Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden Soundgarden - Bad Motor Finger Ved Buens Ende - Written in Waters The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks OST Grimes - Art Angels Ulver - Bergtatt - et Eeventyr i 5 Capitler Samael - Eternal Dødheimsgard - 666 International Alessandro Scarlatti - Some collection of his vocal works that includes his Magnificat

I’ve stopped buying sunglasses (even the stupid cheap ones) because they will not make it longer than two months before I lose or break them. I’m fucking cursed in this manner.

Capitalism was the most popular option only because sadomasochism wasn’t included, apparently.

What if? What if a lot of things. JUST DO IT and find out.

First off, that’s actually the coolest name for a bird that I’ve ever heard.

Second, I don’t think the birds would be bothered if they found out. They have no conception of what either Satan or a jar is. I’ll give credit that they can differentiate day from night. The rest would just be nonsense to them.

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You’re right. Sorry about that. I don’t want to put words in your mouth.

I recognize the problem you bring up, and that’s exactly why I’ve said what else I’ve had to say in this thread. The person you were responding to still has a point in what they’re saying. I’m not convinced they were asking for absolution of the Dems as a whole.

What are your ideas for enacting ranked choice voting that don’t involve leveraging the Democrats to make it happen?

It could maybe happen in individual states that allow citizen introduced ballot measures. That would be great. The scope and efficacy of that idea is pretty stunted though. You’d have to hope the measure passes in the first place, and counting on it to act as a catalyst for every other state to adopt the same is unrealistic. I’d expect a much longer time horizon on that approach than engaging with Democrats as far as making it the standard for the country at large.

That’s the other alternative I can think of to get the foot in the door, but I’m very open to hearing anything else that’s feasible.

The left in the U.S. seemingly has such a poor grasp of coalition oriented politics despite needing exactly that in order to become viable at all as political entities. It’s maddening. If people on the left en masse could put their ideals on the back burner long enough (and we’re only talking a couple/few election cycles) to force through issues of vote reform and campaign finance reform by working through the Democrats they could spend the rest of their lives voting for people that a) actually represent their values and b) actually have a shot at being elected.

Edit: That time frame may be optimistic, but the point stands. Cooperation/consolidation amongst the genuine left as a voting block/political force, and doing so through the currently actionable political channels, is what it’s going to take to get to where we want to go.

RCV will still have an effect on gerrymandered districts. It disrupts the clear funding strategies of lining up behind a single/pair of candidate(s). It becomes either a lot less guaranteed that your funding dollars are being put to good use, or a lot more expensive to make sure that they are. [Caveat: this obviously assumes some depth of a viable candidacy pool in a given district/race.]

Legit, if you have never contacted your reps in Congress before to let them know that they should be supporting a bill this is the time to do it. Make as much noise as possible on this one. It has the potential to be more impactful on every issue than most any other bill concerning a single issue. The only contenders I could think of would be campaign finance reforms or possibly some prohibitive action against regulatory capture.

Hum-diddy-hee-hee Hoo-ah Hoo-ah

There’s a rule against that, yeah, but it’s easy to get around the rules. All he needs to do is get one of his colleagues to scratch it for him.

This is better. I’m never having kids, but if I did now I’d really want an MRI scan of the little darling.

Deli-sliced turkey, muenster cheese, honey mustard, and my home-made pickles, on wheat.

Younger brains have fewer memories. This checks out.

I did that thing where I lied on the internet. The preamble was there purely as a setup for the greatest joke of all time.

I always pictured mammoths being more docile: disinclined to charge. Didn’t realize they could be more of a wooly bully.

Beta testing a system update. Lots of improvements here. This beta has been open for quite a while, and it seems to be catching on. It’s already more or less stable. I expect mass adoption with somewhat regional distribution at the 1.0 release. Of course you’ll have the stragglers insisting the out-dated version was better. In comparison I find it clunky, restrictive, and demanding. Our processing power has increased in orders of magnitude; why we’d want to keep using an archaic way of doing things like this is a head scratcher.

It would be very on-brand, and probably entertaining, if these two send absolute bottom dollar lawyers to represent their case.