To be clear, I agree that any healthcare reform that isn't addressing costs and transparency instead of coverage is chasing a windmill. But I don't see e.g. insulin cost caps being an election-loser

In many rural areas, expanding insurance/coverage won't change anything because there aren't any providers within a few hours.

In my bougie area, everybody is insured and we wouldn't see much impact.

In lots of other areas, urban areas especially, it would be as you say

This is hard to generalize tbh. What you're talking about is the supply of healthcare providers, and short of a quasi-military system that stations new grads based on need, we're going to continue to see widely uneven distribution of providers

We probably should have a universal single-payer system, yeah, but even if it isn't zero sum, it's still going to be insanely expensive relative to foreign equivalents because all of our shit costs so much more

The insurance claims process is incredibly broken.

Healthcare coverage being tied to employers badly fucks over huge chunks of the populace.

And so on

The thing is people talk about "healthcare" like it's one problem not a network of interrelated problems.

Americans pay significantly more for the same services than anybody else regardless of who is paying.

Insurance companies and providers work like cartels and intentionally obfuscate costs

At 10 over 75? Non-zero chance his 'trial' is a note read aloud next to a burn pit.

You know the joke that in some extreme circumstances you 'stop being biology and start being physics'?

There is a point where your politics stop being law and start being history. It is not a good place to be.

So I guess it depends on what you mean by Blue State. If it's "Dems have completely certain majorities," like Maryland, VA isn't quite there but it's probably close enough for 2026 specifically.

If you just mean "Dems consistently have the upper hand," I think we're probably there

Dems gained three seats in the House of Delegates and held a majority in the Senate.

The last significant R victory in Virginia was 2021 and it was very obviously a backlash to COVID lockdown, bad economy, and scandal-plagued administration in Richmond

That's a better term

It's a shame because that legislative tracking work that made her prominent is important, but after the first time I saw her veer into outright fear mongering I haven't been able to unsee that pattern in the rest of her work

It's the most milquetoast, watered down, corporate-speak version of warrior. It's like you wanted to use Zack Snyder Leonidas but it's cold outside so your mom made him put on a parka and mittens. I can't even be offended by the fascist vibes because they've been buried under a thick crust of lame

I appreciate having a neutral term for "person in the military" because every fucking one of them is specific and it's a pain in the ass. I think that's the need warfighter is trying to fulfill, it's just a goofy, cringe term to do it with

Grok is certainly blatant and ham fisted but it's a mistake to think that's what normal LLM manipulation looks like

I feel like this is underestimating how easy LLM poisoning is and overestimating how much we know about it. Just last month that Anthropic published findings that poisoning required a lot fewer malicious tokens than expected. @dfrlab.bsky.social should have more forthcoming about facts on the ground

I respect Kat Abughazaleh's willingness to put her money where her mouth is and embed mutual aid into her campaign, but I think her campaign rhetoric is counterproductive