From what I understand, some degree of nuclear power is always going to be necessary. This is because while we tend to think of excess power in the energy grid as being stored away, this in fact is not the case and we only use power as it's actively available. Excess power is wasted. The major downside of renewables is that they're circumstancial. Solar energy is only available during clear days, wind power is only available on windy days, etc. Until we massively improve our energy storage capabilities we're going to need some kind of constant supply of power backing the other ones when they aren't available. Without adequate nuclear energy available, that's going to be fossil fuels. And when compared to coal, oil, and natural gas, nuclear energy is unbelievably better for the environment. The only byproduct is the spent fuel which is dangerous, but we have control over where it ends up which is more than can be said for fossil fuels.
Gray
When I agreed to go $60k into debt, I was a stupid high schooler under the age of 18 who had never had a real job and didn't know what money was worth. Colleges were spamming misinformation at me to get me to give them my money. I was misled on the ease at which I could get a solid job out of college. I trusted that the system wouldn't charge me more than the value of my education. 6 years out of college now, still $45k in debt. The system fucked me over royally when I was still a kid.
Yeah, bullet dodged on that guy. It's pretty shitty when the choices are a racist or someone with Alzheimer's. Especially considering how large California is, I'm pretty sure they could have come up with better options.
I don't even think this is necessarily an age issue. You can get Alzheimer's at 50 too. To me the issue is a shameful unwillingness from Democrats to acknowledge Feinstein's inability to fulfill her duties. Pelosi straight up called people sexist for suggesting Feinstein should step down. It's despicable. If I was in California, I'd be pretty fucking mad right now that my senator was being used as a tool to advance other people's interests by preying on her dementia.
Unfortunately, steeply here doesn't really capture the size disparity between Lemmy and Reddit. Lemmy has 60k active monthly users. Reddit has 450 million active monthly users. We have a looong way to go before we can really compete. But we just have to keep pushing. Now that we exist and have a sustainable userbase, the next time Reddit does something idiotic we'll be here to attract disgruntled users. Something good that we can be doing is showing up to the threads on Reddit about the terrible things Reddit does and advertising Lemmy to people.
I kind of like that idea, except I think it's less likely to create a non-partisan court and more likely to create a randomly partisan court. Like, odds are that five of the justices would still have a partisan lean. Is that fair to the American people? Also, when Republicans block a president from having their judicial nominations confirmed, then it becomes even more likely for conservative justices to make it to the SCOTUS. Same for if Dems blocked. It would incentize obstruction.
I've felt that we should simply have the SCOTUS be elected like we do in many states. Why shouldn't the people have a direct say in who makes the greatest decisions about our constitution? It was one thing when the court was ostensibly non-partisan, but at this point if it's going to be partisan either way, we should just make it elected.
Alternatively, we could bake the partisanship into the court. Make the court have an even number, then reward an equal number of justices to the major parties (parties receiving more than x% of the vote in presidential elections or something like that). If libertarians or greens ever get more popular, we can have the court autoadjust to split between more parties. That's my hairbrained idea that would probably be too messy to be worth it.
I was reading about Vivek Ramaswamy on his Wikipedia page last night and I saw that he's seriously pushing raising the voting age to 25! What a bunch of absolute fascist shitheads. Trying to steal the right to vote from voters that disagree with them. Literally doing the thing they accuse Democrats of doing. It's the same old bullshit hypocrisy with those fuckfaces. I wish it still surprised me. How anybody could possibly support them at this point is beyond me. They've become a joke and nothing more at this point. I wish there was a serious opposition to the Democratic Party. It's not good to have only one sane party in a country. You want your party's ideas to be forged in the fire of scrutiny that comes with serious political conversations. But what Republicans have become is useless. At this point I can't wait for them to just fucking die as a party. Wipe them out so badly that a new party has to rise in their stead. And God I hope it looks nothing like the modern conservative bullshit ideology.
I did some digging and the two words have different etymologies. So it's a coincidence. English has many words that share the same spelling but have different meanings/etymologies as well. "Fan" for example. For "tour", the "tower" usage comes from the Latin "turrem" which also means "tower", and the "tour" usage comes from the Latin "tournāre" which means "to turn".
You think it's weird in Iowa? Try Wisconsin! Literally every state it touches now has legal weed except for the tiny bit of Iowa we touch in the corner. Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan. All now have legal weed. But I still see the news reports in Wisconsin about "criminals" being caught with weed. It's insane.
This is complete speculation, but I wonder if the less common inverted title (eg Lake Michigan, River Thames, etc) comes from English's French influence. In French they usually invert the title in this way. For example, what we call the Eiffel Tower, they call the Tour Eiffel.
Yeah, I get annoyed at the people acting like this place is perfectly fine as it is. It isn't. It lacks content. It has repetitive posts. And as far as I'm concerned, growth will iron out those problems over time. It doesn't need to be all at once, but I am looking forward to it. 60k active monthly users is nothing. Reddit has 450 million active users. It's hard to overstate how much larger Reddit is. Even if you're a hipster opposed to Lemmy growing to a Reddit size, it isn't even remotely close to being that large yet. And as far as I'm concerned it still hasn't reached the mass it needs to turn it into a super engaging community just yet. I'm rooting for it to become more engaging and I'm doing everything I can to increase that engagement, but we really don't need the smug in denial "it's perfect right now" attitude.
America's original intentions were to keep the courts apolitical. And for most of our history that worked just fine. The recent politicization of the courts is more an inevitability that comes out of such a highly polarized environment than anything else. It's very difficult to create a system where the courts aren't politicized in this environment. I don't think it's a fundamental problem with how judges are appointed. As far as I'm concerned, the systems to appoint judges will always be vulnerable to politicization. Whether that's by politicians, an independent body, or elections by the people, judge appointments can always be politicized in such a divided country. So I think the biggest question we should be asking is why America is so divided right now and that's a MUCH larger and more complicated question.