It doesn’t say that these are federal, but yes

All of them are up for re-election every 6 years, but only some of them are up at each 2 year interval.

I think you’re being too strict with your definition of an identity because it is not just one thing. Identities are multi-faceted and fluid. I think that you ignore an important part of the picture when you ignore perceptions of you as part of your identity. They add to a conceptual cloud around you that is you and how you come across to others. I rather like to avoid oversimplification which I feel you are falling for, although I still do believe that one’s own identity is most important of those and ought to be respected by others.

Have you seen the Clayton Biggsby sketch on the Chappelle show with the blind black white supremacist? He had no knowledge of being black, but I think most people would still argue that it formed a major part of his identity regardless of his own concept of himself.

To nuance your previous point, being misgendered is a negative experience because that person’s “concept of you” does not agree with yours, becoming a point of conflict between you two and even inside yourself, not necessarily because they are wrong (although you are free to have that opinion). Sometimes people close to you will know you better than you know yourself.

I think you could say part of one’s identity exists outside of the person. Their self-identity should be respected and often will align with what they project outwards, but that’s where people get confused about a person and then stubborn ones get fed up with the whole idea.

Anyway, in this case since the tree lacks sentience, it wouldn’t have an internalized gender that we could know, but we can see that its sexual characteristics have changed and give it a transexual label. The trans label can cover both.

It was perpetuating a legacy from Team Fortress Classic, or TFC. Prior to that, Team Fortress went through a few iterations, including on the Quake engine and/or as mods, and later was rebranded when it was moved onto the Half-Life 1 engine.

Life has taught me that anything can be a weapon. Would it be enough to show them my ticket?

Yes dude you figured it out. Please wait patiently while they work on the sequel which will certainly fill us in more on what the hell is going on regarding these plot holes.

I don’t think people actually knew this, especially the fans it would matter to the most. People have blinders up of confirmation bias that filters out what they hear to pick up just the words that support their pre-existing ideas. Despite this, I hope it can be one realization that penetrates through their defenses and causes them to ask important questions again.

Also I wouldn’t put it past Elon to be short-sighted.

Whatever. If you can’t tell, a “need for excitement” really means “unwilling to follow along if something happens along the way that I disagree with”.

Really, how can those voters who did not vote for Kamala but generally support the left be so short-sighted not to see the consequences? They wanted to punish Democrats but ended up punishing the country and the world. They let perfect be the enemy of good.

As bad as the party is, I do place a lot of blame on fickle voters, who were so offended by the undemocratic process that led to the candidate change that they abstained or voted for somebody else instead of rejecting the “evil” guy in the only effective way we have.

Voting should be a duty we perform every election instead of something we need to get “excited” about in order to follow through with it.

PROOF Democrat cities are completely burning down. Eating their neighbors with BBQ and getting high from their ashes? What will they stoop to next?

Very possibly, but I’m wondering what he would day about why he would be endorsing the “communist” that would be plausible. I think most on the left would see right through it.

I had only heard about the preggo fetish characteristics of this and could not believe it, but now I see it

I think they are saying they would rather depend on software and hardware that they can more or less control rather than cloud services

Please. We need election reform.

Any finger could be a good shit post if you use it right

The framing that Putin is walking over the NATO states is what makes things look weak. You’re basically goading them to overreact instead of following protocol in these situations and showing restraint as needed. Small offenses are not worth making large mistakes over and it is unwise to be preoccupied with petty shows of power.

Resigning is a way to call attention to the problem while you still have most of your credibility. There would be a smear campaign against you, but the alternative situation might be after getting fired for cause, where it would be easier to believe that you are just making excuses to save face. Especially if you are already demoralized and don’t have the energy to make a stand, you may start feeding the idea that you are just unfit for the job and lose support internally.

It also adds a bit of chaos into the organization that needs to replace you and may not have somebody prepared to step into a position haunted by this politicized issue and rocky transition. It does happen because organizations are made of limited and discrete people, but it is easy to be afraid of the infinite number of sycophants that must be ready to take their place.

It might be a tactic that is useful in limited situations, but I agree in general that we want rusty cogs slowing down the fascist machine.

But that would also mean “you can do x at the cost of y”. Ambiguous consequences here mean that they could impose a cost that would be too great when doing mental risk/reward calculation.

Anything can be a weapon, so I’m sure that they would use that rationale to take everything from them