Has Nate Silver taken this into account in his simulations?

In a European coalition, if the minority of the coalition disagree with some law being voted on, does the whole coalition still vote for that law? Or would minority legislators break and vote with the opposition?

I think this is a programming exercise.

Most overrated is definitely NGE.

Well the reason why I imagine you to be non-religious is because thats a prerequisite for the argument I intended to (and did) give. A (Christian or Muslim) religious person would disagree with my starting premise that there is no truth about a religion out there in the world. And indeed, for a religious person, the question of whether some religion X is Y may very well be a theological question, where sufficient study or faith or practice reveals the truth. This is not the sort of discussion I was interested in having.

I can certainly agree that there may be some core components to a dogma concept such that we would cease to call it that concept without it. And I certainly don’t believe homophobia to be a core concept of the Islamic dogma. (Core concepts would be fairly limited here, like that there is only one God, and Mohammad is the prophet of that God).

The question of what something is, unless specified otherwise, always includes was and will be.

Hmm, I’m not sure that’s correct. But in any event, the way I read the OP’s question, with its reference to post 9/11 Islamophobic claims and the veracity of them seems to be very much a question of how Islam is currently and has been for the past 20 years. Questions of historical Islam and some hypothetical future Islam don’t seem to me to be what’s targeted here.

Sure, so the question presented here is one about “Islam.”

I’m not a religious person, and I imagine you are not either (considering you use this website, I imagine you are a materialist). So, as nonreligious people, I think we should have no issue saying that there is no fundamental “truth” as to what “Islam” is out there in the world. Rather, what the concept/religion of Islam is just what its followers generally believe it to be. Like most concepts, there probably aren’t many super hard-and-fast necessary and sufficient conditions, but rather there is a family resemblance of concepts that exist in the minds of its followers, with some ideas being more core (i.e. believed to be part of the concept by more people) and some more fringe.

So, answering the question of whether Islam is homophobic (rather than was or has been historically) is just a matter of determining what beliefs/values with respect to homosexuality its followers attribute to it. I imagine Mahmoud would attribute his homophobia to the religion.

As you suggest, it could very well be the case that the Muslims who are homophobic have come to those beliefs due to their material conditions of their place of birth rather than the prevailing religion in the region. But then, insofar as such homophobic people consider themselves Muslims, and attribute such beliefs to being a value of such Islam, then Islam becomes/is homophobic.

Your response to me seems more interested in the question of whether Islam “causes” people to be homophobic. But that’s a distinct question from whether Islam is homophobic.

Separately, if you want to argue that Islam is only homophobic if it “causes” people to be homophobic, then I don’t see why it has to be “the more probable cause” for a person’s homophobia in order to be homophobic. Surely there can be many different causes for why some particular person might be homophobic? If the material conditions of their place of birth is the driving cause for their homophobia, but a religion came in with the assist, (that is, it is not the “most probable cause”) I see no reason to say that such religion is not homophobic.

Idk about those other issues, but on the union point, there’s a pretty big difference between what Biden and Trump have done with the NLRB.

Here’s a small post I made about it the other day https://hexbear.net/comment/5553162

You think she would try to run for a third term?

I’m not aware of this, and some quick google searching isn’t revealing anything. Do you have a source for this?

With respect to the union point, Abruzzo at the NLRB has been pretty based. She rescinded the Trump era directives (which were super employer sided, see for example his NLRB GC’s ridiculous workplace salting and union representative directives) and replaced them with union sided directives. This has resulted in several challenges and overrulings of long-standing pro-employer precedent (see e.g. cemex, overruling a 1969 precedent). And the Biden board members have been significantly more union sided than trumps (cemex was a party-line split vote among the board, and there were several anti-Amazon and Starbucks rulings that made the news early in Biden’s presidency if you recall).

This union-friendly NLRB is probably, in part, why the number of union applications has doubled compared to Trump’s term. For context, forget about how massive of an increase doubling is - this is the first time the amount of union applications has increased between presidential terms at all in the last 50 years.

This is not to say “vote blue no matter who” or even “vote.” in the first place. You do you. But I think it’s important that your decision to do whatever you will is made on the facts. And there is a pretty material gulf between Biden and Trump’s NLRB board and NLRB GC.

What is the Lebanese army doing? Is it just sitting this out while Hezbollah and Israel fight over southern Lebanon?