Shifting baselines. It makes me wonder if people in the bad old times of monarchy might have actually been more free than we are now.

No, they love slaves, which babies will become if we withhold from them the necessities of life for long enough.

The ones that live at least.

I truly lost the plot on this meme lol. How did this even start?

It seems like it might finally be materializing. I don’t know every detail of Mamdani’s politics but they do seem genuinely left by American standards. I can’t think of a further left candidate that has won a prominent election in this country.

Should be, but NYC has a surprisingly conservative streak. Just look at their past mayors.

Yeah it’s complicated. It might help more radical campaigns to launch but the actual tally should favor consensus candidates who I expect to be moderate. But it will be interesting to see what happens.

I actually think RCV is maybe bad for Mamdani. He has a lot of energy but is the furthest left candidate. RCV tends to favor moderates, and Cuomo is probably perceived as more moderate, rightly or wrongly.

Polls are legitimate data on the sentiments of voters. However, they are prone to various error, and when combined with the tendency of partisans to trumpet polls that favor their narrative and dismiss or ignore those that don’t, this can build a misleading view of what’s happening.

This is just one poll, so while it is interesting and suggests a tightening race, it’s probably an outlier. So I think my prior is still that Cuomo is heavily favored, but we won’t know for sure until the results are counted.

So trust the polls but understand that they are not prophecies, only one clue among many as to what is really going to happen.

It’s fairly obviously for rabid, bloodthirsty nationalists in both nations. These leaders build their power on fear and have a constant need to demonstrate social dominance over one another, lest their image as an invincible strong-man show any cracks. In reality they are scared shitless over the possibility of a real war which would threaten their continued rule. So they put on this puppet show so the useful idiots can think of ”hur dur America/Iran stronk, we beat those filthy heathens” with less risk of escalation.

I guess but it sucks for civilians caught in the crossfire. Can’t we just have a Khamenei/Bibi cage fight instead?

And then we just don’t let the winner out of the cage.