I started because I used to follow a 28-hour day and would wake up at 6:30, look out the window, and wonder “Which 6:30 though?”

Right, which is exactly what makes the middle period of existence, while brief, extremely appealing.

Ch-ch-ch-chia?

Did you misinterpret Starship Troopers to be straight endorsement of militant fascism?

yes!

There’s your problem. Just because an author writes a book with a world building premise does not mean they fully endorse the world created. In Stranger in a Strange Land, which came out less than two years later, the main character creates a free love hippie movement. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a few years later, is about a revolution against authoritarian oppression.

If a person names as his three favorites of my books Stranger, Harsh Mistress, and Starship Troopers … then I believe that he has grokked what I meant. But if he likes one—but not the other two—I am certain that he has misunderstood me, he has picked out points—and misunderstood what he picked. If he picks 2 of 3, then there is hope, 1 of 3—no hope. All three books are on one subject: Freedom and Self-Responsibility.

Heinlein wrote thought experiments. He wrote about the relationship between people and the society they live in. To that end, he wrote about a number of different kinds of society, and how people related to them. Insofar as you could ascribe any particular political ideology to him based on his writings, he was broadly anti-authoritarian. Nothing remotely close to a Nazi.

Uh, curious where you got that from, especially since I don’t see how you can be both a Nazi and a libertarian. Did you misinterpret Starship Troopers to be straight endorsement of militant fascism?

You should read Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert Heinlein. This is basically the main theme

What do I do when the rules of the game are not fair?

Something that actually accomplishes a change in some way. Boycotting an election isn’t that.

I wouldn’t pre-count, but I cannot conceive of a world where I wouldn’t be adjusting the ratios for the last few slices once the discrepancy was obvious.

It was written for the nobles who were made military leadership.

I had an on-again-off-again thing with an AFAB person who identified as non-binary for the latter part of that time. Still had a vagina, still enjoyed PIV, still had a body I found attractive, so whatever. Only real difficulty was cutting gendered language out of dirty talk, especially with them being a sub.

Admittedly, I’m kind of a gender-abolitionist anyway. Biological sex I get, I like putting my penis in a vagina. Body-type aesthetic preferences I get, but those are pretty individual in the first place: some people like tits, some like ass, some like skinny, some like thick, some like short, some like tall; there are plenty of women I don’t find attractive but others do, and vice versa. But outside that, gender just seems socially regressive. So long as I am sexually attracted to you and you like having sex roughly the same way I do, the rest is just personality.

I’m sincerely not sure how social gender would affect my relationship.

So, despite their “elections,” and despite the fact that the winners go on to govern, if the population does not turn up to vote, elections are not democratic

So? That’s not a mechanism that overturns the result. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says " If enough voters boycott the election, the result is illegitimate and new candidates must be chosen".

“Legitimacy” is a functionally meaningless term here. It has exactly zero effect on the material outcome. It’s not a real thing that means anything outside your head.

What does that have to do with my point?

If a population boycotts an election, that’s an expression of power and absolutely delegitimizes the results.

This is your central flaw. It doesn’t. The winner still gets sworn in, they still choose their cabinet, they still enact their policies. Life goes on without your input.

I’d say I’m closer to a strict utilitarian lol My vote doesn’t mean anything except legitimizing the people I vote for and the system as a whole.

You are very much not. Again with the “legitimizing”. There is no “legitimacy” metric in elections. Power doesn’t scale with vote count. All that matters is which side beats the other. If only one person “legitimizes” the system, and everyone else refuses to vote, the winner still has all the powers of the president. The outcome is exactly the same as if every single voter chose them.

They don’t get fewer powers for winning with only one vote, they don’t get any extra powers by winning by 100 million votes. The concept of “legitimizing” the system is a fiction that exists only in the mind of deontologists.

In the trolley problem, voters are voting on whether to pull the lever. If enough people vote to pull the lever, the lever is pulled. It’s even more clear cut than the trolley problem, because Gaza is on both tracks. You don’t even save them by not pulling the switch, you just let everyone else on that track die too. There’s no reason not to pull the switch, there is no dilemma. Inaction is objectively the wrong choice.

less culpable in the ongoing genocide if I didn’t legitimize the people arming it by voting for them, even if the other party would have also armed the genocide

You seem to be a strict deontologist. I do not subscribe to that worldview. I find it childish and self-centered, both ineffective and rarely consistent. But putting that aside, “legitimacy” is irrelevant. It will continue with or without your personal blessing. It’s moralistic posturing with no material effect.

The democrats’ postmortem apparently says that arming genocide resulted in a net loss of votes for them.

I don’t think that’s what it says at all. I think it may have said that it resulted in a raw loss of votes, I do not think that it reflected a net loss of votes. I think their data implies they would have lost more votes in changing positions than they would have gained. Like it or not, the propaganda is strong, and there are more low-information voters than high-information ones. Go against Israel, and you go against AIPAC. Go against AIPAC, and you’re in for a world of hurt on the political field. You’re not just losing active Zionists, you’re losing fence-sitters who are not immune to waves of attack ads.

Obviously not supporting a genocide is a no-brainer, but the majority of voters have no brain to speak of. You can’t beat organized and well-funded propaganda with the silent treatment.

If the democrats want our votes, they have to not arm genocide. Not voting for them until they stop arming a genocide is a perfectly clear way of staking that position.

The problem is that this way of thinking is backwards and ineffective. I don’t give a shit about rewarding Democrats with my vote; I care about securing the most favorable conditions I can. When both popular options are bad, that means picking the less bad one, even if it’s only slightly less bad; even if it’s exactly as bad by one metric, and only better on other metrics. Our votes aren’t to give them some achievement trophy, they’re to determine who will be making policy decisions.

Further, it isn’t really an effective way to force them to change. People who didn’t vote for them didn’t fill out a questionnaire to communicate why they didn’t vote for them. The only way they get that information is if it’s given to them somehow.

They have information about what will happen if they break with Israel: AIPAC will dump tons of money into opposing them. Not only will they lose the Zionist portion of their voter base, but wealthy Zionists will inundate them with attack ads to jeopardize other portions of their base.

They’re going to do calculations, based on the actual communicated data they have, to weigh the number of voters they’d lose vs. the number of voters they’d gain by withdrawing support for Israel. The data against withdrawing support for Israel is highly organized, heavily funded, and very clearly communicated. However widespread you think the movement to withdraw support is, it’s less organized, less funded, and less clearly communicated. From the perspective of DNC leadership, the calculations are clear.

If you want them to change, you need clear, organized data to show them what the change needs to be and how many people support it. You need tens of millions of signatures on a clearly worded petition. Otherwise, you’re essentially just a loose collection of anonymous strangers giving them the silent treatment.

Computers I guess? That’s about as logical as you can get.

👉👌

Not counting a recent shadow cast Rocky Horror Picture Show, last would be the university production of Antigone my buddy was in like 12 years ago.

My mom was a huge Broadway fan, so I’ve seen Chicago and Les Mis on Broadway, and Les Mis and Wicked a couple of times locally. My wife and I are going to NYC this fall and we’re gonna do a Broadway show since she’s never been to one. Haven’t decided which one yet, leaning towards Book of Mormon but we’ll have to see what’s playing while we’re there.

v.a.p.e. = verily, a penis électronique