Honestly, I feel like if districts are gonna be drawn, it’d make more sense to just choose some algorithm and have a computer do it.

I’ve thought about this exactly. Here’s my idea.

Crowd source the algorithm every X years. Anybody with basic skills in map making and programming can submit a candidate algorithm. Candidates are scored by…

A) how well they evenly distribute the population across districts (eg +X points for every extra person a district has above a perfectly even distribution), and…

B) how simple the districts are (eg. +Y points for every corner each district boundary has.), which would prevent any kind of gerrymandering.

Lowest score with above example points system wins. Winner gets to have their name on any ballots used while the districts chosen by the algorithm are used. Or something. 🤷

But they’re not introducing nuance, they’re invoking FUD.

Their arguments aren’t, “RCV is way better than FPTP, and it’s great that communities are adopting it, but I happen to like this similar system even better. Let me tell you about it.” I would love to see discussions like that.

Instead, their arguments are “RCV bad. [Other system] good.”. Their arguments play right into the hands of those that want to delay/avoid change so that they can continue to manipulate elections.

For communities that do this, the goal is to…

A) Drive out the homeless so they go to other, more charitable communities, and become someone else’s problem, and then…

B) Point out the higher rate of homelessness (and higher taxes necessary to deal with it) in those other communities and say, “Look how awful those communities are!”

I’ll believe it when Ze Frank does a True Facts video on it.

That’s the very definition of letting perfect be the enemy of good. We can have really good now, or we can debate ad nauseum for decades about what would be perfect, never reach an agreement, and have done nothing.

It takes six months from “we need a new person with these skills” to “ok here’s the job posting,” ??? And if in those six months the required skills change a bit, you can’t just tweak the job posting and instead have to start over from scratch???

Your company has serious issues that are wasting everyone’s time and need to be addressed. Stop making excuses for wasting people’s time.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I am convinced that was Russia!s proof-of-concept for what would become their information warfare against democracy.

I find myself increasingly having to consider this possibility when I interact with people online. Are they well meaning, or are they actively trying to sabotage progress. Maybe they’re well meaning but have succumbed to the arguments of others actively trying to sabotage progress. 🤷

RCV has the momentum and is infinitely superior to what we have now. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of much better.

Edit: And honestly, I’d be happy if a community chose one of the other options. I don’t care. They’re all better than what we have and we should be applauding every city, county and state that switches to any of them.

Trying to demonize one because you don’t think it’s perfect is just muddying the waters and subjecting us to decades of more of the shit sandwich we have now while we debate which alternative is flawless.

A finger waggle, perhaps.

It shows that there is bipartisan support for it among rank and file voters. It’s really just the politicians that know that they wouldn’t stand a chance of winning under such a system that are against it.

Sadly, there are people that would completely agree with this statement, and not detect an ounce of sarcasm.

Yeah, but… Where is that? /s

It strongly reads to me like the writer is trying to make something mystical/mysterious out of a completely mundane “feature” of mirrors.

In the photos, the tall, geometric figure reflects the rocky desert and perfectly aligns with the horizon.

Ummmmm, that’s the photographer that did that. 🙄

It’s right there in the teaser on on this page.

“Terrorism? Boy Howdy” 🤣

I hate to say it, but I’m inclined to think that the Russian government may simply block access to Firefox (and the Firefox addons site).

Probably true, but that’s not justification for Mozilla to save them the trouble by doing it for them.

Tangent: Whenever the news reports a major earthquake somewhere, I like to remind people that Plate Tectonic Theory is “just a theory” and that some religious leaders confidently assure us that earthquakes are caused by promiscuous women.

Link is to the second page of the article. I thought it was odd how it kept saying “Smith said” without identifying who Smith is.

Proper link: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/microsoft-in-damage-control-mode-says-it-will-prioritize-security-over-ai/

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with reporting the facts that you do have when you have them and are confident of your sources.

Acknowledging remaining open questions that you don’t have answers to yet, is a bonus.

A perfect example of reporting before the fog of war clears would be reporting completely erroneous information as factual. So unless you’re suggesting that a Ukrainian fighter jet did NOT in fact strike a target inside Russia, then this isn’t the “perfect example” you’re looking for.