I agree, the president should be the best we can get, but infortunately we don’t elect people to be good at the job. The nature of elections selects the person who is best at elections at that moment. Sometimes that person happens to be really competent but that seems to be the exception and not the rule.

I’d like to think this is a problem with American voting specifically, or maybe first past the post election systems, but I worry that this is the trend of democracy as a whole. It seems like all democracy is sliding that direction, and I can’t think of many safeguards in place to resist it.

I sat with it for a moment, and I think parliamentary systems do seem more resilient since they require experts to be appointed or hired to do the real work, while the elected officials are steering the general direction. That falls apart of course when the appointed experts are selected for reasons that have nothing to do with expertise.

I don’t know what a solution to this is, and I think that is by design too, though it may just be the way the human brain works, I don’t know. It’s very hard to imagine new ways of doing things that are very different, and it’s even harder to see a clear path to that different future. I’m hopeful because good people are working on it, but I’m worried because the problems are so titanic.

I don’t think you’re going to find peer reviewed studies on something that happened a month ago, but I would be very sure to say someone is working on it.

But if you’ve used Twitter you can recognize when something changes. I haven’t used it for years, but secondhand I’ve heard it was pretty egregious. Obviously this could be due to external parties heightening a disinformation campaign, but I’m not sure that really matters.

American social media platforms creating an environment where propaganda and misinformation flourish and refusing to take action against it has the same net effect as TikTok altering internal algorithm. Arguing that somehow TikTok is worse because it’s a foreign government is nonsense when every social media platform is manipulated by foreign governments to the same effect.

Doesn’t help the US government just keeps saying “trust us bro, we have reports that say China is spying on us” while they threaten to ban one platform. Nobody trusts that, it looks like a witch hunt, and sounds racist when they single them out this way.

Okay all done TL;DW:

Q: Are Americans stupid?
A: No, just not engaged or educated in matters of politics.

Q: What about the decision makers at the DNC and Harris campaign?
A: Yeah, they sure do appear to be, or more charitably, in the pocket of big business interests while attempting to be R-lite.

Q: Okay, Liberals, specifically pundits and media?
A: More defensive than stupid, they got the campaign they wanted but lost and don’t want to take any responsibility.

Q: Republican leadership and media ecosystem?
A: Some are, others motivated by racism, others money, and onward, you know the stuff, it’s the normal list.

Q: Is the show stupid along with their viewers?
A: Not stupid, misjudged the threat of Musk and Ben Shapiro types, clearly left leaning media and viewers should be shifting gears and approach to better reach disaffected Americans.

Q: What do next?
A: Prepare for the worst, push for the best. Connect with people in real life. When the bad things happen that we know could happen, don’t brag, but draw attention to the fact that there are people out there who knew this bad thing would happen.

TL;DR: Nah people aren’t dumb and that’s both good and really depressing. Be good to each other and reach out when you need help.

It’s been a while, but doesn’t approval carry a very heavy risk of ‘unfavorable’ outcomes where a less popular candidate wins if everyone votes normally? I remember it seemed to reinforce two candidate contests and encourage simply voting exactly like we do now (with the similar outcomes).

-Reading into it more, that happens because if you vote for your second favorite, they may beat out your favorite, but if you do not vote for any but your preferred, you won’t risk spoiling your own vote. This of course can lead to neither winning and a third candidate nobody wanted winning, similar to first past the post.

I think that RCV, being fairly widely used now, seems like a pretty good alternative to first past the post, and while it’s not perfect, doesn’t have those obvious strategic voting issues that Approval has. I’d still take approval over first past the post. Might even take a dice roll over first past the post honestly.

Edit - for disclosure, I’m also iffy on approval voting because it’s constantly referred to in a way that makes it sound like it’s a kind of panacea, paired with a list of why x other voting method doesn’t work. It’s also being pushed by conservative groups all over the US, which raises my defenses for better or worse.

Why blame the people who didn’t vote? They didn’t vote for a reason surely, just as you and I voted for a reason. Just because their reason isn’t the same as yours doesn’t mean it isn’t just as valid. Maybe it’s ignorance or perhaps it’s misinformation, but at this moment there’s no way to know that, so discounting 10 million peoples conscious choice only serves to widen divides and alienate more people.

Blame Harris and the DNC for running bad campaigns and candidates. It’s on them to win the voters and an election, and it should have been clear that ‘the same campaign as last time and the time before’ wasn’t working.

No matter who we point at, we’re going to have to start reengaging with our communities and supporting each other, and having those 10 million (likely somewhere left of moderate right) people on side going forward is vital.

That’s an awful lot easier but likely less accurate and what happens whenever establishment Dems lose. “Hillary lost because of Bernie Bros” is the first and loudest instance that springs to mind. But even if that statement were true, In hindsight we know that she and her campaign sorta rigged the primary, which looked more obvious than they probably intended. That disenfranchised some voters and they didn’t vote.

That’s not the voters fault, the candidate did something that made those voters not vote for them. Just like Kamala/the DNC did with running an ancient dude, not having a primary, running the ancient dudes VP, supporting the genocide of Palestinians, loving fracking, and onwards. I was really optimistic early on with her VP pick but that seemed to be the moderate leftmost edge of her campaign.

I’m of the opinion that until the DNC stops appealing to disenfranchised Republicans this steady slide right will keep happening. Running as R-lite hasn’t really been paying off as well for them as it did in the 90s.

To be clear, the EU developing an operating system for EU use is not a dystopian vision without assuming many things about the theoretical future project. The petition is asking for this for transparency and independence from an actual dystopian vision coming to fruition in a ‘forced’ Windows standard. That doesn’t really lead me to imagine a dystopian nightmare where the EU forces everyone to install their distro (A potentially comical vision on its own).

I rather like the idea that governments contribute to open source projects, sounds a lot better than the same contribution going to private institutions. The use of open source software may introduce some vulnerabilities, but those are replacing vulnerabilities that are already there. I would also imagine investment in some open source projects would encourage more development in adjacent areas, much like Valve, Proton, and gaming.

I would be interested to hear what alternative you have to solving the problems that the project in this petition is attempting to solve. It’s easy to shoot down something for not being perfect but it’s pretty challenging to come up with a theoretical proposal that pleases all.

So much of our modern political system is poised around vibes, because that’s all the older voters (seem to) really care about. If I had a dollar for every time I heard some variation of having a beer with George W, I’d have more dollars than I do now.

I think in contrast younger voters care about a vast array of issues very deeply, making engaging in politics a much more complex task that they probably don’t have time for. Given that so much of the coverage consists of no-meaning political lines with no coherent policy right now, engaging in traditional ways is pointless until they stop having vapid “debates” and “interviews” with no content, and start forcing real policy discussion.

I think Bernie was popular with younger voters because he brought so few vibes and so much policy. I went to a Hillary rally and a Bernie rally during the primary in 2015 and the difference was night and day. Hillary talked about the positive feeling of continuing the Democratic legacy, while Bernie talked about sustainable agriculture and straw polled the attendees about wind power.

To be clear I bet this held true 50 years ago when our old voters were young too, no hate on the olds here, priorities change, though I hope mine don’t. Also I wonder if this is all still true for the new young voters, most of my interactions are with millennials and gen z. My few interactions with the folks graduating now have been tainted by my old and out of touch self and by their (in my opinion) under-practiced interpersonal skills from covid years at home. Again, no hate intended.

I use MXLinux, picked it somewhat at random when I was frustrated with windows 10 privacy settings and haven’t looked back since. I tried mint, mint cinnamon, Ubuntu, and Fedora before MX, and Fedora is the only other one I have stuck with, to use on a Surface Pro (I needed Wayland for the touchscreen).

MX has been really stable, light on resources, and has worked really well through two complete hardware upgrades. I play games on steam, some brand new some old, and I haven’t found one that I can’t play yet. That is due to steam/proton/proton GE more than the OS I expect but I’m happy nonetheless. I also run my home entertainment box on MX on an old PC (I know there are better choices for os for this, I was just comfortable with it).

I like it because I haven’t felt any reason to try anything else, perhaps someday I will and I’ll just find a new OS then, but until then it’s my favorite I think.

I never played BioShock 2 or Infinite, but I watched full playthroughs of each, and I thought infinite was great! Different to be sure in most ways, but it was a neat expansion of the world and themes hinted at in the first two games.

I seem to remember a lot of sideline criticism when it came out that boiled down to “NPC sidekick not love interest but hot so I don’t like game”. I thought, and think that is ridiculous, and fortunately I think that criticism has faded with time because Elizabeth is such a positive part of the game, from my view.

I should play through the BioShock games…

Unfortunately people don’t take care of themselves because it’s expensive too. Most people who don’t have a lot of money also don’t have a lot of time to prepare food from whole food sources, so they go for inexpensive pre prepared foods, which are awful for you.

Exercise is possible but again requires a lot of time (and energy) that you likely don’t have if you’re working two 35 hour a week food service jobs (or one, honestly). On top of that the built environment is so hostile to being outside of a car, that the easy free exercise choice of walking places is entirely or effectively impossible in most places.

All that is to say I don’t think the blame is on individuals (not that you really said that) for not choosing the healthy options, it’s on our society for focusing on work, convenience, and efficiency at the expense of health. Just like everything else here, it’s going to be a real challenge to fix because it’s to tied into everything else, but I hope we can tackle it.

By definition, an agenda is “a program of things to be done or considered” which does not equate to wanting to do something. It more closely resembles a daily planner or task list.

So in as much as you and I have an “agenda” when we get out of bed, you are right, the person submitting the PR did likely have an agenda of waking up and going about their day. There isn’t a ‘woke agenda’ at play here, however, as the person I replied to seemed to imply.

Along with potential reasons mentioned in this post, right wing folks also have fewer obvious places to go troll now that twitter is just filled with them and Hershey’s or whatever. Perhaps they are coming here looking for trouble specifically.

It’s also possible they’ve always been here and have just found more reasons to engage recently. Either way, the amount of bad faith discussion and derisive language is frustrating and upsetting.

I have just been blocking individuals if I find myself getting frustrated, but I also took a long break from social media because I felt like the discussions about Gaza were bordering toxic, so I’m not sure my approach is sustainable.

Imagine you have been purposefully targeted for harassment or excluded from activities in the past due to your preferred pronouns or perceived gender. Seeing “he” with that context would likely feel excluding, which is a reason someone without an ‘agenda’ would want to see it changed.

I made the leap a few years ago now, and since getting a (slightly) newer AMD GPU I haven’t had a single problem that I didn’t create by messing around with things without knowing what I was doing. I use steam and the Glorious Egroll version of proton and every game I have wanted to play has worked, even ones that are brand new. No tinkering past the initial steam setup. I don’t really play competitive online games with anti cheat so you may encounter problems that I haven’t if you do.

I use the advanced hardware support version of MX Linux, if that really matters. I had bad experiences with Ubuntu, but haven’t tried it with this machine so I don’t know if it was the OS or the hardware.

I’d say give it another shot on its own drive when Microsoft frustrates you again, you can always swap windows back in if you don’t like it.

If I’m reading that right, that could also say that Instagram is suppressing anti-israel content? It’s just saying that in comparison to Instagram tiktok is showing more x, y, z. But Instagram is absolutely not a neutral point to measure from.

For starters there’s different demographics on each one, but I’m sure you could adjust for that, maybe the study did. But I don’t think you can adjust for the impact the US government has on Meta. I don’t believe for an instant that some US agency isn’t manipulating algorithms or requiring certain tweaks to steer discourse just like they did with US news outlets.

I don’t think that is a safe conclusion at all, the colonial Europeans were pretty notorious for removing anything or anyone or anything they didn’t see as civilized in the Americas. They also brought disease that wiped out an astounding number of the native people. From an also uninformed view it would be just as likely the native dogs suffered a similar fate, or simply disbanded and roamed free when their companions died.

I had a very similar experience but just kinda glumly stuck with the broken experience in that in between, and just played what I could get to work. But now with proton, specifically the ge version, there’s isn’t a game that I can’t play (that I have wanted to play). It’s pretty amazing how quickly the changes and improvements to gaming on Linux have come.

I also have an AMD system now, which might be a big part of why it’s so painless now.

Second for guild wars 2, the world is huge when you first start playing, and though the initial levelling experience can feel like it takes a while, once you have hit the cap you can go pretty much anywhere. The story is pretty linear, though, so if you want a deep and complex story it might be better to look for a single player game.

I’d also say the combat system in Guild wars is fantastic, it’s simple enough to pick up and not have to stress about playing the game, but if you want to engage and get better there is so much to learn about and improve.

I am not traveling to go see this one, but did for the one that went across the US a few years ago. I thought it was really cool and would go again if it weren’t so far away. The way the hot Tennessee day got so much cooler, the way the evening bugs came out, the birds stopped singing, the shadows looking like they had a bite out of them, all together with being able to see the suns corona for a couple minutes made for a really really cool experience for me. It was also a big party/camping trip with friends so that helped too.

I could see it not having that impact for everyone, but I figured I’d share.