There used to be a very similar shop near me that was actually just a front for selling cannabis.

Do you mean where people use it as an adjective? E.g., ‘This house is very aesthetic’ where they mean ‘beautiful’?

How deep does the rabbit hole go?

Oddly, it’s also true of me and my wife. Maybe I was on to something?

I thought that women drank tea and men drank coffee, because that was what my mum and dad did.

But he voted Trump in 2016. I think that’s what @Chuymatt@beehaw.org meant by a ‘historical conservative’.

I thought: 8 billion people in the world. Someone’s gonna be into it.

Whether or not George Mallory summitted Everest.

Mallory was a great climber. People who knew him think he had the ability. Another member of his expedition saw Mallory and his partner, Andrew Irvine, close to the summit, but not close enough to be certain whether or not they made it.

Neither man returned from the mountain. Mallory’s body was later found, many decades after he died. but Irvine was never seen again, dead or alive.

There are various other bits of circumstantial evidence, but the fact is we’ll simply never know for sure. I like to think they made it.

Several people here have mentioned the genocide in Palestine, which I accept is a major issue and one no one should be dismissive of. Biden himself acknowledged the validity of the issue in his speech to the DNC.

I honestly find Biden’s decision to keep spending so much money arming Israel baffling, but there is at least some chance Harris will change that policy.

But if Harris doesn’t win the White House, Trump’s policies will intensify the perescution of the Palestinians and also lead to pogroms, if not actual genocide, in the US and elsewhere.

I agree this is not a happy choice to have to make. But it’s also quite clear which is the right choice.

Tear it all down and start fresh or GTFO.

Okay.

Now what?

Try to learn Russian really quickly.

You raise a fair point: what exactly is a zombie? To me, a zombie is not a sapient thing, so if it remembers its previous sapience, it’s not a zombie. But zombies aren’t real, which makes it difficult to define them precisely.

No. Jesus had his intellect and personality intact, which zombies do not.

NB: I’m taking the Gospels as gospel, here. I do not think the man himself rose from the dead.

You may well be right and that’s why it’s vital not to be complacent. Donate, volunteer, vote. Get out there and make a Harris win happen!

Further thoughts on this:

Criticising the Democrats as merely a type of Republican has other downsides: it effectively takes the Republicans as the standard type of politician, i.e., it turns every argument into an argument on their terms.

This also means that we don’t effectively criticise the Democrats, who are best criticised on their terms, not as merey lesser or mutated Republicans.

The “lesser” fascist is still a fascist, and fascists spend much more of their time attacking us than attacking each other, and on top of that even if they do attack each other it’s through attacking us.

But the Democrats aren’t fascists, lesser or otherwise. They’re not ‘the Republicans, but less so’; they’re a different organisation with different histories and philosophies, different people and different priorities. The Democrats, for example, are not promising to overthrow the constitution, but overthrow it a bit less than the Republicans; they’re not planning to overthrow it at all. Degrees of evil are not possible in this case, nor in many others. The Republicans are straight up wrong in a way that the Democrats just are not.

For these reasons, I don’t buy the framing of lesser evil at all. If I did buy that framing, I would still wholeheartedly vote for the lesser evil, because it would still be better than more evil, by definition. Even your definition of ‘the same amount of evil, but slower’, would be better.

That may explain why they didn’t abolish slavery, but does not justify the fact that they themselves owned slaves.

Having strong morals is mutually exclusive with compromising your morals to enrich yourself, which we’ve established is something they did.

True, but one that conveniently allowed them to do what they were already doing anyway. As I say: not titans of moral probity.

Personal power, leadership abilities, integrity and morals were much stronger with these people, and in their times in general.

There’s just no reason at all to think this. Most obviously, people who signed their names to the idea ‘all men were created equal’ while themselves owning slaves quite obviously did not possess a high degree of moral integrity.