I really disagree. The aliens being insects is perfect because it provides a justaposition with the human characters. The idea is that the insects are a swarm of mindless drones. Meanwhile, the humans are…well, also a swarm of mindless drones. Which is sort of the point of the movie. The fascist society they inhabit actively dehumanizes them and robs them of their ability to think for themselves. The visuals of the film reinforce this in the larger fight scenes: the mass of gray bodies that constitute the human forces all blend together into a single swarm, much like that of the insects. And by the end of the movie Rico is completely hollowed out as a character: literally just inhabiting the same role as Rasczak, and even parroting all of his phrases from earlier in the film.

Democrats are so ego driven that they think death itself cannot claim them at a moment’s notice. I think this is part of the facade of the Democrats people are, unfortunately, going to respond to this election: Democrats, as a party, like to present themselves as being all about compromise and caring. Getting things done for the #AmericanPeople. But when it’s time to step down and let others shine in the limelight because you’ve had your time and the physical realities of age are something you have to acknowledge, or when there might be a better candidate for an election and you have to make the difficult choice of not getting what you want for the good of the country, that fucking sentiment disappears like a fart in the wind.

How do you figure? If they’re in power and let the government, they get blamed for it. Call the bluff. Let the government fail. If it’s in a position where one political entity gets to hold it hostage in perpetuity, it’s functionally unsalvageable and broken by design.

I’m gonna go ahead and ask the obvious question: if it’s so effective when the Republicans do it, then…you can fill in the rest.

Third Way was originally a think tank architected by Wall Street for the sole purpose of committing ideological false flag operations and grossly misrepresenting academic findings for the benefit of their corporate overlords. They once released a study under a headline that basically stated that because of Democrat economic policies, the gender wage was falling. And they were technically right. It was falling. It was falling because men were getting paid less and women were making the same amount.

Now, remember kids: if an unpopular Democratic presidential candidate doesn’t win an election, who do we blame? That’s right: literally everyone to the left of us. That’s how you make progress in a country, after all: Demonizing the left in the same way conservatives do. And why do we do that? That’s right, it’s because we’re secretly conservative, too. We just tolerate gay people more, but don’t want actual social or economic progress. Repeat after me: “unfavorable political outcomes are everyone else’s fault but mine!”

Well, I guess that’s why I said “in this day and age” and not “always.”

Luckily, in this day and age, clean water is both cheap and plentiful. Unless you’re in one of the places where it isn’t. But in that case I doubt you have access to room temperature beer, either.

To some extent, the Democrats are playing chicken with Trump’s eventual re-election. They don’t want to actually “seize” power in the same way that Republicans do. They want the pendulum to swing back and forth so they can keep getting re-elected and keep playing that old game of kickball with Republicans. Dems win some. Republicans win some. Everybody gets to complain about the opposition and do nothing. That Republicans seem to be updating their modus operandi from playing kickball to playing what seems to be “king of the hill, but with knives” has not quite dawned on the Democratic party collectively yet.

Not the best, but better than nothing.

We have very different opinions about the fundamental nature of “old, room temperature, completely flat” beer, if nothing else.

This is the thing. People like to blame Berniebros and whatnot for Clinton’s loss in '16, but the reality is that the centrist Democrats that vote for the party’s corporate-backed candidate wouldn’t vote for a progressive one, so even if Bernie had won the nomination, he probably still would have lost because he would have lost the support of these DNC hardliners. I heard people literally say in '16 that if Bernie had somehow won the nomination over Hillary that they would have just stayed home. It’s wild to think how ideologically balkanized the Democratic party is, with so many people fervently belonging to the leftist minority that holds their nose every election to vote for another mediocre person whose best attributes are being “not an outright fascist” versus the people who will never vote for a truly left wing candidate because they’re fiscally conservative but socially liberal and just allergic to compromising in the same way that they’ve forced the leftists in their party to do since forever.

What are they, 1-2% of the potential Dem voter base?

Add a .000 in front of those numbers and you might be right. If those numbers were accurate you would expect somewhere between, what…1 and 2 million tankies in the US alone?

You have to understand that the average American functions off of lizard brain impulses. It would be probably go like this:

Acknowledging age concerns of the electorate = show of weakness.

Running someone fresh that appeals to this American Idol-esque popularity contest = show of weakness.

Running someone Republicans don’t have their talking-points fleshed out on = show of weakness.

America operates on principles of running someone strong who says they will always be strong and that if they ever become weak while in office and they acknowledge this to be replaced, the entire party goes with them like a tug boat latched to a sinking oil tanker. Trump didn’t win because he’s smart or a decent human being. He won because he exudes baseless confidence like a broken nuclear reactor exudes gamma radiation.

Warren is a woman and economically progressive and America hates people who are either of those things, let alone both.

It’s like RBG all over again, if these people could just get it through there heads to quit while there ahead they could preserve a decent legacy, instead of tarnishing it by leading the way to a regressive order that overturns everything they’ve done.

This is one of the core problems of the Democrats: hubris. When Obama had a majority in the House and Senate, he could have easily pushed through a Supreme Court appointee to replace RBG. But she wouldn’t go. Because in her mind, there was no one qualified to fill her shoes. She was convinced that she was the GOAT and that to voluntarily step down when it was safe to do so would be an insult. This is coupled with the fact that Democrats were absolutely, completely certain that they would win every election for the presidency after Obama without trying and that the “coalition of the ascendant” would easily put Hillary into the White House, and then she could be the first female president in US history and have an easy PR win by replacing an aging female supreme court justice.

I’m willing to bet we have the the same problem here, but in one person: Biden probably thinks the Democrats could never field anyone for president better than him and that his victory is a lock without any real effort to campaign for it again.

Fun fact: the last time anything like this happened it was with Grover Cleveland. Cleveland was the 22nd president of the United States who lost his re-election bid the first time around, and then got re-elected to be the 24th president of the United States. We are officially in the second Gilded Age.

People seem to think I’m advocating voting for Trump. I’m not. You have to vote for Biden, because the alternative is unconscionable. But people shouldn’t pretend the Democrats are a party of political accomplishment. You’re not voting for the positive changes the party can do. You’re voting for the promise that they won’t go out of their way to make things worse. That’s it.

They’ve done plenty with it.

You’re right, Biden signed an executive order making it illegal for a railway union to actually go on strike. And he kept a bunch of Trump appointees in positions where they can do the most damage. Like that dipshit who runs the postal service now.

They’ve had 4 years already and done nothing with it. I don’t know what you think another 4 will accomplish.

It’s good for python stuff, specifically, potentially because python as a language is the closest we have to a natural, descriptive programming language, and as an LLM that might make connections between functional behavior and language easier. That said, it sometimes tells you to do things that won’t work because the libraries you’re using have some specific incompatibility issues between them and the only way you can find out is via github issue discussions.

Those of us who noticed when HailCorporate first got shadowbanned could see that particular train a coming. Reddit was always going to strangle its own content to death in order to make it more advertiser friendly. I’m honestly surprised it took as long as it did.