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BamaATL

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Posts posted by BamaATL

  1. This woman is the actual full blown embodiment of the mental health crisis within the Republican ranks, someone that desperately needs help, and won't have a hope in hell of ever getting it because of her voting choices.  The fact that she's anywhere near anyone running for political office to include something as minor as a small town council person let alone within a whisper of a potential President, is just pitiful.  It speaks to the gross negligence of the "adults in the room" in the leadership of the Republican Party and their willful acceptance of what they know to be wrong, crazy, and dangerous, etc. for the sake of power.  When the Republican Party repeatedly abandoned whatever morals they may have once had for the sake of Trump and power, this was the inevitable result, people that have no business whatsoever being anywhere near power, within in a whisker of it.  The scary thing is, it's not like Loomer is some sort of outlier among this group, she's just the flavor of week, there are plenty more, all similarly damaged people ready to take her place in a heartbeat.  

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  2. 3 minutes ago, heso said:

    The new Trump ad in PA during Monday night football is an entirely context free clip of Kamala in a 2019 dem primary town hall saying that she’d ban fracking. Then saying that 120,000 fracking jobs in PA will vanish if she’s elected. 

    Just to give an update on ads in Georgia, I'd say it's 3 or 4 to one in terms of volume in favor of Harris.  Trump ads mostly make claims like we are paying 3 times as much for gas (which is humorous, as gas today was $2.82 a gallon, which when one considers inflation, is actually significantly lower than when he was in office (easily over $3 per gallon, pre-inflation)).  His ads are blaming housing costs on Harris, along with grocery inflation.  Then we get some weird ones with no talking just showing a black family at a pool with "Trump" written (it's fucking really weird).  The Harris ads a very effective in my mind, mostly about not going back, forcing corporations and billionaires to pay their share, attacking 2025 and tariffs.  

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  3. 9 minutes ago, Chopper said:

    I know this was in regards to something else but in general when internal polling is made public, it's no more reliable than a public poll. The polling may be better, the polling may be worse, there would usually be an ulterior motive for releasing it. Treat all polls as suspect. 

    Yeah, a guy giving lots of money to PACs then been given sandbag info and encouraged to then pony up more, why I never.  

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  4. 4 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

    Some precincts were extremely pro-Biden, where the polling place I assume was a Black church.

    How is he supposed to manage without a fascist authoritarian to force women to marry incels?

    Interesting tidbit about that, I was a senior in 2001 when Maddox got elected and it was actually the involvement of the Greek machine that put him over the top, which is pretty ironic all things considered (I think he was a Sigma Nu, though I don't off-hand remember).  Anyway, as I mentioned the city itself is pretty liberal, and to your point quite diverse, the county on the other hand is not.  

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  5. 24 minutes ago, Js1 said:

    Yep. He won Tuscaloosa County like 57-42. Sadly no precinct level data to see if he won the Bama campus 

    He went in 2019 and Bama lost 

    He won't get a friendly reaction from the student section, but the power brokers of the state will be there, and he will get love from them.  That having been said, if he's wasting time in Alabama, a state he has in the bag, that means he's not campaigning in a place he needs.  What we could all be pulling for is a medical emergency and Alabama's shitty health care system to really shine.  

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  6. 1 minute ago, Gatorubet said:

    I think it is clear that Justice Thomas recognizes that Black people like Tituba are the cause of all society’s woes since even before the Republic.   Now follow me here: you are going to need weapons to deal with Negroes who are not at all like Clarence Thomas.  This is a compelling reason why that right “shall not be infringed.”

    That sounds a smidge racist to me.  

  7. 29 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    "There was no serialized production of firearms when the Constitution was authored, therefore all serialization of firearms is heretofore unconstitutional"

    - Chief Justice John Roberts, probably 

    Yes, but how is impacted by the Salem Witch Trials?  

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  8. 24 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

    Still have heard what it was this guy did to warrant being shot at

    Given what we know of the Secret Service lately, there is every reason to believe that they shot at their own agents, or they tripped and fell while running with a gun.  We will have to wait to see an official report and actual accounts of the events, but I'd give even money that there is a comical element to the actual shots fired portion of this.  

    Honestly, that's sad, because prior to recent events, the Secret Service has had a pretty good reputation for the last 40 years or so of being on top of their shit.  Between this and the clown show in Pennsylvania, to say that their reputation has taken a hit would be a bit of an understatement.  These are people known for rightfully taking their jobs extremely seriously, and this has to be extremely embarrassing to them all.  

  9. 24 minutes ago, Goredho said:

    Pessimism, realism.  Optimism, naïveté.  Again, our intelligent species has been around for 200,000 years on a single planet.  The universe has existed for 13.7 billion years.  The average star is orbited by 10 planets, the average galaxy contains 100 billion stars, and there are an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.  And you are optimistically postulating that the only path for an intelligent species is inexorably forward to greater achievement, overcoming every existential obstacle encountered every time to the end of time, even as their problems become planetary in scope.

    And yet, for all those places and for all that time for intelligent life to birth and grow and surpass our own limits and make itself known, none has.  The only evidence we have of an intelligent life in the universe is our own.  If what you are suggesting is accurate, the universe should be overflowing with intelligent life that we couldn't help but observe in some way.  But we don't.  We just observe a vast and empty void.

    I'm all for the looking, and if we wind up with scientific observations that suggest a different conclusion is more likely, I'm happy to change my views.  But what is most likely given what we know at this time is that simple life is likely out there, and fairly common.  But intelligent life is rare and either hasn't developed or has hit some cap in its advancement before its disappearance from the universe.

    We've been actively looking for well under 50 years (seriously anyway) and there is every reason to believe we haven't been looking for the correct things.  I'd say there is pretty good reason to believe that haven't done enough looking just yet to pack it in, but maybe that's me.  

  10. 3 minutes ago, Goredho said:

    I pretty much completely disagree.  Civilizations collapse all the time, generally with a big dose of hubris and self-inflicted wounds.  Look at Easter Island, the Anasazi, Mayans, Incans, Norse/Vikings, etc...  All of those people had a chance to course correct or invent solutions to the problems they were faced with and did not.

    Within about 200,000 years, humans went from cavemen to being able to annihilate all life on our home planet save for maybe a few hardy cockroaches.  Our population growth is outpacing our ability to solve the problems associated with overpopulation.  And we're not close to putting a foot on our nearest neighboring planet in our solar system, let alone reaching across the galaxy to contact anything else that may be out there.  Not because we aren't capable of fixing our problems or developing technology given an infinite amount of time, but because we'll argue over what the fuck is a problem right up until it becomes insurmountable and takes us out.

    Could another form of life follow a different trajectory?  Sure, but there's no evidence of it.  I believe the far most likely scenario is that primordial life is fairly common, but intelligent life gets snuffed out long before it could really make itself known in the vast ocean of the Universe.

    Those are examples of societal collapses, not species.  Though each of those societies did collapse, people survived from each (with the exception of perhaps Easter Island) and despite their individual collapses, the species moved forward and thrived.  

    Our population is actually on pace to peak latter this century and then retract.  We are close to being able to put people on another planet, and that's without there being any real will or expediency to do so.  Just imagine, if it were pressing, and there was global will to the point of say 5% of the global gdp, could we do it in the next few years, the answer is absolutely.  

    Again, there is nothing in our collective history that says we can't do something, matter of fact, any time someone has said that they've repeatedly been proven wrong, sometimes it just takes a while.  Great accomplishments, like the Apollo program (just as an example, and space to boot) require great will and financing.  When both collide, we can do much. 

    I get that pessimism is the flavor of the day, especially politically and all that, but now is nothing more than a blip on the radar, and it to shall pass.  If you consider our collective accomplishments in just the last 500 years, even with all the bad mixed in, I'd bet on us well before I'd bet against us.  Tasks that seem like miracles to the vast majority of people during that time frame and now are day to day normalcy for us.  100 years from now, things that seem like miracles to us will be mundane to everyday people. That isn't to say we won't have missteps, go in the wrong direction from time to time, etc.  

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  11. 1 hour ago, KYHorn said:

    Just so it's on your radar, the latest shooting near a Trump was carried out by a Ukraine-war advocate who claimed to have daughter for Ukraine and seems to have organized volunteer efforts. He has been quoted in a few news articles on this topic as well. I'm sure Russia won't use any of this to advance their cause. 

    https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-suspect-shooting-assassination-attempt-west-palm-beach-1954191

     

     

    I don't know what is true, and what isn't, but the Ukrainians are already refuting that this guy had any real ties to the foreign legion.  

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  12. 13 minutes ago, thunderlounge said:

    But they do exist. Which is what the Drake equation is getting at. No matter how fractionally small, there is a greater than 0 chance. A google 0’s and a 1 at the end is still a chance. 

    I think I'm not doing a good job of expressing what I mean.  Yes, it's possible that civilizations, including our own could snuff themselves out (in my opinion, extraordinarily rare).  However, that isn't why we aren't finding other civilizations of yet.  If we were to go out searching the cosmos for signs of the Gutenberg printing press, guess what, we could search for billions of years and never find anything.  That having been said, this invention was incredibly important to our own development, so you can't say it wasn't evolutionary important to us.  The more likely scenario isn't that there aren't other civilizations, it's that we aren't looking for the correct signatures because we don't yet know ourselves, and radio transmissions aren't it.  

    I'm not saying this is correct either, but consider our understanding and only recent ability to detect gravitational waves, for all we know, these can be used for carrier signals.  

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  13. 4 hours ago, Snake Diggity said:

    7 weeks to go, key dates for things that could change the outcome:

    9/17: Fed meets on Sep 17-18; their announcement about rate changes could have dramatic impact on the stock market and sentiment toward Harris.

    9/20: Early voting begins; exit polling and other insights might start showing up.

    10/1: VP debate; for now it looks quite likely that Walz/Harris will receive another bump, but a major snafu could erode their momentum.

    10/4: Sept jobs report released

    10/10: Sept inflation report released

    11/5: Election Day 

    Unscheduled or unknown events that could change things:

    Assassinations and assassination attempts

    Health problems for either candidate or their running mates 

    Scandals (affairs, etc.)

    Developments in Ukraine/Israel wars

    Significant stories involving illegal immigrants


    I think there’s more downside for Trump in the unknowns than for Harris.  I think Trump is more likely to get killed, have healthy problems, or have a scandal.  Harris is more vulnerable to negative outcomes related to stories on the economy, Ukraine/Israel, and immigration, but I think it’s limited.  I don’t think the majority of Americans actually would prefer Trump to handle something like the aftermath of Putin firing off a nuke, or Iran escalating with the Israelies.  Interestingly, it doesn’t look like the actual crimes that Trump has been indicted for are going to have any material impact on the election; that’s insane to me.

    You forgot 9/26 the Jan 6th previously redacted portion of the indictment becomes public.  

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  14. 3 hours ago, thunderlounge said:


    Yes, in so much as we talk about responsible society. But here’s the thing, and while I agree the Drake equation does  have an educated guess factor in it (how could it not?), those data points toward advancement are well placed. Including the destruction of a society.

    I agree some of those could be mitigated, if that path is taken of course. But here is why it can’t at our current level: rogue participants.

    We just found the atomic age, relatively speaking in terms of universal timeline. This is the real critical point in the Drake equation.

    Not because the US/Russia are going to do it. It’s that one tiny group that gets their hands on a device, or devices, that could detonate just enough of them to cause nuclear winter.

    If placed in the right spots, it would decimate crop production for centuries.

    But it’s also unstable with some outlying countries right now too. Anyone trust NK?

    So that’s just one thing that is possible. 
     

    The other is natural disaster on a scale not seen since the dinosaurs.

    What would happen is Yellowstone lit off tomorrow? Something like that might not wipe us out completely. But it could easily set society back to the dark ages. I think we get back quicker, provided knowledge is preserved.

    But it also could wipe everything out. There’s no way to prepare for that.

    How likely are those things to happen? 

    I think it depends. It depends if a civilization can advance fast enough to have the capability to counter the problem.

    For example, maybe yellowstone is set to pop 500 years from now. Who knows. But in those 500 years, maybe we advance enough to understand how to relieve volcanic pressure without causing an eruption.
     

    We don’t know of course, but that’s the scenario playing out in any civilization. How fast can it advance to have the technology to reduce, and eventually eliminate, its own extinction.

    I don’t think that starts to become reality until a civilization occupies multiple planets.

    Think of resources it would take to settle another planet. A shitload more than a few little habitats you can’t leave without a special suit.

    We’re talking science fiction levels of need. Kinda fun to think about. 
     

    Well, not yellowstone going off without capabilities to survive, but the needs and challenges of advancing to those levels.

    Disasters, man made or otherwise aren't just likely but will happen, but as to the eradication of our species and knowledge, right now there is very little that would ultimately do that, barring a super nova in our vicinity.  There is every reason to believe that at least a portion of humanity would survive just about every forseeable scenario.  That doesn't mean that our growth as a species wouldn't be impacted or stunted for a while, it would be, eradicated, no.  That's sort of like saying anyone that survived such an event, for no reason in particular, would revert to living in mud huts and utilizing only stone age techniques and completely shun the knowledge we have in perpetuity.  

    As to that applying to the Drake equation, it's likely that any other civilization also went thru this sort of period, but even in spite of disasters, self made or natural, survived it.  Could we make this harder on ourselves, or in the case of another civilization could they have made this harder on themselves, absolutely.  However, I find it extremely unlikely that in either case a species would self eradicate, to include our own, even potentially in spite of ourselves.  A bad actor or actors could certainly do a lot of damage, but there is nothing to suggest they could eradicate the planet, not even close.    

    The more likely reality is that we are looking for the wrong signatures, simply because we don't understand them yet.  You don't use a rotary phone anymore, no one has in years, yet in searching the cosmos, that's sort of like what we are doing, because for now, that's what we know.  

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