[-] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 40 points 10 months ago

That ship already sailed. Florida is fucked.

From 2002-2022, Florida has held six elections for four statewide political offices: governor, attorney general, chief financial officer, and agricultural secretary. Of the 24 combined elections, democrats won two: CFO in 2006 and agricultural secretary in 2018. Dems won two senate races in that same time frame (2006 and 2012 with incumbent Bill Nelson), and two presidential elections (2008 and 2012, with Obama).

The state has been drifting right ever since the early 2010s. That's been magnified lately.

The best outcome for democrats is they leave Florida in a mass exodus and go to other states that are close. Locking down nearby Georgia and North Carolina would be way more useful. Any gains in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania would be invaluable. Further away, moving Texas left quicker would be great, and Arizona is far from locked down. Adding more house seats (and electoral votes) to blue states would be better too, since Florida is going to stay gerrymandered to reduce voter power as much as possible.

All we'll get out of Florida is heartbreak. The state is already lost and we should act with that knowledge in hand. Turn it into a republican vote sink so that conservatives leave purple states for it and have the left leave Florida for purple states.

[-] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 31 points 11 months ago

It's smart, I don't know how people will feel about it but it's smart.

The US and China are in an escalating economic cold war. It's goes completely against US interests to invest finite resources into growing the economy of an economic rival — and ditto for the converse of China investing into growing the US economy. Especially in an aggressively competitive economic sector where relative technological advancement is king for competitive purposes.

[-] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 48 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

In theory it's exceptionally illegal to curtail unionization efforts.

In practice, the law has been whittled away by decades of conservative judiciary decisions and weak department of labor enforcement. This isn't helped at all by the balance of power.

Companies can afford to scare off some degree of workers, especially at the lower end of the salary range. Big businesses can survive shutting down a store or losing business at locations indefinitely. Big businesses can afford expensive lawyers and to indefinitely stay in litigation over union busting efforts.

For workers, it's a completely different proposition. Is Walmart or Home Depot or Starbucks going to want to hire someone that is actively suing another major corporation for anything at all? It's even worse if it's labor rights related, but just suing them in the first place is going to make it a struggle to find employment at a lot of places. That's even pretending they can find & afford lawyers. Or that they can handle the transition period from job A to job B even if it isn't difficult to find job B.

These businesses hold all the cards and they know it. You see similar thinking, though different details, behind Hollywood's decision to just try and wait out the striking writers and actors. They can survive losing billions of dollars in income a year from now with unmade projects; striking workers will struggle to get by with no salary.

[-] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 30 points 11 months ago

The overall state matters far more than the local area for determining what your government is going to be like. Colorado Springs cannot make abortion illegal for its residents; Colorado can. Colorado Springs cannot ignore the state's laws on minimum wages, or LGBTQ rights, or any myriad other laws.

It's why I, as a progressive, would have no interest in living in Austin Texas: as left-leaning as Austin is, the state of Texas plays a bigger part in that governance and would make it an undesirable place for me to live.

Incidentally, Colorado Springs has been moving left. It has a non-republican independent mayor now, and the democratic governor even won the city in his reelection campaign (still lost the county, but came close). Trump won the county by 10% in 2020, after winning it by 20% in 2016. Likewise, Romney and McCain won it by 20%; Bush Jr. won it by 30% and 34%. In 1988 Bush Sr. won it by 40%. I expect the city-only results are even closer at the presidential level but cannot find data for that quickly.

[-] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 81 points 11 months ago

Tuberville's asinine blockade of military promotions presumably played a big part in this. I think it's a smart idea even in a vacuum though. The types of people that would be interested in serving in Space Command positions are, I expect, going to be the types of people least likely to find living in Alabama to be tolerable. Locating the HQ in Colorado is going to be a lot better for their recruitment efforts.

That's not to mention the official reasons offered, that it would be a clusterfuck to relocate the HQ. Which is a perfectly sufficient reason on its own too.

[-] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 35 points 11 months ago

Does Boeing have any recent projects that are an unmitigated success? Everything I see from them is about a new project being a disaster in some manner.

[-] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 29 points 11 months ago

Lots of things.

Use public transportation.
Have multiple experiences available nearby to do as a day activity.
Have a large pool of people available to meet and know.
Walk to anything interesting.
In general just have lots of options and variety for anything: work, groceries, eating out, etc.

Some small towns might have some walkability for downtown but nothing more than that.

[-] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 56 points 11 months ago

Every time I see crazy heat data for Arizona and other places like it in the US, it makes me wonder. When the fuck will we see a reversion of population trends of people moving south? Arizona, Texas, etc. are only going to get worse. Everywhere is going to get worse, but there's a lot of rapidly growing areas that are on track to be non-viable for 1/3+ of the year within 10-20 years.

People should not be moving to Arizona, not with climate change as it is.

[-] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 49 points 11 months ago

But why male models?