Historically, it’s been alleged that some ‘celibate’ Catholic bishops fucked women. When the resulting bastard children grew up, they were rewarded with coveted Church appointments. If anyone noticed the apparent favoritism, they blamed the adultery on their brother, saying the appointee was a nephew (it: nipote) rather than the priest’s own illegitimate son. Thus the origin of the term nepotism.

Probably some of them had different tastes and realized that fucking boys leaves less evidence.

Not nationally, but because Maine uses both Instant runoff voting for presidential elections, and the Congressional district method of assigning electors, it’s mathematically possibly for Maine to split its electors 2-2. eg, the Republican wins both districts individually, while the Democrat wins statewide. Not this year though – needs a competitive 3-way race so the runoffs matter.

Phil Ochs says it better than I can:

In every American community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects, ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.

The issues have changed slightly from the 1960s, but his song’s accusations of hypocrisy and NIMBYism among those who publicly espouse progressive causes still hit close enough to home.

deleted by creator

It’s hard to predict this in advance, since it’s sensitive to things like voter turnout in non-competitive states. For instance, a blizzard in New England could affect the popular vote without impacting the electoral college vote. So I’ll just tell you how to calculate it.

First, identify the tipping point state. Some guys think it might be Michigan this year. Meaning either candidate can win by winning Michigan and every state more favorable to them than Michigan. Other good guesses are Pennsylvania and maybe Arizona. Then take the difference between a candidate’s margin in Michigan verses their national average.

2020: The tipping point state was Wisconsin. Biden won WI by 0.6% and nationally by 4.5% representing a 3.9% electoral college advantage to the Republican.

2012: The tipping point state was Colorado. Obama won CO by 5.4% and nationally by 3.9% representing a 1.5% electoral college advantage to the Democrat.

So the electoral college doesn’t intrinsically benefit the Republicans, but it probably will this year.

Becoming a victim of one also works.

Don’t correct that. He’s wrong. It’s way more than 46, most multi-term presidents defeated several different contenders.

Edit: I got 63 white men and 1 white woman, not counting pre 12th amendment elections, not counting minor candidates who didn’t win any states electors. There’s a lot more if you include minor candidates, but then one of them would be Cynthia McKinney who is a black woman.

You can read it out loud that way too. KiloGOP has three syllables.

Invariant of the day: In any square mile of the USA, there are 25 Republican voters, the rest of them either vote Democrat or not at all.

It doesn’t work of course. Suffolk County, MA (Boston) has a partial pressure of about 1kGOP/mi². Nevertheless, it’s closer than you might expect considering how many square miles don’t even have 25 human beings.

Seems like these sort of hacks always involve the company’s data about its users, and never their own confidential contracts, trade secrets, or other leaks that could directly damage their own operations.

It makes a guy suspect they actually have a very good understanding of information security, but just don’t think yours is worth the bother.

This might have been 20 years ago. Some civic organization, probably on Martin Luther King weekend, held a tribute honoring some famous black men. One of the most prominent famous black men they invited was actor James Earl Jones – reasonable enough so far. So they called him up to the stage to present him with his honorary plaque made out to James Earl … Ray.

Party affiliation as listed on voter registration isn’t a loyalty oath either. It’s just a way of asking which primaries you want to vote in. You might as well pick a party with relevant primaries in your area whether you agree with their platform or not.

(Voter registration is public information and may affect which candidates and PACs send you mail.)

This phrasing is so weaselly you baited me into fact-checking it. Congratulations!

on track to

meaning it’s crediting Biden with things that haven’t happened yet? I didn’t investigate how many future acres he needs to make this meme true.

more land … first-term persident

The Pacific Remote Islands are much larger, but mostly water. Created by Dubya, expanded by Obama, both times in their respective second terms.

modern

Personally, I’d have counted Carter as modern. His Alaska Conservation Act weighed in at 157 million acres. I think that one got Congressional approval too, so maybe they’re only counting land protected by executive fiat.

So I’m a male, fertile so far as I know. Suppose I walked into the county courthouse, hand in hand with my sexy sister and asked for a marriage license. Naturally, the clerk would say “GTFO you disgusting freaks. You’s brother and sister and we don’t need no more incest babies in this county.” If I came back the next day with my beautiful brother, the clerk, seeing that our union would produce no natural offspring, agrees that love is love and we just need to sign and notarize these forms.

Science (incl math) is green. Blue is geography. Orange is sports. Pink is Entertainment. Art and Literature apparently can be either purple or brown. You’re still missing yellow for history.

There isn’t much math to do really. Take as axioms that the obvious way to balance 2 or 3 tubes is in fact balanced, and that if you add a balanced arrangement of tubes to an already balanced arrangement, the result is still balanced.

Why is Gates’ rate so much lower than the other guys’?

They’re trying to capture the consumer surplus. Normally, a seller can have either high margins and low volume, or low margins and high volume. The retailers wet dream is to get the benefits of both. If the reward program profiles you as someone who buys coffee at $4.00, but not at $6.00, you’ll get coupons for coffee that the people who buy coffee every week regardless of price won’t get.

FWIW, I’ve found stores that don’t even have rewards cards frequently have lower prices than their competitors’ reward card sale prices.

I think it’s Chaucer era.

I assumed the only reason we don’t already is because of the ethical issues with subjecting human women to the practices that make bovine milk economical.