nfh

It’s not that there wasn’t any political pressure. It’s that the slightest bit of pressure caused them to pull the plug swiftly.

I think the companies who were led by people personally antagonistic to DEI already weren’t doing it. They started it when the political winds were in favor of DEI, found that it did something beneficial for them that was worth the investment (ultimately, increasing profits, probably through PR) and reaped what they could. But the slightest headwinds caused them to drop it, for lack of confidence it would be worth the continued investment. For others, it was beneficial enough this pressure didn’t change their decisions.

None of this is likely coming from company leaders caring about DEI for some sort of principled reason, just companies who care about only one thing, reassessing the value of DEI in terms of that one thing, $ return on spend. This is a group who needs subtler treatment than the anti-DEI crowd, this is fair weather friends who don’t care. What little we can do is reward those who don’t give in to the slightest push.

Impeachment is easy, relatively speaking. A simple majority of the House can impeach Trump as they did twice in his last term. I believe the number is 7, of 220 Republicans in the house, would need to vote to impeach.

Getting a trial in the Senate to convict and remove, which requires a two thirds vote, would need about 20 Republicans, of 53 to vote to convict. I can’t imagine what would need to happen for that to occur. And even if it does, JD Vance is sworn in by Roberts as POTUS? I guess that means we’re in a world where Republicans think that’s better in some significant group.

A crazy, washed-up former reality TV host running for a new term as president while in exile on the moon sounds like the plot of a fun sci-fi political thriller, but not a reality I want to live in.

Yeah absolutely, not providing a good reason is really easy to do when there isn’t one

It’s good to understand why things have been done that way. Sometimes there’s wisdom in the way things have been done, and lessons learned by people who paid real costs to learn them. Sometimes the reasoning is so bad that doing things differently for its own sake is a reasonable decision. You don’t know unless you dig deeper, and not digging deeper on things that matter seems pretty dumb

If she was unwilling to break from him because of his wishes, even if she was theoretically able, that speaks volumes about her as a leader.

two billionaires, unfathomably rich individuals, in the last ten years that having a good public image was overrated, but decided they’d rather use their platform to hurt people, and alienate anyone who liked them, but wasn’t a raging bigot. is the allure of being mean to people on twitter.com that great?

if Musk had shut up just 5 years ago, he’d probably have more money, more respect, but somewhat less power. instead he’s become the guy a lot of people are excited to see have a total breakdown, and hopefully lose everything.

n a normal administration I think you’re right, but this isn’t a normal administration. Officials who take an oath are sworn to uphold the constitution, not to follow orders from the president. Soldiers have a duty to disobey illegal orders, and DOJ attorneys have similar traditions.

If the president and top Justice department officials are knowingly and repeatedly ordering them to take actions that are clearly illegal, and are publicly known to be doing so… they’re not whistleblowers, they’re conscientious objectors to a criminal enterprise being run openly by public officials.

You need to qualify for membership in the UK?

As an American, It’s the cheapest place to get a variety of fruits, veggies, several types of cheese, coffee, and toilet paper, at least on average. The catch is just that you need to buy in large quantities. They definitely have fancy and expensive brands too, but I don’t think they do as well here. They’re also a really popular place to fuel up cars, because they’re usually cheaper than the area around them, but sometimes up to 10% cheaper.

I guess that you need to drive a car there is also a catch, but I just moved to the second place I’ve ever lived that’s within reasonable walking distance of a grocery store, so driving to get groceries is normal to me. I lived near an Aldi for a few years, which was awesome.

I think we agree that most self-identified conservatives aren’t actually very invested in the status quo or tradition, and are actually regressive reactionaries, but I think it’s a clearer point to say that most self-identified conservatives aren’t in fact conservative, than that conservatism isn’t actually what people (claim they) mean when they say conservative. At that point, conservatism loses its meaning.

Conservatism is about favoring tradition and supporting the status quo. Going this wild about a common grammatical construct because it reminds you of people you hate for existing isn’t conservative, it’s something far worse.