The point is that if the rules aren’t grounded in science, it’s not science fiction. You can have the trappings of science, like space travel or whatever, but if people are moving objects and doing impossible acrobatics by using a magical force, it’s fantasy.

Though not mine, I personally think that definition works better than most. Still, if you pin me down, I’d say that there’s a spectrum, with hard SF (where everything is rigorously anchored to scientific principles) at one end, and pure fantasy (with magic and such) at the other. There are lots of things between those endpoints, with some being closer to one or the other, and some being very much in the middle.

Oh, it’s fantasy

I always liked the distinction (I forget who originated it) that science fiction is a story set in a world where the rules are defined by physics and fantasy is a story set in a world where the rules are defined by the author.

As other people have said, it would be way worse to have him him assassinated. If it’s looking like he’s going to lose, I could see the people who want the US unstable to prefer assassinating him instead.

It’s not like wasp nests are much less organized on the inside. Here’s an example.

It’s a valid point, but it’s kind of like saying it’s great that the restaurant you’ve started going to has such a small menu compared to the old one because you’re not eating as much.

There seems to be this disinformation campaign trying to spin it that the reason the US government has an issue with TikTok is because they don’t want the free expression of ideas. What’s going out on TikTok isn’t what the government cares about. It’s that the company is controlled by the Chinese government and the potential use of it for spying and major privacy violations is significant.

He’s so disingenuous. He says “I’m just a dumb guy asking questions,” but his show is clearly slanted and he gives sure time to people who wouldn’t and shouldn’t reach that kind of audience without him.

Yep, exactly. And Republican talking points encourage that kind of ignorance.

I’ve been careless with a delicate man

My wife has a chronic pain condition, and there were a bunch of years where it was just impossible for her to stand in the kitchen, so I did all the cooking for the family. I have this vivid memory of going to the grocery store after a demanding day at work, pushing my empty cart down aisle after aisle, and being so completely out of ideas that I started to cry. Even at the time I thought it was the most pathetic thing ever.

I’m not understanding. I’m saying there are people who think things are better now, and I think that’s crazy - the only ones who legitimately had it better before are insurance companies, who could just cancel you if you were costing them money.

It’s so crazy that anyone aside from the people who own insurance companies thinks things were better before the ACA. I had a friend who got bone cancer and had a leg amputated at 17. For that type of cancer, it’s nine years before they consider you in full remission, so he was essentially uninsurable for nine years because of the pre-existing condition.

There were people who had insurance that covered almost nothing because that’s all they could afford - the ACA got rid of plans that didn’t actually provide a benefit.

Our healthcare system is really, really terrible, but it’s so much better than before the ACA.

Exactly. He lies so much to inflate his “greatness” that it’s just a habit at this point. It’s never mattered to his base whether the things he said are true or not, never any consequences to him lying, so he just does it at every opportunity. If he was telling you that he took a dump, he’d add something like “…and all the people in the bathroom were very impressed - they’d never seen such a great dump before. They were cheering.”

I always hear about people lamenting that they lost their boomer parents to Fox News or Facebook or whatever, but I’m a boomer parent who lost a son to Rogan. He’s always quoting absolute nonsense he heard on that show about Kamala or liberals. It’s so sad - he’s a pretty smart guy.

Same with me. Well, that in combination with the way they treated the app developers. I honestly didn’t have an issue with Reddit trying to make money, or trying to prevent all the LLMs from skimming their content for free, but there was no reason to cut the app developers off at the knees.

I had already changed my relationship/view of Reddit years prior when the internet connection to Russia was severed for a day or so and so many subs (especially political ones) became fundamentally different. Hard to ignore that. But i just couldn’t continue to give free content to such an awful company.

I didn’t know it happened either, but I check the news a couple times a day to see if anything happened.

It seems like you’re being disingenuous. You said you need Twitter to find out about things like the assassination attempt, so obviously you check Twitter, but the concept of checking the news is apparently strange to you.

Yeah, over fifteen months since I created my account here for that reason

You could simply open a news site a couple times a day. They all had the assassination attempt up pretty quickly.

You could say the same thing about Reddit, yet a lot of us left there a year ago on principle. Sometimes taking a stand means doing without.