I’m not in that community myself, but from what I hear a high quality for suit can cost $10-20k. Not sure what differences in construction may exist between those and what you made. But some artists definitely make decent livings making them.

Have you kept up with the times? Republicans perform better with low-information and low-engagement voters. In elections with lower turnouts, Democrats do better.

This may seem shocking if you’re used to politics of earlier decades. It wasn’t long ago that Democrats did better in higher turnout elections. But that was when Democrats had more working-class appeal. Now Democrats focus on winning the suburban professional classes and simply hope that turnout is low enough among working class voters that they’ll be able to inch over the finish line on the college-educated vote.

So really, if Democrats do better the lower the turnout is, why in the Hell would you expect them to win an election with a 100% voter turnout? If anything that would trigger a Republican landslide.

He did keep Trump’s concentration camps from the first term open though. Past performance is the best predictor of future performance. And if another Democrat like Biden or Harris wins in 2028, odds are they will keep ICE unchanged. The pattern of immigration policy for the last 20 years has been that the far-right Republican position of today becomes the mainstream Democrat position five years from now. Democrats repeatedly run towards the right on immigration, hoping to pander to the racist vote. It never works of course, but they never learn.

What you’re missing is that the drug you’re injecting that’s labeled “chemotherapy” might actually be a mislabeled carcinogen that will accelerate the cancer.

Politicians lie. They even lie about what party they belong to. What’s a power-hungry Republican to do if they happen to live in a solidly blue state? You can’t get elected being yourself. So instead you lie. You pretend to be a Democrat and actively lie to the voters. You join a party that you share few values with.

Once elected, you do everything possible to destroy the party from within. After all, you would prefer to be able to run openly as a Republican. You want Democrats to be electorally unpopular. So you do everything you can to make the Democratic brand as toxic as possible.

The critical failure of “blue no matter who” is that labels often lie. You may think you’re voting for a Democrat, but you’re actually voting for a Republican. And once that fake Democrat has been elected to a safe blue seat, they’ll be nearly impossible to remove due to incumbency advantage. If a fake Democrat gets the presidential nomination and wins in 2028, we’re guaranteed Republican rule until at least 2036. The 2032 election will be a contest between that fake Democrat and an open Republican; one of the two will win. By voting for the fake Democrat, you guarantee 8 years of Republican rule. If the base stayed home and refused to vote for the fake, at least there would be some nonzero chance of a non-Republican winning in 2032.

The fatal flaw of your strategy is that you assume labels mean anything. There is in fact nothing preventing people from simply lying about which party they most strongly identify with. And your voting strategy leaves you completely at the mercy of these fraudsters.

Back to your chemo example, you would be like a desperate patient randomly injecting any drug that someone told you was chemotherapy or a cure for cancer. You would be spending thousands on bogus homeopathic treatments, because, “has to be better than cancer, pick the lesser of two evils.” In the end, you actually end up dramatically shortening your life because you injected yourself with bleach, thinking that it had to be the lesser evil to the cancer.

“Vote blue no matter who” is to politics as the Steve Jobs strategy is to medicine.

The critical failure of “vote blue no matter who” is that many of those who run under the blue banner are actually just opportunistic Republicans who happen to live in blue states or districts. They’re Republicans who can’t get elected running as their true selves, so they lie and pretend to be Democrats. And then you do vote for them, because “blue no matter who.” And then they corrupt the party from the inside, and deliberately make it harder for Democrats to win in the future. Remember, these people aren’t actually Democrats. They don’t want the Democratic Party or Democratic values or goals to succeed. They’re just a bunch of cynical Republicans pulling one over on the Democratic base.

The problem with “blue no matter who” is that it has no way to address outright fraudsters. You’re electing ‘Democrats’ who literally want the Democratic party to fail.

I’m just imagining the scene in a sci fi comedy.

“I thought you said we were getting mechanical tails? Why the Hell is this attached to my front?”

“Experiments determined that this was actually the more effective and cheaper option. Don’t worry, a front tail works just fine for balance!”

Won’t someone think of the poor working class furries? A fur suit can already cost 10 or 20 grand. Now they’re going to have to add cyborg body parts to the mix as well? Talk about gentrification!

Improve it by covering it in fake skin, the same used on limb prosthesis! /s

I want to be turned into a drone. I’ll be just like this cat. It will be a much larger version. Used for deliveries or emergency services. And I will be completely naked.

Funeral pyres or other forms of open air cremation are generally not legal due to concerns of fire spreading.

That’s why you set up your OWN funeral pyre! Got a terminal cancer diagnosis, looking to go out on your own terms?

1. Erect a large funeral pyre on a large piece of open ground. (Ideally do this at a time of low fire risk.)
2. Create an ignition mechanism that can be activated by a timer.
3. Take a lethal dose of opioids or whatever assisted-suicide drug you’ve been prescribed.
4. Set the timer to ignite the pyre a few hours after you are certain to have succumb to the effects of the drug.
5. Activate the timer, climb atop the pyre, and take the big nap.
6. A few hours later the pyre alights and your body is cremated in an open funeral pyre.

I mean, sure, it’s illegal as Hell. But who are they going to prosecute? Are they going to put your ashes on trial?

The idea is you have investments running that return enough to keep the place running indefinitely.

Yeah. This is really the most terrifying version of aliens. Not ones that want to take over the world in a grand dramatic fashion. Instead, I find truly indifferent aliens to be far more terrifying of a concept. We are literally animals to them. Or, more they view us as we view other animals.

Imagine being abducted by aliens. Instead of showing you the universe or trying to communicate with you, they don’t even bother. They just proceed to vivisect you. They dissect you alive, without any anesthetic. They only give you a paralytic to keep your from screaming or resisting. They’re doing the equivalent of wild animal research and they’re simply indifferent to your suffering. You are not a person to them. Your pain means nothing. Your family will never know what happened to you, and the aliens don’t even bother trying to justify their actions to you. They make no attempt at communication. They slowly take you apart piece by piece, silently going about their work. You’ll never know who they are, where they’re from, or why they’re doing this. They do not owe you an explanation. To them you are no different than a plant.

Every single night I have a strange recurring dream, where I am wearing lederhosen in a vat of sour cream…

I want the safety announcement at the start of the flight to say:

“You are in a flying metal coffin. Now imagine this coffin filling with smoke and fire. This plane only passes safety regulations because we simulated unboarding it with everyone behaving perfectly, leaving all of their crap behind. In an emergency, you MUST leave your stuff behind. Your life depends on it. The lives of everyone around you depend on it. If you see someone trying to take stuff with them, you MUST use whatever level of force is necessary to stop them. Even lethal force is justified. You must be prepared to tear someone to pieces if they don’t leave their stuff behind. The lives of you and your family depend on the asshole in front of you letting their laptop burn.”

That’s the kind of boarding announcement I want to hear!

Honestly, I can work with selfishness. I just can’t work with stupid. My partner and I are well enough off to likely never need to rely on the social safety net. Not crazy wealthy, just a couple, both with STEM backgrounds. Well enough off that we are unlikely to ever qualify for any needs-based programs, but not so well off that we don’t have to work for a living. We stand to gain little from a strong social safety net, but we strongly support public housing, Medicare for all, tuition-free universities, etc.

We do this for two reasons. One, there is the moral aspect. There’s a genuine desire to not see the poor and working class live in squalor and misery. In a country as wealthy and technologically advanced as ours, no one should have to worry about access to the basic necessities of life.

But the other reason is actually pure self-interest. Nothing in this life is certain. Unless you’ve put away enough to live off the interest of your investments, you are not immune from a job loss. Obviously the better off you are the less you have to fear from this. But unless you literally don’t have to work anymore, you’re at risk of ending up broke and homeless. Even us, with the right combination of job losses and medical emergencies, could end up needing to use that social safety net. If the fever dreams of the AI chuds come true, and the professional classes are replaced by LLMs, well my partner and I are both out of work. Even if I will likely never need public housing, I want it to exist, just in case I am unfortunate enough to need it. We’ve been quite fortunate and had some lucky breaks. But fortune can change. And in an era of rapid technological advancement, anyone is at risk of their entire career path suddenly being made obsolete when they’re right in the middle of their career. Too late to start from scratch; too early to retire. It could happen to any of us. One of the reasons I support a strong social safety net is pure self-interest.

We really don’t know the details here, and I think that’s key. There are scenarios where charging a homeowner make sense. Like you see an intruder with a knife. You whack them with a bat. And you knock them to the ground. And then you just…keep doing it. The guy is literally on the ground, skull half caved in, just begging you to call a fucking ambulance, completely at your mercy…and you’re still whacking him. Force can easily escalate well past what is needed for any reasonable level of self defense. Just because someone breaks into your home does not give you legal permission to torture them or murder them in cold blood. Maybe the homeowner tied the intruder up and literally tortured him.

A prosecutor knows how unpopular prosecuting a homeowner for attacking a break-in victim would be. It would be an obvious political lightning rod. I’m inclined to believe that if they’re willing to go to all that trouble, the homeowner likely did something that went well beyond what any jury would consider reasonable self defense. This is the kind of case you do not as a prosecutor make unless you can be damn sure you’re getting a conviction.

I would go the opposite route.

Got a BBQ? Return the bag of flower as a literal pile of ash.

“I…umm…really don’t think I’m fit for parenthood…”

PSA: Careful, doing this IRL. It might explode. I would get nervous heating a whole bag of flour on a BBQ. Seems like maybe an explosion risk? Or perhaps I’m just being paranoid.

My point is, you never even bothered to google Kamala ICE policy. If you did, you would have found this article:

https://www.wvtm13.com/article/fact-checking-kamala-harris-border-security/61780748

From 2024.

Speaking to a crowd in Atlanta on Tuesday, Harris reiterated her support for a border bill that would increase funding for ICE detention beds, border patrol agents, asylum officers and immigration judges. It also would also reinforce new restrictions on migrants seeking asylum, alongside other reforms.

This is a casual forum, not an academic debate. If you want to start demanding sources for things, show that you’ve put some good faith effort into disproving the claim. If you just want to reply casually, that’s fine. That’s what most discussion here is. But when you start demanding a higher level of rigor, it’s only polite to demonstrate that level of rigor yourself first.

They didn’t even start the process until two years in to the Biden administration. Biden sent the nation to Hell through the oldest liberal failing - seeking to compromise with Republicans. He appointed a Republican as his attorney general. Did you forget that? And then Garland proceeded to slow-walk the Trump prosecution. They only moved forward at all after the House investigatory committees forced their hand.

Before demanding sources, please provide you own. What research have you done so far, so others can help you find what you’re struggling with?