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Dial up? Nah I’m driving over to hook up the null modem cable.

I have this comforter I bought at a consignment sale for 15 dollars years ago. Every day I revel in how much I like it.

I think the counterpoint is that it seems not that common for one and only one con man to milk this voting base. Trump seems to be special in that he has nearly a monopoly, where as others would probably be in stronger competition and stuck splitting the populace.

Ok, I didn’t recognize that in some states she did manage to only lose by a 20% margin, which is still a huge margin and I still wouldn’t call that “almost”.

“almost” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I think she never got more than 20%, which is insane for any challenger to someone “incumbant-like”, but she didn’t come close to almost beating him.

I suspect that if he loses again, maybe the republican party gets actually serious about rebuking him, like they kind of did after January 6th for a minute, and then maybe a bit more after their embarrassing 2022 results.

Yeah, I could see how that could be an impediment to a campaign, but practically speaking, if he is the governor: -Bill comes in, he vetoes, the veto gets overridden, the governor didn’t matter.

So whether he nixes it or Robinson rubber stamps it, the practical end result is the same. The optics may not be as good, but he’s hit his term limit anyway and I think his supporters would rather see an NC politician on the national stage instead of him looking marginally better doing symbolic vetoes.

I too marvel that Robinson won the same election that Cooper won. I can’t fathom the voting public that would make that split choice. The districted elections were mangled to explain the state congress and the US house, but the fact that the statewide went “Tillis, Robinson, Trump, and Cooper” I just will never understand.

On the downside, he’s relatively unknown on the national stage.

On the upside, it’s a natural progression, he served as governor for a full term and the timing is right to move on to the next political field.

To add to your points, he’s a democrat who won the same exact elections in a state that Trump also won both times, a state that simultaneously elected republican supermajorities and a republican lieutenant governor while still electing him. A straight white southern man who is about as nonthreatening to GOP sensibilities as you can get without actually being a republican.

A non-duopoly choice is a 3rd Party candidate, Jill Stien, Green Party.

Reading her platform, I’d say it’s a no go for me.

Two bullet points back to back are “Have the UN Security Council hold Israel accountable” and at the same time “end the UN Security Council”. So which is it, use the UNSC to hold Israel accountable or the UNSC is a bad thing?

Also on her platform, disband NATO and stop giving Ukraine aid. If we do this, then Ukraine and Russia will just hug it out and everyone will be happy. A few unrealistic things like this where it’s way too optimistic and paves the way for things to go horribly wrong.

Then there are the good intentions, but bad consequences ideas. Pay reparations to third world countries for climate. Historically, “just dump money and resources” has been tried and you just give those to regional warlords that will make things worse. Need a more thought out engagement plan than that.

Broadly some decent domestic policy goals, but pretty impractical foreign policy ideas.

I have a razr with big external screen. I like open to answer and close to hang up, it’s satisfying.

But I really like that when its closed, it is a nice little device when I just need a little device. Also nice to fit in pocket.

I kind of like the concept of using it as a stand or tent, but frankly it won’t stay “on” Long enough for me to get that much use out of it, even when plugged in.

Downsides have been the battery not lasting as long, and once in a great while I pinch myself a little when opening it. Also if I’m trying to wirelessly charge it in my car while also doing Android auto it tends to overheat a bit, but doesn’t when I actually plug it in.

Even before covid, I think companies got a bit skiddish about actually going negative. Probably still do on little things, but I think Microsoft at least makes Windows pay for itself while also using it as you would use a loss leader.

They employ a lot of this strategy (the ads, the ‘subscribe to Microsoft 365 today’ ‘your computer is at risk to ransomware because you aren’t paying us for onedrive’). Except the “loss” part. In fact, I think it’s rare nowadays to find a “loss” leader, they seem to have settled around at worst “barely profitable” in business. Too many loss leaders had pretty terrible business outcomes, so it seems to be an unpopular thing to expose your business the risk of going negative margin at any significant scale. Like this disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener

I seemed to touch a nerve to even imply Microsoft ever has compatibility issues…

Yes, you can get “modern” and give Microsoft continual money, yes, that was the whole point.

As to no alternatives, well, there are. FreeIPA is pretty squarely an Active Directory equivalent. The challenge is that if you have both Microsoft and non-Microsoft infrastructure, you have to use Microsoft management for both because Microsoft will only interoperate with the Microsoft solution. Once you have any Microsoft, then the only option for an all encompassing solution gets automatically locked down to only Microsoft.

Since you probably are employed by Microsoft or a Microsoft focused business partner, your perspective may be a bit skewed.

That’s not the question though, they may have backwards compatibility as a sacred cow, but the theme of their changes as of 8 and newer has broadly been more about trying to force other Microsoft agendas rather than trying to just make a better product.

Though I have had some older titles that work better with wine, or even older where I need dosbox to run it.

Their objectives went south around windows 8.

They screwed up execution before, certainly, and in never was a huge fan, but they were at least trying to make what they sincerely thought was a intrinsically good desktop experience until 8.

Windows 8 was when they had the fear of Android and iOS and the Microsoft phone os was failing on its own, so the mission for Windows 8 was to throw the desktop user experience under the bus for the sake of trying to bolster the phone platform, and maybe make PCs that were tablet like. Also seeing Apple and Google succeed with Internet account based access to the devices was a motivation to get people into an online ecosystem that would have the way to indefinite monthly payments and an app store where they could take a cut off all the application vendors’ revenue.

They may be neutral, but they could just personally be tired of his specific presence, so probably low energy. Also complacent, they’ve gone for over 8 years with zero imminent threats to react to.

Frankly, people act really weird in a crisis. Like totally unexpected behaviors and fixations on stuff you’d think you wouldn’t think about. Basically people tend to kind of short circuit when faced with an unfamiliar, panic situation. If people were acting particularly weird before the first shot, that would be suspicious. But once shots are fired, all bets are off for “weird” reactions. Haven’t been in a shooting event, but have seen people react to other traumatic stuff and it’s all over the place.

Also incidents at sea are far less likely to be mysterious, with any plane or ship likely to be in that area can actually connect with someone. Versus before when you had no easy to reasonably notify anyone if you were in distress.

Everyone knows the real thing to be afraid of is quicksand.