A couple things to consider on that:

• Once again the percentage of eligible voters who bothered to vote at all in the presidential election was small
• As in the other elections where Trump ran, many people were casting votes against someone as much as they were casting them for someone. In 2016 Trump won largely because of the avalanche of anti-Clinton sentiment that came from Republican regulars who very much did not agree with his platform. In 2020 Biden won in no small part in response to the disaster that Trump created in his first term. Then in 2024 the quick switch that the democrats pulled to change their endorsed candidate caused a large number of otherwise reliable democrats to not bother showing up at all.

  I would much rather go nearly anywhere in Europe.

  If we were to go back to the topic of the IgNobels themselves it would be interesting to know how many people actually traveled internationally the last several years to attend in person. I've read about them regularly but never considered going in person; I'm not sure I even knew before reading this that they were previously hosted in the US.

That might depend on how widely we define "arena rock". Yeah there aren't a lot of "rock" acts - by the traditional definition - that are selling out huge stadiums but there are plenty of other acts that are. Between various pop princesses, nostalgic rockers from the past, comedians, and even politicians we have plenty of non-sporting events selling out the hockey, basketball, baseball, and football arenas.

That said, while the tours pay the artists better than media / streaming revenue - and by a huge margin - the artists get but a small fraction of the ticket price. Prices keep going up, and at some point the fans won't pay it. Ticketmaster doesn't seem to have a plan for this, they seem to exist in an alternative reality where all fans have unlimited funds to see their favorite artists.

Of course it's well known how much money some artists make through their tours. People are willing to pay the price to see them, so good for those artists.

However, at what point will it no longer work? At some point the prices will be too high to sell out arenas. Big acts have been able to demand $1,000 or more for the best seats at giant arenas. Like so many others I can't name a single act that is active currently that I would pay anywhere near that much to see. If prices - and fees - keep going up the number of people in my camp will increase. Maybe the premium experience will be enough to offset that, but at some point demand side economics will take over.

If I can buy every single album, LP, single, and special edition an artist has ever released for less than 1/4 of what a ticket goes for - or for that matter less than just the fees for a ticket - the system seems a bit broken. Sure the live experience is different but is it worth that much?

No, people are leaving because the system is destroying their way of life. With scientific funding constantly being attacked, it becomes more difficult for scientists to advance their careers. Eventually they cross a threshold where they can't justify staying here any longer.

And assuming that Trump will leave in 2029 is a huge gamble right there. He never acknowledged losing the 2020 election. He has surrounded himself with people who would support him if he refused to leave, and he has been attacking the constitution with even greater vigor since the start of this term. I would not count on him to leave.

The choices we - and our government - are making are driving out many of the people who we most need here to move our country forward.

• We're attacking science and science funding - so scientists are leaving.
• We're attacking academia - so academics are leaving.
• We're attacking labor - so laborers are leaving.
• We're attacking free speech - so journalists are leaving.
• We're attacking medicine - so physicians and nurses are leaving

This is not the start of the brain drain, merely the acceleration. It certainly isn't nearly the end of it either.

Crowdstrike has such a strangehold on corporate IT that we will only see more - not fewer - occurrences of their software itself taking down networks. We all remember the fairly recent event where crowdstrike did billions of dollars in damage to networks around the world with a faulty update. Since then even more companies have adopted it.

I work with many large companies who run crowdstrike. When I ask their IT folks how it works - or even how it is configured - I get blank stares back. Presumably someone knows how to configure it, but that someone is never the person I get to interact with. If I'm doing an installation and just need to connect a USB drive to a new PC it can take hours just to get permission to do so. If I install our software first (before connecting the new PC to their network at all) and then they install crowdstrike, crowdstrike can render the PC completely unusable without warning - leaving us no choice but to nuke the PC and start over from the OS installation. If they install crowdstrike first it might lock out so many ports and services on the PC that I won't be able to install our hardware and software at all.

Again, virtually nobody on the IT staff know how to handle the issues. I'll spend hours at the keyboard with them, with them using various admin accounts, and we won't get anywhere. And there is no way to predict which setups will go sideways with crowdstrike installed first versus which will go sideways if it is installed later.

One important thing I have learned - crowdstrike updates and policies are far, far from instantaneous. IT will install them and it may be an hour or more for everything to take effect as the updates and policies come down from the server. Something that works at 2:30pm might suddenly be irreversibly broken at 2:40pm, without warning.

This is not how IT security should work.

What would that look like in practice though? Would all MAGA iconography be banned? Would Trump and his family collectively become persona non grata? How do you distinguish between MAGA and anything that is too similar to it?

If we look to Germany for parallels, we see there are nationalist right wing movements still there, they just don't call themselves Nazis. What criteria would be criminalized?

Eliminating is a strong term. While the way they have entrenched themselves into all aspects of US political power can make it seem like there is no other way I'm not fully convinced. If the dear leader does cancel midterms then it will likely be time to eliminate the MAGA party. If we instead actually have something approaching free and fair elections then there may be hope for a less radical solution.

Very true.

I actually suspect we may be approaching the end game of the two-party system. While our democracy was never designed to work this way, it has been locked into this for far too long. In 2000 the democrats became subservient to the GOP, now it has essentially be codified as such - hence we really have only a one-party system.
Br> If we could rebuild our government with at least 4 or 5 parties we could possibly prevent a situation like this - where one party takes over the entirety of government and locks out everyone else - from happening again, though I don't see that as being an easy reformation.

I can understand the desire to demonize the MAGA party, especially considering how much effort they have put in to demonization of everyone who isn't in their party. However I really see it as counterproductive. Nobody is going to get traction in this country by only declaring themselves to not be MAGA; they have to have a coherent platform (even when the MAGA platform is spectacularly incoherent).

While perhaps the conservatives who wield power - currently or in the past - are all of the MAGA mindset now, I have met plenty of conservatives who do not align with everything MAGA. There are conservatives out there who are voting only reluctantly for Trump and the rest of MAGA, generally more as a vote against the opposition than a vote specifically for anything.

In fact I would say that the majority of those elected from the MAGA party likely don't support everything MAGA. However they want to keep their elected positions and they know they can't do it without the support of their Dear Leader. As a result many of them are supporting things that are counter to their own beliefs, simply because they want to keep their cushy elected positions.

I would argue for a little more granularity on that argument.

The Republican movement - as embodied by the GOP - is not entirely evil. Cruelty was never the point of the GOP.

However with the MAGA movement - which now stands in for the GOP - cruelty is indeed the point. MAGA wants to hurt everyone who disagrees with it. First it insults, then it harasses, then it eventually goes at its enemies directly and physically if it cannot drive them away any other way.

It is important to recall though that during the Lawnchair Administration, the GOP told us that every democrat was mentally ill; that the democratic party was run entirely by people of the same description you just used. They told us the democrats would take over and destroy the USA. Of course that did not happen, but don't fall into using the same rhetoric that they used, as it could well lead towards the same follow up actions (if the chance ever presents itself).

If our country is to survive this in one piece - which I would say is very much an open question - then we need to be ready to extend a helping hand to those who have so enthusiastically embraced MAGA.

The MAGA party is pretty blunt on what they want - a country only for themselves and people who think exactly the same way they do. Every day they push a little harder towards that goal. Eventually they will also try harder to fracture bonds between people who are not in line with MAGA, and the communications network will be part of that.

Before you say that could never happen, think of all the things that happened in the past 12 months that we thought would never happen.

Why would he be that precise? We've seen the carpet bombing approach that ICE is using and the complete lack of concern for collateral damage. He'll eventually be ready to just shut down all the networks in all the blue states, while tapping all the lines in all the red ones.

That's one thing that scares me more than anything. If the MAGA party successfully starts the civil war that they are itching for, the first thing they'll attack is the communication networks. My evacuation plan with my family revolves around how to find each other if this happens.

The cost won't matter here when the MAGA party deploys the same; after all Musk will likely let them do it here for free. The lesson to learn is how are the Iranians communicating without it? Is the cell network (as much as they have one) down as well? People are still getting information around and out, but how?

I've been looking for better handheld radios for communicating with my family in exactly this situation. The best option for long-range portable radio uses the cell networks, and I wouldn't count on them to stay up here if someone declares an emergency. We should be thinking of what our plans will be when our government is weaponized against us. Don't fool yourself into thinking you can make an effective weaponized stand yourself.