World War I never ended. The Civil War never ended. The sacking of Rome never ended.
taobao.com, which i think is like a Chinese Amazon?, seems to be indexing my sites like a search engine.
@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
@ike Electoral reform is first on my list of reforms we require to have anything like a sane government. I prefer approval voting to ranked choice, and would insist upon some form of proportional representation for the House, but in general I strongly endorse your list. 1/
@ike I don’t think it’s impossible. Other democracies have managed serious electoral reform, even though it obviously endangers incumbents in the existing system. I think there’s some hope that US party “brands” get so completely destroyed that the winning pitch for candidates is to blow up the two party system. /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!
@admitsWrongIfProven (it was not, announced only after the fact.)
"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."
@marick (sorry! i love the song too! i think in my head i frame it as a kind of ironic critique, so it doesn’t ruin anything.)
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.)