EnsignWashout @ EnsignWashout @startrek.website

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Joined

2 yr. ago

The little squiggles are necessary to ensure election outcomes acceptable to the ultra rich.

I'm joking. (Mostly)

The squiggles are probably county line divisions, and probably simply the smallest existing land divisions with good population data available to make the map from.

I say "mostly joking" because existing county line divisions are already weird in some cases, to ensure election outcomes acceptable to the ultra rich. So there's an unpleasant grain of truth in my joke.

the very fact that there is a big urban/rural cultural divide is one of the things killing America.

I agree wholeheartedly about the problem. But blind highest count vote on every topic is one of the big dividers between rural and urban folks.

Rural folks will simply never have the numbers to influence outcomes in a pure vote count scenario. They're aware of this, and it leads to animosity.

Incidentally, I agree that financial decoupling would be ruinous for both, as well.

The real solution is represtational seats that give everyone a voice - no matter how the voting zone is divided.

I suspect that requires doing away with first-past-the-poll. The winner of that race will almost always be a city person, by raw numeric chance. That's fine, city folks have some good ideas. The problem is when there's no rural voice at the negotiation, at all.

And I think any sensible person realizes we also have to put a stop to all gerrymandering.

Also, we need to give seats to what remains of all of the first nations, while we're at it.

The key lesson here is that anyone can find $25 / month to waste on WebVan stock.

It might be possible Ferengi also have higher-than-human-average neuroplasticity and simply adapt easier - this might even aid in the on the job theory.

I think you're on to something.

Various Ferengi having a kind of genius foreign to Federation values is a recurring theme in DS9.

Nog, in particular, gets up to some antics that probably require some brilliance. I recall him hacking or circumventing things even early in the series.

This still has the representative issue that each of the narrow bands are narrow due to a huge metropolis within them, and the rural population of that band will always live with rules created by the metropolis for the metropolis.

It's a pretty map, though.

And is still makes more sense than "carefully negotiated by powerful ultra rich a few hundred years ago to protect each of their giant egos."

It's worth noting that we also lose on the output, contractors tend to underperform compared to long term stable employees.

So there's a case to be made that it is even lose/lose/lose (more expensive/worse outcomes/loss of economic stimulus of good stable jobs).

That's exactly my experience, as well.

The PineTime is the best current option for a pebble enthusiast, since the Pebble.

But I still have to charge the PineTime every week or so, and that is with the screen off most of the time.

I miss the Pebble's battery life.

What I assume went down at the studio:

"People have expressed exhaustion toward movies centered on Chris Pratt. Is there anything we can do about that, while still making another movie centered on Chris Pratt?"

"Well, sir...no one is asking for another Garfield movie..."

"Perfect. It's match! Get someone to sell us the rights to a first pass AI script, and ship this thing."

Oh!

As they say, them who laugh lasts, probably needed a minute to think about it. Today, that was me.

I don't see how even Amazon can try to kill the competition in a market that huge, regardless of price or convenience.

So I assume you wrote this after picking up groceries from your locally owned grocery store? Because you still have one - it didn't collapse due to a Walmart coming to town?

Most of us have a solid example of what driving a grocery store out of business looks like, though.

"Not everyone in the union will celebrate this corporate partnership. Some members have legitimate concerns about tech giants shaping classroom priorities through financial relationships."

When has a corporation and a Union ever not seen eye to eye?

(Please don't answer. This is sarcasm. Otherwise RIP my inbox.)

...all except the delicious animals, obviously.

Crowd cheers again.

One of the first messages translated:

"Are the monkeys listening? Shit. How long have they been listening? I should provide some context for what I bubbled yesterday..."

It still is, it's a standard for imaging devices.

Oh, thank you. I had forgotten that!

And also a nightmare.

Yes. Now that the memories are coming back, I do notice most of them aren't very nice...

A tricked out tank, covered in specialized launchers.

Or do I just have a really weak electric stove?

I think you might just have a really weak one, or poor compatibility pots? I've had both, and if anything my gas burners feel a little slower and cooler than my induction stove did.

Yes. It is bullshit that a city that size lacks functional transit.

But it is in the middle of nowhere, compared to much of the world, so each person has a compelling reason to own a car, if only to occasionally escape from Columbus, OH.

It can become better, but the challenges are real.

I hate the impacts of cars too, and desperately want better transit options.

But we should maybe put up a sign for stories out of North America:

"North America is really really big. It sucks that it doesn't have better mass transit coverage, but that's still a genuinely hard problem to solve in rural North America."

Most folks in rural North America have stories both of being the rescued and being the rescuer when cars have broken down.

Wow, I totally missed the part where Microsoft had a gun to your head.

Yes. Microsoft is good at hiding that part until it's too late to do much about it.