When they have something to bite for, they want to be a part of something. If it’s just about making sure the worst stays out, it’s a poorly motivated chore.
I think the PJ25b people are pragmatic enough to get those good optics in the short term.
If Trump actually gets adamant they can just make him a trophy and he’ll be happy.
So our utility came out and said they have to raise residential rates by a rather large amount, largely because so many data centers are demanding so much power they need to upgrade, so residential rates have to fund that…
To find the cloud in the silver lining, I can easily see how this doesn’t happen.
Currently we are outraged at ICE and military in our streets inflicting harm on innocents, nervous about getting in a war no one would have even thought of, suffering from tariffs increasing prices and ACA premiums going way up.
The thing about every single one of those is that Republicans caused them and Republicans can mostly fix them. Simply by undoing the things they caused in the first place makes folks feel like things are getting fixed, and many will forget why they were broken and just be focused on how they got better during the election year.
So I expect immigration enforcement to tone down (already saw a story to that effect), for them to manage a last minute ACA subsidy extension with much drama, pulling back a lot of tariffs, and chilling out on Venezuela for 2026. Going extra by cutting some “tariff fund” checks and some HSA deposits, to make sure the people get some money, even if it is smaller than the money lost, people fall for “windfalls”. Maybe throw some folks under the bus like RFK Jr and Hegseth, to drain the swamp so to speak.
No, I do my own research, thank you very much
How else will another physicist discover gravity?
Indeed, it’s less about actually ousting these people. It is about being seen as trying to do so.
Their goal was not to destroy the US per se, it was to just get them out of the region. Destroying might have been nice, but only in a way that destroyed their power.
So an unleashed unhinged US was not something they wanted. Sure we might not have the freedom, but they never cared one way or another about that.
And also 100% why we won’t ever have that
“but at least they aren’t Democrats”
A refrain I’ve heard so often from them after bemoaning some inhumanly bad thing they think a Republican has done.
Well the explanation would work for one election, 2024.
In 2016, he was a terrible choice on so many fronts, but no especially strong reason to expect he would dramatically shift inflation or pay. And on those specific metrics, his first term was mostly typical, except pandemic, which people can believe to be an utterly freak event beyond anyone’s control if they still wanted to vote for Trump.
The global economic shock continued and was exasperated by war. Biden had little to do with it, but it was on his watch, so he gets saddled with blame, so to the extent a voter just thinks about their personal economic situation, they vote for “not the current leadership”.
So this term has been marked by utterly predictable economic problems that everyone told them would happen, but they didn’t have first hand experience to trust that, and Trump’s rhetoric resonated with the “I know smart people say it doesn’t work, but ‘common sense’ tells me get rid of immigrants and tariff all imports and things will be great, making American jobs and getting rid of foreigners taking the jobs”.
So now they get to see first hand why those common sense thoughts don’t actually work.
Still. I predict next year they’ll roll back tariffs to try to create a bit of deflation and also cut checks to everyone to make them feel like winners in the moment as they decide midterms.
Yes, the government that was accused of abducting a family is in the right, because that same government says they are treating that family well, and no, no one is allowed to independently verify that, but obviously you have every reason to take our word for it
Whatever the situation is in Venezula, it’s not going to be a good thing for America to get entangled.
Hussein was a pretty bad dude, but our intervention in Iraq ultimately was bad for America and didn’t exactly make things in Iraq better.
I’m not surprised that Weird Al would have clarity/social/political awareness. I presume that he generally is that way, but generally sees his role to be about joy and fun, letting others take care of the more serious stuff that needs to get done and remaining a trusted ‘brand’ for people to just have some fun and joy regardless.
So yeah, I think it’s pretty weird for Weird Al to be doing this performance. It suggests that things are so bad Al thinks it’s warranted to put aside his general role because it’s just that important.