*20* years ago our customers were complaining about the leased phone line expense and the time it took for any phone company repairs. That's when we started offering cellular radio telemetry, but those modems come with Internet IP addresses now. Local radio connections seem safer, but still the operators often want remote access to the main data collector (computer) over their phones, etc.

"What would it take to get ranked-choice voting at the presidential level?"

ChatGPT:

To implement ranked-choice voting (RCV) at the presidential level in the United States, several key steps would be required:

Constitutional Amendment: Since the U.S. Constitution outlines the Electoral College system for presidential elections, a constitutional amendment would likely be needed to implement ranked-choice voting for presidential elections. This would require:

Proposal: A two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress (the Senate and House of Representatives) must pass a resolution to propose the amendment.

Ratification: After the proposal, three-fourths (38 out of 50) state legislatures would need to ratify the amendment.

Federal Legislation: If a constitutional amendment isn't pursued, an alternative could be a federal law that mandates RCV for presidential elections. This would involve Congress passing a law that requires the use of ranked-choice voting in federal elections. However, this approach might still face challenges related to the Electoral College, which is set by the Constitution.

State-Level Implementation: Before federal action, individual states could implement RCV for their own elections (such as state or local elections) to show proof of concept. While this wouldn’t change the federal system, it could demonstrate the system’s viability and pressure the federal government to adopt it at the national level.

Electoral College Reform: Ranked-choice voting would also require reform to the Electoral College system. Currently, each state's electors are awarded on a "winner-takes-all" basis (except in Maine and Nebraska, which have more proportional systems). Adapting ranked-choice voting to the Electoral College might involve either switching to a proportional allocation of electors or changing the way electoral votes are distributed in states that have a more winner-take-all approach.

Public Support and Advocacy: A significant national effort would be needed to build public support for ranked-choice voting, as well as advocacy groups and campaigns to push for the reforms. This would involve educating voters, legislators, and other key stakeholders about the benefits and challenges of ranked-choice voting.

In summary, moving to ranked-choice voting for presidential elections would involve a mix of constitutional and legislative reforms, a potential overhaul of the Electoral College system, and grassroots or advocacy efforts to build public and political support for the change.

They already do that for mini-golf.

More e-waste is so much better than decomposing trees. (/s - for the humor-impaired)

I wouldn't disagree.

'Kids... I paid over $400 for 16 MB in the 1990s.

I think he was being sarcastic, as in, we should be optimizing around hardware resources.

I don't care what they do to their bodies, apparently they don't either. Or do you suspect they run marathons and their house only has veggies in it?

If the complete answer was out there, we wouldn't be talking about it.

I was just spitballing; there may be many reasons why the hunger mechanism seems broken.

You make a good point; maybe they need to START smoking to trim down...

You have to admit that the majority of people are not like diligent you but are more like those bakery patrons. So the people on that bell curve end up all getting put together in one KFC bucket. And don't kid yourself, the drugs will be plan A for the majority if not already.

We wouldn't buy a 100 # bag of dog food, open it in the corner and let the dog feed itself--it couldn't do it. So I presume we are not designed to have constant food access either, be it donuts or salads. The snake in the article eats once a month...talk about intermittent fasting.

I suspect some unknown, microbiome interaction is at play, maybe made worse by it being attacked by the chemicals in our modern, man-made environments. Personally, I've noticed myself suddenly getting naggingly hungry upon just seeing food...I was fine seconds earlier.

FYI, it's a false flag post.

Tres bien.

Whew, thank you; I thought I was hallucinating.

Many complain, but I would like to know what the benefit of having Unicode would be on this site.