@ike Yeah. Ranked choice is the most prominent single-winner alternative voting system in the US, but I think it has problems with complexity (both in the ballot and in the apparently paradoxical outcomes that sometimes occur) and with the kinds of strategic voting it encourages (to avoid those paradoxical outcomes). 1/
@ike Approval voting also (all nonstochastic electoral systems) also admit strategic voting, but the situation is simpler and voters can understand an affirmative case for not voting strategically, and voters who do abstain from voting strategically can become determinative of elections, so there is a kind of incentive to generosity. I’ve written a bit about it here: https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/03/28/how-to-understand-approval-voting/index.html /fin
what humans generate is artisanal slop.
TPUSA. CPUSA. Coincidence?
@artcollisions @jcrabapple there are so many, but Woolworth’s cuts hard, it was where i got me gumballs as a kid.
sure, Montgomery Ward, Radio Shack, K-Mart, Toys ‘R’ Us, JC Penny. Midatlanticky, Hechinger’s (killed by Home Depot). Errols (and Blockbuster, Errols was a midatlantic precursor). Woolworth’s died in 2009. Silber’s (a Baltimore bakery) died in 1980. That ages me pretty well, i’m old enough it was a staple of my childhood.
@jcrabapple @artcollisions you’re making me feel so old. Woolworth’s is still around in Mexico I think!
"today we practiced an age-appropriate Active Threat Drill in conjunction with the…Sheriff’s Office. These drills are required by law to occur at least four times per school year. Students practiced either running or hiding depending on the location of the potential threat."
is there an easier prediction than that, five years from now, there will be stories about how China now dominates the commercialization and innovation of yet another technology invented in the US?
see @ryanlcooper on mRNA vaccines https://prospect.org/health/2025-08-20-robert-kennedy-has-gutted-best-defense-future-pandemics/
[new draft post] The whole point of a democracy https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/08/20/the-whole-point-of-a-democracy/index.html
what if you are a lawyer and like really really idealistic but you don’t even like U2?
cue the Rolling Stones 🎶 https://youtu.be/O4irXQhgMqg https://mastodon.social/@AltEvil/115060935067091081
i feel like zuckerberg might be bipolar one minute it’s like let’s poach them for billions, the next minute let’s fire them all.
it's not economic competition if one monopolist is toppled by a successor monopolist.
(it's sequential tournament competition, which delivers for shareholders of the victors, rather than for customers, vendors, or workers.)
i just learned that my @Inoreader will AI-read-aloud arbitrary RSS feeds. hmm.
“It's no wonder that Zuck thinks that chatbots can replace our friends… At some foundational level, he thinks we are all chatbots” @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/seeing-like-a-billionaire/ ht @carolannie
sociopathy is a full time occupation, and it does require staff.
opposites are alike in most ways. hot and cold are both temperatures, have much more in common with one another than they have with green or tall.
and so it is with human adversaries. the bitterest of enemies are always more alike than different.
what has hurt stack overflow more, “cozywebification” (discord, etc) or “ask AI”?
i wish the correlation between exhaustion and ability to sleep were stronger.
Congratulations! You are invited to apply.
distinctions btw money and equity and debt are much more a spectrum, a continuum, then we mostly acknowledge, and tremendous good could be done developing instruments between currently conventional points along this spectrum. see #WillBeaman https://moneyontheleft.org/2025/08/13/blue-bonds-duck-or-rabbit/ ht @jwmason