And yet said republicans are only viable politicians when they can win over non GOP voters like in Vermont

Vermont is almost entirely a blue state! Phill Scott is successful as a Republican in Vermont because he is able to win over democrats with a combination of moderate politics and a strong level of local credibility.

He would be destroyed in Texas or Florida. You’ve got to realize that the people that vote in Phill Scott every election are the same people that have consistently kept Bernie Sanders in power… a self professed socialist

I’m not the person you replied to but I can comment to this effect. (Sorry for the wall of text - a lot of context to give about the American two-party system).

America has always found itself entrenched in a two party system. Periods that resemble now (very tight competition between the two parties) are very common in American history, but you do get occasional periods where a single party will be dominant for a long stretch. This says just as much about the unsuccessful party as it does the successful one: one is able to represent a large segment of American society, and the other is not. In this situation, the unsuccessful party will always rebrand to increase it’s relevancy (the alternative is that a party collapses and a new one forms, but that has not happened for >170 years). As an example, the Democratic Party (today includes Obama and Biden) once was the first choice for racist Southerners who were butthurt about the civil war. The Republican Party (today includes Trump) was led by the likes of Lincoln and was extremely progressive in racial issues for the time.

All this to say that the Republican Party doesn’t have to change in name or branding or even leadership to eliminate Trumpism and provide a platform for moderates. History tells us that, instead of a successful 3rd party rising up and replacing the Republicans, we will simply see a relatively short period (maybe 12-20 years) of Democrat victories and then the Republicans will be forced to adopt a more reasonable platform.

To an extent, this is already happening. In 2016, Republican Party leaders planned to adopt a platform that was more progressive on racial and women’s issues - they saw it as a lesson learned from their failures in the Obama era. Those same officials were blindsided by Trump’s popularity and had to pivot the opposite direction to meet the mood of the country. Despite Trump’s success though, his platform was never designed or planned as a long term strategy for winning elections and gaining support. Trump’s supporters are overwhelmingly old compared with his opponents, and thus are literally being replaced.

This should illustrate the extent of the republican party’s failure to adapt: they have won ONE presidential election popular vote since 1992. One. Out of eight that have occurred.

People like OP are an important part of this natural process of party realignment. OP rightly should be represented by a major party, but the modern Republican Party is failing to represent him. His is not a rare opinion in American political discourse; there are millions of people who would vote for more moderate conservatives if they had the option. One impact of this is that more far people are registering as “independent” voters than in previous years.

The end result of this, of course, is that the Republican Party is likely to change to represent people like OP over time. If people like OP begin to feel disillusioned with the Republican Party and it’s platform to the extent that they don’t vote, this process will only speed up. OP can do nothing better to quench the rise of far right trumpism than to be a political orphan for a while. That’s exactly what we’re encouraging by pointing out that his party hates him.

TL;DR

This dichotomy is not new in American politics and OP will actually do more to change the GOP from the outside than from the inside.

Never had that or met anybody who has. You should go to a doctor bro

After setting up the PC, search “defender” in the toolbar and poke around a little bit. The security settings are very intuitive, so I’m sure you can modify things to your liking.

GOP

Trump-Lovers not welcome

Dude, take a look at trump’s poll numbers for registered republicans. You are the one who is not welcome in the modern GOP, and you should stop kidding yourself about that fact.

Ngl I’ve had non-alcoholic beers that I could not distinguish from real ones.

(The same is not true for wine. Non-alcoholic wine is ass)

Strongly agree about iced tea and kombucha. Both can be bought or made at home, and are naturally complex, fruity, and diverse in flavor.

I think people suggesting very sugary drinks like coke are missing the point somewhat

I agree that the article is wrong on that point. It was still objectively dishonest to make a comment about how nuclear power is unclean without mentioning either fission or fusion specifically. Your comment was begging for a caveat or some sort of “but.”

There is no indication at all that nuclear fusion is going to create harmful byproducts in the same way that fission does, and so make a comment that criticizes “nuclear power” as a whole is a very stupid thing to do overall.

I’ll also point out that the whole basis for your above comment was to cherry-pick one of the very worst examples of fission energy out there. Look up any modern plant, it’s cost per kilowatt hour, and it’s waste disposal procedure. A single poorly-designed nuclear power plant that predates the Kennedy admin doesn’t move the needle on fission power’s overall efficacy.

What do you think the death toll of flight attempts was before the Wright brothers finally got it right? Certainly not in the millions.

Whether or not you like communism, “keep trying over and over until it works” is a bad plan when failure has historically cost lives.

This mfer doesn’t know the difference between fusion power and fission power smfh

Or the guy popped out of his hammock like a gopher and jump-scared the bear

Seems a bit dramatic. A combination of bear spray and safety procedure are all you need to reliably avoid them.

I’ve safely camped in bear country countless times personally.

You have the palate of a child

It is really dumb to make it a hard cutoff in the first place. Colorado uses a system in which someone who is 15 can consent to sex with someone no older than 18. At 16 you can date consent with someone up to age at 19, and at 17 up to age 20. At age 18, people are considered adults and there is no longer an age limit to consent.

It is wholly necessary to protect children from sexual predators using age of consent laws. At the same time, it is a bit ridiculous to pretend that people in their teens don’t have sexual relationships with one another, and the law ought to reflect that. I certainly don’t feel that an 18-year-old should be considered a criminal for dating a 17-year-old, anyway.

Honestly as someone who is also in research, that is pretty understandable. Preprint papers are all subject to peer review and editing after the fact, but are a good opportunity to stake your claim on a big discovery before someone else can. Preprints are inherently not final versions and I guarantee that the mistakes will be caught before publication.

Okay so I agree that it needs to be peer reviewed and independently verified before we can trust it. But how exactly does the preprint look rushed?

Very true that it needs to be confirmed, but worth mentioning that every paper in history was at one point or another unreviewed and uncooborated. The fact that this isn’t yet doesn’t inherently mean anything bad for the quality of the results.

I’m just a biologist so I can’t weigh in to the credibility of the paper beyond that

I appreciate the recommendation but I don’t see my perspective on this issue as flawed or in need of changing.

I do have a lot of issues with the way wealth is distributed in capitalist societies… our income from work is a downright shitty attempt at approximating people’s value to society. Some people get more than they deserve and others get a lot less.

At the same time, I don’t think it’s wrong that at least a large part of a person’s value and worth should be determined by how they choose to spend their time. I see it as inherently unjust that someone who doesn’t apply themselves in a way that improves or maintains the world should be rewarded the same as someone who does.

The world is full of passions and hobbies that everyone would love to earn money from, but there are a lot of shitty, difficult, and hard jobs that need doing and but won’t get it without some sort of incentive. Thus, inequality, at least to some extent, is an essential feature of human societies that strive to improve over time. Every communist country has been wrought with inequalities under the surface, because they couldn’t motivate people without it!

This is not to say that anyone who honestly tries according to their ability deserve poverty, and I strongly believe in having a social safety net to help those people (I consider myself an Obama/Clinton democrat for reference).

While capitalism is an ultimately bad and inefficient way of rewarding people for their contribution to society, it would be far, far worse to fail to reward those that work extra hard, especially in jobs that are otherwise undesirable.

That’s the perspective I come from, and I think we simply have to agree to disagree.

I guess you’re right. You can say it makes me an asshole if you want, but I don’t think that person deserves the same credit or wealth as a person who got an education and used it to work full time in a specialized field.

I do not see that as a weird or unjust opinion.