Theoretical biologist here. I consider viruses to define the lower edge of what I’d consider “alive.” I similarly consider prions to be “not alive,” but to define a position towards the upper limit of complex, self-reproducing chemistry. There’s some research going on here to better understand how replication reactions (maybe encased in a lipid bubble to keep the reaction free from the environment) may lead to increasing complexity and proto-cells. That’s not what prions are, but the idea is that a property like replication is necessary but not sufficient and to build from what we know regarding the environment and possible chemicals.

I consider a virus to be alive because they rise to the level of complexity and adaptive dynamics I feel should be associated with living systems. I’ll paint with a broad brush here, but they have genes, a division between genotype and phenotype, the populations evolve as part of an ecosystem with all of the associated dynamics of adaptation and speciation, and they have relatively complex structures consisting of multiple distinct elements. “Alive,” to me, shouldn’t be approached as a binary concept - I’m not sure what it conceptually adds to the discussion. Instead, I think it should be approached as a gradient of properties any one of which may be more or less present. I feel the same about intelligence, theory of mind, and animal communication.

The thing to remember when thinking about questions like this is that when science (or history or literature…) is taught as a beginner’s subject (primary and secondary school), it’s often approached in a highly simplified manner - simplified to the point of inaccuracy sometimes. Many instructors will take the approach of having students memorize lists for regurgitation on exams - the seven properties of life, a gene is a length of dna that encodes for a protein, the definition of a species, and so on. I don’t really like that approach, and to be honest I was never any good at it myself.

In the books, Isildur turned invisible by putting on the ring, and dove into a river to escape a band of orcs. The ring, under its own will, slipped from his finger and he was spotted by orcish archers, who killed him.

I’ve always thought that the “invisibility” aspect of the ring was that it shifted the wearer into the shadow realm. The Nine were invisible without their cloaks, but were visible when the ring was worn. It also made the wearer more visible to Sauron, iirc.

If that’s the case, then the power granted by the ring might mean that magic users (such as Gandalf or Galadriel) would more easily draw on power from the other realm into this one.

Yes, but at the same time no imho.

Authors of later books absolutely had access to the works of earlier authors. It wasn’t “the Bible” as we know it today, but there is a direct lineage where new material has been added and existing material has been edited, to result in the book we have now. That’s why the character of Jesus was able to fulfill prophecies.

So I’d tend to define “the bible” as a collection of literary works and interpretations (I don’t think you can separate the two without losing significant meaning) that evolves over time. Evolutionary pressures can include how well a particular “species” serves the rulers at that time, and how well it fits with the general zeitgeist (eg apocalyptic or euphoric).

So, like Trump, they didn’t have “the bible” but they had “a bible.”

Yes. These should be made illegal, or restricted from on-road use. As trucks increase in size and height, there are studies that they become more and more dangerous. They should be banned for safety reasons.

I haven’t looked into their finances specifically, but $327k sounds like how much money they probably make in a 15m window on a Tuesday afternoon.

I understand that you want Biden to win. I do too.

What you don’t seem to understand is that, in your enthusiasm for the former, you’re failing to identify the difference between “we should have set up an inheritor three years ago” with “we should change the ticket right now! Or in a few weeks!” or whatever it is you’re imagining I’m saying.

I will absolutely guarantee you that our back and forth here - whether it’s an intellectual debate or your defense of Biden qua Democrat - will flip zero votes.

I’d also suggest - and please at this point let’s stop play fighting and just talk - I’d suggest that you take a look at data science or statistics as a career. I think you kind of have an intuition of an argument, but it’s something that you could construct more strongly.

So let’s pretend that we build a function that predicts that a given Democratic candidate wins an election versus Trump etc. We want to maximize the probability of a Democratic win. It’s not necessarily the candidate most likely to win the primary, especially one that’s explicitly non-contested. To be more clear, we want to maximize the chance of a Democratic win, and that may or may not be the candidate most likely to have won either a fairly contested primary election. And even from that model, we’re subtracting the fairly contested primary election. As I implied, no one is going to outpoll Biden because no one is opposing him (which would be VERY BAD) and he did not announce/enact a transition plan staring two years ago (WOULD HAVE BEEN A GREAT IDEA).

So to be even more clear - no, I don’t like Biden. I don’t especially dislike Harris, except that I think she’s a very very bad politician. The Harris we saw in the first debate just never reappeared. I’m not sure Biden will win, and I’m pretty sure Harris would lose. I’m not sure Newsom would have lost (I am a fan and would hate to lose him as governor) had he gotten a $1B coffer and establishment endorsements three years ago. Do you see the difference? I’m not saying that Newsom today could start from Jump Street and beat Trump. I’m saying some people who are supposed to be the adults in the room should have made that call three years ago.

In college, I had a fellow student with a similar condition. Although he’d often use a wheelchair to get around, it was not at all unusual to see him using his arms to walk around campus.

In multiple occasions, I saw him do a takedown tackle of another student and basically wipe the ground with him. He didn’t even look completely muscular - although he did have really good definition on some of them - but he was so damn strong overall just from the way he got around that he’d just thrash them.

Plus, there’s no way to socially come out as winning a fight with a person who has no legs. There’s no way not to lose that fight, it’s just bad versus worse.

I feel like I explained my reasoning at length and in response get nothing of note, but rather what I’d see on a bumper sticker.

What’s really amusing is that they (falsely) accused Biden of taking a $5M bribe, when the Trumps’ open transactions as President and his administration went two orders of magnitude beyond that.

I seriously read it and went “$5M? Pfffffbbbbbbbbbbbtttt!”

The only way she runs is if Biden dies. She’s been too much of a non-entity to have appeal with the party and has significant opposition from the Repubs. I think she’d have a really tough time winning.

The Biden administration should have had her in front of the cameras at every opportunity acting as the face of the administration.

It’s too late now - the choices are locked in. I’m voting for Biden-Harris again but it doesn’t matter because I live in California.

I’m living in one of the safest places in the US in terms of states and cities, but my partner and I are putting together a golden visa/work transfer plan that would drop us in Europe if this election goes south, because I don’t think things are going to get better after that. Think national legislation driven by Texas and Florida.

I might be mis-remembering, but I remember being pretty confident that almost any Democrat in the primaries could and would have beaten Trump. We’re past the point where it’s meaningful to debate whether one candidate would have outperformed another hypothetically (eg would Bernie have pulled more of the disaffected blue collar white voters who went for Trump). It was closer than I expected and closer than I would have liked, but coming off the polling and voting trends we were seeing I didn’t think the Dems would lose it.

This is feeling more like 2016 in that the Dems are committed to running an unpopular candidate (like her or not as a politician, she was the least popular candidate in presidential history, except for Trump).

There was simply overconfidence on the Democratic side that people would see through the Trump arguments and a refusal to acknowledge that Hillary, while a great candidate on paper, had all the charisma of a Manila folder. Obama and Bill Clinton won on charisma. W kinda cheated and then rode the 9/11 train (but honestly Kerry was a Democratic Bob Dole). Reagan won on charisma. Trump won on racism and charisma (although it’s not a charisma that I get).

I think Biden won on being not-Trump combined with reflected glory from Obama and (for the primaries) being seen as the safe choice. The reflected glory is gone - Obama is far back in the rear view mirror and Biden has his own record now. Agree with it or not, he’s no longer being presented as the safe choice by the press because of his policies and his honestly pretty dismal approval rating. Head to head there’s a serious chance he could lose, and there’s not a Ross Perot coming in from the top rope to tip the election. The board is still out on the third parties - who they’ll pull from - but it’s telling that third party candidates with low single digits could swing the election. Again, 2016.

These arguments being made are why this feels like 2016 and not 2012.

Absolutely. The VP position is not a high profile position, and Harris has been disappointing even in that regard - and I’m saying that as someone from California who would have supported her for president. Whether you want to base it on racism, sexism, personality, or the administration in general, she’s mostly been balancing on the knife edge of being a non-entity and being actively disliked.

My personal hope was that Biden would make Harris a front and center member of the administration in preparation for stepping down after one term and giving her a slow pitch over the plate to be the next president. He did not do so - she was more in the shadows than Biden was under Obama, and far more than Cheney was under W or Gore under Clinton. The theme for the past four years should have been transitioning, rather than Biden pulling a Reagan while riding off into the sunset. Whoever Biden picked should have played that role. It could have been Pete, it could have been Warren, it could have been anyone picked from the Democratic candidates or from state governments.

What I’m saying is that there is absolutely no way that we should be looking at a very realistic possibility of a Trump re-election and that this is feeling a lot more like 2016 than 2020.

Because the disadvantage displayed by current polling may be an artifact of no one but Biden actually campaigning, and the recognition of the possibility that, were they to actively campaign, they’d have a higher probability of winning.

Biden is more of a national name. All that means is that if he were to drop out, he’d need to do a handoff and they’d need time to campaign. The problem is that they’re running out of runway if they’re going to do that.

This same thing happens every couple of decades. In the 70s and into the 80s, no one wanted to buy a Japanese car - or virtually any Japanese products. They were considered inferior to their American-made counterparts (cars, but also electronics like radios and TVs). The inferiority of Japanese products was regular material for stand up comics and late night TV. The only reason, we were told, that anyone was buying their products was that they were dumping them on us at a loss. Now, Toyota isn’t synonymous with “cheap piece of crap import” but is considered a quality product that rivals American automakers. If you can tolerate a large dose of regular old establishment racism and want to flash back to how America saw the Japanese in the 80s, check out Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun. Or really about 70% of what was produced in the 80s, I guess, but that one is a keeper.

Fast forward a decade or two and they were saying the exact same thing about Korean cars. Same with Korean electronics in general - why buy Korean when you can buy Japanese?

Now it’s Chinese cars. I’m sure in the next decade or two it will be Vietnamese or Indian cars.

Well to be fair, every religion’s god is the one true God.

That’s not even a little bit true. Historically, most religions were polytheistic, and most religions today would count as such by outside observers.

I was thinking that we could replace the board with a hexagon map and replace the pieces with printed cardboard squares.

I’m so sorry and that’s lovely, in that order.

The Ada programming language being named after Ada Lovelace was like if they named the MS Explorer version of JavaScript “Turing.”

You know, I’d vastly prefer this over Mormons.