Totally agree with you a call by AP would be much more certain than this no-name publication. A call by nearly anything else would be more credible.

I was just irked at the suggestion this shouldn't have been posted, it had relevant useful information and I'm glad I was exposed to it. Sure this is likely an attempt at a clickbait headline by some small website, but it's very simple to just store this away as that and still get some value.

I also have an irritation with the association between decision desks calling an election and them actually being certified. People mix this up most of the time.in.my experience and don't realize that a news agency calling something has literally 0 legal connection to the race being won.

And for your final point about the 100% accuracy except when incorrect totals are counted kind of enhances point. Counties often do not report things correctly as fast as we want them to, but they have no obligation to.

The thing you are missing is the accuracy of decision desks has absolutely nothing to do with the argument of calling elections. Even if they were 100% accurate (they aren't, I just found 5 from past 10 years with a cursory Google search) the point still stands.

An election being "called" means nothing more than a journalistic institution deciding that they think the outcome is certain enough to publish. That's it!

That was my whole point from the start till now. Your pedantic obsession with the accuracy of decision desks has nothing to do with my claims. But go ahead and keep beating that straw man if it makes you feel better. I'll happily prove they get it wrong despite that being an entirely different argument.

Are you really suggesting that the only time an "actually credible decision desk" has made a bad call was over 25 years ago? I used that example because it was huge and top of mind, I'm sure if I did some research I could find plenty of retractions between then and now.

And how is it that I have suggested Florida and Congress are on par with AlterNet? I clearly stated that this was a weak source, I've never disagreed with you on that front.

It was your claiming that this election hasn't been "called" I took issue with. Your original post suggested there was some official "calling" mechanism we are waiting for and there isn't. I can't help but notice you were pretty silent about that despite it being the crux of my disagreement.

This outlet is saying their analysis suggests that Boebert has such a slim chance at victory they are calling it. That is newsworthy, it's up to the reader to evaluate the source.

I'm glad this was posted and I found it informative.

The race has been called... By alternet...

No news agency holds the golden key to "calling a race" as they are not at all involved in certification of results. If you'll recall fox news called Florida pretty early in 2000 and many claim everyone was wrong on that.

Yes this is a pretty weak source but it is not confusing why it was posted.

While I won't argue that US election campaigns are long, the counting afterwards has a good explanation. The two big factors that make counting votes so complex is we have 50 versions of elections, and we bote for everything at once.

I've heard that French presidential campaigns take like one night but if I recall correctly the only thing being voted on is the presidential candidate. This makes hand sifting of the ballot into piles extremely easy and then a machine or person can just count them.

In the US you vote for a whole slew of things all at once. Proposed changes to state law through propositions, your house representative, your governor, you STATE representative, senator, STATE senator, sheriff, university head, city council, and on and on and on. So tabulating all these is a bit more complicated.

Then you have the 50 different systems. So Mississippi is going to take a while, that's because they allow for absentee mail in ballots to come in 5 days late and if a voter on election day didn't have proper ID they have 5 days to shoe proper ID and then vote. This guarantees it is going to take long after voting day to get results.

Big money donors did not swing from Democrats to Republicans, this is a flawed analysis. The uptick in republican top 40 funding came from existing republican funders greatly increasing their funding levels and a large part elon musk dumping half a billion into Republican hands.

None of that is Democrat funders switching sides as you are suggesting. And it is not even clear to me if democrat funders gave less this go around adjusting for inflation. It seems Soros didn't give money to the DNC but he instead funded democratic organizations in different ways.

Votes being prioritized more than dollars makes no sense whatsoever considering dollars are a major way to secure votes.

What are you not understanding about seizing the money being the violent part? People don't exactly take kindly to their money being seized, and at present there is 0 legal mechanism to seize all billionaire's wealth.

Trying to add that legal mechanism into the system is what you will see extreme resistance to including state sponsored violence.

It's like you are hand waiving the most difficult part

All of the groups mentioned in your quote from the article are opposing AOC because of her stance on Palestine not being strong enough. It has nothing to do with her "not being maoist enough".

A ceasefire in Gaza is extremely popular among the electorate, so this stance is pretty solid according to your "flock to progressive ideals" argument. Linking to the wikipedia page on Maoism to make your point here makes absolutely no sense. Especially considering the liberation maoists are stated as being "a much smaller maoist caucus [within the DSA]" right there.

If you want to make an argument that there should be no hesitation in endorsing her despite her support for the iron dome and support for Biden/Harris with them "working tirelessly" behind the scenes on a ceasefire, be my guest.

This is kind of an interesting thought experiment around laws in general. If you made guns illegal tomorrow you would certainly increase guns crimes because anyone who doesn't give up their guns is now committing a crime. Similarly all sales of guns would now be illegal and the demand for illegal guns would go way up resulting in more black market trade.

But the framing of the question leads to that conclusion. If what you are actually after is something more akin to "if legalizing drugs decreases violent crime then shouldn't legalizing guns also decrease violent crime?" This is more interesting in my opinion.

Now let's assume for a second that legalizing drugs does decrease violent crime (I do believe there I'd research that supports this). What crime is reduced? It is likely that crime around the drug trade itself is what is mostly reduced: you do not have as much cartel, gang, mob, and other organized crime entities around who are committing much of the violent crime. Drug users themselves are probably committing less of the crime than the actual distribution as using drugs is often times not an inherently violent act.

For guns the gun itself is a tool of violence. You cannot use a gun without committing a violent act. Now not all violent acts are violent crime, as target practice is not exactly illegal, but it is still violent. If you make manufacturing of guns illegal less will be manufactured which means less will be in existence therefore there is inherently less access to tools of violence. I'm sure the drug smuggling trade would introduce more violence as it would increase drastically. However the increase there may be smaller than the decrease of just having less guns in the world.

I guess the key difference is that guns are a tool of violence much more frequently than the use of an illicit substance is most likely.

Most of the things you listed are not moral things.

• staying positive
• making friends
• looking for a better job
• saving money
• selling online
• therapy
• religion
• sleep

All of these have nothing to do with moral good or evil. An evil person can stay positive that their plan to steal credit from coworker will result in their promotion. An evil person can make friends and take more than they give from the relationship. An evil person can take a better job that exploits vulnerable populations. An evil person can hoard wealth... And on and on.

It seems like you are saying things aren't working out for you financially, socially, etc. And for a lot of that cognitive behavioral therapy can certainly help you reframe bad thinking and patterns to make things better. That doesn't mean all your problems are solved, but it can make things better.

Many of the things you listed are wise things to do rather than morally good. And even if they don't result in your idea of "success" they almost always result in something better than having not done them. For example saving money. Let's say you save 10,000 and inflation makes it only have the purchasing power of 8,000. You find yourself in a spot where you are unemployed and that 8,000 is going to be a saving grace. It will help your life way more than if you had blown it on 10,000 worth of vacations or consumer goods.

This was not the spirit of the article. It made clear that a problem that has faced tech all along is unclear leverage. A factory worker stops working and nothing gets built so no profit. A R&D tech worker stops working and that just means some potential future technology that may or may not exist doesn't get built which doesn't immediately hit profits and may not at all.

They were trying to explain the struggles of union drives in tech that have been here all along. The "worse deals" it attributes to the increased interest rates of 2022 and cracking down on "woke" workers.

On AI they were saying that tech workers may now see themselves more like traditional workers rather than artisinal coding masters with low unemployment. This shift could cause a greater incentive to tech workers to discover their specific leverage to push for more security.

It also highlighted how campaigns about specific demands (ie not working with military) are much easier to push than pushing for unionization which is more abstract and controversial.

Very good read, lots of nuance.

Let's take your example of a Hyundai Santa Fe. 5 year total cost of ownership according to Kelley blue book is ~$64,00 while the plug in hybrid Hyundai tuscon is ~$54,000 and the Hyundai kona is ~$49,000. (Note I adjusted the numbers for all up to account for $6.00 gas)

If the question is about small vs big the big tuscon is about the same as the small kona since it is a hybrid. So you can have big and save at the pump. Now why would someone spend $10,000 more for a Santa fe over a tuscon? I dunno, car buying is complicated and emotions come into play quite a bit.

I suspect you wouldn't balk at someone getting a small car at an upper trim level, but that could be them spending $20k more for fancy gizmos and leather seats.

The more surprising thing is people are spending $50,000k for 5 years of transportation regardless of energy source. If you want to save money on transportation, paying cash, buying used, or keeping what you already have are much bigger savings options than how big the vehicle is.

I've seen someone trade in a big v8 SUV with horrible gas mileage for a small sporty sedan and told themselves they were saving money. But the 15% 5 year loan they picked up was telling a different story.