Damn, must be nice to live in a country where powerful people face consequences for their actions.

Scientists: One desperate plan we are considering to combat climate change is a series of gigantic mirrors to deflect sunlight away from the planet.

These assholes: OK, but what if, like, the opposite of that?

Oh yeah, for sure. Everything DOGE did was a farce, and it almost certainly lost more money than it saved. Even en if it didn’t, they blew any savings up on their first budget legislation. I just find it particularly hypocritical to cut $40 billion in global aid because, “we don’t have the money,” then turn around and spend $40 billion on global aid to a single country

$40 billion was the entire annual budget of USAID. No matter what you think of them, they did provided essential aid to dozens of nations, and DOGE destroyed them under the pretense of lowering the deficit. Now we’re spending that much money just to prop up one countries economy.

(Yes, I know they USAID is a soft-power tool of American imperialism, and is rumored to have been used as cover for CIA operations, but they also did a shit-load of global AIDs prevention work, and I’d rather have spent the $40 billion on that than bailing out a libertarian freak so Rob Citrone can get rich.)

Calling it now; 3 middle-schoolers are gonna beat the shit out of him and steal the medal, and that’s how the bill of rights will be repealed.

Do you mean one and two? Two and three are clearly different, as three has no pattern other than disenfranchisement. I agree that one and two are both valid ways to divide the squares visually, but the text is stating that one is, “perfect,” and two is, “compact but unfair,” implying that the goal should be getting each political group some representation. That is still allowing politicians to pick their constituents, and even if it’s more fair than three, it still built to serve the candidates, not the voters. Compact (i.e. a system that divides districts entirely by geography and population, without consideration towards demographics or political alignment) should be the actual desired outcome.

I don’t use A.I. because I’ve had nothing but negative interactions with A.I. Customer service bots that fail to give adequate responses, unhelpful and incorrect search result summaries, and, “art,” that looks like shit hasn’t made me want to sign up for ChatGPT or Gemini. For most people, this isn’t a moral stance, it’s just that the product isn’t worth paying for. Stop framing people that don’t use A.I. as luddites with an ax to grind just because tech bros spent billions on a product that isn’t good yet.

Everyone’s been doing either one or three for decades, the fascists are just more effective at it. What’s changed is that they’re doing it in a non-census year with the explicit goal of changing the outcome of the 2026 midterms. The only states with have unbiased districts are the places where people have passed ballot measures against partisan districting, but Democrats have been just as happy as Republicans to pull this shit.

Number 2 is the actual ideal, not number 1. Number 1 represents, “good,” gerrymandering that politicians argue for, but it really only serves them. They get to keep highly partisan electorate that will reelect them no matter what, which means they can be less responsive to the will of their voters. They only have to worry about primary challengers, which aren’t very common, and can mostly ignore their electorate without issue.

It’s also important to note that this diagram is an oversimplification that can’t express the nuances of an actual electorate. While a red and blue binary might be helpful for this example, a plurality of voters identify as independents, and while most of them have preferences towards the right or left, they are movable. The point is that actual voters are more nuanced and less static than this representation.

Number 2 is how distracting would work in an ideal world; it doesn’t take into account political alignment at all, but instead just groups people together by proximity. A red victory is unlikely, but still possible if the blue candidate doesn’t deliver for his constituents and winds up with low voter turnout. It also steers politicians away from partisan extremism, as they may need to appeal to a non-partisan plurality. That being said, when literal fascists are attempting number 3, we’ll have to respond in kind if we want any chance of maintaining our democracy, but in the long term, the solution is no gerrymandering, not, “perfect representation,” gerrymandering.

And God bless the French, they will burn Paris to the fucking ground for this. Meanwhile, in the U.S., congress just decimated what little public healthcare we have, and guys with Gadsden flag profile pics and handles like, “1776patriot,” actively cheered them on.

Shit, that’s a good one.

Well, I wasn’t even thinking about that, but now I’ve got a whole new thing to be self-conscious about.

People are right in saying it’s context and consent, and it’s not completely gendered. Men’s swimsuits are basically just boxer shorts. Normally I’m not self-conscious about that, but a few months ago I signed up for a toddler swimming class with my son where I wound up being the only Dad, and suddenly I felt a bit exposed. I think the normalcy of walking around in nothing but a small pair of shorts kinda evaporated once I was the only man in the room.

Not sure, though, how this ploy would work out for our fine fellows in South America and Canada, the ones currently belabored with being the closest neighbours…

Fuck Mexico, I guess.

Relatable.

There’s a Lovecraft story about this exact thing. It doesn’t end well.

Same.

To he fair to Brooks (which I hate to do, since he is a shithead), he was very aware of the dangers of Trump and endorsed Hillary, Biden, and Kamala in the last three elections. He has even said that he was wrong about Bernie, and now acknowledges that his kind of economic populism is the only thing that could have stopped Trump’s fascist populism. That being said, he’s spent the last three decades promoting the kind of Regan-style neoliberalism and Bush-style imperialism that got us into this mess, so fuck him.

Most of the in-costume stuff is, and the Black Ranger doesn’t break dance in that. But there’s usually an out of costume fight with Putties before that.

I think it was probably an even bigger mistake to have the Black Ranger fight with break dancing Kung-Fu moves, but what do I know.