
Everything posted by Iz π
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2024 United States Presidential Election Thread
We didn't last time but I'm not against it if there's enough interest - of course it's likely to not be over after one night and indeed last time's thread lasted us all the way through to inauguration due to Jan 6th.
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2024 United States Presidential Election Thread
If you replace Kamala with Trump in that post it'd make a lot more sense and be a lot more redeemable. On Trump's side if he wins: Pulling funding from Ukraine, helping Russia in their unjust war Upholding abortion bans and seeking to roll them out, causing suffering for women across the USA Related to the above, promotion of 'family values' aka. violence against women within patriarchal marriages, as shown by Trump's personal conduct and treatment of women Attempted deportations of millions within the US Fascist rhetoric and implications on subverting democracy. Yet MORE funding to Israel and Netanyahu's preferred choice. On Kamala's side if she wins: Probable continuation of the status quo of the US's rogue ally (the one who is actually culpable) committing war crimes while the Democrats try to disentangle themselves (note that Kamala's statements, as VP and therefore of limited decision-making authority in the Biden administration, have pretty much been as pro-Palestine as an establishment US politician will be allowed to be). Additional point on that horrific post, describing Israel's horrific actions as 'the worst evil known to man' is language that I would judge to be anti-semitic. Israel's evils are equivalent to dictators in Russia, Syria, Iran, or just a rather belligerent warlord - describing it in that fashion implies something a bit beyond that.
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2024 United States Presidential Election Thread
I am cool so I arranged some remaining holiday days to coincide with this, will probably do what I did for the General Election which was stay awake as long as possible, then fall asleep at 5am once the direction of travel is pretty much known (we hope!!). I am definitely up for overanalyzing counties in Indiana in the middle of the night, this is the sort of stuff I live for. Really buying into the idea that older midwestern women are absolutely turning out in droves for Harris because of Dodds/abortion, that would be glorious.
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2024 United States Presidential Election Thread
I am stoked about the Iowa poll - all hail Selzer - she also saw the red shifts in 2016 and 2020 that no one else saw coming. It confirms a lot of my priors that we are in a much more favourable Democratic environment than the polls are showing - that's how the campaigns and apparent reaction to them are behaving. Hopefully it's somewhere in the region of the reality and all the other polls are herding bitches.
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The Tory culture war on truth thread (mk IV)
_cu279B_mf0 thanks for giving me a throughline to the previous Tory thread references to honesty Kemi. Discuss the unwelcome attempts at regaining relevancy that the battered and defeated Tory party does over the next few years.
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2024 United States Presidential Election Thread
He's got a large amount of rallies in NC, the single state he's running defense in, for someone who's supposedly the favourite. He's an old man who needs put up to rest, tired and stumbling all over the place, campaigning taking its toll. In contrast, Biden is looking chipper in every public appearance now he's been freed from the burdens of running. Really been an excellent president.
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2024 Conservative Party Leadership Election
I mean quite. The whole 'first X' thing is such a spurious and irrelevant criticism to level at Labour, it matters far more what each politician will do for each community now it's quite clear that anyone can make it to the top. Badenoch isn't going to have favourable policies for working class communities, many of whom are minorities. I'm funnier than that. I'll put one up though soonish.
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2024 Conservative Party Leadership Election
Conservatives also tend to have four leaders in the same timeframe it takes Labour to have one. Badenoch will be awful but likely ineffectual so good stuff.
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The Official Labour Calmer Steering Thread (mk III)
What on earth are the axes on that graph? To give some reality, it's fallen a cent against the dollar in the last 48 hours and has fallen minus seven cents since this time last year. Sure, it's reacting to borrowing (but this time needed borrowing instead of wasteful dumb-con-libertarian borrowing), but I don't think there's any signs it's irrecoverable, there are fluctuations like that all the time, the media are likely again overreacting to totally normal things and making them sound apocalyptic.
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2024 United States Presidential Election Thread
They're all about equally close, though the polls tightening and refusing to move in almost all of the swing states this last month has been suspiciously static and has caused suspicions of poll herding for those reasons you state, such that even if some polls find results different from a virtual tie, they compensate their model to adjust closer. FWIW I'm at this stage more confident about Dems winning PA than I am them winning WI. Also yes there are lots of dodgy red polls and commentators. There also seems to be a layer of 'non-partisan' ones that pride themselves on being supposedly neutral yet they always have their priors and results pointing to a Trump and Republican victory. Curious. I think drawing too many conclusions from early vote, crosstabs or poll analysis is getting yourself into the weeds, but the broader picture is that polls that aren't about intention to vote (so enthusiasm, favourability, voter grouping opinions) are looking pretty positive for the Democrats getting a good voting environment to see them over the line.
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2024 United States Presidential Election Thread
Additionally, anyone given a prominent speaker position for a campaign like that, in that manner, has language signed off by the campaign. I don't see why one would defend the Trump campaign (from anything, but specifically this for now) from being associated with this person that they chose to appear at their rally. It's not like he was the only one either, the evening was packed with white nationalists and racists, because that's who the Trump campaign is for.
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2024 United States Presidential Election Thread
Quite, any other candidate, any other campaign would have been sunk from the huge barrage of racist, fascist rhetoric that has come out, from 'she happened to turn black', to stirring up a pogrom against Haitians after the debate, to John Kelly's relating of his praising of Hitler. These are all individual campaign-ending events, and they only haven't sunk the campaign because he's Trump and the media do not do their due diligence when it comes to condemning him in the way they would do anyone else who said the offensive things he does. The Puerto Rico debacle probably only gained traction because it didn't have Trump at the centre of it, because the media have a huge blindspot for him. That and the Madison Square Garden rally was only not the most fascist thing ever done at that venue in New York because the literal Nazis went on tour there. It would be hilarious and highly deserved if it causes him to lose the big Puerto Rican diaspora states like *checks notes* Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, but something like that should have caused the media cycle to whip up in condemnation long before.
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Scissor Sisters
jinxed this by relistening to their discography the other week. would very much appreciate some new material from them, they have such a lineup of incredible and diverse songs even among the 4 albums we do have
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The Official Labour Calmer Steering Thread (mk III)
Yeah, there are some decent things in the budget for public transport, like putting HS2 in Euston, future investment in certain bus and train routes, but keeping fuel duty in while allowing the very popular bus fare cap to go up is going to overshadow that part of it. The worst thing about this government so far is an inability to understand how cutting something to save a small amount of money is not worth the outcry and the comparatively huge benefits that it provides. I was never one to go to bat for the WFA because I'm not old and as much as I'm against making things mean-tested unnecessarily some wastage was clearly there, but the saving was not worth the hit to the government's reputation. Similarly, even though the government came up with figures showing that the bus cap was losing them money by only providing 71-90p's worth of investment for every pound spent, that isn't going to fly when people who use the bus now have a 50% increase of what they have to pay. For people who use buses to get to work, that's losing hundreds of pounds over the year that they may well not have to spare, and they will directly blame Labour for that. Direct example for myself as to why this is just a dumb idea, I use the bus sometimes to get into town as it's about equal cost to parking there. An increase is going to make me reconsider it and start clogging up the town centre with a vehicle that doesn't need to be there. Countries with functioning large urban areas get this right and massively subsidise public transport to make it usable and declog the centres of car traffic - and the Tories were on the right track if not perfect (should have been even cheaper) with this policy, so very disappointing Labour instantly start treating it as a fee that you just start increasing annually. That said, real positive to see income tax thresholds unfrozen and to go with inflation in the future, capital gains tax up, and the minimum wage rising. It's a much more positive budget than I was expecting and the right sort of language from a government coming out of tough economic times and providing enough investment to ensure they don't happen again. Hope that that all gets realised and it's treated relatively well by the press, who seem to have been giving Labour a slight reprieve the last few days, although that's probably because they're more interested in what's happening across the Atlantic.
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Do you ever wonder if the predictions are influential?
Exactly all of this. This is something that we enter to show off something good from our natural music discovering journey, and while the competition is fun, people do get hung up on form, streaks, outcomes etc. instead of it being fun to do well AND an opportunity to discover music. Sucks when a song you've sent and like doesn't do well but it is not personal, it was probably just more niche or other people didn't agree. Do I think the odds/predictions affect things? Probably yes, especially if one hasn't heard the songs and then goes in with preconceived expectations, which is why if I do predict, I predict later on, and wouldn't recommend to anyone that they read the odds thread before listening. Does it matter? Probably not. This is a social thing as much as it is a game and competition and there should be more talk about what will do well, I tend to remember contests with active odds threads far more than those with dead ones.
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β’ BJSC 169 β’ STABILISATION
That is a really good set of qualifiers overall - final about to come for being very strong indeed. Sorry to lose moonvampire and Joanna Newsom from the other semi but on the whole, a good night. Thanks for hosting Leww
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β’ BJSC 169 β’ STABILISATION
oh excellent to see Aelandor through, that's one of their best for a while, I can never resist a bit of a pirate theme. thank you for seeing my song through :heart:
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β’ BJSC 169 β’ STABILISATION
That is a really close semi damn, I have a bad feeling about this for some songs I'd like to see through.
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β’ BJSC 169 β’ STABILISATION
Shame about Lotunia coming last, that was a really good song lyrically, I'd hoped it would have done a bit better than that.
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β’ BJSC 169 β’ STABILISATION
there were some real fantastic songs in my semi, hope they all get through
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2024 United States Presidential Election Thread
Was going to ask you about this because that wasn't matching up with the numbers I was seeing for Clark County - taking a look into it further I was seeing the mail-in numbers where they're 40k ahead, while early-in-person is dominated by Reps. I'm not overly concerned about it though, Nevada's early signs have been bad for Dems before and they've turned it around, the lead in early in-person voting for Reps is likely to be the high-propensity voters voting anyway, and Nevada recently moved to voters being automatically registered as unaffiliated, so the young Dem voters may well indeed be registered as independents. Besides, even if all of that is wrong, it's the least important swing state as it doesn't matter for who wins the presidency in most of the likely combinations.
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2024 United States Presidential Election Thread
I wouldn't use RealClearPolling/RealClearPolitics, quite apart from having a dodgy site that breaks when I maneuver around it they don't do even the bare minimum of filtering when it comes to dodgy polls, hence for the last couple of cycles they've had a Republican bias compared to other poll aggregators - hence every polling commentator with a Republican bias (especially those that like to pretend they're 'objective') uses them religiously. At least 538 does the bare minimum there. The NYT/Siena poll that has them both on 48 is worrying though, as that is pointing to a Harris loss. Signs from early voting and limited polling on demographic breakdowns as such has me a bit more positive though, basically Republicans are early voting more than they did in 2020 and Democrats slightly less, yet the margins of party registrations are also roughly where they were in 2020 - and also independents (harder to poll), at least in states where you're automatically registered independent at 18, seem to be younger and therefore breaking for Harris more. Anyway the supposedly liberal pro-democracy Washington Post is choosing not to endorse a candidate, so we know which winner the capital class want.
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Record of the Decade: 2014-2023 - SF2 Voting
+25 Bring Me The Horizon - Parasite Eve +24 My Chemical Romance - The Foundations of Decay +23 Taylor Swift & Bon Iver β Exile +22 Galantis - Runaway (U & I) +21 Blossoms - Charlemagne +20 Grimes - Kill V. Maim +19 Clean Bandit (feat. Anne-Marie & Sean Paul) - Rockabye +18 Hozier - Take Me To Church +17 Arcade Fire - Everything Now +16 Grimes - Flesh Without Blood +15 Clean Bandit (feat. Jess Glynne) - Rather Be +14 Taylor Swift - Out of The Woods +13 Ava Max - Sweet But Psycho +12 MGMT - Little Dark Age +11 ABBA - Donβt Shut Me Down +10 Let's Eat Grandma - Happy New Year +9 Dua Lipa - Break My Heart +8 Wolf Alice - Don't Delete The Kisses +7 Ariana Grande (feat. Zedd) - Break Free +6 Tones and I - Dance Monkey +5 Lil Nas X & Jack Harlow - Industry Baby +4 Christine And The Queens - Tilted / Christine +3 Dua Lipa - Love Again +2 Avicii (feat. Dan Tyminski) - Hey Brother +1 Lana Del Rey - West Coast
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Record of the Decade: 2014-2023 - SF1 Voting
+25 Metric - Doomscroller +24 Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper β Shallow +23 Ghost - Mary On A Cross +22 Go_A - Shum +21 Zhu - Faded +20 Lilly Wood and The Prick - Prayer In C (Robin Schulz Remix) +19 Chainsmokers (feat. Halsey) - Closer +18 FKA Twigs - Two Weeks +17 Lorde - Team +16 Rina Sawayama - XS +15 Lil Nas X - Montero (Call Me By Your Name) +14 Mr. Probz - Waves (Robin Schulz Remix) +13 Weeknd - In Your Eyes +12 alt-J - 3WW +11 Caroline Polachek - Welcome to My Island +10 Paramore - This Is Why +9 Mark Ronson (feat. Bruno Mars) - Uptown Funk +8 Chainsmokers (feat. ROZES) - Roses +7 Little Mix - Touch +6 Noah Kahan - Stick Season +5 xx β On Hold +4 Taylor Swift - Wildest Dreams +3 Janelle MonΓ‘e - Make Me Feel +2 MΓ₯neskin - I Wanna Be Your Slave +1 Panic! At The Disco - High Hopes
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2024 United States Presidential Election Thread
For me, it's the way Trump starts alleging it's breaking election law for a few volunteers with the spare time to cross the Atlantic to add their own individual labour only to the Democratic campaign... and then meanwhile you have Elon Musk jumping around like a dipshit (credit: Tim Walz) and promising cash giveaways for votes for Trump and apparently that, which comes in at about number one of things that are illegal in UK political campaigning, apparently that's all fine. OKAY THEN