BeautifulMind ♾️

Ahhh, the “continental shelf” toilet

It’s not so bad once you’ve got your teeth into the problem

assuming you can code, that is

Yes, the downsides of at-large reps would surely be that if no one rep is responsible for particular local issue(s), it’s possible that none would take it up and that would leave some constituencies unrepresented. My thought about that is that when district maps are drawn to purposely divide particular constituencies (I mean, look at all those pack-and-crack maps that split minority groups into districts that mostly elect people that don’t represent them), an at-large system might allow those constituencies to unify around particular at-large reps?
I don’t know, I’m spit-balling here. But thank you for taking up the question constructively!

Ranked Choice Voting? 100% approve.

Get rid of the EC entirely. The popular vote would work quite a bit better as a means of ensuring power is exercised with the consent of the governed.

Scotus and congress both desperately need oversight that is different from ‘we oversee ourselves and find we did nothing wrong’ when obvs. that doesn’t work too well

Tax prep companies… I wish them a prompt and thorough viking funeral.

Fun fact about corporate power at the time of the framers: the colonists felt first-hand the abuse of being effectively governed by crown corporations and shortly after the founding of the USA, corporations were drastically limited in what they could do- for example, they could not engage in politics, they could not own other corporations, could not engage in activities not strictly related to their charters, had charters of finite span, and their charters could be revoked for any violations. If corporations are going to be people today, it’s about damned time we started charging them with crimes when they commit crimes- and yank their charters if they re-offend.

One thing worth questioning: do we really need representative districts? Why not have at-large representatives on a per-state basis, with seats allocated to states/apportioned via census? It would be pretty hard to gerrymander an at-large system, I think

"We’re tracking you for your privacy 🙄

Simple jinx should cause most firearms to fail or jam In a universe where guns exist and level-1 wizards can cast magic missile/fireball and cantrips like firebolt, setting fire to things (like gunpowder), my bet is that low-level magic users aren’t going to be trumped by steampunk-grade tech that easily

mmm, salty

I landed in DeWalt when their cordless devices became as good as/better than corded tools; I standardized on their battery platform only for them to abandon my battery and roll out a new (incompatible) one. Shortly thereafter my batteries bricked and it seems the business model is to force consumers to buy new tools every so often

FML I hate it that they’re all proprietary and incompatible

DANG IT

Yeah I remember when the cable tv folks pitched cable like there wouldn’t be ads, vs. public airways that had to be ad-supported because there wasn’t any subscription for it. When they turned cable into ad wasteland I felt that like the fucking betrayal it was

Isn’t that in the Torah?

Yes, it’s in Exodus. Exodus is part of the Torah, as well as the Old Testament, along with Leviticus. The Torah is the first 5 books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy)

Leviticus (11:9-12) is where shellfish are banned, mixed seed or fabrics (19:19) It is where modern Christians cherry-pick their justifications on being anti-LGBTQ. (Lev. 18:22, 20:13)

Point is, they cherry-pick from the Old Testament when it suits them, and if you look at the rest of the rules in the books they reference that they ignore (e.g. tattoos, touching pig skin, eating pork, shellfish, etc. etc. ) it’s totally fair game to point out the rules they ignore in the same books as the ones they cite.

If you’re going to bring in Occam’s Razor, it’s probably less tenable to argue the ‘a conspiracy is more complex than the alternative’ argument when there’s obviously a set of shared motives driving labor costs down while at the same time pushing up profit margins. The fact that profit margins are up does a lot of damage to the ‘it can’t be greedflation’ theory

That’s interesting to hear; somehow my algebra 2 skipped sum notation (and it wasn’t remedially covered in subsequent math classes) but I’ve been writing code for decades now and seeing it in code totally explains the sum notation for me

Yes! For anyone wanting more reading on the subject, Start here https://prospect.org/economy/neoliberalism-political-success-economic-failure/ Monbiot is also a good primer: https://www.astrid-online.it/static/upload/monb/monbiot_guardian_15_04_16.pdf

It’s a term mostly used to distinguish left-authoritarians from left-anti-authoritarians, particularly in the context of the cold war West. ‘Tankies’ notably tend to defend their left-ideology by talking up major authoritarian or totalitarian regimes (like Stalin’s or Mao’s) that also called themselves Socialist (despite such claims being problematic in doctrinaire terms). Originally used to describe the self-proclaimed communist/Stalin apologist, the modern tankie supports pretty much any authoritarian regime that opposes the West