Pagliacci

I think too often we get caught up on "the game" and try to frame decisions solely in that context.

The reality is that sometimes in politics people hold genuine beliefs, and when it comes to the GOP I think a non-insignificant caucus of them genuinely opposes abortion for various personal reasons.

Of course, it's just his "get out of jail free" card to save face publicly when he starts rejecting requests.

He qualified it by specifying it's if you were "unfairly" facing repercussions, which of course means he can deny or accept anyone he wants for any reason that he wants and still claim he's upholding his pledge.

There's a significant difference between the people rising against their government and the people rising against some of the government on behalf of the rest of the government.

That's what happened on Jan 6th. Those people were launching an assault to support their preferred representatives, they were very much pro-government. Nothing libertarian about it.

I think their words are accurate, it's just that their allegiance isn't to the United States of America.

I don't think he knows how SCOTUS works...

I don't think so, his "X" idea has been around for a long time, he really thinks it's his next big idea. I'm sure people have raised all of these concerns with him, but I doubt he's listening. Tesla, SpaceX, etc. are ideas that he bought, this one is his baby. I don't think he's open to ideas or criticisms on it.

He bought the company to bootstrap his idea of his "X" app which he envisions becoming something like WeChat for the world outside of China.

I think it's a terrible idea that's a solution in search of s problem. WeChat works in China because the government literally enforces it's usage. The rest of the world isn't interested in a one-stop-shop for anything and everything.

It's the problem of trying to be everything for everyone. You end up with mediocre or bad solutions for many problems instead of great solutions for a couple of problems. It works when there's no competition, see WeChat, but when there is competition that competition is going to beat you at their game because you're too busy playing a dozen others.

Haven't used my desktop in ages, has been completely replaced by my personal and work laptops.

It's so incredibly frustrating. One of the main reasons Trump rose to popularity was his campaigning against D.C. ineptitude and corruption. Drain the swamp and all of that. And now we have the perfect encapsulation of why those issues exist. He is the ineptitude and corruption. But the people who are supposedly railing against that are embracing him without wavering. Now they're about to nominate someone who had a laundry list of indictments.

If you can't hold yourselves accountable how could you ever expect to hold others accountable? It doesn't work like that. The GOP is broken, but perhaps more concerning are the supposed independents who for one reason or another just don't seem to care.

I've had Pixels since the first one, this is news to me.

Edit: Just went looking for it, not installed. It's in the play store but not sure how it could be unavoidable when it's not pre-installed.

He'd probably have to put all of his eggs in the reincarnation basket and start doing some good deeds.

Or bad deeds, depending on your opinion of actors.