AnIndefiniteArticle

Teamsters were part of the AFL as a “skilled labor union” pre-great-depression. What’s a “skilled laborer”? You can usually tell by their gender and skin color. Teamsters were also anti-communist and had several leaders who were anti-strikes. The Teamsters were a milquetoast union option that the bosses preferred to a real union as a compromise with organizing workers. They grew quickly.

Merging with the CIO cleaned a lot of this up. The symbol of the AFL-CIO is that of a white hand labeled “AFL” shaking hands with a black hand labeled “CIO”.

Teamsters historically have been an imperfect “foot-in-the-door” union. Something to begin the process of organizing and collective bargaining and giving workers a voice, while being willing to compromise to keep power and stay alive. Don’t look to the teamsters if you want radical change. Look to them to expand the reach of labor unions to white, blue-collar workers that are skeptical of more radical/socialist unions.

Right, all more reasons the streak in the image is too fast to be an AR bullet.

Thanks! With the information in the article you just linked, I am now very suspicious that this is a picture of the bullet, where I previously thought it was plausible from my low-precision estimate. From the article:

“If the gunman was firing an AR-15-style rifle, the .223-caliber or 5.56-millimeter bullets they use travel at roughly 3,200 feet per second when they leave the weapon’s muzzle,’’ Mr. Harrigan said. “And with a 1/8,000th of a second shutter speed, this would allow the bullet to travel approximately four-tenths of a foot while the shutter is open.”

Same procedure, but an AR-15 shoots a bullet faster than the speed for a generic bullet that I used, and the shutter speed was faster because it was a fancy NYT camera. 3200ft/s is almost exactly 1000m/s. The 1/8000s shutter speed is the fact that seems the most reliable, assuming that the photographer knew what setting their camera was on.

What I disagree with is that that streak is only 0.4 feet long. The average size of a human male head (brow to back of head) is about 20cm, or 8in per this image from Wikipedia. The streak from the bullet in the image is about twice the size of Trump’s head, or 40cm/16in. Due to projection effects, this is a lower bound on the path of the bullet during the 1/8000s exposure. This puts a lower bound on the speed of 3200m/s. This is over three times the velocity of an AR-15, at minimum. Either this was some super-high-powered rifle to fire the bullet that fast, the shutter speed is misquoted (or a misleading representation of the exposure time), or this isn’t picture of the bullet.

Thanks for providing the data to make me suspicious that this is an image of the bullet.

That isolated tweet with the pic doesn’t claim to be from NYT or a NYT photographer. I’ve never heard of this “spectator index”. Here is the AP collection of photos from the event.

If I do assume that’s a bullet, let’s test if the size of the streak makes sense. A bullet travels at about 750m/s. That streak (using Trump’s head for scale) is about 50cm long, or 1/2 meter. A 750 m/s bullet travels 1/2 meter in 1/1500 seconds. When you consider projection effects (we might not be looking with a line-of-sight perpendicular to the bullet’s trajectory), we expect the length and time used in my above calculations to be lower bounds, with the true answer probably being within about a factor of 3 of that bound. This means that this image only makes sense as a bullet if the shutter speed is between 1/1500 and 1/500 seconds. That lines up with this website’s recommendation of 1/1000 second exposure time for bright outdoor shots.

Either a very good fake that considered the kinematics, or this is a real image of the bullet.

Yeah, I think that the media is reaching to show that Trump is also unfit after they spent so freaking out about the Biden debate.

The problem is that Trump is unfit for very different reasons than Biden is unfit.

Trump had some run-on sentences in those clips, and a lot of what he was saying was either false or terrible policy, but I understood every point that he was ineloquently making, even if I thought they were bad points.

Biden’s debate performance, on the other hand, had several moments where I don’t know what he was trying to say.

Trump in these clips changed topics within the scope of the larger argument that he was making: “America is broken and only I can fix it”. I disagree with his argument and several underlying pieces of evidence. He wandered between very different points without clearly transitioning. In spite of that, he was still coherent and I could immediately understand what he was saying.

Biden answered a question about abortion by talking about how Trump thinks illegal immigrants kill little girls, allowing Trump to segue to that topic and not address overturning Roe V Wade. Several times in that debate, I didn’t know what point Biden was trying to argue.

I will vote for Joe, but pretending that Trump’s mental state has deteriorated to the same level as Biden’s is clearly a delusion. Trump had less mental acuity to lose, but it’s still there and still lying and rambling and meandering around a given theme, saying everything and anything to support it regardless of if it makes sense. Biden can’t seem to remember what he was talking about after a few seconds.

If you want to focus on Trump’s lack of fitness, this is the wrong way to do it. It’s entirely being framed around the ways that Biden is unfit. Within that framing, Biden always looks worse. Trump is unfit for other reasons, and we should focus on those until we have a candidate running against him with a bit more mental acuity.

I love organic maps and openstreetmaps. The biggest thing missing is satellite view. I like to wander around and explore an area on maps before visiting. OSM has more interesting/relevant details and better visual color coding than the vector street map on google. Google has a satellite map, which is non-negotiable for me especially if I need to quickly orient myself while driving in a new place. I use three layers loaded into qgis for planning trips: OSM, google maps satellite, and a topographic map from USGS. I sometimes use organic maps on my phone if I don’t have access to a computer with qgis. I rely on Google while on location because organic maps lacks a satellite feed.

It’s a spew into the universe. It might even be bad advice. I’m processing the possibility of Trump winning and Biden somehow being our choice on the other side trying to hold off the big “you’re fired” to American democracy. Three people have read it enough to upvote it, and maybe it helps them process it, too.

If he’s getting results cleaning up Trump’s mess, it’s because of his team. Showcase his team and all the work they’ve done. It’s his choice of cabinet members and Supreme Court nominations that we are voting for.

That and the military is all the president really does. Our system of military alliances are a mess. Joe inherited that and young people are demonstrating that they want to see that changed.

The moderate play is to showcase the people who a vote for Trump would fire. John Oliver’s piece on Schedule F hits on that well. This is an important core feature of why we want Joe.

He also needs to do something to adapt our foreign policy (which is the President’s core power) to the people’s desire to change our role on the world stage to a less violent one.

He needs both to win big for the dems. It doesn’t matter if he’s feeble and old if the election isn’t about him. It isn’t. This election is about the fundamental nature of what our country is. America has to confront its darkness and fix itself. Neutral isn’t an option when we’ve been going in reverse. Where are we going? Set a destination for what America should strive to be, and ask people to vote for that.

The circus format makes people want the big strong man barking out at the debates. We need the man intensely feeling the moment he’s in with looks of pain as he tries to process his predecessor’s ranting. We need to show the people and system of civil rights/service/reparations that a vote for Uncle Joe represents.

Trump 2 is the American Revolution finally ending with its version of a Napoleon moment. Hey: we held out a bit longer than the French!

Biden 2 is four more years of life support. Educate us on the people and their roles, Joe. Open up for democracy and new ideas to build a new America. We need to know what’s there in order to collectively imagine what could be. We need to know who else we are voting for when we vote for Joe. He needs to set the stage for people to feel like they are voting to build and protect an America that they want to live in.

Ultimately, we need some constitutional amendments to fix our broken government. Evolve past an enlightenment-era collapse pattern and into something that can last. Maybe run on a slate of amendments that a vote for Joe would endorse. Undo Citizens United, cement Roe, net neutrality, rank choice voting, etc. Make a list and have everyone agree that that is what we are voting for. If he wins with that pitch, he has a good argument for either congress or the states to ratify the amendments, or to call a convention if they don’t follow through. Let Trump write a list of amendments, too, and put it up to a vote. Joe’s Constitution vs Trump’s Constitution. Joe’s American vs Trump’s America. Actually, ending up with two constitutions up to a vote like that sounds like the start of civil war II: which states ratify which constitution to get behind which president. Maybe that’s just where we are headed, unless we can be convinced to use a civil way of negotiating for a new system. A civil way would be more responsive to nuance and less prone to bake-in of ideas due to backlash.

We need that next revolution, but first we need to set up a system of civil resolution to make sure that it doesn’t destroy us.