I still think an elected chamber is important. Might be better to create a third chamber filled by sortition. Legislation needs to pass 2 out of 3 chambers of Congress to get to the president. Call it the “House of Jurors” or something. It would consist of 5,000 members divided proportionally to by state or territorial population and selected by sortition among registered voters for a term of two months or until they quit (people can quit immediately if they don’t want to serve). There is no formal debate, but members can talk to each other. No legislation can be introduced. Their only job is to show up and vote. The meeting place is a football stadium, once a week. Scantily-clad cheerleaders will be present for halftime and there will be free beer, Coca-Cola, and Costco hot dogs. Participants get $20,000 for their trouble. Accommodation provided free of charge at a hilariously large Motel 6.

All of this would probably still cost less to the taxpayers than Congressional salaries and expenses. And besides, what are corporate interests going to do, bribe five thousand people? Lol

Localist parties can probably win as well. I think there are some observations that can be made from UK elections, which also use first-past-the-post.

• Local political parties can win. The Scottish National Party did well in Scotland for several years (until their poll numbers collapsed after their former leader quit and got arrested)
• It makes more sense for small parties to pour all their resources into contesting a small number of seats than to contest and lose a large number of seats. The UK Green Party spent a lot of effort to get their leader elected to Parliament in the Brighton Pavillion constituency.
• Local representation matters. When your party controls several seats on a local council or devolved assembly, they have more chances to gain visibility or even govern. US parties should spend a lot more effort on state legislative races than the presidential one.
• Vote-splitting is less of a concern when one ideology is already overwhelmingly dominant in a region. That is a good region to try to win. For example, the DC Statehood Green Party is the second-largest political party in Washington, D.C. because the DC Republican Party is tiny and terrible (polls in the single digits). That’s a good place to try to win some seats.

The competition is welcome. We need it to continue to drive innovation. At least in America, traditional American brands haven’t put out anything interesting for years. Just the same models being rehashed, but slightly bigger and more fuel efficient.

Right, the options in this election are:

1. Mildly senile and slightly incompetent old man
2. Fascist

“Imprisoning” a company is kind of a nonsensical concept because it is a concept that is made up and exists only in the minds of people. But one “creative” punishment is potentially to punish the company by confiscating its equity.

So instead of N years imprisonment, the state confiscates N × 5 per cent of the company’s equity. That means that all outstanding shares represent 100 minus N×5 per cent of the company instead of 100 per cent.

Example: Company A has 1 million outstanding shares. Each share of common stock therefore represents 0.01% of the company. Suppose the company is convicted of a crime that would be punishable by 3 years imprisonment. So 15% of its equity is confiscated. That now means 1 million shares represent 85% of the company, so each share of common stock now only represents 0.0085% of the company. The state gets one special share that represents the 15% equity that was confiscated. The state gets 15% of all profit dividends going forward.

This would heavily encourage companies to avoid criminal activity and it is multitudes more effective as a deterrent than mere fines, because it directly hurts a company’s share price, i.e. the one thing that its investors actually care about.

Yeah, what’s wrong with GNOME’s calendar? It’s basic and it works… fine. I use it for my daily tasks.

Window’s default calendar is similarly mediocre.

Laws aren’t, by themselves, an effective way to keep dangerous guns out of the hands of criminals, because it is really easy to (illegally) import guns from a place with lax gun laws into a place with strict gun laws. There’s also a problem with existing gun laws encountering enforcement problems from law enforcement agencies who refuse to enforce them or who don’t care enough about it.

On top of that, there is a cultural problem where guns are associated with masculinity and being “cool”. That leads to way more people acquiring them than there really should be, and many of those people really shouldn’t be having them. That’s not something the law can fix.

You can’t really trust the orange tip anyway, since criminals have been known to paint that on real guns to trick cops, with mixed success.

Regardless, from a police officer’s perspective, you only have half a second to tell whether an object that someone is getting out of their pocket is a gun or something less harmful, like a cell phone. So it’s understandable why they chose to shoot in this situation.

Of course, if it were harder for the general public to get guns, then police wouldn’t be put in these situations where they have to make life-and-death decisions in under a second, but we have to live with the consequences of which rights we chose to value.

That definition (“all voters are equal”) is a good starting point, but it’s also less watertight than it seems. I will show you an obviously unfair system that exploits that definition:

All voters vote for one candidate. The candidate with the second-most votes wins.

I had an argument with someone who said they opposed instant runoff voting because letting people move their votes around is tantamount to giving them extra votes

Or the boxes are pre-made and they ran out

Normal person: ¬(Garbage | Trash) = okay to put here if it is not garbage and not trash

Computer programmers: ¬ Garbage | Trash = okay to put here if it is not garbage or it is trash, but since garbage and trash are the same thing and ¬P | P = 1, it’s okay to put anything here

In a normal context, I would agree with you but when louder singing is enforced by the State then I take issue with that.

Believe it or not, it happening in one country doesn’t mean it’s okay to happen in another country

Don’t forget—this is a nuke threat. Israel has nukes.

You don’t seem to know the meaning of the word “spend”.

How much have I bought in crypto to hold myself? I don’t hold any crypto. The answer is zero.

The figure that appears in column E of Form 8949? Over a million USD.

You answers seethe of jealousy. You keep trying to pin the label “crypto bro” on me because you want to dismiss me as someone not worth listening to, and the money I earned as illegitimate and fake. You argue not because you think you’re right, but because you can’t bear to be wrong. To you, crypto is a scam with no use and everything it touches turns to shit, and everyone who says otherwise must therefore hold the opposite opinion and think everything it touches turns to gold. Binary thinking at its worst.

Your thinking is simplistic and devoid of nuance. You’re right about one thing though. I am condescending. Because you deserve it.

Reply if you desperately need to put in the last word with a feigned aura of coolness, and laugh it off, because there are no more arguments to be made. Only insults left. You won’t receive a response, and I won’t even read whatever you write, because this conversation is over.

Go buy a Cybertruck or something.

Nothing

Read carefully, because it seems that reading comprehension is not your strong suit.

Wiktionary defines “crypto bro” as “an enthusiastic cryptocurrency supporter, usually male, especially a dogmatic and condescending one”.

You may notice I do not fit any of those categories, besides perhaps being male.

For the adoption of cryptocurrency by businesses and states, I am apathetic, even mildly in opposition. As for being dogmatic, I entirely am not, because I don’t give a shit.

But I will admit, you have successfully tempted me into being condescending towards you.

This is not different from five state-wide positions with a requirement that the candidates live in a specific region. It’s weird but not particularly unfair.

It’s just a matter of presentation.

The cat is 155 cm tall, the humans are actually 9-m giants