Kellamity

Bill is the pony that travels with the Fellowship from Bree to the Mines of Moria. I hope he has a good birthday

This book was funded and published by Uri Tzafon, an extremist fringe group that even the Israeli Government distance themselves from

I'm not pointing this out to try and downplay the genocide in Gaza or ignore illegal settlements, and of course there's a discussion to be had about the extent to which small radical factions can reflect and influence the political mainstream

But its a bit disingenuous to present this as just an 'Israeli Children's Book'. It's kinda like calling Nick Fuentes an 'American Journalist'

To be fair it's an exaggeration but based in truth - although of course it's a result of selectively breeding dairy cows and removing the calf, so as an argument against veganism it's somewhat self defeating

But yeah not milking a dairy cow will result in excessive pressure in the udders, which causes pain, infections, and sometimes the rupturing of the udder which i assume is where the 'explodes' comes from

I see your point but again I'd say it's because of the US's winner-take-all system, as well as 50 states vs 650 seats

Farage posed enough of a perceived risk to the Tories that they moved in his direction to avoid losing votes to UKIP. UKIP never would have won more than a handful of seats, let alone a majority, but by splitting the right vote Labour could have beat the Tories in swing seats

And yes, that could be broadly true of a 'spoiler' candidate in the US presidential election, except that:

1. Only 50 states, and therefore a tiny amount of swing seats compared to the UK

2. more population per state than per British seat. By a whole huge margin. So its not enough to potentially appeal to 8,000 people to 'spoil' a seat

3. The above leads to funding issues. Not only is there more money generally in the US elections, but because you have to flip a big state not a small constituency, you have to spend way way more to make an impact. You can't focus a small budget on one tiny area and win a seat

4. Winner-takes-all means that as long as a campaign thinks it will win a state, and then a presidency, who cares if some counties went to a spoiler candidate?

I'd love to be wrong, and I do think that there's probably also a cultural/historical element to the US's two party dominance. But that said, its just a different system, different processes, different outcomes, different challenges than in the UK

There are 650 MPs in the UK, and unlike ind the US it isn't winner-takes-all; if you win one of the 650 seats you get to be an MP

In the US presidential election, there are 50 states for a bigger population and even then winning one while losing the others achieves nothing

In the senate and house elections, which are more analogous to the UK, independent candidates are viable, right? There's at least a few. But it's not comparable to the Presidential elections

FPTP is fucked, but it's only one element of why the USA is deadlocked into the two major parties being the only contenders. The electoral college, the winner-takes-all nature... all sorts

For anyone who is politically involved and knows the issues, Walz won by having better and more consistent positions; as well as Vance saying some scary fascist level shit

But I fear that most undecided voters aren't in that camp, and for those people Vance did well just be being coherent and vaguely normal.

Vance lied and twisted the truth a bunch, but if you just tuned in without knowing all the facts and context, that wasn't necessarily clear

For me though I was pleasantly surprised by Walz actually making a moral case for immigration, you don't see that nearly enough

Coppola was heavily involved in the production of the film where some of the abuse happened, and during the fallout he allegedly tried to sue the victim of the abuse for breach of contract

I don't know why you're being down voted, he is literally a billionaire

'No ethical billionaires' apart from this guy apparently

Regardless of the electoral politics, as Chris notes, the important challenge in social policy is helping people who won’t benefit from wealth transfers from wealthy relatives, rather than engaging in fantasies about “generational warfare”. What matters is not generations, but class.

'Is it bigger or smaller than a breadbox' was a common question in games of 20 Questions and stuff when I was a kid, although I'm not sure why or where from originally (a game show I think?)

So yeah here instead of a bread box it's a Bread Box factory and the thing being compared is also really really big

E: yeah a game show https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-is-it-bigger-than-a-breadbox/245317

Right, I was trying to imply that it wasn't really okay, hence the 'okay' in inverted commas and stuff - this obviously isn't okay

While this prosecution was completely fucked up and was 100% linked to the criminalisation of abortion (and therefore miscarriages and pregnancy in general), the issue was that following the traumatic premature birth she didn't immediately remove the baby from the toilet

Moving north wouldn't have helped on paper, as the alleged crime of letting your baby drown is still illegal

That said, possibly a more progressive state might have had the good sense to not prosecute or even treat this as a criminal matter. On the other hand, the DA where this happened was a Democrat according to the article

A grand jury declined to indict her, so it ended 'okay', apart from all the unnecessary additional horrific trauma inflicted on a grieving mother and being a harrowing sign of dark repressive times