Tootfinder

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

"""
Once the distinctions had been made, and the first punishments applied, the venereal were accepted into the hospital. And they were crammed inside. In 1781, 138 men occupied 60 beds in the Saint-Eustache quarter of Bicêtre, and in the Miséricorde in the Salpêtrière there were 125 beds for 224 women. Patients in the terminal stages of the disease were simply left to die. 'Grand Remedies' were applied to the others: never more, and rarely less than six weeks of care, starting of course with blood-letting and purging, then a week of baths for two hours per day, then purging again, followed by a full and complete confession to bring this first part of the treatment to a close. Rubbing with mercury could then begin, with all its efficacy. Each course of treatment lasted one month, and was followed by two more purges and one final bleeding to chase out the remaining morbific humours. Fifteen days of convalescence were then granted. After he had definitively made his peace with God, the patient was declared cured and sent away.
This 'therapeutic' demonstrates a rich tapestry of fantasy, and above all a profound complicity between medicine and morality, which give their full meaning to these purification practices. For the classical age, venereal disease was less a sickness than an impurity to which physical symptoms are correlated. Accordingly, medical perception is ruled by ethical perception, and on occasion even effaced by it. The body must be treated to remove the contagion, but the flesh must be punished, for it is the flesh that attaches us to sin. Mere corporal punishment was not enough: the flesh was to be pummelled and bruised, and leaving painful traces was not to be feared, as good health, all too frequently, transformed the human body into another opportunity for sinful conduct. The sickness was to be treated, but the good health that could lead to temptation was to be destroyed.
"""
(Michel Foucault, History of Madness)

Isn't it weird how when a Federal Crown Corporation - Marine Atlantic - buys a new ship... there is nary a mention that it was built in China (#BCPoli #BCFerries

Russia’s transport minister was found dead in what authorities said was an apparent suicide
— news that broke hours after the Kremlin announced he had been dismissed by Putin.
The firing of Roman Starovoit followed a weekend of travel chaos
— airports grounded hundreds of flights due to the threat of drone attacks from Ukraine.
Russian officials did not give a reason for his dismissal.

Trump says the US must send more weapons to Ukraine
President Donald Trump says the U.S. will have to send more weapons to Ukraine, just days after ordering a pause in critical weapons deliveries to Kyiv. The comments from Trump on Monday appear to be an abrupt change in posture. The Pentagon announced last week that it would hold back delivering to Ukraine some air defense missiles, precision-guided artillery and other weapons. U.S. officials said the Defense Department was concerned that its own stockpiles have declined too much. Meanwhile, Ru…

🚨 My friend Nouran is in danger!
Nouran and her family are one of the almost one million people stuck in the area that Israel has said it is going to destroy imminently.
They need money to afford to move South.
Please help if you can and please share so others can.
https://chuffed.org/pr…

Urgent help for Ahmed's family
"I’m tired, Mama. I’m thinking of the hours that I'll spend tomorrow in the water line." – says 9 year old Ahmed to his mother before going to sleep.

Related to understanding firearms, "rifles" and hand guns tend to be rifled. Rifling is grooving that runs in a helical pattern down the barrel. When purchasing a firearm, it's important to check the rifling.
First check that the firearm is unloaded. Empty or remove the magazine, cycle the weapon. Next, check again that it's unloaded by looking both down the barrel and into the magazine. Now, shine a light down the barrel and look down it. In the absence of a light, you may be able to reflect light off your thumbnail.
Rifling should look as though it's drawn on with a sharp pencil, and the barrel should look otherwise completely smooth and clean. If the rifling looks like bumpy mountains, then the owner probably used corrosive ammo and didn't clean it enough. It will probably still shoot, but not at all accurately.
Both the rifling and the pin can be used in forensic analysis to match a bullet to a gun. I don't honestly know how accurate this is because a lot of forensic "science" is just made up stuff that relies on the CSI effect and doesn't actually work as advertised.
However, not all firearms are not all rifled. Shotguns are "smoothbore" firearms, meaning they lack rifling. It is not possible to perform forensic analysis of a smoothbore firearm. It *is* possible to check for powder on the hands of someone who has used a firearm within the last few days, but it's not possible to distinguish between firing inside and outside a range.
I've been gathering all kinds of tidbits like this, partially just out of curiosity and partially because I've been wanting to write a story about a revolutionary group fighting a modern authoritarian society. I'm always happy to learn other bits, if anyone has anything else I could throw in my narrative (whenever I finally get back to writing it).

The House passed its $892.6 billion defense policy bill Wednesday,
despite vocal criticism from Democrats
after the Republican majority denied votes to limit the Trump administration’s use of the military domestically.

The bill advanced by a vote of 231 to 196, largely along party lines.

The House now will wait on the Senate to pass its version of the annual legislation before beginning the “conference” process,
in which negotiators from both chambers reconcile …

House passes $892.6 billion defense bill over Democrats’ protests
The vote, mostly along party lines, lost Democratic support as the GOP rebuffed efforts to rein in President Donald Trump’s domestic military agenda.

Long; central Massachusetts colonial history
Today on a whim I visited a site in Massachusetts marked as "Huguenot Fort Ruins" on OpenStreetMaps. I drove out with my 4-year-old through increasingly rural central Massachusetts forests & fields to end up on a narrow street near the top of a hill beside a small field. The neighboring houses had huge lawns, some with tractors.
Appropriately for this day and this moment in history, the history of the site turns out to be a microcosm of America. Across the field beyond a cross-shaped stone memorial stood an info board with a few diagrams and some text. The text of the main sign (including typos/misspellings) read:
"""
Town Is Formed
Early in the 1680's, interest began to generate to develop a town in the area west of Natick in the south central part of the Commonwealth that would be suitable for a settlement. A Mr. Hugh Campbell, a Scotch merchant of Boston petitioned the court for land for a colony. At about the same time, Joseph Dudley and William Stoughton also were desirous of obtaining land for a settlement. A claim was made for all lands west of the Blackstone River to the southern land of Massachusetts to a point northerly of the Springfield Road then running southwesterly until it joined the southern line of Massachusetts.
Associated with Dudley and Stoughton was Robert Thompson of London, England, Dr. Daniel Cox and John Blackwell, both of London and Thomas Freak of Hannington, Wiltshire, as proprietors. A stipulation in the acquisition of this land being that within four years thirty families and an orthodox minister settle in the area. An extension of this stipulation was granted at the end of the four years when no group large enough seemed to be willing to take up the opportunity.
In 1686, Robert Thompson met Gabriel Bernor and learned that he was seeking an area where his countrymen, who had fled their native France because of the Edict of Nantes, were desirous of a place to live. Their main concern was to settle in a place that would allow them freedom of worship. New Oxford, as it was the so-named, at that time included the larger part of Charlton, one-fourth of Auburn, one-fifth of Dudley and several square miles of the northeast portion of Southbridge as well as the easterly ares now known as Webster.
Joseph Dudley's assessment that the area was capable of a good settlement probably was based on the idea of the meadows already established along with the plains, ponds, brooks and rivers. Meadows were a necessity as they provided hay for animal feed and other uses by the settlers. The French River tributary books and streams provided a good source for fishing and hunting. There were open areas on the plains as customarily in November of each year, the Indians burnt over areas to keep them free of underwood and brush. It appeared then that this area was ready for settling.
The first seventy-five years of the settling of the Town of Oxford originally known as Manchaug, embraced three different cultures. The Indians were known to be here about 1656 when the Missionary, John Eliott and his partner Daniel Gookin visited in the praying towns. Thirty years later, in 1686, the Huguenots walked here from Boston under the guidance of their leader Isaac Bertrand DuTuffeau. The Huguenot's that arrived were not peasants, but were acknowledged to be the best Agriculturist, Wine Growers, Merchant's, and Manufacter's in France. There were 30 families consisting of 52 people. At the time of their first departure (10 years), due to Indian insurrection, there were 80 people in the group, and near their Meetinghouse/Church was a Cemetery that held 20 bodies. In 1699, 8 to 10 familie's made a second attempt to re-settle, failing after only four years, with the village being completely abandoned in 1704.
The English colonist made their way here in 1713 and established what has become a permanent settlement.
"""
All that was left of the fort was a crumbling stone wall that would have been the base of a higher wooden wall according to a picture of a model (I didn't think to get a shot of that myself). Only trees and brush remain where the multi-story main wooden building was.
This story has so many echoes in the present:
- The rich colonialists from Boston & London agree to settle the land, buying/taking land "rights" from the colonial British court that claimed jurisdiction without actually having control of the land. Whether the sponsors ever actually visited the land themselves I don't know. They surely profited somehow, whether from selling on the land rights later or collecting taxes/rent or whatever, by they needed poor laborers to actually do the work of developing the land (& driving out the original inhabitants, who had no say in the machinations of the Boston court).
- The land deal was on condition that there capital-holders who stood to profit would find settlers to actually do the work of colonizing. The British crown wanted more territory to be controlled in practice not just in theory, but they weren't going to be the ones to do the hard work.
- The capital-holders actually failed to find enough poor suckers to do their dirty work for 4 years, until the Huguenots, fleeing religious persecution in France, were desperate enough to accept their terms.
- Of course, the land was only so ripe for settlement because of careful tending over centuries by the natives who were eventually driven off, and whose land management practices are abandoned today. Given the mention of praying towns (& dates), this was after King Phillip's war, which resulted in at least some forced resettlement of native tribes around the area, but the descendants of those "Indians" mentioned in this sign are still around. For example, this is the site of one local band of Nipmuck, whose namesake lake is about 5 miles south of the fort site: #LandBack.

A former Justice Department official is warning of a
🔥wave of retribution inside the agency.
Patty Hartman, who served as a top public affairs specialist at the FBI and federal prosecutors' offices, told CBS News,
"The rules don't exist anymore."
Hartman, who was fired Monday via a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi,
is the fourth person connected to the agency's work on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots to be terminated in the past month.

Fired Justice Department official warns "we are falling into an abyss"
Patty Hartman, who worked with the public affairs team on Jan. 6 prosecutions, was fired Monday by Pam Bondi.