Excellently articulated. Perhaps there’s a simple explanation for all of this - perhaps he’s sick, or if we really want to get conspiratorial, even maliciously poisoned? (I’m trying to convey something that would be outside of his control hence not remotely his fault in any way.)

The thing is, it doesn’t matter. He could have cancelled the debate altogether, but instead he rushed through it. This seems reminiscent of his handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which tbf was 99.9% Trump’s deal, except the handling of it was Biden’s, and revealed some about his personality, to ignore his advisors and substitute his own knowledge for theirs. Which is fine, it’s his prerogative as President to do exactly that, except… he was wrong. The first and basically only job of a leader is to pick good advisors and listen to them, so as to be correct. (Then, if time, train someone else to do likewise.)

This is also reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s handling of his sexual scandals - it happens, but then he went and lied about it to the Supreme Court, which was a whole other thing.

So now, people are - FOR SOME REASON - not quite trusting that what Biden is saying is truthful. Maybe he means well, maybe it really is temporary, but again, none of that is relevant. He needs to reassure people, if not last week’s opportunity then create some new one, that he really does have what it takes to go the distance and be the leader of the United States of America for the next four years.

Fuck, I’m freaking out, bc Trump is going to win.:-( Anyway, thank you for keeping your head about you as the rest of us lose ours - your calm and cogent analyses of things are helpful to read:-).

The mainstream media is bought by the trillionaires, so I’m mostly ignoring them.

I thought The Atlantic was basically the last one left. Even The Guardian has encroached first into clickbait titles and now several paragraphs at the top of clickbait content even if the latter part of an article can finally get into real stuff. So it is in transition as it finishes off the enshittification process it already began.

But The Atlantic… I hold to a different standard, in my mind, and when they speak, I still listen. Perhaps I shouldn’t - can you point to an example from them that shows that they have jumped the shark too? The Atlantic isn’t in the same class as e.g. the NYT!!?! They are still worthwhile (I thought?)!

So media aside, people - especially young people that don’t have the personal history with political matters - they watched the debate, or saw clips of its worst moments. They see this shit with their own eyes. It’s not just the media doing a hit job, as has been true in the past. This time it’s real.

Asking your President to remain awake during a conversation, especially one prepared for literally weeks to months in advance does not sound like bullshit to me. Rather it sounds like the basic foundation for any job that I’ve ever had personally, and have ever so much as heard of.

Perhaps Biden('s people) should not have agreed to a debate in this format, giving only 2 minutes for each question, that favored Trump’s style of false but pithy statements? Nonetheless, he did agree…

Also I’m not saying he’s senile, though I would like for a real test to be done. In any case, can we agree that it doesn’t matter at this point? Doing the debate in that manner caused a LOT of harm to his campaign. Maybe I’m just not stating it in the right words, but that’s more along the lines of what I mean…

In more detail: we cannot control people. Hillary Clinton failed to earn sufficient votes, and Trump won in 2016. Now, is Biden repeating the same pattern? Vote Blue No Matter Who is an authoritarian dogma - but we have no power to enforce it. People, especially the youth, will do as they please. The only hope is to try to earn it? That’s going to be a LOT more difficult now, than it was prior to the debate…

Tbf it really did seem a conspiracy theory back when it started. He used to be fairly energetic, despite being old. But, time passes.

The problem now is that unlike conservatives, liberals don’t take as kindly to being lied to, and to say that he’s both too old to speak and also not too old to be President… it just doesn’t sit right.

I mean did you…

…

…

watch the…

…

…

…

thing, you know the thing, that does the stuff?

Please note, I’m not suggesting to not vote Democrat. Also, the sleepy Joe stuff back then was different than it was here during this debate?

Also, his debates last time weren’t… ideal, but he at least remained awake during them!? Anyway, I’m with you: I understand someone wanting him to win, but how on earth can this be considered a done deal already?

There is a time and a place to stop all questions and get to work. But we aren’t there yet!? And being ready to change one’s mind based on the most current set of facts is literally the hallmark of the Age of Enlightenment, as opposed to e.g. the divine right of rulers to continue for as long as they wish to?

Perhaps you missed the last almost 4 years where people were doing precisely that. There was this whole thing with Ron Desantis, and Nikki Haley, and the brainworms inside of JFK, Jr., etc. It didn’t work, and his base chose Trump, if not unanimously then close enough to it, and also far back enough in the past for such a call to not be relevant anymore. Plus conservatives are just different kinds of people - for them, power is not bestowed upon someone by We The People, but ripped out of the people’s hands by force of will. Might does make Right after all, in their playbook.

But Dems are not choosing Biden. Also, no primaries are being held. So asking him to drop out is the last hope before holding your nose and voting for him anyway, hoping against hope that just like for Hillary, others do as well (although in that case… well, I’m sure this time will be different. Why am I sure? Bc… shut up, that’s why!:-P /s).

Excellent breakdown imho.:-)

A large part of the confusion is that dinosaurs did not emerge from birds in the same way that humans did not evolve from Chimpanzees (nor monkeys) - but rather, both groups in those pairs evolved from a common ancestor (but different ones:-).

Birds have feathers and for the most part fly, while alligators not so much. In attempting to simplify, e.g. Avians to “birds”, it causes confusion. Alligators also are not warm-blooded as birds are, not do they have beaks, all hallmarks of modern birds, but they do have four legs, long body with a tail, moveable eyelids - and don’t they have external ear openings as well? - all hallmarks of modern lizards.

Scientists use precision language like “non-Avian theropod”, but those don’t map perfectly to common words like “birds”, which everyone knows are just government drones anyway:-P.

I can chat with someone for hours on end, but I also like using my own toilet, and having access to a tea, snack, etc.

For me, what blocks having random conversations is having 1-3 hours of status updates daily - it doesn’t leave much leftover to do the work especially when my firm declaration that it was going to take twice as long as someone else estimated (and then sure enough it did, at minimum, and maybe taking 10x) is ignored. That would block conversations regardless?

Anyway, the conversations are the content, but them being present physically is only the medium, so WFH does not need to block them, and if anything can help facilitate them e.g. working one in-between other meetings whereas the time taken to physically walk over would have been prohibitive.

Which is already a red flag right there. Too bad there are no real consequences for their attempting to lie & cheat their way towards finding someone willing to put up with their BS, and at this point I don’t mean the on-site factor that is perhaps a legit need that they may have. It’s just how capitalism works, except that they’d really rather it work for rather than against them…:-(

That’s understandable but like… you could go to a coffee shop or literally rent office space nearby to where you live - it doesn’t have to be all one way or the other. Anyway, if they truly do enjoy being surrounded by people then I don’t want to knock their totally valid preferences, just to say that there are other ways.

In the past I have very much bought the content legally, by the normal means. The issue of giving to the creators directly I don’t know though.

I can’t recall exactly but I thought it’s already happened, and if nothing else Dick Chaney shot someone in the face, and continued on to shoot others in other ways in other trips.

Totally unconnected (yeah right! and if you believe that…), some of this money supposedly from “the NRA” actually is funnelled through from Russia. Not all, but it seems a common pipeline by which, shall we say “certain politicians” are bribed no wait yeah that’s what I meant there. At least it’s a factor that complicates things, but since it’s money it complicates it a lot.

In some other country that might even be thought of as something worth doing about, and similarly with the sacrifice of our literal and actual children. But here we cannot, bc you know, we are instead “Pro-Life”.

That would be one way.

I have thought long and hard and have been unable to come up with any other alternatives.

I do wonder if ghost guns may change things, but even so I doubt they can shoot e.g. 1000 rounds per minute. Anyway we should do something, rather than the literally nothing that is currently done.

Edit: to be clear, I am totally okay with people owning 1770’s style muskets:-), it’s those ones such as used in the Vegas shooting scenario that are unprecedented in their ability to lay waste to swaths of human crowds all at once that I think might benefit the most from regulation - and even then, perhaps put exemptions such as someone having served with distinction in the military can “properly” use such. I have no idea how…or for what, but sure, you’ve earned that and it still keeps it out of the hands of the untrained masses.

He could try, but he can’t be everywhere - that one takes vigilance to stop before it happens, i.e. us.

I think you are presuming the consequent here. It may help to strip the story of all emotional connotations and just treat it as a logical game - hard to do tbf but it would help. So like, if you start with a story where it is a given that a real God exists, then a lot of freaky stuff can happen downstream from that… bc the Truth is just stranger than fiction, I mean regardless of this stuff even it just is.

e.g. in The Matrix movie, you can go your whole entire lifetime and never once see The Architect, nor anyone you’ve ever met or even heard of either… and yet he exists all the same. Saying like “well then why have *I* never seen him” represents an assumption that may not be valid - in that case, that you would or even could ever do so (by what, walking to work, eating noodles, drinking at a pub, reading a book, intoning a chant in an old language?).

Anyway I cannot prove the existence of God so I’m not even trying to do that here, just to show you a peek into the idea that presuming that He does not exist in the first place relies on some heavy assumptions, that cannot be proven. Or maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill here, and misunderstanding you, especially if English isn’t your first language. But those are some thoughts that I can offer to help get you started on your pathway to better understanding it from the outside, just in case they may help.

Some atheists seem to not want to full-on “hate” fascism, I guess thinking it demeans them or some such. As such their more neutral stance makes them “collaborators” (or worse), whether they realize that or not. And thereby allows such to spread, by virtue of not being opposed hard enough.

Evil needs to be fought against - and I’m not talking some alien lifeform with red skin, a forked tail, and carrying a pitchfork, but inside of our very selves.

But I guess I didn’t express my last point very well:-D.

Of course not. The point would be to offer people the choice - the consequences of any action are never up to us, only the decisions.

And I wish most non-Christians were more like you. Regardless of our “beliefs”, there is work to be done, to make life better for people - not “kill them all and let God sort them out later”, but right here, right now. I have found it exceedingly easy to get along with most people irl - it’s called “not being a dick”.

Tbf, “religion” itself is an extremely debilitating mental illness (inducing cognitive dissonance) when wielded by authoritarians for ulterior motives, obviously including diddling kids but even more so (at a higher scale I mean), allowing those in power to parasitize off of the backs of those who actually work in society. Ironically that can be cured by reading more of (rather than less) the texts lifted up as “holy scripture”… which is why access to that is curated and heavily obscured as people rush forward to tell you “what it really means is…” (e.g. give me money, and more importantly OBEY).

In short, greedy people have made society the way that it is now, for their own purposes, and therefore there is heavy resistance to trying to do things any other way - people are literally killed who try to buck the system (e.g. Jesus to name just one:-D). Also, religious authoritarianism is only one (particularly effective) way to implement that greed, but it is not the only way e.g. dictatorships.

As far as an all-powerful diety, I have no problem envisioning that (once you get past the fact that most religous “authorities” lie - for their own agenda - e.g. is God “good” like Santa Claus, peeping on little children to make sure they eat their veggies and get in all of their nappies; or is He rather good like Azathoth/Cthulhu, in allowing us to do our own thing even if that literally ends our planet and all life on it, whoopsie daisy!:-P), but ofc it makes just as much sense to envision the opposite too:-). We don’t need to be dicks about whether chocolate or vanilla is better - so long as we agree that murder is bad etc.