The reason that former US allies are still not going to trust the US after this vote is that after the absolute shit-show that is a Trump presidency with a GOP house and GOP senate, 50% of American men are STILL voting Republican.

And, that’s the vote. That’s not the people who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the GOP this time, but stayed home rather than vote Democratic.

It’s just a matter of time before the US swings back to MAGA again. If that happens the US might once again renege on its treaties, threaten allies, start wars, and break international laws.

Texas and Kansas think BBQ sauce should be basically ketchup, but with even more sugar. North Carolina has great sauce with vinegar and spice. South Carolina’s is also great with the mustard-based sauce.

I think she is, but I don’t think she’d convince enough people she is. She needs a higher office than congress to convince people, ideally one with executive experience, like governor. It’s too bad that she won’t have a chance to run for NY governor before 2030. And, she has no real ties to any other state, so she can’t go to her second home state and run there.

Those are some hard-working mofos.

Based on the one guy you know.

That’s like believing that the bunnies were with Hugh Hefner for his sexual prowess.

It’s a bloodbath for Republicans. But, this isn’t an endorsement of democrats. This is just “throw the bums out”. I hope the democrats are smart enough to realize this.

I suspect they won’t be. I would bet that Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer think that this is a massive vote for their leadership, and that they delivered a huge win. I have little doubt they’re going to claim that this result means they have a huge mandate and that the American people love them.

Now what if the GOP had run a straight, white, christian man instead? I imagine a lot of GOP voters stayed home rather than vote for someone who wasn’t white, had a funny name, and is a pagan.

Yep, it was strange they even pretended they were going to do it.

The movie isn’t about you, it’s about Chuckie and Will, and their relationship to the city. For them it isn’t all Boston.

Tufts is in Medford, and maybe partially Somerville. I don’t think any of it is in Cambridge.

Allston pokes into Cambridge. Cambridge surrounds Allston. West of Cambridge is Arlington, Watertown or Belmont. Southwest of Cambridge is still Watertown.

As for Bunker Hill, Somerville is North-East of Cambridge. Only a tiny slice of Cambridge connects to Bunker Hill. The rest of the North-East border is all Somerville.

Boston is South-West of Cambridge, that’s the real story. It surrounds part of it on 1 side in one area because the Charles river curls around Cambridgeport, then it curls the other way and Cambridge surrounds part of Allston.

It has been a while since I watched the movie. But, consider the scene at the beginning where Will shows off his intelligence in a bar. I think the movie set that up as Will and his friends wanting to take a “field trip” to a non-Southie bar. It felt like they were far from the place where they belonged, even though it might have only been a 15 minute drive.

In any case, it isn’t just about leaving Southie. Like I said, at no point does Chuckie say “you’ve gotta get out of this town”. He just hopes that one day when he goes to knock on Will’s door, Will isn’t there. And, it isn’t because he wants Will to move to “a different town”, or something. It’s that he wants Will to not get stuck in a rut, never taking a chance on life, and not using his talents.

Will answering his door whenever Chuckie knocks doesn’t just mean he’s still living in Southie. It also means that he is probably still working the same job, still hanging out with the same people, still in the same rut.

Which 3 sides?

Also, the most famous of those universities (MIT and Harvard) are in Cambridge.

Someone from outside Boston might look at the entire metropolitan area and call it “Boston”, but one of the key elements of the movie is that Will and Chuckie are locals who are living their entire lives in a small neighbourhood in South Boston.

For a local, there are huge differences between Cambridge, Somerville, South Boston, the North End, Beacon Hill, Charlestown, East Boston, etc.

In any case, in the movie he never says “you’ve gotta get out of this town and make something of yourself”. What he does say is that the best 10 seconds of his day is when he walks up to Will’s door and hopes that he’ll have left without saying goodbye. That does suggest that to fulfill his potential he’ll have to move somewhere else, at least for a while. But, the way the lines are delivered, it’s not that he has to leave the Greater Boston Area, but that he can’t just get stuck in a rut, living in the same place, doing the same thing, never taking a chance to improve his life.

Sure, theoretically Will could live in the same house for the rest of his life, while also making the most of his talent by working at Harvard or something and just commuting from South Boston. But, the other context for that scene is the girlfriend.

Chuckie asks Will about his girlfriend, and Will says she’s moving to California to go to med school. That’s what kicks the whole scene off. The audience knows that Skylar invited Will to come with her, and not only did he turn her down, he basically had a panic attack at the idea of leaving his life in South Boston. Chuckie knows Will well enough to know that it wasn’t just a casual fling, and he’s happy to end it because she left town. At the end of the movie, Will’s friends give him a car for his birthday, and he uses the car to drive to California to be with Skylar.

Now, maybe in 10 years he’ll move back to the greater Boston area, get a job at MIT or Harvard, buy a house next door to Chuckie and commute to his job from his old neighbourhood. Maybe his and Skylar’s kids will play little league games together, and the two will hang out to watch the Patriots (and they’ll be in for a hell of an era for that team). But, even then, he’ll have done what Chuckie wanted and not waste his talent.

The scene has nothing to do with leaving the Boston area to get a good intellectual job, and everything to do with not getting stuck in a rut, being scared to take a chance and use your talent.

Which 3 sides? To the North-East of Cambridge is Somerville. To the North is Arlington, to the West is Belmont and Watertown. Boston is basically only to the South-East.

No, Cambridge isn’t Boston.

Cambridge is very close to Boston, but it’s a different city. They’re on opposite sides of the Charles river. These days the river is very narrow (it used to be a lot wider in colonial times, but they’ve drained swamps and built over them since then). The two cities have integrated mass transit systems, and it’s a short walk across one of the many bridges to go between the two.

But, they’re not the same city. The two places have different characters. Boston has “Southie”, the Red Sox, the Celtics, the Bruins. Cambridge is much smaller and has MIT and Harvard. It has no sports teams (other than the school teams) and is a very rich and diverse city because of those rich and diverse schools. Politically it is very different from Boston. People jokingly call it the People’s Republic of Cambridge because even by Massachusetts standards it is very left leaning.

MIT and Harvard are in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is a different city on the opposite side of the Charles river.

“Never” is a long time. If this were just a game theory world, then yes. If people always did the optimal move, then a multi-party system would eventually become a two-party system, and once it became a two party system, there would be no way to change it because every change is non-optimal.

People sometimes don’t behave rationally. In Canada in the 1990s the Progressive Conservative party had a majority government and seemed unstoppable. But, the leader Brian Mulroney became incredibly unpopular. At the end of his time in office, he was so unpopular that everybody knew that his party was going to be destroyed in the next election. But, at that point Canada was effectively a 2-party country, Liberals and Progressive Conservatives. Even though the Liberals were going to take power, it was just a matter of time before it swung back to the Progressive Conservatives. So, the smart move for the PC party would have been to just bide their time.

Instead, the party split in two. Half stayed PC, the other half joined a new party called Reform. But, because of first-past-the-post voting, the conservative votes were split, half went to the Reform party candidate, half went to the PC candidate. As a result, the PC party was destroyed in the election. They went from 169 seats to Liberals’ 83 to only having 2 seats. They were the 5th biggest party, after the Bloc Quebecois, Reform, and NDP. They nearly lost official party status.

These days there is no PC party anymore, The split party eventually reformed and dropped the “Progressive”, now they’re just the Conservative party. And, they’re again part of the duopoly. Whenever the Liberals lose, the Conservatives win, and vice versa. But, for a while things changed because humans are not always rational.

It’s theoretically possible for humans to be irrational in a good way too. A well meaning and honest party could gain power and then pass legislation that hurt itself and helped democracy, like getting rid of first past the post. But, to do that, they’d need to feel massive pressure from voters. Even if the politicians want to do it, they need to show that the people are forcing their hand.

It could just be that your vote doesn’t matter. But, they want to keep you believing your vote does matter. If you don’t think your vote matters, you might do something more than just vote occasionally, then sigh when despite your voting, nothing changes.

Like, they’re almost spending as much money on ads against prop 40 as they would have paid in the wealth tax itself.

I’ve heard hundreds of millions spent in total. One billionaire alone, Sergei Brin, would owe $12b in taxes if this tax passed. The amount he’s spending fighting the tax is a tiny fraction of what he’ll have to pay if the tax passes.

It gives you an idea of just how insanely rich these people are. It also fully justifies why they should not exist at all. If one man can spend a tiny, insignificant fraction of his net worth to influence governmental policy, and it’s the most spent on any political issue ever, it shows how much power that one person wields. Not only is every billionaire a policy failure, a billionaire is an engine for producing policy failures at scale. They need to be destroyed.