You’re not wrong. We have a representative democracy because the Founders thought the same way. I guess I prefer not to believe that it’s impossible for people to be well-informed enough to make a good decision on these things. I’ve certainly seen some new lows in the past 10 years.

I’m asking for the individual candidates to lay out their specific political goals. The party can continue to publish its platform and planks.

Then people vote based on whether they want to see those goals met. When those politicians are up for re-election, it’s fairly easy for someone to tabulate whether or not those goals were met. If there are extenuating circumstances (overwhelming opposition, for example), then they can use that to defend themselves. This would help hold their feet to the fire.

As for voting ideologically, I attribute that mostly to FPTP - people feel as though they cannot do anything but vote ideologically because there are no real alternatives. That’s why RCV is extremely important.

An ex-coworker of mine recommended Mango Languages, which is supposed to be much better and also if you have a library card, you can usually get a subscription for free through them! The lessons are probably a little longer than 30 seconds, but not too much longer. I’d say a minute tops.

Moving away from FPTP is, for democracy, the crucial first step that very few seem to have taken.

Hard disagree. It’s really easy for candidates to talk the talk on the campaign trail, and then do a 180 once they’re in office.

That being said, this doesn’t work if you let them use flowery speech and vague promises. If you had parties submit a platform of actually actionable decisions they would make (e.g. “decrease the federal minimum wage”), you’d be able to suss out what they actually want to do. It would also provide a rubric for re-election - how many of the things you wanted to do did you accomplish? Are there good reasons why you weren’t able to?

Usually RCV is an initiative or referendum depending on how your state does it. In mine, it’s just a separate issue on the back that we have to vote for, alongside things like “should we institute a tax for schools” or “should we approve building a new park”. Entirely separate from voting for candidates for any position.

Don’t forget a little note saying "Think this is stupid? Vote for Ranked-Choice Voting!’

That makes a lot of sense, and very much tracks with what I’ve experienced of DHS. Scumbags.

I think they’re funded just fine, but recent events have created some unusual expenditures for the SS.

The cultural victory, if you will.

Seconded! It also has a more informative cycling interface.

Oh, 100%. One of the side effects of trying to appeal to families, who are usually more budget-conscious, is that they felt like they had to bring the price down… despite the fact that that was basically impossible. I’m not saying they should have gone luxury, but I’m puzzled as to why they wouldn’t target the many nerds who have lots of disposable income and would kill to throw it at this kin dof experience.

True, but those are feature films. After an hour or two the audience starts losing the plot, literally. Jenny’s video I would describe more as a documentary (I’d categorize most video essays as such), which typically run for much longer without losing too much.

My take was that they were pulled very hard in two directions: the initial idea was to appeal to the hardcore fan who would love nothing more than to drop thousands of dollars to have an immersive Star Wars experience, and it was see-saw’d by the desire to also appeal to the classic Disney market of families with children. Inevitable result: you get something that satisfies neither group.

I don’t give a shit whether people 3 decades ago would have watched this, since they had no way to do so. It does worry me that if you post a video longer than 30 seconds or write a response in paragraphs, the immediate response is “tldr?”.

You should watch it. Jenny does a great job breaking down what they did right and wrong. And it turns out it was such a monumental project that you need four hours to talk about it fully.

Our attention spans are dropping precipitously, and it worries me.

I am, thank you! It’s pretty common in my city, the police took one look at the surveillance footage and shrugged it off. I hope the thief got a decent amount for it.

The new ebike was my first big purchase after getting the new job, and it’s a ton of fun. :)

My first ebike was stolen, about a week after I’d put it together. I was looking forward to zipping around my city with it. What really sucked is that I had bought it before getting laid off, and was looking forward to zipping around the city for fun while I looked for a new job. Luckily, I did find something new after 6 months and could eventually buy a new one.

Brother printers are easily within 100-200.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1802557-REG/brother_hl_l2400d_compact_monochrme_laser.html, for example.

Are you even looking at them?

It’s interesting to see how much of Canada has bitten the American onion over the past few decades.