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Guns are exhibit A in why you must cater to imaginations not just needs. If you don’t, a dark imagination takes over. The narrative imagination abhors a vacuum. In America it also shoots at it. And sometimes the void shoots back.
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CNN says Biden team being super cautious and disciplined in firmly not gloating about either Trump or his supporters, or taking any bait. The afternoon statement signaled a clear intent to be beaker in chief and woo away non-core trump voters if he wins.
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I don’t think the mainstream media or social media is going to be that restrained or forgiving if Biden wins. Jake Tapper already described Trump’s litigation endgame as “flailing.” Otoh if Trump squeaks through — still a slim possibility, his holy rage will be unstoppable.
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Worth thinking this through since it’s so close. If he does win I think Trump will go Old Testament on everyone who is now abandoning him. Mitch on down. Revenge on traitors will be first priority of second term. Both GOP and Fox will be tortured for doubting him.
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Everyone’s written him off, but he’s definitely not done. Statistical weird luck and/or strange legal events could still hand this to him. If he wins I think after revenge, his second biggest priority will be destroying Obamacare as his legacy. Scorched earth.
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Yep, Trump is still very much in this game. His early switch to litigious endgame tactics should not be mistaken for actual weakness. The count is in charge, not his premature reactions.
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Brand new Arizona numbers tonight reinforce the trend I detail in this video. The math points to an AZ win for Pres Trump. Stay positive and stay engaged, patriots!
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“Whoever wins” is a fun twitter search right now. Everybody is hedging expectations and trying to be antifragile 🤣
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An extremely new disease, Arizona Derangement Syndrome, ADS has taken hold. It’ll be done in a few days... unless it turns into Florida.
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Premature calls are really dangerous because you get loss aversion shock when it doesn’t actually work out. Last night AZ looked like it was so safe, Fox called it for Biden (in despair? Bracing for a shock?). Now it looks like the expected flip might be flipped. Flip-flop state.
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Commercial break: This portion of the livetweet brought to you by the Grand Canyon. Enjoy the greatest canyon in the world just hours from maricopa county where the fate of empires hangs in the balance an outbreak of Arizona Derangement Syndrome is underway.
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If this drags on into tomorrow I’ll have to get back to work. Could only block out 2 days for the dooooomscrolling
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CNN explains the AZ mystery: late mail/drop off in AZ is skewing republican because they’ve been doing it for longer etc. Unlike everywhere else where it’s tending strongly for Biden.
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Update soon it looks like. They might have to pause the count till tomorrow because open carry trumpies demonstrating for trump are creating a security situation in the parking lot making a shift change hard or something 🙄
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Okay looks like nothing more will move tonight. GA and AZ will both take overnight at least. GA just narrowed a bit more in favor of Biden. This is like watching Cthulhu colored* paint dry. I’m going to call it a night soon. * greenish grey
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CNN is doing a weird analysis where they’re acting like Biden has more of a chance because there’s more combinatorial pathways for him. This is ridiculous. You have to weight that pathways by likelihood. 3 unlikely stories for not represent 3x likelihood as 1 good story.
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I think I’ll wake up to AZ and GA being called for Trump by a whisker and NV going from safe to dicey for Biden like AZ did today, and it coming down to PA and a courtroom battle. 😬
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Maricopa is continuing the count despite the nazgul buzzing them
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Staff at the @maricopacounty Elections Department will continue our job, which is to administer elections in the second largest voting jurisdiction in the county. We will release results again tonight as planned. We thank the @mcsoaz for doing their job, so we can do ours.
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Calling it a night. Now for another chapter of The Hydrogen Sonata. First Trump term I read all of Pratchett. If he wins again I’m reading all of Iain M. Banks. If Biden wins I’ll have to get back to work since a slim shot at a non-sucky future will be briefly back in play.
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Good morning. I see nothing has changed. The universe is still expanding, entropy is still increasing, Trump still hates Edmond Dantes, and the race has narrowed everywhere. I guess the ooga booga will continue until morale improves.
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The market isn’t doing anything particularly interesting or intelligent that I can see. It’s such a delightfully mediocre superintelligence. Doesn’t even harbor a basilisk.
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Haven’t really been following senate or house either, but that’s doing what I thought it would. I had some hope of a more decisive rejection of Trump but never believed in a blue wave for congress, and am not sure I even was in favor of it. The party hasn’t earned it.
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So looks like a divided Congress by a very slim margin in both houses. Aka gridlock for a president who will be a lame duck on day 1. Which would suit either of them fine. Biden won’t try to be bold with a narrow mandate, Trump has no big ideas now that the courts are secured.
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Big picture: Monarch (emperor = potus): weaker First estate (clergy = media): weaker Second estate (nobility = congress): weaker Third estate (“commoners” = stock/home-owning wealthy): stronger Fourth estate (social media): stronger Fifth estate (under-the-API workers): weaker
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Commercial break: This part of the tweetstorm is sponsored by Sirius Cybernetics. In the grimdark future there will only be robots with Real People Personalities™ to look forward to.
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Thought: there are elections that change everything (1980, 2016) and ordinary elections that convince you nothing can ever change. There are false positives (2008, 2020) that you think will change everything but reinforce nothing-will-change-itis. And false negatives (1964?)
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In the US, only presidential elections seem to have global equilibrium shifting powers. Congress is important mainly for optimizing locally within a new region of attraction set by a narrative shifting president and locking in gains.
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Ok, must save lessons learned for later. Back to meditating on the hive-mind present-moment stream. Nothing continues to furiously happen in AZ, GA, NV, PA. I don’t think NC and AK are meaningfully in the decision matrix.
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Hot take: Contra take that Trump will stick around as a power center even if he loses, because he fueled a red wave to shape congress races... no. He’s done the job the party needed to shift the equilibrium and is too much chaos to keep around. He’ll be kicked to the curb.
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