Interesting. There is a strong correlation between social media use and mental illness. I wonder if maybe there is some link at play here.

Unlike Millennials, gen z had social media as soon as their parents let them. I wonder if the social pressure of trying to maintain a presence on socials might be influencing the risk aversion.

A stretched the real numbers (33 states for Trump) for the sake of my joke.

Realistically, Maga passing a constitutional amendment repealing the 22nd (I think) that limits terms for Presidents is possible, but incredibly unlikely. It’s a lengthy process on purpose full of all sorts of ways to slow it down even further or derail it entirely. He has the political will and the power right now and for the next 2 years, but I’d bet if he’s able to pull off even some of his more spectacular plans, enough people would finally get it and he’d lose at least part of Congress, if not all of it.

…there’s no way that 3/4ths of all US states will agree to that shit.

We’ve had an extraordinary number of “there’s no way that…” moments in the past decade most of which have been connected to Trump, why tempt fate like that? The 2024 election map has more than the 38 red states needed to ratify a constitutional amendment.

I set my mom (62) up an old laptop running Ubuntu last year when her laptop was stolen out of my sister’s car. She’s adjusted fairly well to it. She needed a lot of hands on support at first and any time she uses her printer, but she has figured out how to do a lot of things on it on her own.

She makes papercraft activities in inkscape for a weekly storytime she hosts at a bookstore and has gotten very proficient, but still needs some hand holding when printing errors crop up.

I think you may have missed the point of the article. I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume democrats don’t want to do anything about immigration. Trump and Biden both have basically the same plan to address illegal immigration. Harris’ plan is similar to both of theirs as well.

Illegal immigration is not nearly as serious as the average Republican might believe. They add strain to systems already working beyond their limits, but legal or illegal migrant workers aren’t displacing citizens at work and aren’t leading to the kinds of outcomes Mr. Trump would like his followers to believe. It does happen occasionally, but not enough to justify the alarming hate filled rhetoric.

The problem is that “poisoning the blood” is nakedly racist. The phrase has been used for over 100 years as a dog whistle for white nationalism. How can you have a rational discussion about addressing the real problems that enable illegal immigrants (American businesses hiring them) or the additional strain they put on already over worked and under funded public services if one side is ideologically set on the notion that migrants are evil?

I don’t think it’s reasonable to believe that democrats don’t want to address the border. Safe, legal migration into the United States benefits everyone. If we streamlined the legal immigration process and cracked down hard on businesses and individuals hiring undocumented migrants, that would address the bulk of migrants illegally crossing our borders.

Perhaps we make it a felony with mandatory jail time (per infraction) to hire an undocumented worker or own a company that employs them. Or perhaps we remove the exemptions some types of businesses enjoy from paying minimum wage. One of the reasons businesses hire illegal immigrants in the first place is they are cheaper than American workers because you can pay them less than minimum wage.

Right now there are a lot of businesses that benefit from cheap migrant labor, if we can break that trend, some of those businesses will fold, for sure. But do we want to let failed businesses that can’t stay open without breaking the laws of the United States to continue to operate?