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2 yr. ago

  • Just changing the voting system by itself won't get rid of the two party system, we also need proportional representation. I much prefer Approval Voting and Sequential Proportional Approval Voting because the results are as good, if not better than RCV, they're easier for the individual to understand, and it's impossible to submit an invalid ballot using either method. Plus RCV doesn't actually change the winner the vast majority of the time. Fargo and St. Louis both use approval voting and folks there appreciate being able to vote for everyone they like and know that their full ballot will always be counted.

  • Technically no, but it'll never happen.

    The way the parties nominate candidates for president is an absolute mess, but the nominations aren't official until the parties hold a closed convention with delegates who vote for candidates to be the nominee. Back in the day these delegates used to actually be the people who decided who got nominated. These days they're more like a ceremonial role, with a lot of them (I think) being required to vote in line with the way people voted in their state's primary.

    Anyway, I'd have to look it up to be 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure enough delegates have some kind of autonomy that it's possible they could nominate someone other than Biden. Who they would end up agreeing on....? Heck if I know.

  • I shall never forget as long as I live. Katie Porter or AOC would be better choices.

  • I dunno about you guys, but I didn't believe it for a second when he said he was going to be one term. Shame on him for lying, even if it was obvious.

  • Yeah the quality of care and health outcomes among rich countries is pretty much the same across the board. Each country has specific areas they're particularly good or bad in, but overall health outcomes are pretty much the same, including the US. We just wildly over pay for healthcare because we've defined our consumer to be individuals, which means they have no bargaining power. Normally this wouldn't be too big of a problem if the industry had heavy price regulation, but we also don't have that. If we switched to M4A, the consumer would become Medicare and bargaining power would go through the roof.

  • I'm not really sure who likes them other than the people who like them

    ....What?

  • I think the phone market should also be broken up.

    The reason a doupoly is bad in any market is that it's essentially next to no choice for the consumer, and the businesses can force changes to the market that are anti-consumer with little reprocussion. In any given market the minimum number of legitimate competitors necessary for meaningful competition will be different, but even three is too few in the web browser game, especially when the market shares look like this.

  • Yeah, it's a social problem. Recognize that mass shooters are almost exclusively white males. The book Angry White Men by Michael Kimmel does a great job of profiling the person who does this sort of thing and why. There's a lot that goes into it. Economics, masculinity, school culture, etc.

  • Open source researchers on social media suggested a Krasukha electronic warfare radar jammer had been positioned on the complex.

    That's why. The jammer is messing with Ukrainian operations and Russia put it there so they could scream "nuclear site!" if Ukraine ever went after it.

  • Whenever a group in power says "we promise we won't do the bad thing" you can be rest assured, they will do the bad thing.

  • The explanation I heard was that it was likely Mary and Peter hallucinated Jesus only a few days after he died. That's a very common timeframe for when people hallucinate seeing dead loved ones, and the early descriptions in Bible match the flavor of dead loved-one hallucinations people typically have, with the figure assuring the person everything will be all right and whatnot. Other descriptions (like Jesus appearing to all twelve disciples or crowds of people) seem to have been written later more as persuasive arguments, with doubting Tomas acting as the stand-in for the skeptical listener. This is all from "How Jesus Became God" and I have no idea how mainstream or fringe the author's views are.

  • Almost certainly the entire reason Google is funding Mozilla is to try and stave off antitrust lawsuits.

  • Any kind of money is an arbitrary store of wealth.

  • I've heard theories that key people probably had hallucinations of Jesus a few days after he was killed, which was the big thing that helped launch him from yet-another-apocalyptic-preacher to (eventually) God himself. I don't know how well these are accepted, though.

  • Yeah that's been an anticipated problem, since home solar is essentially a lost customer for the utility, but infrastructure maintenance costs don't change. Honestly the power grid shouldn't be a commercial enterprise, even if it's under shit tons of regulation. It's so absurdly critical to society we should have nationalized the power companies a long time ago.

  • Can't sell your excess power to the grid?

  • Well then clearly you're not used to the idea yet.

  • I barely use GIMP, but years ago I heard about it and gave it a go. It simultaneously opened three or four seemingly random windows and no actual workspace as far as I can tell. I immediately gave up. It wasn't until recently that I had a reason to try again, and at this point I had forgotten the absurd situation I ran away from the first time. Luckily they've made some improvements since then. It's still a bit obtuse, but I hear a big update is coming soon that might fix some of the UI issues?

  • Once you get used to the idea of chick dick, well, it's just a dick on a chick.