docAvid

That doesn't mean they won't vote for him in a race against Trump.

I've seen a lot of them say they won't. I've seen people who I know in the past have argued that we have to support Clinton or Biden in the general election, because Trump is worse, and even campaigned for the lesser-evil candidate, turn around and say they can't support Biden this time. I don't know if they will reconsider, as the election gets closer, or when faced with reality of a ballot in front of them - I certainly hope so - but I'm not taking any vote for granted in this election.

As an aside, while the violence against Palestinians has really caught people's attention, I don't know why people seem more mad at Biden this time than last time, or more mad than they were at Clinton. There hasn't been a president in the last few decades at least who would have handled the situation better; on other issues, Biden has proven much better than I expected when I held my nose and voted for him last time; and Trump is a cornered animal, much more dangerous this time around.

Fucking apeshit craze-balls, makes sense, business as usual.

Bibi loves that because he can basically permanently avoid a 2-state solution, and if it ever does happen, it's just official apartheid. Separate, as the United States learned the hard way, is never really equal. The only realistic solution is a single secular state.

Medication helps a lot of people, and CBT is very effective for others. I've never heard of a "technique" that's effective against depression that can be reasonably described like that, but I'm not an expert. Would love some concrete examples.

Programming is the art of juggling of state and control flow

Sure, stateless functions deal with and impact state in some way. If that's what you meant by your previous comment, that's fine, but that's honestly not what would typically be meant by "juggling" state.

The part about declarative languages has nothing to do with state. Declarative languages do not give the programmer control over flow, the other part of your definition.

Learn Lisp, and you will never again be so certain about the difference between a programming language and a data format.

No, my question does not imply a pure functional language at all. Pure functions exist in languages which are not purely functional. Most of the functions I write are pure functions. I could have a workflow where I work with another programmer who handles the minimal stateful pieces, and I would only write stateless functions - would that make me not a programmer?

(There are also purely functional languages, by the way. I just didn't remotely imply there were, or make any claims about them, at any point in this thread, prior to this parenthetical.)

The part about declarative languages has nothing to do with state, or functional languages. Declarative languages are a whole different thing. Of course declarative languages handle state. The comment I was replying to said "Programming is the art of juggling of state and control flow". Declarative languages don't involve juggling control flow.

I didn't say there is...

No, it's really not.

So, writing stateless functions, or working in declarative languages doesn't count?

A primary challenge strengthens the successful candidate in the general. Our democracy is deeply flawed, but it always has been. It's not worse than in the past when only a tiny fraction of the population was allowed to vote. This is the first time in history that we're seeing serious national discussion of ranked voting, and some states and localities have implemented it.

Approval voting is actually worse than first past the post, in my opinion. We need ranked choice, IRV or STV as appropriate.

Where's your degree from, Hillsdale? I can't imagine it would be any serious school.

• If you had a legitimate degree, you probably would be able to make a coherent argument, instead of announcing that you have a degree, like it's a magic talisman, to always make you right.
• If you had a legitimate degree, you would probably know that there are people with more education than yourself who are socialists, and not believe that having a degree in economics necessarily makes one pro-capitalist.
• If you had a legitimate degree, you would almost certainly have had at least one or two socialist professors on your way to that degree.
• If you had a legitimate degree, you probably would have learned more intellectual discipline than to call anybody who doesn't agree with private capital a "tankie".
• If you had a legitimate degree, you probably wouldn't be so unwise as to assume you were the only one. This thinking shows a really sheltered life, like somebody who has never even been to a university, or encountered new ideas. It connects back to the "magic talisman" view I mentioned above.

Sure, language is complex, and it isn't broadly wrong to refer to the US as a "capitalist country", as capitalism is certainly the dominant economic power, here, but that's intentionally dodging the point. You were the one speaking in absolutes, saying "But socialism is a stupid inefficient system, so it's a non starter." That statement alone indicates a complete lack of understanding of what socialism is, an understanding rooted in absolute systems, which in turn heavily implies a lack of understanding of what capitalism is. What do you think these words actually mean? Come on, show me what that Hillsdale degree was worth.