It’s the angle. Can you hold your weight with your arms straight out to the sides? Sure, you can do push-ups, but can you do this?

or this?

Most people can’t.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But I also want a president who’s not just going to take amphetamines so he can perform well past his bed time.

I’m not saying either of these guys is my first choice. I’m just saying that it was late, Biden had a cold, and he was probably taking Nyquil or something - he would want to be up there sneezing and blowing his nose. If you compare his performance in the debate to his speech in N Carolina, he certainly wasn’t at his peak. Good knows how much cocaine Trump had snorted before the debate.

That’s not how I meant it.

There’s a cultural value in virginity in girls. It’s pretty common across cultures: for marriage, virgin women are more desirable than non-virgins. It’s biased; the virginity only increases value for girls, and it probably stems from men wanting to be sure than any prodigy are actually theirs. Women can be nearly 100% sure a kid they have is theirs (not quite 100%, as there’s a brief period when a channeling swap could conceivably be made), but the men can never be certain. The best odds you have is to get yourself a virgin. So female virginity has been valued through history (by men), and I think this is where the fetish of having sex with virgins comes from.

That’s what I’m taking about. I’ve never understood the appeal of “being a girl’s/boy’s first.”

She was born in October; shit, you’re right. She’ll be barely legal in time for the election, and certainly eligible by the time she’d take office. So she won’t be too young to vote for by the time of the general election.

Wow.

The problem is that upvotes serve two conflicting proposes. Upvoting raises visibility, so one use is to say, “this is a post people should see.” In that case, you may not necessarily agree with the content of the post, but rather believe it’s worthy of debate. A good example of this is c/unpopularopinion, where the community rules specifically state to upvote if you agree it’s an unpopular opinion, not whether you agree with the opinion.

The other, conflicting, use is to signal approval or disapproval.

You can’t do both at the same time. It’s a flaw in design Reddit had, which they fixed but monetized. Lemmy did not learn from Reddit’s mistake and instead repeated it.

Two conflicting uses for the same action is terrible UX design.

Yah, absolutely. I’m frankly a little surprised Trump is still alive.

We know who Biden’s running mate is going to be, unless there’s a surprise upset. Trump’s is still up in the air and the weasels are currently fighting for it.

Someone pointed out, the debate was scheduled for 9pm, with two men over 70. I’m in my 50’s, and I’m no good after 8pm. This should have been held in the morning.

The debate was poorly arranged, and once again Biden’s incompetent staff contributed by letting it happen.

Shit. That’s next level. I mean, if it works; it should at least have had a self-destruct to prevent capture and analysis.

I have never, ever, understood the appeal of virginity. Who prefers someone who is uncomfortable, awkward, and doesn’t have any experience?

This has always baffled me. This is one reason why I think sex workers should hold a high status in society: they provide an valuable service in training the uninitiated and unskilled. It’s like taking tennis lessons, and all your future partners should be grateful for their lessons.

Thank you! So, in that situation, instead of 3 consecutive terms, we could see 4.

Assuming she’s successful, becomes far more popular, and there are no major crises that work against her.

The most reliable way to get re-elected is to be president when a war starts. Like how Bush Jr engineered 9/11 so he could ensure re-election(*). But it tensions escalated with Russia and we got involved, that’d do it.

(*) Yeah, no. I don’t really believe that. It’s just a joke.

2 years and 1 day

OK. This is a specific reference to something about our laws of succession about which I’m embarrassingly ignorant. Can you save me a web search and elaborate?

For sure. But there will be a lot of indirect debate on social media, because Trump can’t keep his burger-hole shut, and Klobuchar’s free to murder him (metaphorically) on public platforms. Even if he only posts to TruthSocial, everything he says gets parroted on X and Facebook, and that’s still where the most eyeballs are.

And old school public media picks this stuff up and repeats it - that’s mostly what they’ve been reduced to -but it still reaches a lot of eyes and ears.

And: Trump refusing another debate, she could just hammer on his cowardice, over and over. That’d be a win.

Klobuchar is tough. If nothing else, I’d love to see that fight. Only slightly less than I’d love to see an AOC v Trump fight; that’d be like watching a skinny junkie enter the MMA ring against Holly Holm. It’d be hilarious. But AOC is too young, and Trump will be either dead or in a home by the time she’s old enough to run. I just hope Bernie is still active enough by then to support her. I don’t know that she could get elected - she’s too polarizing - but it would be a marvelous spectacle.

Anyway, I prefer Yang’s politics, and I’d be thrilled to see Buttigieg in the White House, but I stand by Klobuchar as the best bet.

🙁 🤝

Lemmy really, really needs emoji responses that don’t require and entirely new comment.

Agreed, and agreed.

Why not Klobuchar? She’s got some national recognition from the 2019/20 cycle, politics are acceptable to moderates, progressive (enough), and she’d eat Trump for lunch in debates and on social media. Plus, she’s from the Midwest, and might pick up some folks for regional loyalty, and could play against the “slick New Yorker” which might still work.

The bases are going to vote party lines. I think undecideds and wavering moderates are the pick-up points, and I think Klobuchar could do that.

I like Yang’s politics, but he’s got a popularity problem, and Buttigieg - Trump would just harp on his sexual orientation, and I’m not confident enough that America’s ready yet to vote for a gay president. Hell, we can’t even get a woman into office.

IMO Klobuchar’s the safest bet against Trump.

Why?

Man I hope there’s a brace across his back, because a human’s arms are not strong enough to overcome that much resistance.

But it there were a sturdy brace, that looks like almost enough resistance to keep him from dying, if he can keep from tumbling. Which he probably can’t.

Yeah, that guy’s best outcome is a lot of broken bones.

Once again, we agree.

Why always with the old white men, when we have prominent politicians like Yang, Buttigieg, Klobuchar? And as for Bernie, if you want a firebrand who’s going to alienate moderates, why not AOC? Well, she’s too young to run, but she’s not the only truly liberal option. Warren is old enough, progressive enough, and a woman. But, no, Bernie Bros gotta Bro.

Yeah, it’d have to be a Lemmy design change, and then all of the many clients would have to implement it… momentum is a powerful force in the software world, and difficult and dangerous to overcome. Look at the fiasco of Python 3; that was a cock-up of epic proportions. Lemmy’s got enough users and clients now that changes have to be made extremely carefully.

which is what I’d wager many think of when you say “the Internet”

I wager you’d be right, but most people are wrong.

I’m saying that everything is built on foundations that are fundamentally English and American, and this influenced even Berners-Lees’s creation. HTTP and HTML were fundamentally ASCII. DNS and the WWW eventually evolved broader encoding support, but it’s clearly tacked-on and awkward. All you need to do is look at URL encoding rules as proof.

I’m not saying it’s right; I’m just saying there consequences of an English, American-centric design of what underlies all computer technology today is evident at all higher levels, no matter how hard we try to mask them.

I’m sorry if I’m repeating some other response; often my Lemmy client can’t load sub comments, and I see you already have 6.

I think we’re voting for Kamala. She’s not running because she can’t win, not against Trump, and probably not against anyone else. She’s even more unpopular than Biden, and the Right would have a field day if she were the front runner.

But, frankly, side by side, Trump looks more healthy and robust than Biden, and it’s saying something. If Biden is elected, Kamala will be president before the end of his term.

I don’t know if that’s terrible; I don’t particularly care for her, but she’s better than Trump, and is on the right side of most of the issues I care about. Also, if she did a decent job and had some luck, she’d be able to run again for a second term, and we could get an unusual streak of three liberal(ish) terms.

As for Biden, a president’s staff does most of the real work of any president; I think of a president more like the captain of a large ship: they take a lot of input from the crew, and make decisions. They don’t gather the information or touch the controls; as long as they have a competent team, I suspect nearly anyone could functionally be president. As long as he’s mentally capable of processing the information he’s given and making rational decisions, he can do his job. I’m just no longer convinced he’s going to be capable of that for a full term, and the way he’s looking, I wouldn’t be surprised if he physically failed in the next 4 years.

So: President Harris. I just hope they’re putting effort into making sure she can step into the shoes quickly. If Biden can even win this election.

Biden, though. Dude’s looking like Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China.