TSA and Customs both scan your face instead of your ID/ passport now for adults. It seems like the government has confidence in it?

As if he’d ever see a kid walking in front of that thing.

I guess you’ve never have neighbors with bamboo!

It has long since become a problem for every neighbor that borders their yard. I’ve been digging the runners our of my yard since we moved in 8 years ago, and I’m about ready to spend ~$10k on remediation (burying a wall that the roots can’t penetrate).

It is not native and grows out of control where I live. It takes over acres too densely for anything else to grow.

Can we harvest bamboo to extinction next?! Starting with my neighbor’s yard…

As a parent: happiness is about expectations. The exhuberance of youth can carry them as long as we aren’t preparing them for the halcyon, easy days of the 1990s. Life will be hard, it always has been, but there can still be fun and rewarding experiences. They need to know resilience, independence, and be quick on their feet both mentally and physically.

There are many Great Filters, but this one is mine (ours).

Sure, but whether you’re talking about military might or economic might, more people is more leverage. That was my point.

This “too dangerous to exist” argument is seemingly more true for nuclear technology, but the world recognized the threat and came together to manage it.

I will grant you that database and ability to search it lends itself easily to popular oppression, but it still requires thinking, breathing humans to do the oppressing.

Most technology is not dangerous without psychopaths in power, and damn near everything is dangerous with psychopaths in power.

I came here to make this comment less cogently. You have it exactly.

Now, does it violate US law and multiple Executive Orders to search the database to get dirt on US Citizens and use it against their election campaign? Yes. Yes it does. But this administration thinks laws are for sissies.

I think the argument to make space for them is more practical than compassionate. WTF are we going to do if we just refuse to speak to or have any dealings with 1/3 of the working age population. Are we relocating all Trump voters South of Virginia and splitting the Union here?

Setting aside our own authoritarian problems for a second, if you want to have a wealthy country that can oppose authoritarian regimes (like China and Russia), you need all 350 million of us. (And you need Europe, India, and democratic Asia on board, perhaps even some middle eastern countries, all people you may have philosophical differences with that you have to learn to work with).

The US has needed rank choice voting since Nixon at least.

The people that oppose this administration don’t want anarchy and guillotines though. They want integrity, law, order, justice, etc. The teeth of the anti-MAGA movement will have to come through at least semi-legitimate means, i.e., I think it will have to come through the authority of state governments.

And we see state governments become increasingly aggressive against this administration. These marches embolden the mayors and governors that oppose MAGA; they say that the people are with them.

The protests are to keep reminding ourselves that we aren’t alone and other people are willing to stand with us and back us. If we can engage our neighbors a bit, all the better.

We can’t hold any of them accountable without remaking the Supreme Court.

Damn, I was excited about a real life Hermione.

The state of Israel, that Greta is running afoul of, didn’t exist in Hitler’s lifetime. Try again.

It’s a boon in that people still want law and order and have a means to pursue it.

But the collective action, unimpeded by conflict, of 150-300 million people is a huge factor in what has made the US so prosperous for 80 years. We are giving that up.

My personal guess is the tipping point comes when the 2026 elections are either brazenly fraudulent or disregarded by the sitting majority leaders. If that doesn’t happen, then my next bet would be on the 2028 elections tearing us apart like those of 1860.

I will admit, my guesses have some big caveats around international relations. The Trump administration has shown disinclination to stand up to China or Russian, and have all but said they won’t defend Taiwan against China. Their calculus may change if they believe participating in a world war will help them cling to power I guess? Trump is kind of a Russian pawn though, and Russia would much prefer the US be torn apart in Civil War than jump in to defend Europe or democratic Asia.

Sigh. I really don’t love the walking-on-my-pants-cuffs trend, especially for dress pants (pictures in the link are worse than this thumbnail).

As someone about to hit 40, I’m tryyyyyyying to let go of skinny pants, but the above is just so impractical!

I have listened to part of the It Could Happen Here vision for what could go down, but I’m on the fence. In the 2020 election and Jan 6th, I could see that version of things more: militias creating general lawlessness with a weak federal government that can’t maintain peace.

But since Trump arrived on the scene, people have been increasingly geographically sorting themselves by political affiliation. Additionally, we are seeing blue state coalitions form around vaccines and climate change. And now we are seeing folks band together at the state-level and pressure their state governments to take stands against the federal government. Additionally, we are seeing more punitive behavior between states (busing of migrants from Texas, financial punishment of blue states, trying to criminally charge ObGyns providing abortion services across state lines, red states offering Trump their national guard to punish blue states, redistricting based on the actions of another state).

Regardless of how people feel about the federal government, they seem to still see legitimacy in their local governments, and are increasingly using those local governments as vehicles for negotiation.