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Cake day: January 4th, 2024

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  • Technically it’s the other way around. The size of the electoral college is determined by the size of the House plus the Senate.

    Now, the House was meant to increase in size as the population increased.

    Now, since the mechanism for that increase wasn’t spelled out in the constitution, there were heated arguments every 10 years over the new maps, but it came to a head in 1921.

    Long story short, the permanent apportionment act of 1929 set the size of the House at 435 members. We’ve added two states since then, and the US population has tripped. But still it’s 435.

    Repealing that one law would fix several problems.




  • No, it won’t change the minds of his base.

    But there are people he wouldn’t consider his base, that also tend to vote conservative, who were actually offended by some of those jokes. And then realized that hey, Trump and company are white nationalists, and that means that no minority will be safe.

    It’s a tiny minority of Trump supporters, but as close as this election could be, that’s more than enough.

    Now, Trump is planning on stealing the election anyway. Via disrupting or delaying certification of votes past December 11th, Which then means that there will be incomplete slates of electors, which means the election goes to the House, and each State gets one vote instead of the house itself voting.

    They’re going to try to use Section three of the 20th amendment.

    If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President-elect shall have died, the Vice President-elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President-elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President-elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President-elect nor a Vice President-elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

    Fun times to live in…






  • Countless was a little under 2000 people (at least as far as Harris is concerned) That’s about half of what her predecessor in the same office did over roughly the same time period.

    Now, that conviction is for “possession, sale, or cultivation”. Most paid a fine rather than serve jail time. We also don’t know the exact breakdown of possession vs sale vs cultivation.

    We also know that Harris pushed for decriminalization and legalization in California, and has pushed some of the same as vice president. I think Joe is the roadblock there, even if he was convinced to pardon a bunch of people for simple possession.



  • The difference between red and blue is often about 5-10 percentage points. But if you’re up 5, that means your opponent is down 5. Because it still has to add up to 100.

    To turn a state green, that party would have to be up at least 50%.

    You see how that’s a problem, right?

    But while Green is pushing ahead, where do you think those votes are coming from?

    If the Greens pick up 5% of the vote, they need to take those votes from someone, and that’s most likely the Dems. Now they have 45% of the vote, because percentages still have to add up to 100, the Republicans have 50%, and handily win the election.

    For greens to replace, most likely the democrats, would involve the left loosing every election for about a decade or two. Just completely having no voice in government.

    You see what parties don’t switch like that right? No, the party has to collapse, and then a replacement has to step in.

    And in order for a party to collapse, it needs to be a coalition party. Like the Whigs. https://www.history.com/news/whig-party-collapse

    Something that is unlikely to happen to a modern party.

    Thus the only way for the greens to gain power is to change the voting system. Real voting reform needs either Approval or STAR as the voting system. (there are a few more, like Ranked Robin, but the main point is that it needs to be a cardinal voting system.)

    The Green party under Jill Stein mildly supports RCV, a system that deeply flawed and will not actually fix things.


  • I will say, the voting system that we advocate for is important.

    There are three common choices. RCV, Approval, and STAR.

    RCV has some momentum, but is just a bad voting system. It’s arguably worse than Fist Past the Post, because in a way, it is FPtP. Or rather, it’s several FPtP elections in a row, dropping the lowest each time.

    Which is where a problem creeps in. See, it’s drop lowest, and then never hear from that person again. So if they are the literal second choice of 99% of voters, they’re dropped in the first round and never seen again.

    This leads to ballots that look like this;

    1 - dropped in 4th round 2- dropped in 1st round 3- dropped in 2nd round 4- dropped in 3rd round 5- Guy you kind of hate and only listed because the rules said you had to list 5. He’s the one who got your vote.

    If you had dropped your first choice, Your second through third might have won.

    There’s also a version of the above ballot that doesn’t have a number 5, in that case your ballot is just thrown out as exhausted. Up to 18% of ballots get thrown out as exhausted. At least that’s what the data from California and Maine has said.

    Most countries that use IRV (RCV’s real name) don’t publish any election data, so we use what we’ve got.

    Anyway, Approval and STAR are both immune to shit like the above, because how you rate one candidate has zero bearing on how you rate another. Woo for cardinal voting systems.




  • The definition is that Tesla is shit.

    They’re selling a spotty lane assist as Self Driving when it is not.

    Other companies are selling actual self-driving cars, (even if those companies are fucking up as well) but Tesla is nowhere near that level of autonomy. All because Musk cheaped out on the sensor package.

    Teslas will never be self-driving, because they literally cannot detect the road and obstacles with just their little camera setup.

    They should not be allowed to call it self-driving, or autopilot, or anything else that implies that you can take your hands off the steering wheel.