I feel there’s no way the owners of vocaloid would be able successfully argue that the free versions are not also able to be called vocaloids. The term is practically synonymous with all computer generated human vocals in an anime style.
TIL about the free version of the vocaloid-like software though.
What? First off, how is that related to what I was talking about?
No, what I said is what happened. Especially for down ticket candidates trying to play moderate.
Harris tried to walk a moderate line and well which wasn’t selling anyone on voting for her, at least not anyone that wasn’t already sold for reasons aside from her or her team’s lack of a compelling message.
I think the leadership is less socially conservative compared to the past, but they represent some very conservative bases so they more or less are having to crawl progress forward or they risk a schism.
The previous pope, Pope Francis, stacked the Vatican with more progressive leaning cardinals. I believe Pope Leo will be following in Pope Francis’ footsteps in terms of appointments.
That was the strategy in 2024, it failed soundly unfortunately - mostly because it’s not a compelling platform.
Meanwhile Bernie’s approach of actually selling a progressive message to voters in Red states has actually clicked.
He pretty much can’t, Kentucky state law, from the 1920s, bars him from running in the general election.
He can try a write-in campaign for Mitch McConnell’s seat instead, which the article mentions, but he would run afoul of state law if he tried to run as an Independent for the seat he currently has.
Both likes and dislikes, imo. Bad actors and their bots can make it appear as though their stance is a widely held belief, they can dog pile dissidents, they often attack a straw-person for a point you never made to pull others against you and derail the conversation, etc.
With user level tools at your disposal, such as on BlueSky, you can at least coordinate a response to flag potential bad actors and even have the options to mute/block them by default. If your account were to be hacked and publishing disruptive content which was not something you would post, then your account could end up on these mute/block lists and you’d need to communicate the issue with the individuals that maintain these mute/block lists.
Manchin at least was a ‘D’ seat a fraction of the time, but instead it’s a regular ‘R’ seat now; imo it was a trade down. With Fetterman it’s just a complete waste since we could have an actual Democrat in that seat. I feel it’s more like a Sinema situation.
Sinema officially did a flip to Independent, I wouldn’t be surprised if Fetterman does the same. All the more reason to primary corporate aligned incumbents and vote progressives in though; which currently occupy less than five seats officially in the Senate and about 100 seats in the House.
I question if Don Osborne would even want to be on the Democratic ballot. It would dilute his sell as an Independent if he was running in the Democratic primary at all.
I’m not sure on the rules, but they probably do not have primary rules in place for ‘None of the Above’ since that’s not a great sell for the state’s Democratic party if that ever won.
My view on the situation is that this is an example of Democrats taking possibly the wrong lesson from 2024 or at least trying a strategy that didn’t work at all back in 2024. It was a bit more strategic to back Independents in more Red states. However, I think actually backing a progressive and trying to educate people about a progressive platform would sell much better than some “appeal to everyone Independent” candidate which doesn’t encourage Democrats to turn out and does not encourage Republicans who like the more radical candidates.
Hear me out, they could just offer a non-profit insurance option through the state; this would make private companies need to be offering better benefits to consumers to stay competitive. There is no need to remove baseline benefits for people at all.
Individual Senators do have power when their peers are trying to pass something or prevent something.
That’s how some Senators, like Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, were able to get her state special concessions negotiated in order to pass an unfavorable bill, such as the OBB bill which was anything but beautiful.
Probably that the rural, least populated parts of the country hold a disproportionate amount of political power and this is a consequence of that. Well that and the deliberate defunding/deconstruction of our education system.
I feel that half the problem is pushy people and the other half is those same people getting FOMO.
A normal person isn’t going to care, but people that see legitimately everything as ‘their prerogative to anything they want’ are the types that are going to have anger, coursing in their veins, the second they get a whiff of something ‘exclusive’ that they are not privy to.
Also, we’re one country right? If we’re one country then everyone’s voice should matter. And currently, there’s not even a strong reason for some people to show up to the polls when their state already swings over 20+ points in one direction.
People in both red, blue, and purple states would all be better represented from the popular vote being in place.
At what point is something considered an entirely different belief system though?
Part of why there are so many different sects of Christianity is because belief systems can differ quite a lot on what the focus is for followers of the faith.
Even Mormons are considered Christian, but many Christians would put them in their own category since they have an entirely different holy book that they follow.
Maybe it comes back to the word for ‘Christian’ being this less meaningful, all encompassing, definition. In which case, I feel there’s an argument to be made that having at least some other way to show distinction matters, whether that’s a new word or phrase entirely.
For the sake of conversation though, I feel there is some utility in using the word we are already familiar with, in this case ‘Christian’, and making a compelling definition, in the context of the conversation, based on the values echoed in the text. I feel that we can still hold the general understanding that this is a narrow definition, but it’s one made based on those values that we may want to see encouraged.
TL;DR: It’s difficult to have a conversation about any group of people that is made up of a wide assortment of people from different walks of life.
No judgment since I think many anime shows are not worth the time, but anime is just another medium, like books, more than anything. If there’s a genre of something you like on another medium, then there probably are some decent shows for that genre in anime.
Lots of anime is written with a specific audience in mind, such as the most well known anime shows being written for teens and young adults. Even more, most anime has a specific gendered audience as its target audience.
I personally didn’t care too much for anime until I watched some very high quality shows that pulled me more into the medium.
Notably all red states as well. There’s other voting systems I’d suggest but I believe it’s worth waiting till they can’t ban them first.
Wow that changes a lot about the title.
Taking it at face value you’d walk away thinking this is the dominant attitude in most of the western world, when that’s not the takeaway at all. A title like that just makes most men and women think their country is more conservative than previously thought. Talk about not helping young people that have more balanced views.
If there’s a form of Ranked Choice Voting in the primaries, such as STAR Voting or Ranked Robin, then the DNC will have a much more difficult time pulling shenanigans.
First Past the Post voting in the primaries favors moderates and extremists, but an issue with moderates is that they don’t excite voters with big life changing policies. So no one, except people already bought into preventing the worst option, show up to vote in the general elections. Which makes it harder for everyone.
More states need to get forms of Ranked Choice Voting implemented, specifically STAR or Ranked Robin voting if we want to see more progressive wins.
Isn’t the message that progressives need to get in the game more? We’re looking pretty bad when it seems that progressives are not showing up for the primaries to put a progressive governor in office, or more congress members in the House, and Senate. Especially at the state level where positive change is more likely than it is federally right now.
Primary elections are the best chance we progressives have to put a left leaning candidate at the top of the ticket, especially since not a ton of people other than those passionate actually show up to vote.
When not even 1% of the state showed up to support the most progressive candidate on the ballot, it looks pretty bad imo. Ranked Choice voting surely would help a lot more with this, but I’m not excited by the fact that we seem to be just throwing in the towel to corporate backed moderates here.