There are three practical reasons Trump does this:

1. Deflection: Trump doesn’t have an affirmative platform. As a populist strongman, Trump’s platform is situational and entirely based on what his supporters want to hear in any given moment. If health care is in the news, Trump will say his plan is coming in two weeks (it won’t ever come). If immigration is in the news, Trump will say he will build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it (he won’t). But what’s even easier? Focusing on the shortcomings of the opponent’s platform. Any time this works, Trump saves himself an opportunity to be put under the microscope.
2. Deflection: Manipulating the media works. Trump knows that the more ludicrous things he says about Kamala, even if the media then starts to talk about how he’s wrong or fact-check him, the focus is still on the thing he said rather than Kamala’s platform. It’s subtle, but it really does focus the media effectively on whatever he says, and use his frame of that issue as the media’s frame.
3. Filling the echo chambers and other spaces. We’re in our own echo chambers like never before. Trump says these things so that the people in the right-wing echo chambers have a plausible response to Kamala’s policies, or even just need filler for their broadcast/websites/Facebook groups. Ultimately there is only so much media people can consume every day. If Trump has filled all relevant supporter spaces with his own opinions & framing, there is no time or energy left to explore other opinions and framing.

Voters across the political spectrum said they’ve lied about their voting: 27% of Democrats acknowledged it, while 24% of Republicans and 20% of independents did so. The survey didn’t ask exactly how, why or to whom they’d lied.

This is what I was looking for. It’s not reliable data about which direction it may be influencing polling, but if a self-identified “democrat” is lying, presumably it is to conservative family or friends about conservative support (and vice versa). This would mean there is slightly more “shy” democrats than republicans, but with a very large “independent” black box.

My math is rusty, but this sounds like their original source files were at a different framerate than whatever their streaming standard framerate is. E.g., a 25 fps PAL source, playing at a 30 (or 29.976) NTSC rate.

“How dare the left accuse us of fascism, they’re the fascists! Now c’mon everyone, let’s conspire to fake vote totals so we can assert authority we didn’t earn.”

Harris polling right now (and specifically, the trend, since the polling is on track to continue improving until the election) is our control period, before the money and right-wing propaganda hit.

I guess we’ll find out in November not just whether democracy in the US ends, but whether Citizen’s United is the cause of death.

My good faith response to your good faith question: because having a DRM-free copy on your own server or hard drive is the only way to be sure you will be able to play it tomorrow.

Streaming services are a complex collection of licensing deals that are by design temporary. You may not hear beforehand when your favorite artist’s label’s parent company’s conglomerate’s CEO decides to pull their content because they’re going to start their own streaming service, or another service gave them a lucrative exclusive deal.

And while you’re never going to have a hard time finding Taylor Swift, that one 70s esoteric album may become instantly impossible to find once it drops off a streamer.

In the end there are no promises with a streaming service. On the other hand, you put in a small amount of work to grab MP3s or FLACs, set up your own Plex server (or Emby, etc), and you’re good for pretty much forever.

Similarly, support artists by buying their direct merch, going to shows, and so on, but they are barely seeing any Spotify money. Between Spotify and the labels, they are cleaning the plate and artists are getting whatever crumbs fall off the table (unless you’re Taylor Swift or another global artist).

deleted by creator

This may have changed since I learned about it in 2008, but my understanding is that they get around that rule by technically “releasing” you and “rearresting” you on suspicion of related crimes. The “rearrests” can stack.

They also can hold suspects in detention without trial or hearing for months while they investigate, if they choose. It’s not often discussed but it’s a huge part of the pressure/duress.

Honestly? Just use YouTube and ublock. There’s pretty much always a better karaoke selection.

The practical answer is 3-4% above to counteract the right-wing effect of the electoral college. Yes, it all matters on what states she wins.

The theoretical answer is that Kamala could get less votes, just like Trump did in 2016, and still “win.” It’s not practical because the swing states are more conservative than the median population of the country as a whole, which means it’s extremely unlikely those swing states will vote for Kamala while Trump gets more votes elsewhere.

The places you need to watch are Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and to a lesser extent Ohio, Minnesota and Florida. The 538 polls will give you a sense of where those states are leading, and you can see different maps here. polling is imperfect, and frankly I can’t take the anxiety of watching that data day-to-day.

deleted by creator

This is a very thoughtful take. I just have one issue, which is the adjustment you’re talking about, where the base becomes less charged, isn’t something we can rely on anymore. The base in many cases doesn’t even understand the reforms, whether they’ve been implemented, or how they affect them.

For example, the ACA in the US gave health care to tens of millions of people, a huge amount of whom were stupifyingly demanding to not be given health care because it was “Obamacare.” Polls show that those people strongly wanted more affordable health care options, oppose removing the more adorable health care they are using, but also want “Obamacare” repealed.

Their reality is somehow kept separate from their experience, since their reality is defined by their consumed propaganda and their experience is subservient to their reality.

All that is to say: we still need to fix the right wing propaganda problem before any solution works, even the logical map in your post.

Do you have links to her polling well against Trump? That’s my one (very large) concern.

It’s influencers targeting “outsiders.” There have always been outsiders, whether in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, etc. Sometimes that’s even healthy. But because that only became a source of strongly-defined “identity” and “pride,” often people in the past would grow out of it or use it productively (as a source of empathy for other outsiders) and leave only a small dedicated core group who were vulnerable to being exploited.

The difference is that now these influencers indoctrinate a vulnerable audience at the right time, and coach that audience into making alt-right talking points a part of their identity. Social media then allows those new recruits to see each other and create a community that self-reinforces.

There is no equivalent push on the left, because the left assumes that sense will eventually prevail. It was true decades ago, but now there is no reason to believe that - those indoctrinated never have to confront their doctrine, they live surrounded by it.

So yep, it’s going to keep growing. The only solution I can think of is to regulate news media to penalize lying and propaganda. That itself is nearly impossible to do right, since it will be abused by every right-wing leader if there is any opportunity.

Huh… That’s really not nice.

Maybe the command line version is consistent, but day to day I prefer not to do command line. I’ve tried like 5 different GUIs and they all have failed downloads, incorrect formats, and other issues just doing test downloads. I don’t know why, but it’s been a problem every time for me.

You should listen to all the yt-dlp comments, but I’ve always had trouble getting all the yt-dl variants to just download the best version and subtitles consistently.

I use 4K Video Downloader, and it’s easier to use. It has a 30 video per day limit is all, which is more than I need.

Honest question: What should democrats do to reverse the Supreme Court?

It’s definitely X. They left X because they were prevented from engaging in hate speech and held responsible for their actions. Musk created a right-wing hate safe space, and the audience for these users is much larger on X. There’s also a handy way to identify your right-wing brethren with a blue check while they harass perceived liberals.

All in all, no need for Truth Social anymore.