Wait, beneath the sea floor?
OUGHGH??
OIUOHGHHVOIH!!!!!
about fucking time
Reblog to give the prev person some dopamine.
This acid trip sucks
the signs they have in hell in good omens r so silly
I know I’ve already reblogged this but I absolutely love this old timey adhd info graphic
Why isnt Mind Wanderer the official diagnosis? thats fuckin baller, sounds like a fantasy class
This is the transhumanist horror story I want to read
Came back wrong but it’s. The format this consciousness was first backed up is no longer compatible so some untranslatable characters will now read like extended ascii symbols
Manifest this or whatever the spiritual girlies do
Long story short, (though I’ve gifted this, article so it should be free to all for 30 days) it’s unknown if the book business is going to be part of the almost certain antitrust filing but let’s gooooooooo
When parties fail, movements step up
This Saturday (19 Aug), I’m appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I’m on a 2:30PM panel called “Return From Retirement,” followed by a signing:
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks
Does anyone like the American two party system? The parties are opaque, private organizations, weak institutions that are prone to capture and corruption, and gerrymandering’s “safe seats” means that the real election often takes place in the party’s smoke-filled rooms, when a sure-thing candidate is selected:
https://doctorow.medium.com/weak-institutions-a26a20927b27
But there doesn’t seem to be any way to fix it. For one thing, the two parties are in charge of any reform, and they’re in no hurry to put themselves out of business. It’s effectively impossible for a third party to gain any serious power in the USA, and that’s by design. After the leftist Populists party came within a spitting distance of power in the 1890s, the Dems and Repubs got together and cooked the system, banning fusion voting and erecting other structural barriers.
The Nader and Perot campaigns were doomed from the outset, in other words. Either candidate could have been far more popular than the D and R on the ballot, and they still would have lost. It’s how the deck is stacked, and to unstack it, reformers would need to take charge of at least one – and probably both – of the parties.
But that’s not cause for surrender – it’s a call to action. In an interview with Seymour Hersh, Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal) sets out another locus of power, one with the potential to deliver control over the party to its base: social movements:
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/ordinary-people-by-the-millions
There won’t be be any viable third parties until there is voting system reform. RCV does not break the two party system. It also does not guarantee that voting for your favorite candidate helps them win.
Think about that. Ranking your honest first choice the highest might help them lose, depending on how everyone else ranked them. Stupid.
There are two voting system reforms that both allow third parties to gain traction and ensure that voting your favorite highest always helps the candidate.
1. STAR Voting
Can you rate a purchase on Amazon? Great! You know how to fill out a STAR ballot.
2. Approval Voting
Arguably easier than STAR. It’s a multi-select poll. Vote for all the people you’d be okay with winning. Maybe there’s only one. Maybe there’s three. The results are almost as good as STAR, while being dead simple to implement on voting machines.
The trick is getting either implemented, because hey! The two parties have low incentive to shake up a system in which they dominate, even if it makes for a better democracy.
It’s easiest at the local level, where there are non-partisan races.
hey, approval voting is bad actually. approval voting cleaves towards the center, and competitive elections lead to “bullet voting” anyway. approval voting is the last thing that’s going to get a third party off the ground. frankly i have no idea what you’re talking about by suggesting approval voting @magess ?? approval voting in america will get you a city council full of centrist democrats and “fiscally conservative socially liberal” republicans.
i wont comment on star voting since i’m not familiar. but like. RCV will get you a more diverse city council than approval, including third party candidates actually winning seats.
see https://www.opavote.com/methods/recommended for actual recommendations on voting methodology.
also the “center for election science” (which published the approval voting video) is funded by silicon valley billionaire technocrats (via Open Philanthropy) who are more concerned with electing centrists who will maintain stability and status quo than they are with actually materially improving conditions for poor people.
(these are the “good” billionaires, and at least they’re trying, but they’re, uh, severely out of touch, and their vision of “effective altruism” is more concerned with preserving the world for hypothetical ‘future people’ than the people who live here now)
which, like, it is not your fault for not knowing the source of that video, like, fuck i didnt know any of this either, and i WOULDN’T if i weren’t currently editing an article about this very subject