Yup, he accidentally the whole coke bottle’d.

The left Shift is A, and Caps Lock is Z.

To get those keys to function as Shift/Caps you would need to hold down the Fn key (bottom right).

I’m all for minimalist keyboards, but this shit is a bit too ridiculous.

You would hope so, but there’s just as many ‘crunchy’ people on the left as there are in the right.

Part of me, as an outsider looking in with abject horror, wants to see this happen just because I still hold out hope that it might finally wake up a not-insignificant part of rural and rust-belt America that live off these benefits (or ‘handouts’ according to the GOP) out of their political stupor.

But on the other hand, I know that once it’s gone, it’s very unlikely to be brought back in the immediate future by the current crop of Dems, who seemingly would rather keep dangling it as a carrot (along with restoring ablation access) in order to entice voter turnout.

With the right level of Government support, bubbles can seemingly go on for literal decades. Case in point, Australian housing since the late 90s has been on an uninterrupted tear (yes, even in ‘08 and ‘20).

Obama at least managed to deliver the Affordable Care Act; which despite not being Medicare Part E (Medicare for All), was a significant improvement over what existed before.

What the US needs is a proper progressive firebrand from the Dems; someone from the Bernie school - or hell, just pick from any one of the other Western democracies.

Not that I’m actually trying to defend MS/Teams (seriously, fuck ‘em both); but this is more due to IT Admin settings.

We have similar in our company, that’s in place because we handle PIR data regularly and it’s meant to be a speed bump rather than full roadblock.

Both things can be true at the same time; the world isn’t black and white - but various shades of grey.

The Harris campaign was awfully milquetoast, but people’s indifference also played a major role.

Whoever was running Harris campaign needs to be barred from being in charge of any political campaign ever again; talk about legendary levels of mismanagement.

They had the golden opportunity to lean into the ‘weird’ meme and hammer Trump/Vance on that issue - but decided against it because it was what, ‘demeaning’?

The Dems need a firebrand, with a truely populist message and policies; rather than just lip service.

I’ve been mulling over this the past few years, having finally kicked the WoW habit in the second year of Shadowlands (approaching ~3 years now)…

…but how often are quests/missions/objectives etc. just a combination of go to x, collect x of y, kill x of y? At a certain point, all of these become generic - right?

VPN to a country with a lower cost, and sign up there. It used to be Turkey and India, where you could get a Family Plan for like $2/mo - but they’ve cracked down a bit on it.

We use YT for so much in our ‘household’ that it made sense to pool together and get Premium, and honestly it feels good having ~5 people who consume a tonne of content ad-free for nearly no cost while still supporting our preferred content creators.

You need to seperate out the political machine from the populace.

The DNC did make a right-ward play to try and peel centrist/moderate voters who identify as Republicans but didn’t necessarily want to vote for Trump. They did this on the (now we know false) assumption that their base would turn out automagically.

But again, Trump won with fewer votes this time around than he lost in 2020 to Biden with. He didn’t gain standing, the only reason he was victorious was because those left of centre failed to show up to the polls. Voter apathy doesn’t denote a right-wing shift; it denotes a shit political platform.

Voters are still voting rather progressively on state-wide ballot measures, the people haven’t gotten more conservative - despite what the (elite-owned) media narrative would have you believe. Every datapoint and infographic regarding voter demographics is based on %s of voters, rather than absolute demographics.

8 6 7 5 30 9

As in to the left of the (imaginary) political centre; not self-identifying Leftists. This cohort includes centrists, moderates, liberals and leftists amongst others.

I’m not familiar with the California referendum in question, but Florida saw over 57% vote in favour of extending abortion rights.

The only reason it lost was because it required at least 60% to pass; instead Florida now gets to experience the tyranny of minority rule.

I used 2020 as a comparison for a few reasons;

• It was the most recent result prior to the 2024 election, so it will have the most comparable demographics.
• voting infrastructure from the COVID-era is still largely in place, allowing for more early and postal voting than pre-COVID. So earlier years are less comparable.
• presidential elections are just as much about voting against the worse candidate, if not more-so, than voting for a preferred one.
• both 2020 and 2024 could be seen as referendums on Trump’s policies, presidency and suitability for a second term.

Rather than looking at percentages, the individual counts are more important as they tell the underlying story.

The DNC’s GOTV campaign absolutely failed to motivate their base and undecided voters. Perhaps that was somewhat intentional, as a lot of the former GOP aligned ‘never-Trump’ campaign financiers have shifted to the Dems and have used their new-found influence to nudge the party’s platform rightward. The Cheney endorsements certainly didn’t do them any favours!

But looking at how even deep-red states have voted in support of abortion rights, shows that the general US populace is generally slowly drifting leftward - despite what the corporate-owned media narrative would have you believe.

Biden got ~81m votes in 2020, Harris only got ~67m. >14m fewer people voted for her.

Trump also dropped by ~2m, only getting ~72m this time around vs. ~74m in 2020.

Trump didn’t win because of a giant right-wing national shift, he won because of voter apathy on the left.

At this point, Romney would have been expelled and disowned by the modern-GOP; that’s how far right the Overton window has shifted over the past decade.

No doubt he’s smart, he hitched his wagon to the Trump train after all - but I don’t think that’s particularly important.

He doesn’t have Trump’s charisma, so he’d struggle to maintain control over his fan base and would likely face challenges from key faces in the cohort (eg. Ron DeSantis, MTG etc.)

Why is that? He lacks the cult of personality to be able to carry on after Trump IMO, and was largely picked as a ‘Yes Man’.