They believe that the status quo is better than any alternatives. They have not been exposed to other ways of living and those that have lock themselves to basic tribalistic thinking.

Imagine trying to get a sports fan to see the benefits of being a fan of another sports team. Even if they aren’t personally playing and their team isn’t winning they maintain loyalty. Some even bet on their loser teams and lose money just because of loyalty.

It’s all about team loyalty/ tribalism

That seems like a really low number considering how many homeless people I’ve seen in low population areas. I would imagine the dark figure is massive.

You do in the water. The pasta won’t absorb all of it

You are talking about long term consequences. Like capitalists who only look to the current quarter’s profits, politicians only look to the current election.

A smaller voter base is easier to appeal to. Both parties have relatively small voter bases and no competition because of the first past the post system and the electoral college.

The issue with appealing to the left is how fractured it is. Various factions will say whatever policies are presented are not left enough, and still refuse to vote. It’s hard to predict from the campaign’s perspective. Whereas they are unlikely to lose votes from obtaining the support of conservatives while possibly pulling votes from the other side.

Taking one vote from another candidate is worth two votes from someone who is not voting, or who is voting for a non-viable third party.

I know plenty of people who wanted to vote for Kennedy but will probably vote for Trump now that he’s out. This group is likely to listen to former Reagan staffers and republican presidents that they liked.

The American left and right have always agreed on the role of the individual voter in the government, and the role of the government generally. They only vary on who they think should be allowed to have rights, and the rights they should have. They generally agree on economics, business, the police, and the military industrial complex. Each of which contribute to the general oppression of the non-rich citizens.

“Coprime” is the operative qualifier of the original comment. You can’t do what Steve Martin did with coprime amounts of buns and dogs because they can never evenly go into one another. You’ll always have leftovers.

I generally agreed with this sentiment, but the fact that admins and mods didn’t care makes me understand why they felt the need to point it out in the comments.

As long as the mods and admins care about removing bots instead of just wanting an inflated user base I think the comments about bots should stay confined to posts like this one where they are on topic.

Are you a land lord?

I feel like AIPAC is just a way for US politicians to get a higher salary. The feds give Israel money and an Israeli government associated agency gives politicians money directly.

Don’t act like there aren’t cat breeders selling Persians and Sphinxes for thousands.

Science as a methodology began developing in the real world during the renaissance. Prior to that people had methodologies that provided moderately accurate models of reality but often included superstition, unsupported metaphysics, or religious dogmas. These other inclusions are what we call magic: Alchemy, astrology, geomancy, thaumatergy etc.

Assuming Harry Potter’s world developed similarly to ours, the muggles would have taken a scientific view of reality beginning around the 1500s. But magic was real and wizards kept their magical methodology and metaphysics.

They clearly have learned a lot about magic because they no longer call on demons or need the moon to be in a particular phase, but they aren’t using the scientific method to do that.

I mean it took them forever to get indoor plumbing. The Romans had indoor plumbing.

Harry Potter wizards use magic instead of technology, they don’t really seem to be interested in using both together. So I believe that they don’t go out of their way to understand technology or the physics behind it.

Many magical things defy physics in that world. I think wizards in that universe see science as an obstacle and not a valuable method for understanding reality. Because their reality defies understanding by scientific process. It’s all ritual based. The pronunciation of a spell changes its effect.

It’s not a lack of critical thinking that makes them avoid science. It’s the fact that what they do is more immediately effective than science.

I mean they don’t really get taught anything about the outside world. I don’t remember seeing physics or social studies or any other “normal” class on Harry Potter’s class list.

My understanding is that they used wards to prevent technology from working near them.

Thank you! This was actually informative. I imagine the right wing will spin most of this as being easy on crime.

I was a public defender for over 4 years. From this, I don’t think she’s nearly as bad as the prosecutors I dealt with on a daily basis.

Source?

Because it’s art.

There is a lot of skill and artistic talent needed to create a facsimile of real life. Anyone can draw a tree, but a realistic tree takes some amount of artistic knowledge. The more realistic the more talent that the artist shows. Similarly, when the artist deviates from recreating real life it shows an artistic vision beyond reality.

We like art because it shows a different perspective from the minds eye of the artist. And when the artist can render that vision as something that looks real, even if it couldn’t really exist, it is impressive.

The average windows user is tech illiterate. They don’t know what a directory is. I work with a person who opens .docx files by opening Word and using its internal search function. She does not comprehend how or where files are stored.