Among other things, yeah, we really should make voting mandatory.

Because even people who worked in imperial recognized that dealing with stupid fractions is stupid.

Dogs would be just as happy with any other kind of nature, let's be real.

I have such a hard time imagining a conservative, much less a Trump fan, thinking the general concept of Wikipedia is a good idea.

You would think someone would take Zooey's word for it, SMDH.

Did you ever get everything working? I don't have a Mac, I'm just curious.

It should be legal to hunt that person down and clamp a lobster to their nipples.

In my personal experience, whenever I've needed help, people have been nice and tried to help. But, my questions usually include as much context and details as I can give and even my own guess as to what's going on, if I have one. I try to make my requests for help as enticing as I can. "I didn't do anything and now my computer is broken" isn't a very interesting or scrutable request for help, so I can understand the frustration volunteers get when repeatedly faced with those kinds of questions.

I also feel like some parts of the community might be starting to recognize that, if we want Linux to become mainstream, it has to be absurdly idiot-proof and friendly to newcomers. Afterall, the vast majority of people don't want their computer to be their hobby, they just want it to facilitate other things.

Hit me! I'll probably fail, but I wanna try and help anyway.

Cheers!

Yeah, FairVote is.... Okay. In terms of objective vs political, they tend to be as political as they can get while still being objective. They used to actually say a few things that weren't exactly true, but opponents kept calling them out on it so they quit as far as I know. Wikipedia would be a better source, though be aware that proponents of any system will try to sneak in promotional language. But, at least on Wikipedia there's also people trying to keep things objective.

These are what I would consider the most relevant articles if you're looking to understand the realistic options in America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting (called RCV in the US)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_electoral_systems

I would say that you don't actually need to read any of these articles particularly closely. They can get very technical. You can just skim them for the parts you find interesting.

For me, personally, I agree that the industrial meat industry is unethical and has to go. My push-back against the herbivore claims is purely from an objective standpoint. Putting aside objectivism, if humans are omnivores, it makes the moral argument stronger. You'd be telling people they have a choice and can choose to eat a more compassionate and ethical diet. (More energy efficient, too.) If people are herbivores, you get stuck in this weird argument about what humans are supposed to do instead of what we can choose to do.

I spent a lot of time as a vegan, and talked about my choices openly. (Stopped on account of health.) No one attacked me for them and it was because I stuck to irrefutable facts and never made the person I was talking to feel bad for their choices. I just showed them they could easily be a better human, if they wanted to be. Maybe that doesn't feel like enough for you, but I felt that no one ever changed their position on a personal matter because someone else made them feel attacked. They always dig in their heels.

Knees sometimes look like that.

They're around here somewhere...

Eating some yogurt

No? Under the usual American implementation of RCV only the highest ranked candidate on a ballot gets the vote from that ballot. If no one has a majority of the remaining votes the person in last place is eliminated and their votes are redistributed according to the individual ballot preferences. So if the American presidency was ~50/50 red v blue as first choices (with a few people picking third party candidates) whichever third party candidate that took last place would get eliminated. In fact, mathematically speaking, if red and blue each got at least 1/3 of the first place cuts votes, one of them must be the eventual winner and the other must take second place.

There are other systems that could cause chaos with your suggested rankings, but they're generally not considered serious methods exactly because they are chaotic under reasonable circumstances.

You're not very good at thinking beyond immediate consequences, are you?

For sure, for sure. Neither extreme is good for you.

I agree that the National Popular Vote is a fantastic idea. I can't wait to see it hit the threshold and immediately get hit with lawsuits from terrified entrenched powers.

I strongly disagree that RCV would have a significant effect on the presidential campaign, since it has already been shown to have little effect on any other campaign. It's also ubiquitous in Australia, with a similar two-party forcing when implemented for their single-seat elections. The only reason they have third parties is because of their proportional elections.

That paper is making some absolutely ridiculously unscientific comparisons, and immediately ignores the existence of omnivores after flatly stating that most people eat an obvious diet. It's absolute trash.