The original Aladdin story in One Thousand and One Nights is set in China (Aladdin is also Chinese), is based on a middle eastern folk tale, and was written and added to the book by a Frenchman. And then it’s most recognizable incarnation (at least to a western audience) migrates the setting and characters to a fictional Arabic kingdom and gives him an American white guy voice. The character, Aladdin’s, cultural identity as we know it is a little all over the place.

Jesus Christ. Those drugs did a number on you.

The Romans invented the practice of conquering a people and converting them to your own religion. At first they used syncretism, but then they converted to Christianity and invented the practice of denying other religions. Before Rome, people didn’t do that, people believed in all religions.

Well that’s simply not historically true at all. About the Romans or other cultures before them.

Also it’s a cute sentiment to suggest that you believe in all religions. But that’s not actually possible. Many religions are wholly incompatible. Hell many denominations of Christianity are incompatible. You can’t believe in karmic reincarnation and in the Christian afterlife. You can’t believe as the Norse myth says, that the world was formed of the body of a giant, Ymir, killed by Odin and his brothers, and the Egyptian myth that a god masturated and/or sneezed and spat two gods into existence who mated to form the earth and sky. You can’t believe in the one true God, Allah, the Greek Pantheon, and the non-personified Dao. Not all of these basic tenets of these religions can be true simultaneously.

So either, you’re lying, your understanding of world religions is incredibly limited, or you just cherry pick whatever you like from whatever religion you like and pretend you have even half coherent beliefs in the end.

The famous red wastes of Brazil.

I mean clearly it’s not pee. It is entirely contained under the seam line and would be equally saturated all the way to his calves. That’s not what pissed pants look like.

When you’re looking for a sign from the universe on what you should do next…

I thought when my daughter was born, I’d suddenly be inspired to make great dad jokes all the time, but so far, nothing. It’s disappointing. I’m not half as hilarious as the mailman has been recently.

I wasn’t suggesting that changing it so would be easy or simple. The point of the thread thus far was discussing the legality and effectiveness of such a compact.

Someone suggested that as it is now it would be challenged and overturned by the courts. I argued that it is well within the bounds of the language in the constitution and legal precedent.

And someone else suggested that would all but be overturned if any state withheld their voting numbers or if any state in the compact withdrew. I was agreeing that it could be stymied by such things under the current terms of the compact, but also pointing out that the compact can be changed by those in it to make it more resilient/impervious to external sabotage and to mitigate the risks of a schism while still remaining in constitutional bounds.

The difficulty of that change is not nothing, for sure, but still far easier than a constitutional amendment.

It doesnt now. Nothing stops them from agreeing to change the compact though.

Fuck. Off.

In such cases as the popular vote cannot be determined, or should enough members withdraw such that the majority of Electors no longer fall under the compact, the states can just fall back to their previous methods for determining their elector distribution. That’s already established in the compact for the latter case, if I recall, though I don’t know that they’ve a specific provision for another state not publishing their popular vote count. But regardless, worst case scenario, it can just default back to how it already is now.

That would cause the compact to be ineffective, certainly, but still not constitutionally unsound or illegal.

But even that isn’t really a true limitation. If they wanted to, they could also just decide to only consider the officially published vote counts of all the states that choose to report it to keep any rogue states from holding the compact hostage. Or they could even just only count the votes of those states in the compact if they so collectively chose, to. I doubt they would, but they could. Again, they have unbound latitude here. Hell, if they were so inclined they could collectively decide to elect the president with the first name in alphabetical order. What’s to stop them?

Article II, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress

It seems pretty cut and dry to me. It gives absolutely no guard rails, limits, directives, or even suggestions as to how those states’ legislatures may appoint Electors. They can do it “in such manner as [they] may direct”. The states have the latitude to decide how to assign and direct their Electors however they see fit.

It’s already enough latitude that different states at different times have decided A) to give an elector to the winner of each district and two to the winner of that statewide winner, B) to give them all to the statewide winner, C) to have the legislature decide without a popular vote, and D) to hold a state vote and then ignore it anyway and let the legislature decide instead. And 13 states, still, fully allow individual “faithless” Electors to vote against their assigned/pledged candidate, and only 14 states will actually void and replace the electors who misplaced their vote (the other states where it is disallowed just give them a fine or criminally charge them but still let their vote stand)…

If that’s the kind of latitude that is already settled law, then it would be absolutely insane to draw the line at assigning Electors on the will of the whole nation, i.e. of the entire body of people who has a pony in this race, and based on a compact that the states representing the majority of Americans agreed upon. It doesn’t disenfranchise anyone, the current system does that.

I’m sure that it will be challenged. But there is absolutely no legal justification to overturn it.

Small breasts, no breasts/flat chests, medium breasts, big breasts, gargantuan breasts, perky breasts, torpedo breasts, saggy breasts, lopsided breasts, natural breasts, fake breasts, reduced breasts, post-mastectomy breasts, big areolas, small areolas, fake areolas, dark areolas, light areilas, little nipples, long nipples, thick nipples, innie nipples, puffy nipples, lactating nipples, black skin, brown skin, white skin, tanned skin, tanlines, wrinkles, tattooed, in a bra, in a sports bra, in lingerie, in a handbra, braless under a tight shirt, bra less under a loose shirt, hard nipples poking through a shirt, only one breast out, downblouse, pumping, breastfeeding, bouncing, swaying, jiggling, laying, dropping, flashing… bro, there’s a porn site for every single possible combination of those you can come up with. Boobs are great.

Well you’re certainly helping your own case by demonstrating unintelligent discourse. Denial without cause, assertions without supporting reason or evidence, vague implied claims that can’t be refuted because you didnt give enough detail to understand what you’re even really claiming, a call to action without any actual suggestion of what action to take, personal attacks (apparently using talk-to-text “question mark”), and then your mic drop was “I’ll help you through this” without doing anything helpful whatsoever. Wow. What a spectacularly useless comment. Impressive in it’s pointlessness.

The President being dumber than any president before, and frankly dumber than most people in many ways, doesn’t mean that humanity as a whole has become collectively stupider.

In the 50s doctors had recommendations for the healthiest cigarettes. In the 70s, they thought they could give people drugs to unlock superhuman mental abilities. In the 90s, people thought mortal kombat was responsible for gun violence. In the 2010s, we thought that social media would free the world from corporate media control and misinformation (and not that it leads to shit like Trump). And today we have people who outsource their every thought, question, and task to an AI chat bot.

Now that last one will almost certainly lead to dumber people. Average IQs fluctuate, and are in part dependent on good health and nutrition and the ability to regularly exercise logic and critical thinking at a young age. As people outsource more of their critical thinking to a robot, they may very well get dumber. But on the whole, as it is now, we’ve always had smart people and we’ve always had dumb people. Your bias towards seeing more dumb people is just that, a bias. You’ll see what you’re looking for. But a single point of reference is never going to be a good judge for the whole system.

I also don’t think he’s so much tricked by them as he’s an opportunist that sees MAGA as his fast track to the Oval Office, and he’s happy to sell his soul and lie through his teeth to do it. But also, yeah, he’s not stupid, per se, but neither is he particularly intelligent or competent.

And faces, hair, neck, bellies, hips, and legs… basically everything is a yum to somebody.

But I doubt Henry Cavill would volunteer for this particular task.

I mean… had anyone asked? Maybe offer him some Warhammer minis?

That seems to be a matter of debate or denominational disagreement. I was definitely taught that it was all lying in the church I grew up in. But I’m also sure that I probably, at some point growing up, blamed someone else for something that I did to avoid trouble.

Have I lied? … yeah. So have you. So has everybody. Hell, it’s a significant child development stage.