BarryZuckerkorn

It's a bill to create technical standards by which anyone can mark their digital files with a rough analogue of a robots.txt that says "don't train on this file," and a requirement for AI training to obey that standard. It's for everyone, because copyright is for everyone who creates pretty much anything.

Plus the net worths of Trump's cabinet is basically the highest in history:

• Betsy Devos (Education): $2 billion
• Wilbur Ross (Commerce): $600 million
• Steve Mnuchin (Treasury): $400 million

Linda McMahon is worth $3 billion but was "only" SBA administrator, not a cabinet secretary.

Jared Kushner is from a family whose net worth is in the billions between all of them, and he got his dad a pardon.

Let's not forget major donors like the Adelsons, the Kochs, and everyone else.

Yes, Democrats have some billionaires on their side, but the balance isn't even close.

In my opinion, it's quite similar to Brexit: maybe you can get a majority coalition to disapprove of the status quo, but good luck getting them to actually propose a more popular alternative. Much less proposing an actual procedure for getting that alternative onto ballots.

Structurally and functionally, our political systems are not set up to run anyone other than the person who won the primary. Changing a presumptive nominee this late in the cycle is fraught with potential complications, but can be done if there's sufficient support for a specific alternative candidate. Realistically, it's Biden or it's Harris. There's no feasible way to get someone else at the top of the ticket.

Why they went into this election season without even attempting to run anybody aside from Biden I'll never know.

When has either party ever run a credible candidate against their own incumbent?

It's not just about pledged delegates

The leadership of the DNC, DCCC, DSCC, etc., are chosen by election, by members of each committee. State parties send their delegates to participate in these things.

despite not being an incumbent

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. These are processes that longtime party members participate in, and run on, about the structural rules and procedures to follow, and they're open to everyone. Elections often pit "establishment"/"insider" candidates against "insurgent"/"outsider" candidates, and there are examples of each kind (or hybrid candidates) winning the nomination in the modern primary system.

It's more of a spurious correlation: incumbency doesn't buy the advantage in the nomination race, but reflects that a candidate has the network and resources to have the popular support of their own party. That's why incumbents always win the nomination, and tend to win reelection in the general.

Tell me, during an incumbent primary, who controls the DNC?

Same as during a non-incumbent primary. The person who won the most recent nomination tends to have an outsized voice in the selection of party officials (because it's their pledged delegates who vote on all the other stuff). Yes, that means Biden-affiliated insiders had an inside track in 2020, but that's also true of Clinton allies in 2016, Obama allies in 2012, Obama allies in 2008, and Kerry allies in 2004.

More than a year ago, the DNC adopted new rules—including a primary calendar that ignored state law in Iowa and New Hampshire and eliminated any primary debates—designed to ensure that Biden’s coronation would proceed untroubled by opposition from any credible Democrat.

Which of those changes in the rules do you think were designed to benefit Biden specifically? De-emphasizing the role of Iowa and New Hampshire? There's been people clamoring for that for decades, within the party.

There's basically no set of rules that will ever create a credible challenge to an incumbent who wants to run for reelection. It's a popularity problem, not a structural problem.

No one deserves to be a president any more than anyone else, and treating an incumbent as though they do, without having to go through an open, democratic primary process, is to treat them as more deserving of future authority than other citizens.

There was a primary, and Biden got the most votes/delegates under the rules. Nobody is saying that incumbents should automatically get renomination. Or even that the incumbent should get some sort of rules advantage (like say, the way the defending world champ in chess gets an auto-bid to defend his title against a challenger who has to win a tournament to get there).

The rules are already set up to where any challenger has an equal structural change of winning the primary. They just won't have the actual popular support. You know, the core principles of democratic elections.

My 4-person household has one car, one electric cargo bike with two kid seats, a regular bicycle, accounts with bikeshare/scooter options around our city, plus mass transit passes, plus the option of Uber/Lyft.

Bikes might not work as a replacement for a first car, but they can work pretty well as a replacement for a second car, and a tool for reducing total mileage on the car you own.

Everything depends on where you live, of course, but a substantial number of people live in a place where a bike can reduce the number of miles you drive, even if you never actually give up the car.

Huh, weird. I believe you, but I don't see it when I load the page (Lemmy sync, Firefox on Android), in either desktop or mobile mode. Maybe the server is doing something with different browsers/environments.

Just stop using "clean."

Um, ok, done.

The article doesn't use the word "clean." Your first comment is the one to introduce the term into the thread.

I probably shouldn't dunk on a student newspaper opinion piece, but what's the proposal here? For rich people to avoid healthy eating in solidarity?

Singular "they" is older than singular "you." And note, of course, that the pronoun "you" is conjugated as a plural, and we deal with it just fine.