Fucking Facebook. Should have know. It's ruined more good shit than it ever created.

Is the Meetup app still a thing, or has that died away? I met my wife through hiking. A friend I know from work met her on hikes and kayaking trips using Meetup and introduced us on another hike.

And yet the union movement is growing. Why? Because government is clearly not going to do shit to protect workers, so workers are turning back to unions. Because slow progress feels better than no progress.

Union workers and union shops come in all types. It's not just highly skilled trades that require or benefit from unions. The service industry was LONG overdue for unionization given the low pay and abuse of workers.

This is such wonderful news, and great for the union movement. I hope more service industry places unionize and we keep this momentum going.

It's honestly not bad. I don't feel 56, other than recognizing I'm getting a touch of arthritis now, which is a bitch.

> elders

Damn you! (shakes fist at clouds) ;-)

Hey, I'm 56 and I haven't used cable television for over a decade now. Cut the cable in 2012 and went full streaming when most folks were still too scared to. And I damn well am not "elderly" or being preyed on (no more than anyone else who has to put up with vulture corporations I mean).

> wasting taxpayer resources

No they are not. The resources are in place exactly for this purpose.

Listen, I get it. You're upset trans people exist and have rights, and you're pissed bigots get their asses kicked to the curb these days and no one will listen to the same arguments that have been used for centuries to justify slavery, Jim Crow, the holocaust, dragging gay people behind trucks, and other atrocities. I'm sorry it bothers you so much, it must be hard being so persecuted. But bigotry is not a protected class, and the fact "moderates" fight so hard for the rights of bigots says nothing about the logic they use and everything about who they really are as a human being, none of it good.

It is illegal, but it's one of those laws rarely enforced. We walked the tracks all the time as kids, sometimes for miles. No one cared as long as we paid attention and were careful.

Aren't you the same guy not reporting the "full context" of the Wuhan lab story that just came out? You know, the context where one agency said "based on our knowledge of how labs work, without actually visiting the Wuhan lab, we believe it's this," and how EVERY OTHER AGENCY read their report and said "No, that's incorrect," and how everyone is listing it as "low confidence." There's only three confidence levels for these types of reports: High, Medium, and Low.

High = Yep, the evidence is pretty clear and the conclusions are reasonable. We all agree on this. (Russia is planning to invade Ukraine, reports say, with high confidence levels, and that proved true)

Medium = There's some evidence, but also a lot of holes, and the evidence could be read other ways. Still, it seems pretty possible (Iraq war... which, as we now know, turned out to be FALSE, so even MEDIUM levels aren't necessarily truths)

Low = I mean, sure... it's plausible. Unlikely, you've not actually proven it, but it might have happened that way. You need to provide some actual, you know... evidence of what you're saying. Beyond just "trust us, we work in a lab environment, too, so we totally can guess." (This report)

If you're going to lean on the "we don't have the full context" of a video for which many people have SEEN the full context in all it's long winded, racist glory, you better make sure to provide full context for the stories you do cherry pick from.

Of course it's rigged. It's rigged by the wealthy, who are by nature conservative and ensure the laws benefit them and fuck everyone else over. It's rigged by corporations who privatize their profits for shareholders while they socialize any losses they have. It's rigged in a myriad of ways, none of which are caused by leftists, minorities, socialists, communists, or any of the many other -ists that have never held any real power in this country, and when they tried they were ostracized, investigated, banned, jailed, or murdered. Their leaders are later white washed down to the most banal utterances ("I have a dream") while the real radical views are forgotten completely ("Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.").

You're welcome to join us in our endless struggles to ensure equality and justice for all, and reparations for the harms caused by colonization, exploitation, privatization and endless amounts of lying bullshit labeled as misinformation. To build a better society. Or you can just sit there and claim "both sides" if you prefer while shit keeps swirling around the drain.

> It matters because Maine can be pivotal in the national politics of climate. That’s because ours is the only state with both U.S. senators on the Climate Solutions Caucus. That’s the group of 14 senators who will hammer out whatever policy will be voted on by the upper chamber.

In other words, as the writer of this article admits without realizing it, we ALREADY have outsized influence at the federal level. This editorial is just bitching about state organizations not wasting money lobbying senators who are already going to do what they can to protect Maine's environment through national policies. Having worked for Maine Audubon, their focus is state-wide, not federal. As it should be.

And we all fucking know how this symphony goes anyway. All the lobbying in the world won't stop right-wingers from whining, bitching, complaining, and - ultimately - blocking any legislation on climate change and our outdated national policies.

Exactly what I was thinking. The last few times I drove through there, I remember thinking it looked like an outlet trap, not a real town. Nicer than a big outlet strip mall perhaps, but still.

Yeah, fuck these folks, they're idiots.

You didn't describe any "traditional" runoff, you just said runoff. I just saved you SHIT loads of time and money with my instant runoff versus your "traditional" runoff. Boom, it's done at the same time, on the same ballot. At the polls or mail in, it doesn't matter, it saves time, money, and effort. VASTLY superior if you could think it through. But you're clinging to one event in your life which didn't go your way. Meanwhile, entire countries have used this system easily and successfully for decades.

The country lived through Trump, elected via the "traditional" way. And Maine lived through LePage, elected via the "traditional" way TWICE. And I could run through ENDLESS lists of terrible, horrible, disgusting people who got elected without winning a plurality of support because of your preferred method of voting "which has worked for 200 years," and hasn't worked at all during that time period. Instead, we keep voting for the "lesser of two evils" because to vote any other way is guaranteed to ensure the DEEPLY evil assholes win.

But sure, you cling to that one local election that didn't go the way you wanted as proof it doesn't work. It only tells me folks in Burlington did a shit job educating folks on the system and how it works.

Mass confusion should be blamed on a failure to educate your voters. That's not a failure of ranked choice voting.

How many times has normal "first past the post" voting failed now? Thousands. Look at Maine and their two-term governor Paul "Drunk asshole and fuck the poor" LePage, who billed himself as "Donald before he was Donald." Splitting the vote is the only reason he got in the first time, with something like 37% of the total vote. He was despised. He never won an actual plurality. When MORE than 50% of your voters hate someone, the system is broken. At least with RCV, you guarantee that 50% of the voters think the winner is at least tolerable.

Mass confusion is often what happens on voter referendums, too. They word them in such a way no one is sure what voting for or against them really means. Should we ban all voter referendums, too? Or maybe... you know... require they word them clearly?

This is literally instant runoff. That's all. It's simple and it works. Ask Maine.

> A poorly designed plant with even more poorly trained staff over 40 years ago.

Yet you said "it can't happen here." When we pointed out it DID happen here, you suddenly changed your tune and now want to say "well, it won't happen again."

Spoiler alert: it WILL happen again.

You see, the problem with nuclear is not "can we do it safely?" Because the answer to that is "sure." The problem needs to be framed as "WILL we do it safely?" And as long as America is bought and paid for by corporate interests, that answer will always be FUCK NO, because they will do everything they can to shave corners and cut costs, and safety is always one of the first things they renege on. Either we have to hold their feet to the fire to ensure they meet all safety requirements, in which case no corporation will ever bother to build another nuclear power plant in this nation because it won't be profitable enough, or we have to let them do it "their way," which will be a fucking shit show for communities where these things are built.

Nuclear came, and it went. Move on. You want all the "beauty" of nuclear with none of the drawbacks? Go geothermal. We have enough untapped geothermal energy to supply the entire world for centuries, and we're not investing in it at all.

Oil in many countries also relies on slave and child labor. Just so you know, since it seems to be something you're worried about. Also, much of the clothing you buy. And your cell phone. And should I go on?

And no, of course that shouldn't be tolerated. But being so SELECTIVE in how you get angry about it seems weird and suggests you're reasoning isn't "child labor" issues but something else.

Incorrect. You need intermittent headlights.

Did you file a tax return in Maine? Than yes. Otherwise, it sounds like that's a no.

If you can't take your tobacco products tobacco flavored as God intended, you don't need them.

I don't know where you were, but we were out driving all day in the weather yesterday, from Gilead all the way up to Farmington, and down to Portland before returning to the Farmington area. Weren't even enough snow to do more than blow away when cars passed. Roads were fine.

> Exchange profit motive for bureaucracy and debt

No. Exchange profit motive AND bureaucracy AND debt. All three of those are already provided by CMP, as any nitwit could tell you.