Representation by population vs representation by area. The same kind of arguments made in favour of switching the U.S. to a fully proportional system (getting rid of all forms of representation by area) could equally be made in favour of having one world government with proportional representation.

When we think about it that way (world elections would be dominated by Asia), it’s easy to see why we might not want such a system. Then, returning to the U.S. system alone it’s easier to see why many people want representation by area preserved. Although the cultural differences between states are much smaller than the differences between continents, they’re still very much present and the issues often dominate American politics.

It was a casual remark, not a hill to die on. That’s entirely your read!

Floor to ceiling stalls are much harder to clean. The gaps underneath allow for water to drain out when washing everything.

As a Canadian and former campaign volunteer (and poll observer) this is really weird to me. Federal elections in Canada are always hand-counted. Results at each polling station are counted in front of volunteer observers from each party (as well as neutral observers) and then delivered to Elections Canada where they’re tallied (in front of lawyers from each party) and results are reported to the media.

It’s not a big deal and there’s no chaos.

Yes, I have a whole basket full of towels. I use them all once and hang them up. After the basket is empty I wash them all

It’s even worse than that. The Republican side is full of all the gun enthusiasts. In a civil war I don’t like the “north’s” chances this time around.

Not to mention all the fighter jets, bombers, tanks, and drones the military has.

Doesn’t matter! Could get that thing NASA clean room levels of clean and I’m still not going to towel off my butt before my face. That’s just weird!

I do, but I still wouldn’t do that!

So you dry off your butt first and then your face with the same towel?

MicroEmacs was written in 1985 and has nothing to do with GNU Emacs (which people just call Emacs these days). It’s entirely outside of the vi-vs-emacs war.

They don’t care. If the advertisers pay for that spot then they make money! This has been the story with TV ads for decades.

It isn’t just corporations that have ruined everything, it’s spammers and scammers and cybercriminals too. Searching any topic these days is a crapshoot, with a high likelihood of falling into a spammer’s tarpit.

To me it feels like the internet is evolving into a virtual Dark Forest. We float around in these little bubbles of sanity, hiding amid a yawning expanse of seething chaos.

Did Ben Carson attempt to do surgery on himself? Otherwise I can’t explain at all how dumb he was. Wow! Thanks for the example.

Jill Stein may be an idiot politician with laughably unrealistic positions and a totally unworkable take on foreign policy (even dining with Putin) but she’s also a physician who practiced internal medicine for decades.

She’s not an idiot in general. I think she’s just unbelievably naive about people and their motivations.

I think both you and I know the project wouldn’t have worked and in all likelihood it would’ve damaged his reputation. I can’t fault him for opting out of that. As for what he actually did with the money, I am not going to defend that!

We’re talking about two different things here.

Actually trying to end world hunger vs pushing a button and having it happen. The former is really hard and probably way beyond the means of any individual, no matter how wealthy. The fact that Elon promised to do it is only evidence of his extreme ego, not his ability nor his ethics (which his donation to himself calls into question).

If he could push a button and end world poverty at a nominal cost of $xxx billion, I think he would do it. But to actually put in the work over a lifelong project which has a high potential to fail? I don’t for a second believe he’s capable of that. But who is?

I don’t think you thought this one through!

To be the guy known for ending poverty for all time, having statues in every park on the planet? Or just another boat to park in your mega-garage of boats?

Easy choice.

The whole system seems like a sham to me. If one artist has fans that listen 24/7 and another artist has fans that only listen for one hour a day (but that artist is all they listen to), it should be the same. Each person’s account should have its own “pot” out of the subscription fee that only they can allocate to the artists they listen to. Duration of listening shouldn’t matter at all.

How does that work though? Presumably he’s not paying subscription fees on all of his bot accounts, so they must be free accounts. I don’t use Spotify, so I don’t even know why they would have free accounts.

Unless he’s hacked other people’s accounts, then that would make sense for the seriousness of these charges.

Using AI to provide services or crawlers to scan the internet for pages to add to search evinces is different from what this guy did with bots. Those use cases are not pretending to be a legit user in order to collect money.

What this guy did — using bots to fake listen to music — is in the same category as using bots to click on ads that you put on your own web page: it’s serving no legitimate purpose and only exists to defraud businesses which paid for the ads (or Spotify which is paying the royalties)…