I remember when Clinton got elected in 1992, and it felt like a breath of fresh air after a dozen years of Reaganism. His Centrist campaign protected him from cries of “bleeding heart liberals” and felt like a safe way to move the country slightly left after Ross Perot split the conservative vote.

“It’s the economy, stupid” was the catch phrase that cemented so many economic conservative policies in place while providing enough of a bare minimum safety net that people stopped pushing for real change. In the meantime Newt Gingrich pushed the party harder to the right and really helped develop the attack-at-all-costs demonization that has gotten us into partisan hell these days.

Finding someone middle of the road in modern times gave us Biden, who made some real changes that proved fleeting and easy for MAGA to sweep away after Trump turned real anger at the stagnant state of affairs into a second victory.

Maybe we need someone controversial that is able to push real and substantial changes to convince people that their lives are getting better instead of slowly slipping into neofeudalism. Someone middle of the road is likely to continue to preserve the status quo that is suffocating the lower classes, which will lead to another authoritarian populist fascist down the line.

I heard the “bullet” noises when the logo letters hit the screen between the opening monologue and the first bars of the theme song. And then I saw that jeep doing the barrel roll from the opening. I hadn’t realized how much of that was burned into my brain.

I just compared to the percentages on Wikipedia and they all check out. It may be a made up map but it seems to be an accurate one.

There’s a a computer museum near me and I braced myself for seeing several computers that I’d used through my childhood. I wasn’t prepared to see an original iPhone though.

Your tip is also known as The Queen’s Duck.

I think this is more false dichotomy than strawman.

Actually, I’m pretty sure WeWork was more profitable than OpenAI, both in absolute dollars and percentage.