Yes, voters choose the candidate when they participate in the primary. But before the primary ever happens there’s a lot that goes on in terms of determining who will run in the primary, and what resources they have to run a viable campaign.

Political junkies talk about the “invisible primary,” which Vox’s Andrew Prokop, in an excellent overview, describes as “the attempts by important elements of each major party — mainly elites and interest groups — to anoint a presidential nominee before the voting even begins. … These insider deliberations take place in private conversations with each other and with the potential candidates, and eventually in public declarations of who they’re choosing to endorse, donate to, or work for.”

Clinton dominated this invisible primary: She locked up the endorsements, the staff, and the funders early. All the way back in 2013, every female Democratic senator — including Warren — signed a letter urging Clinton to run for president. As FiveThirtyEight’s endorsement tracker showed, Clinton even outperformed past vice presidents, like Al Gore, in rolling up party support before the primaries.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16640082/donna-brazile-warren-bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-rigged

Not only did the DNC go out of its way to steer resources toward Clinton, there were leaked emails wherein party officials were brainstorming ways to undermine the Sanders campaign with negative messaging.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/23/487179496/leaked-democratic-party-emails-show-members-tried-to-undercut-sanders

Using the default lemmy-ui you first have to find a post or comment that the user made in your community. Then you should be able to use the pop-up menu for that post/comment to unban them. It may be helpful to go to the user’s profile and search for a relevant post or comment there.

If you are comfortable using the API directly, you can send a POST request using a tool like curl or a browser plugin like RESTED. The site below provides a reference for formatting Lemmy API requests. Set ban=false. It’s a pain, though; you first need to get the community_id, person_id, and your session authentication cookie as inputs.
https://lemmy.readme.io/reference/post_community-ban-user

Delaware elected Sarah McBride, who is the first open transgender representative in Congress.

Georgia district attorney Fani Willis, who has been trying to prosecute Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election, won reelection.

Washington Congressman Dan Newhouse, one of the ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump (and one of two in that group who survived the subsequent midterm elections), successfully defended his seat again against a Trump-endorsed opponent. That’s at least one Republican in the House who doesn’t always rubber-stamp the party agenda.

Has anyone else bought a durian fruit even after being warned about it? Talk about acquired tastes…

That’s standard practice everywhere else in the US. New Hampshire has this thing about being first, though. They have the earliest presidential primary as well. Releasing early results for this one tiny town is a minor publicity gimmick that shouldn’t have any impact on the overall election. Even the rest of New Hampshire’s towns will wait until Tuesday evening to report their results.

The Associated Press seems to have a decent results presentation ready to go:
https://apnews.com/projects/election-results-2024/

I wouldn’t bother watching minute-by-minute. There is a decent chance that some swing state will be close enough to trigger a recount, and/or one side files lawsuits challenging the results. This circus is far from over.

In each state you only need >50% of the votes to win all the electoral points for that state. Once you have 50% of the votes in a state, additional votes within that state are essentially worthless. In Hillary’s case her supporters were heavily clustered in a handful of states. She won California by a landslide, for example, but then went on to lose in a bunch of other states by narrow margins. If her supporters had been spread out among more states she would have easily won the overall election.

Try it with a cup of pork soda!

Making quiche for brunch. Apparently an omelet is fine, but a scrambled omelette is gay.

“What is Beehaw”: https://docs.beehaw.org/docs/core-principles/what-is-beehaw/

TL;DR: Beehaw.org is intentionally curated and moderated to try and maintain a “nice” environment free of aggression and trolling.

The influx of Reddit refugees last year was a bit of a shock to their system. The Beehaw admins have floated the idea of leaving Lemmy entirely.

something as simple as a variety of colors took hundreds of years of technological advancement

If anyone is looking for a rabbit hole to go down, the history of pigments is a great one.

Winter weather on the northeast US coast is a battle between cold, dry air blowing in from the northwest, and (relatively) warm, humid air from the Gulf Stream coming up from the Caribbean. The weather is determined by which of those two forces is “winning” at a given moment, and it can swing abruptly when the balance shifts.

Expect cold, windy, rainy weather. But don’t be surprised to get snow and ice if those Canadians send a strong cold front.

The comment comparing New York to Scotland is a good one. Dress like you are going to Aberdeen and you should be just fine in New York.

In some places that is a strategy to satisfy zoning requirements. The builder has to provide a minimum amount of outdoor area per dwelling unit. They could create a large ground-level courtyard, or they can create a bunch of tiny balconies that sum up to the same total area. The ladder latter strategy allows a larger building to exist on the same lot.

Edit: Stupid voice-to-text always gets me.

I am glad the regulators are slowly cracking down on homeopathics. Companies selling those placebos now have to publish disclaimers like this admitting that it’s BS:
https://homeoworks.com/disclaimer/

Not that it will stop a lot of people from buying homeopathics, but it’s a start.

I wonder who here is old enough to get the reference…

Something is terribly wrong!

I assume part of it is to keep things competitive. Like how Formula 1 limits the tech that cars are allowed to use. If the richest team with the best equipment always wins, that really takes the fun out of it.

Too much technology also can spoil the fun by being a distraction from the rest of the game. A few years ago there was a game where Jared Goff was receiving play calls through his helmet radio but his radio wasn’t working properly. He would just stand on the field looking stupid and helpless for 20-30 seconds before every play, trying to listen to instructions. It looked bad and was a lame experience for the fans.

I think we’ve been in the same haunted house!

I must have a ghost infestation. My kids always swear it wasn’t them.

And someone monkeyed with the thermostat and WHY IS THIS WINDOW OPEN I’M NOT PAYING TO HEAT THE OUTDOORS!