@ErikUden@mastodon.de2025-07-19 21:02:53
If you don't vote for your wife as president, are you really in love?
@ErikUden@mastodon.de2025-07-19 21:02:53
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-08-11 13:26:07
How the US democracy is designed to avoid representation
Right now in the US, a system which proclaims to give each citizen representation, my interests are not represented very well by most of my so-called representatives at any level of government. This is true for a majority of Americans across the political spectrum, and it happens by design. The "founding fathers" were explicit about wanting a system of government that would appear Democratic but which would keep power in the hands of rich white landowners, and they successfully designed exactly that. But how does disenfranchisement work in this system?
First, a two-party system locked in by first-post-the-post winner-takes-all elections immediately destroys representation for everyone who didn't vote for the winner, including those who didn't vote or weren't eligible to vote. Single-day non-holiday elections and prisoner disenfranchisement go a long way towards ensuring working-class people get no say, but much larger is the winner-takes all system. In fact, even people who vote for the winning candidate don't get effective representation if they're really just voting against the opponent as the greater of two evils. In a 51/49 election with 50% turnout, you've immediately ensured that ~75% of eligible voters don't get represented, and with lesser-of-two-evils voting, you create an even wider gap to wedge corporate interests into. Politicians need money to saturate their lesser-of-two-evils message far more than they need to convince any individual voter to support their policies. It's even okay if they get caught lying, cheating, or worse (cough Epstein cough) as long as the other side is also doing those things and you can freeze out new parties.
Second, by design the Senate ensures uneven representation, allowing control of the least-populous half of states to control or at least shut down the legislative process. A rough count suggests 284.6 million live in the 25 most-populous states, while only 54.8 million live in the rest. Currently, counting states with divided representation as two half-states with half as much population, 157.8 million people are represented by 53 Republican sensors, while 180.5 million people get only 45 seats of Democratic representation. This isn't an anti-Democrat bias, it's a bias towards less-populous states, whose residents get more than their share it political power.
I haven't even talked about gerrymandering yet, or family/faith-based "party loyalty," etc. Overall, the effect is that the number of people whose elected representatives meaningfully represent their interests on any given issue is vanishingly small (like, 10% of people tops), unless you happen to be rich enough to purchase lobbying power or direct access.
If we look at polls, we can see how lack of representation lets congress & the president enact many policies that go against what a majority of the population wants. Things like abortion restrictions, the current ICE raids, and Medicare cuts are deeply unpopular, but they benefit the political class and those who can buy access. These are possible because the system ensures at every step of the way that ordinary people do NOT get the one thing the system promises them: representation in the halls of power.
Okay, but is this a feature of all democracies, inherent in the nature of a majority-decides system? Not exactly...
1/2
#uspol #democracy
@grumpybozo@toad.social2025-06-19 19:21:40
Anyone who took this long to split with Trump is untrustable. They have a history of spectacularly poor judgment mixed with moral turpitude and they failed to recognize their own error for about a decade. It’s nice to have a vote change and good to have someone intimate with the MAGA mindset trying to persuade his former co-religionists, but anyone who stuck with Trump past the first quarter of 2017 has a lot of eager evil to atone for.
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it2025-07-16 19:15:59
I view open primaries (top two winners of the primary move onto the general election) as harm reduction. It's a chance for voters (and especially people who didn't vote!) to say, "oh shit we need to fix this" and refocus their efforts on getting the less-crappy candidate elected in the general. Closed primaries don't benefit voters, as party machines & big business will just bypass losses in the primary, as we see w/ Cuomo. They already HAVE their "oh shit fix …
@pre@boing.world2025-05-27 19:06:58
Content warning: re: Doctor Who - Wish World
A wish granting god baby, granting Conrad's wishes in service of the Rani, turns London into a misogynist utopia and The Doctor into a good husband and insurance worker.
Hard to say why misogynists are so keen on the American 50s. Perhaps because it was before blacks had the vote and women could do banking.
And if anyone doubts this ridiculous tale, their table stops working and their family might call the doubt police, so they soon learn not to. All very oppressive and subversive.
Ruby manages to doubt anyway. And all the disabled people who simply never enter into Conrad's mind. Nice touch that. Great scene in the tent city filled with the dispossessed. They don't seem to have actually done anything so far but maybe they'll get more useful in part two.
Conrad is on TV telling a story about a man named Doctor Who.
Giant dinosaur skeletons walk the city, stepping over sky scrapers, and a bone palace towers above the city. Because I guess Conrad wishes for it to be so in order to give the Rani somewhere to live.
The palace is beautiful and Gothic.
But doubt is seeping in. Rogue is back, on the TV in hell, telling the Doctor that tables don't work like that. So he investigates. Gets himself reported to the doubt police who take him and Belinda to the bone palace.
The Rani's split from Miss Flood gives the pair of them a good chemistry. Queen and her maid of honour. Seems like Mrs Flood is likely to be the Rani's downfall. She doesn't like being told to make a sandwich.
A lot of exposition going on, but they at least put a hat on it: "Isn't just exposition, I need you to doubt"
So that's the reason for the strange wishes: To make the doctor have doubts so severe that the reality collapses, and Rani can rescue Omega. Omega is the dude in a Mask from the first 3 doctors episode, who gave the timelords time travel and got trapped in the underworld in the process. Timelords forgot him and never mounted a rescue, but presumably Rani is now hoping he'll bring back Galifrey.
And with London collapsing into the underworld and the doctor falling from the sky, we get the episode break and have to wait until next week.
That's not a cliff hanger, that an already-falling-from-the-cliff hanger.
Poppy really is his daughter he's shouting as he falls. And you know what that means?
🤨🤔
Back in Space Babies, the worst episode of the Nchuti seasons, that space baby asked if he was her parents and he said he wished that he was their parents.
That wish has been granted somehow?
Is this space baby Susan's mother? They have very different skin tones, but that doesn't matter much in a regenerating species.
Never have found out much about The Doctor's child. When he traveled with his granddaughter everyone assumed he'd met his own kid, the grandchild's parent.
But that doesn't have to be true for a time traveler. Maybe he met the granddaughter before he met his own kid, and maybe his own kid was just wished into his family line 60 years later (or billions of years in his timeline I guess).
Pretty fun episode but not sure it makes much sense. Why doesn't the Rani just wish for Omega to be back instead of all this doubt and underworld bollocks?
Last one next week. Super long episode. Hope it's all cleared up. Good chance we'll meet Susan again I think. And maybe see Omega's mask once more.
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systems2025-05-27 16:53:16
PLpol, presidential elections
PO 2015: "we don't need to run the campaign, we are so great that only an idiot would vote for Duda [the opponent]."
PO 2025: "we just need to focus on Konfederacja [extreme right-wing] voters, left-wing voters won't vote for Nawrocki [the opponent] anyway."
Protip: they are missing a third option.
#PLpol
@pygospa@social.linux.pizza2025-08-01 10:49:08
Writing about the #NoAFD Journalist & Columnist Sebastian Leber conlcudes - and I want to put this up front, because I believe it's important - that those who vote for the AfD in Germany are not persuaded by moral arguments or by appeals to the free and constitutional democratic order. They don't care! What matters to them is the reasons for which they vote for the AfD in the first …
@arXiv_statME_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-07-31 08:32:31
Dice, but don't slice: Optimizing the efficiency of ONEAudit
Jacob V Spertus, Amanda K Glazer, Philip B Stark
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22179 https://…
