doctordevice

I quite agree with what you're talking about with local elections.

But you've misinterpreted what I'm mad about. I'm not mad that they don't support progressives. I'm mad that the Democratic Party (the DNC, not your local party chairs) spends more time and effort demonizing and sidelining progressives than learning to work with us. That has effects all the way down to local primary elections where voters who have been fed anti-progressive propaganda are voting against progressive candidates.

What I'm mad about is not the lack of support, I'm mad about the absolutely ridiculous hypocrisy of a party clearly working against progressives at every turn and then blaming us when they don't get their way.

As a side note, I'm also mad that the progressive movement has a lot of real shitty candidates in local elections. Many of them are clearly just absolute weirdos who shouldn't be anywhere near an elected office. But a small movement isn't going to have the reach everywhere. My House rep is progressive, and I get to watch as the person that represents me gets hamstrung by their own party time after time after time. And then the very same Party blames us for Donald Trump. It's absolutely infuriating.

I am left of the Democrats, and do not feel represented by what they do (regardless of what they say). I vote in Democratic primaries to try to move the party left. I vote D in the general. But you continue to dismiss what I'm saying. You seem to agree that the Republicans trained their party to move to the right but act like it's some crazy idea that the Democrats are doing the same thing? The wrong side is winning within the Democratic Party, and we're all going to lose everything because of it.

I'm not saying they're a shadowy cabal. They're very openly anti-progressive, no shadows necessary. They spend so much of primary time shitting on progressives and then complain when progressives don't want to vote for their neoliberal hacks in the general.

If you're taking the "progressives are irrelevant" position, please make sure to never blame progressives for the losses of the Democrats. Not even nonvoters. If we're not important enough to justify catering to, then we're not important enough to blame. You don't get to eat our cake and shit in it too.

Gonna continue to call bullshit here. The grassroots movement failing to gather momentum in the face of propaganda at the cost of the nation's future is not the same as the Democrats blaming a minority for their own failures. Not even a little bit, can you please reflect a little on how absurd that claim is?

You're also not comparing apples to apples here. First: the Tea Party was an unknown element, there hadn't been a growing fringe movement like that within a major party for a century. The Democrats had the benefit of seeing that happen on the right. Second, the Republicans were willing to embrace the crazy of the Tea Party for the sake of their continuing victory. Very much in contrast, the Democrats are very clearly willing to sacrifice national victory in order to keep progressives down. Three elections in a row they've insisted on running the most centrist candidate possible, resulting two very predictable losses and one surprising victory.

Democrats insist on siding with money and corporations every time, their failures are their own fault, and very much also the fault of their supporters.

See the part about the Democratic Party actively working against progressives, to the point of funding propaganda against them. The Dems saw the Tea Party and care more about avoiding that with progressives than they do about running candidates that can either beat the Republicans or serve the people.

And from what you just said: you'd better have never once blamed progressives for losing the Democrats an election if you're taking the "progressives are too weak" position.

Some of us have been trying. The masses tend to bully and tell us it's all our fault, somehow. According to the Democrats and their base, progressives are simultaneously too weak and unimportant to listen to, and so powerful that we can swing entire elections. I'm still waiting to hear how that one makes sense.

I've got bad news for you. Clockwise/counterclockwise depends on which way you're looking at the screw.

Turns out either way you need to make assumptions about perspective.

Same for me. When I need to, I like to go for regular checkout lanes without a bagger so I can move to the end and offer to bag my own things. It gives me something to do rather than just stand there awkwardly.

There's one cashier at my local grocery store who will often add a 10% discount as a thank you. Which is actually a crazy wage for the couple minutes of work.

I also play a game at Trader Joe's where usually I'm mostly stocking my freezer so it's a lot of boxes. I make my cart the neatest damn cart I can and I win my game if the cashier comments on it.

Silo also has several falls that should absolutely kill people. One that's like dozens of feet into the pile that they throw all sorts of sharp metal objects on? Dead.

Free falling off a bridge with just a rope tied around your waist that stops you? At the very least your back is fully broken, but that fall looked long enough that you should just be dead. Full Gwen Stacy.

Yeah, I love that show. They do a really good job staying grounded in real physics when they're not in the fiction side of sci-fi. IMO, their space mechanics are unmatched in sci-fi.

I love lots of franchises that also do it poorly, but I'm always pleased when they go the extra mile.

Neither "Playable" nor "Verified" status means no issues, unfortunately. It's still good, but IMO the current rating system leaves a lot to be desired.

I don't know about you, but I wanted him to stop working when he was 74 and enjoy the rest of his life with his family like people should be allowed to do much younger than that, not start working again at 78.

I have absolutely no guilt over what happened at the tail end of his presidency, I tried to keep him from being in that position at all.

+ All of physics. Especially anything involving characters falling, lasers, explosions, firearms, and any physics in space (sound, motion, temperature, black holes).

Not that it's known physics, but time travel falls into this category too. Not the time travel itself, that's just suspension of disbelief, but having time travel mechanics be internally consistent. It's difficult to do well.