Don't knock it 'til you've tried. There's nothing quite like feeling the breeze between your knees.

Question: How do you implement proportional representation without sacrificing the ability of the voters to choose specific candidates?

Primaries and/or ranked choice voting allow for people to know who exactly it is they are choosing to have represent them. Proportional representation generally means that the people are only choosing what party they want, and the party gets to decide who will be their representative. There's any number of reasons why you might support a party in general but oppose a specific politician. I'd much rather have a system where people can potentially weed out terrible candidates, rather than leaving it to the party to decide.

I don't think a fake assassination attempt makes much sense at all. He's not losing to the point that he needs to take a big risk. It's not close enough to the election for one big stunt to have a good chance of influencing the outcome. And it didn't even happen at a time and place that would maximize the visibility.

The only thing I can think of that could explain this would be the recent trending of project 2025. But even then, if you need a distraction, the convention is next week, there's plenty of opportunity to shift the narrative there. And hell, if you want to stage an assassination attempt for your own benefit, that's the venue to do it at.

On the other hand, faking it requires conspirators who can make it happen, all of whom have to be able to keep it quiet. There will be an investigation that he can't control. The smaller the conspiracy, the harder it is to pull off, but the larger the conspiracy, the harder it is to cover up. And unlike all his existing criminal cases, there would be no connection to his time as president in any way, so the immunity he just got handed by the supreme court wouldn't apply. And obviously the shooter has to not accidentally kill Trump while he is shooting at him and killing an innocent bystander. Plus, you have to have a shooter willing to die for the cause, or a patsy who can plausibly take his place, which raises so many more questions and carries a whole new set of risks.

By comparison, someone looking at Trump and saying to himself "Well, if no one else is going to do this, I guess I will" is just a lot more plausible.

I knew a guy who had masters degree in philosophy that worked as a security guard. Turns out that the job market isn't great for philosophers.

Well shit, I'm open to being his vice president too. Why wouldn't anyone take the job? Now that being president surrounds you with a bubble of legal immunity, the vice president is free to grant himself a good old fashioned Klingon promotion. Stab him in the neck with a pen, sign some papers with his blood in an official act, and all the evidence is inadmissible.

Now I want to see the Amish and the Romans trying to out-build each other on a battlefield.

If you have a majority on the court that takes this disastrous decision as seriously as they should and are ready to overturn it, then it's fairly easy to get the case to happen. You just need to have a sitting president tell the justice department to bring a case against him. Doesn't have to be for anything big, just literally any criminal offense that can be brought to trial and appealed. He can even appeal directly to the supreme court and ask that they expedite the appeal. They hear the appeal, issue a ruling, and the precedent is gone.

This from the same legal team that successfully argued that the president is above the law, including having the ability to assassinate his political opponents.

4x games tend to be functionally infinitely repayable, since a single game often takes an eternity and there are usually many factions to play.

I particularly like sword of the stars 1 & 2. Honestly don't remember which I preferred but I know I got an insane amount of time sunk into both of them.

Saving time by reusing the same headline week after week.

They have 86 million people just giving them piles of money. They use that money to lend and invest and then reap all the profits. They incentivize those people to take loans from them and get credit cards through them, because when you already have millions of people entrusting you with their life savings, it's easy to upsell them.

And now, just because they have caps on their bullshit fees, they want to charge people for the privilege of handing over all that free money? Fucking genius right there. No way that will backfire.

Banks are awful, find a credit union, never deal with this kind of bullshit again (probably).

There's only two routes to getting this undone. One is a constitutional amendment, the other is for the Court to get several justices who are eager to overturn this decision, and then bring a case to trial specifically to address this issue.

I can't think of an amendment that would likely have a broader appeal than one that says presidents aren't kings and aren't above the law. But even so, I can't see it getting passed any time soon, given the overwhelming bipartisan support it would need. Personally, I'd like to see this done anyway, if only so that we could also include a provision stating that a president can't pardon himself, and can't pardon crimes that he ordered.

By comparison, it seems a lot easier to change the balance on the court, since one way or another it will be changed over time. And assuming we reach a point where we can be confident that the majority is ready to completely erase this ruling, then you just need to bring a case against a former president.

One could wait for such a case to arise organically, but that's leaving a lot to chance. You need a former president to have allegedly committed a crime, you need a evidence enough to bring a case, you need to go through the appeals process, they need to try to use presidential immunity, and then it needs to be taken up by the Supreme Court. Any number of things could go wrong, and there could be political fallout. If there's a serious enough situation that requires this, by all means, go after them and make this an issue in the case so that it has to get appealed. Worst case scenario, they get away with something they would have gotten away with anyway.

Personally, if I were president and had shifted the balance of the court back to one that respects the rule of law, I'd probably tell the justice department to bring a case against me, appeal to the Supreme Court, ask that they expedite the appeal, and then they can completely reverse this insane precedent. It would all be contrived, but that's hardly anything new. I would make sure that anyone I appointed to the Court was down with a plan like this, If they won't do that much to safeguard the country, the constitution, and rule of law, they can't be trusted with the responsibility of being on the Supreme Court.