Trump's cognitive deficiencies are old news, whereas the Biden we're seeing now is unrecognizable from the last campaign. Given the narrow margin Biden won by last time, that should be concerning to his supporters. You really think this is a media conspiracy?
Honestly at this point the DNC can pick someone - anyone - and I'd be fine with it.
To be fair I think it's too early in Pete's political career for me to say that he stands by what he says or for you to say that he doesn't. I don't think anyone can hold a candle to Bernie on ideological consistency - he would rather lose than compromise. We all admire him for that, but it makes him a better activist than politician. I say this as someone who donated to his campaign and voted for him twice.
I agree that Pete is the polar opposite, but I don't know if it's a bad thing. Early on he said that he wanted the primaries to be a debate of ideas, and that - if nominated - he would champion the platform of the party. That could be the MO of a grifter, or it could be someone who's serious about restoring democracy. I don't blame anyone for being skeptical, but if we're dismissing him because we have concerns about his healthcare plan, I'd say we're still living in 2016.
I agree that we have no idea if he'd actually go through with reforming the court if given the opportunity - I'm just pointing out that Democrats have openly called for reforming the court, on the presidential debate stage, as recently as 2019. It shouldn't be viewed as a non-starter - especially when these ideas were coming from the so-called moderate wing of the party.
On the M4A topic, it's crazy to me how its supporters have managed to ally themselves with the private healthcare lobby in opposing a competitive public option. If Medicare is more efficient than profit-driven insurance, as we all suspect, then forcing private insurance to compete with it puts us on a direct path to a single-payer system. Pete is a democratic capitalist - it shouldn't be a surprise that his version of M4A uses the system in place to get us there. If Bernie amended his bill to include a 15-year transition plan I doubt anyone would accuse him of flip-flopping.
Reforming the Supreme Court was basically Pete's thing during the primaries. He was talking about it years before Roe, Chevron, and absolute immunity. He suggested adding 6 more judges, 5 of which would be rotating appointments by the other 10. It's a shame Biden won't do anything about this - especially when there are other leaders in the party who would.
For thousands of years the ruling class has tolerated the rest of us because they needed us for labor and protection. We're approaching the first time in human history where this may no longer be the case. If any of us are invited to the AI utopia, I suspect it will only be to worship those who control it. I'm not sure what utility we'll have to offer beyond that. I doubt they'll keep us around just to collect UBI checks.
Right on. AI feels like a looming paradigm shift in our field that we can either scoff at for its flaws or start learning how to exploit for our benefit. As long as it ends up boosting productivity it's probably something we're going to have to learn to work with for job security.
This is how it went down with Agile at my company 10 years ago, and some process certifications and database technologies before that. Based on what I'm hearing from upper management microservice are probably next.
From my perspective the corporate obsession with microservices is a natural evolution from their ongoing obsession with Agile. One of the biggest consequences of Agile adoption I've seen has been the expectation of working prototypes within the first few months of development, even for large projects. For architects this could mean honing in on solutions in weeks that we would have had months to settle on in the past. Microservices are attractive in this context because they buy us flexibility without holding up development. Once we've identified the services that we'll need, we can get scrum teams off and running on those services while working alongside them to figure out how they all fit together. Few other architectures give us that kind of flexibility.
All this is to say that if your current silver bullet introduces a unique set of problems, you shouldn't be surprised if the solutions to those problems start to also look like silver bullets.
I tend to gravitate towards female characters in single player games and I ask myself this same question a lot. The weird thing is that I have no gender preference when my options are more limited - it's only when I'm being asked to customize my appearance. With male characters I never really know what I'm looking for - usually what looks right is what looks familiar. Maybe I'll be scrolling through hair options, find something that reminds me of Aragorn, and before I know it that's who I'm roleplaying. With a female character it's easier for me to resist these influences and make someone original because I can rely on my own preferences to tell me what looks right. I'll still play male characters if I have a specific influence in mind, but otherwise I find myself much more likely to actually finish a game as a female PC.
I disagree with you but respect your honesty - you don't deserve the downvotes. I'm sure you're not the only one jaded enough by this situation to cast a protest vote.