Undecided voters
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Jul 25, 2016
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As of right now, the current American election landscape features two candidates with the lowest approval ratings in the history of elections. It's essentially a choice between a shit sandwich and a shit salad. Literally every human being on earth either hates one candidate, hates the other, or hates them both. They're pretty terrible people. At least we can all agree on that.
But what a lot of people like to ignore, or delude themselves into not believing, is that it's a two-party system. You either vote Democrat, or you vote Republican. Voting for a third-party candidate is literally throwing your vote away, for the convoluted reason that entire states are won or lost in support of a single candidate, which are then fed into the electoral college system to determine a winner. Or whatever. I don't understand how elections work. But I do understand that if I'm a Republican (hint: I'm not) voting in a Democrat-heavy state, my vote will likely be outweighed by the rest of the votes. Not only that, but if I vote for a third-party candidate in either a Republican-heavy or Democrat-heavy state (those are the only choices), my vote will surely be outweighed by the rest of the votes.
UNLESS everyone gets on the same page and votes for a third-party candidate, which will happen exactly never. And of course a side effect of voting for a third-party candidate is that it takes votes away from one of the two main candidates, ensuring the victory of the other.
Anyway, to my main point. Most people say they're undecided about who to vote for, for the aforementioned scatalogical reasons. Or more accurately, they're definitely not voting for the opposite party's candidate, but they're not yet comfortable voting for their party's candidate. My prediction is that all that rhetoric will wash away, and people will vote for whoever is the forerunner of their political party. That's how the two-party system works. You can be as undecided as you want, and you can feel uncomfortable about supporting a candidate, but in the end you'll eat that shit, whether it's a sandwich or a salad, because there's literally no other viable option. #politics
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Black and blue lives (2)
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Jul 25, 2016
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There's a debate currently going on in our country about whose lives are more valuable: Black peoples' or police. Or at least that's how the debate is framed. Like any issue in our divisive culture, if you're not on one side you're on the other. If you support black lives, you hate cops. If you support all lives, you hate black people. I think in reality most people generally sit the fence, i.e. they believe that black lives matter, and that blue lives also matter. This is the correct answer. Personally, I don't think this needs to be a thing. Black lives matter; this is true. Black people seem to get routinely killed by police, while unarmed and in plain view of video cameras. This is a problem. The solution, clearly, is not to kill police. In this case, violence doesn't defeat violence, unless you honestly think you're gonna overthrow the government (good luck with that). I don't know what the solution is, but I'm pretty sure it's not to scream louder than the people who keep getting shot for little to no reason. As a twitter-er said "#AllLivesMatter is like I go to the Dr for a broken arm and he says "All Bones Matter" ok but right now let's take care of this broken one". And as the infamous Rodney King said 24 years ago, "Can we all get along?" #sociology
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Melania Trump speech
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Jul 21, 2016
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I think the whole fracas of Melania Trump's plagiarized speech at the Republican National Convention was an intentional move meant to distract attention away from the fact that the RNC is a complete shitshow. #politics
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Diet snacking
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Jul 21, 2016
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I've felt for a long time that the success or failure of any one particular diet comes down to the snacks you're willing and able to eat. Most diets consist of cutting something, whether it's calories or carbs or fat or wheat. It's not particularly difficult to come up with a meal that meets those requirements. Generally if you stick with lean meat and vegetables, that's all there is to it. But what about all those times between meals, when you used to eat cookies and crackers and chips and candy? Diet snacks are usually crappy things like celery sticks and green peppers. These are unsustainable as snacks unless they're something you normally eat. The key is to find something that meets the requirements of the diet that also doesn't negatively affect your health in some other way, all while being desirable to you. Instead of stupid vegetables, go with pickles. Instead of gluten-free crackers that taste like cardboard, go with corn chips. There are a million ways to stay within the rules of a diet, but a lot of it comes down to finding snacks you can live with. #food
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