TheVat

I think the ethical principle also applies: if one demog is deemed unfit to vote, why not others? Are people who flunked, or skipped, social studies (aka civics or, in UK, broken down into citizenship, history, geography), really capable of selecting a candidate in an informed way? You see the problem here. Pretty soon it's just an elite voting, like Athens or Rome.

I strongly suspected as much. I admire putting that space to use. Like people who live in attics. The latter helps the housing crisis, the former helps the jam crisis. Looks like. Cinammon, perhaps. I normally wait an hour before breakfasting, it's a little after seven a.m. here, but that ship has sailed I can see. I think the indigenous tribal people in my area adopted bannock from early traders, and it became "frybread," which is now an important part of cultural identity. It's wonderful. Blueberries would fit in with the local native tradition.

Emily's offer to help Iran is rejected. Raw onion, shallot, Ayatollahs? No, I...no! War!

The similarity of the Polish doughnut to the American doughnut is remarkable! I like the way the sack has been ripped open, as if by some ravenous animal. This creates a dramatic tension with the superhuman restraint which the young gentleman is displaying. I just ate an odd snack: mashed a leftover potato, mixed in butter, green beans, a spoonful of crushed almonds and some dill pickle relish. It works.

Funny, I had just posted something gloomy and Forsythian on another site this morning, re suitcase bombs in midtown Manhattan. Yep, the US has set up at least a couple more generations of America loathing, and are no doubt mobilizing terror assets as we speak. The Turnip regime is beyond stupid. Though, as someone noted elsewhere, this could also be a chess tactic for the MAGAists to declare a national emergency and take over the Congressional elections in November to prevent "fraud" and so on. I didn't really know much about numbers stations, so you are again one of my main TIL posters. Thank you.

Entertainment media don't help with such myths. I've met people who think of autism as Christian Bale in The Big Short, who plays someone with mathematical skill in analyzing financial markets and has minimal people skills. Such characters in movies and television have become the cliche. They're all brilliant coders or mathies or pianists... or they're Temple Grandin. They tend not to show the folks who only eat white food, can't manage a phone conversation or make their own purchases, and engage in handflapping (stimming) when there are more than two people in the room. As @swansont notes, it is outliers who are singled out for attention. When I was a young fellow, the public figure most commonly mentioned in this context was the pianist Glenn Gould, who was on the spectrum (and also had synaesthesia, which helped him as a musician - he saw musical tones as colors).

A chilling example. And one that points to the Australian model, where children below a certain age are legally blocked from social media. Let educators and parents and RW mentors reach children before the Andrew Tates do. This actually suggests one respect in which the dotard bloc might have something to contribute, as they keenly recall the world pre-internet. Not all conservative forces are regressive, if they foster healthy distrust of bro influencers, AI slop, crypto-fascist subcultures, etc. Now I must recover from your link and do the sensorily deprived monkeys. Phew!

I'll see your Purcell and raise you one Nepomuk Hummel.

I do get that you're playing DA here for stimulation of discourse, and am enjoying some of the responses. Also learning a Zimmer frame is limeyspeak for a walker, so that's a good TIL for me. I thought to explore @CharonY proposal to disenfranchise penises, but there are simply too many bad jokes crowding out other thoughts, so have to move past that. (Though it could help to solve inflation?) (Dammit. Moving. On.) I do recognize that old voters can, even with kind intent, impose policy hardships on the younger, and I wish I saw a practical approach to this. If everyone in the USA around my age had been a treehugging flower child (like me, sort of), then our descendants would at least have us a voting bloc for renewable energy, eco cleanups, social justice, peaceful geopolitics, no or few nukes, organic farming, etc. I.e. the stuff they need more than we do. But that didn't happen, and people seem to have lost some grip on the Social Contract, in which elders are supposed to be humble and caring servants of future generations. I realize this walks me right into a social malaise rant, where I chastise my peers for selling out to late stage capitalism and having a poverty of spirit. A useless tack, since the topic is how to make better voters. Back later.

Well, yeah, there has to be some leeway to talk about whatever we're watching on YT recently, for sure. Not sure where the line is there. Stringy posts about a podcast on the war with Iran - does that take over this thread or do we form a separate thread on that? Help me, oh moderators....😀

TBH, I may not be as well versed in the stats as I'd like, but I was trying to address deeper characteristics here: Am I saying that being younger doesn't correlate with fresh ideas or openness or less rigid partisanship? Not at all. But your environment can really influence your priorities and how you define "fresh." Rural people often feel the federal government is distant, doesn't care about them, doesn't understand their apprehension about regulations or social change imposed from far away, etc. So even moderately bright people, of any age, will get sucked into the group belief that a populist candidate who's a flawed vessel (i.e. Turnip) at least sees and hears them and doesn't bring an entourage of urban elites who dismiss them as "flyover country." One reason Harris chose Tim Walz as her VP was precisely because of that rural thihg: she hoped that his being rooted in, and understanding of, flyover country would help her ticket. And she wasn't wrong, but it just wasn't enough that year for a variety of complex reasons.

My point was that, had under-50 voters voted as they did in 2020, then Harris would have won. The over-50 vote didn't change much, so those in that demographic who saw through Trump still did so. Or to put it another way, younger voters greater facility for switching sides isn't always an indication of mental sharpness or openness to change: those who changed in fact were won over by an appeal to very old-school bigotries and fears. And again, it's demographics at work: rural people tend to vote for Republicans regardless of age. And rural states have older populations. So you simply have more old folks in rural areas, because younger people have tended (until quite recently) to leave for urban areas to seek careers and further education. So when the electoral college system favors smaller population rural states, this favors Republicans. Rural people favor Trump because of rural priorities and traditions, not because they're old.

Afterthought: The fact that 54% of voters over 50 went for Turnip in 2024, has more to do with the demographics of older Americans than a particular impairment of mind. And it's also worth noting that the 46% of older voters who voted Harris were key in states which did go for Harris. The primary increase in votes for Trump came from voters UNDER 50, not over.

Voting age ranges sounds like one of those political hot potatoes that people would fight over for a long time. While I can understand the theoretical basis, disenfranchisement has not had a happy history. I also note the way it strongly punishes wise, savvy and alert octogenarians for the mental sclerosis of their peers. We've fought so long and hard to get the vote for every adult, I feel any attempts to start clawing back voting rights could go to some really bad places. Especially if it removes people from the voter rolls who have spent their lives developing better ability to judge character - old folks may lose their mental math skills and knowing where they left their keys or remembering names, but that doesn't mean they will also lose powers of judgment - and often they gain in such wisdom.

Can we take political digressions over to the politics forums, please? Good grief, we need spaces where we don't have to focus on that sickening, sordid and depressing business for a few precious moments.

Two different Boleros...

Tommie Emmanuel must never ever switch to decaf.

Dear "Mr President," Just trying to keep track of your principled and unwavering position on Iran: 2012: “Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin — watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.” 2013: “Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly — not skilled!” 2016: “We’re going to stop the reckless and costly policy of regime change.” 2024: “I’m not going to start wars. I’m going to stop wars.” 2026: "...the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests." Wait...what?

Emily has written a will, which expresses her wish for cremation. Sniff o' crematoria fair, o tamer coffins.

Won't I, mad dog, laminate pet animal? Goddamit now!

The hypothetical nuclear attack that escalated the Pentagon’s showdown with AnthropicStart-up Anthropic and the U.S. military are careening toward a clash over government use of artificial intelligence — and whether it should be allowed to kill..... https://wapo.st/3OCZdqY (Free link) ...But that still leaves room for AI to influence decisions on targets and speed of response. In a recent nuclear war game at King’s College London, many leading language models including versions of ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s Gemini all quickly favored launching warheads. That could influence a human’s decision to fire, said Paul Dean, vice president of the global nuclear program at the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative. “It’s not simply ensuring that there’s a human being in the decision-making loop,” Dean said. “The question is, to what extent will AI impact that human decision-making?”

Just this morning, I had an AI search try to "please" me by misquoting HL Mencken (famous American journalist). The AI had somehow linked all the times that our president has been called a moron and a narcissist, and so the Mencken letter in which he says someday America will elect a complete moron (written in 1920, his remarks primarily aimed at Warren Harding who was then running for president) is misquoted as "narcissistic moron." So the AI invents a quote which sounds even more prescient than it already was. (The whole letter is worth reading, and seems very relevant to now, but that's OT for this thread)

Yes I remember younger days when cycling was my primary transport, as well as recreation. It takes a lot of fuel. I would eat like a farmhand and stay rail-thin; I remember getting asked things like "Do you have a hollow leg?" Thanks. Will investigate further. The also S American quinoa has become popular here, too. This is interesting, re pão de queijo. With the discovery of mines near Ouro Preto in around 1700, some 20% of the Brazilian population at that time, mainly slaves, occupied a vast territory in southeast Brazil. Since wheat was not available, local cooks created a kind of bread from starch derived from the cassava tubers shown to them by Tupiniquins indigenous groups. In the late 19th century, grated hard cheese was added.[3]

After reading recently that AIs, when engaged in practice war scenarios, choose a full thermonuclear attack 95% of the the time, I was not thrilled about the DoD pressuring Anthropic to remove all restrictions from its AI capabilities in their contract... AP NewsAnthropic CEO says AI company 'cannot in good conscience...Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the artificial intelligence company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s demands to allow wider use of its technology.

If that's your idea of a snack then your meals must be wondrous, epic events! 😄 You and my son. I am more likely to seek a structural carb to spread on. My moistener, to prevent mouth-sticking, is slices of cucumber atop the PB. That's not weird, right? Those are wonderful, but when I eat one it resides in my stomach for about three weeks. I wonder if adding some psyllium husk would be a defilement? Probably. Regarding cassava, chips made from cassava are popular here - there's a large Indigenous community here and gluten intolerance is very common in that group, so stores have a lot of GF options. Many incorporate cassava.