I mean, it wasn’t too different 100 years ago. And the 1920s lead to a decade of economic stability, right? /s

NPR was literally talking about this earlier in the morning, specifically within academia. I forget the speaker, but they cited that after Brexit, neighboring countries saw a rise in quality researchers who opted not to stay or study in the UK.

Honestly, even 2016 gives us some insight though and if I recall correctly, it never really caused significant brain drain. A little hard to measure people who never were here to begin with, but even my wife mentioned her reason for staying after the election and it’s because there’s still money to be made here.

I read this, got upset, took a drive and rationality kicked back in. Even if bullet ballots were higher and Trump had access to software after 2020, it still seems more likely that the average American was stupid, blamed Biden for inflation, and voted against their own interests. I’d still like an investigation in any case (Lord knows every accusation is a confession with these people) but let’s consider a few problems.

First, there weren’t really a lot of evidence of tampering day of, and logistically it would be hard to pull off some kind of ground game tampering without at least raising some eyebrows. In fact, day of exit polling was in line with things looking bad for Harris. There were of course actual interference in the form of bomb threats and of course record breaking disinformation, though the latter is somehow legal.

Second, the bullet ballots argument could be true but is more an indication of an abnormality. That could be a get it the vote with Gen Z males in swing states, it could be people paid to cast votes, it could be a lot of things. I think that deserves investigation, with emphasis on investigation and less on recount because even an influx of real bullet ballots is weird. If it’s a legitimate reason, it’d help both parties to know that that secret sauce was.

Lastly, Harris had a lot of legitimate problems with her campaign, mostly a result of the aforementioned inflation and general discontent people have after 2020. I literally teach social psychology and let me tell you, average human brains are easily manipulated into biased memory. She’d have done herself a service sticking to her initial vibes campaign and distancing herself from Biden as the do-over we were promised when he stepped down. Big R.I.P. there but whatever.

Point is, this was rattling in my brain on my drive home and now it’s a rant on Lemmy.

“Sorry babe, they discontinued the updates and I bricked it trying to install a CFW.”

Jokes on you, it’s a new G-Penis from Google.

Better than a raspberry!

NGL, I hate cruises so much I think I’ll chance it with the dictator.

Kudos to those not having kids. I’ve had two recently fully knowing it’s going to be tough on them, but I’m going to do the responsible thing and teach them self defense and how to disrespect authority.

Plus as a bonus, I’m going to get those additional family members when we’re protecting the homestead from raiders.

I’ve said it before, the man steals political capital. When you can lie like he does, you don’t need a tit for tat, or even approval from the masses.

Yes, but it only feels 117. A brisk wind.

Or potentially we get another Kennedy in office, this time with extra brain worms.

Come January, that list is gonna be full of really, really weird choices for President.

Indeed. Lending any legitimacy to his conspiracy theories is a bad thing. True of Trump and Musk as well, as with any of that clown car.

Seriously. I don’t care that much about fluoride in the water being removed for four years, but I’m quite grateful that my youngest is getting the last of his vaccines before January. Hopefully it just ends up a “states rights” thing. Still sucks for herd immunity but at least I’ll still be able to keep my family vaccinated.

You know, the single “disrupt the norms” part is actually perfectly legit. We need that desperately in some departments. The people he chooses and why they are chosen are terrible dogshit, though, obviously.

Harris was threatening to put Republicans in some of these positions, which isn’t equally bad but still a terrible idea. I personally would love to see a progressive shake-up cabinet, although my priority is always education. Depts of Education are often led by establishment figures (and even Dems have picked donors for it as a reward for service) and it’s a big reason we see little movement at both federal and state levels.

There are a lot of very progressive, research-backed education specialists who would absolutely rock my world. But they’re always Socialist, if not Marxist. Turns out to be a good worldview when addressing public school effectivemess, but they won’t ever be picked unless the dems get more progressive.

We’ve had several elections in recent memory where it’s been really clear that progressive Democrats win elections compared to centrists (mostly midterm elections but still). Somehow that lesson hasn’t stuck, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Harris’ defeat also doesn’t teach this lesson. At this point the old guard really just needs to die.

People want change, GOP is offering it and people are eating it up. They just have no idea how incredibly stupid that version of change is.

Especially the discovery of hidden content. Need amnesia device for this and a few other games.

If I was Zelensky, I’d probably agree to a rebuilt Ukraine with Trump Towers and Tesla factories and all sorts of things. “Just imagine, Mr. President, world class Trump golf course and resort in Crimea— envy of all East Europe!”

Why did that shitty influencer beat up the crazy guy from The Hangover?

What blows my mind is MS fucking bought Skype and somehow Teams still can’t handle video calls correctly. The actual fuck did they do with that acquisition?