Musk has no wife that I know of. Only contractual sperm recipients? Or maybe he's converted to one of those religions with the sister wives? But if you tried to film a Bond movie with the villain based on Musk, no one would believe it.
Why the FP brain fart? Or am I just reflecting too much.
I actually started using GitHub for a new project, but without the Copilot seasoning... Which somehow led me to these rants of the day?
So how do y'all feel about Microsoft's new Copilot websearches? It seems to me that the successes are minor and forgettable while many of the failures are spectacular far beyond merely being wrong. The better to sell more advertising? I wonder if some AI can explain to me how this makes economic sense as the stock markets tumble to new highs, TACO and NACHO notwithstanding. I'd websearch the google, but that has become even more ridiculous. And my last short question to DeepSeek apparently drove it insane?
Meanwhile, the people who appear most influential in today's world appear to be divided between a league of Bond villains and a gaggle of pompous puppets, with the biggest and most orange puppet playing with nuclear weapons... Not seeing a path to human survival in this mess.
So I should go for a joke? Something about no wife, but several contractural sperm recipients? Or how about the Bond villain who has sent his own family to Argentina to protect them from the mess he's making in the country where his money and influence comes from? These are the (negative) resolutions of the Fermi Paradox we have all been looking for? (With the usual spirited apology to the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi?)
A few of these don't hold up, and one does. Let me separate them.
"It forces the President to consider everyone." It's the opposite. Under the Electoral College candidates ignore most of the country: in 2020, 96% of campaign events were in 12 states and 33 got none.
That's not the electoral college. That states that were uncompetitive, states that were already safely in the candidate's hands and states that were already in the opponents hands. The fact remains that in your scheme candidate would focus more on the more densely populated regions in those states that were competitive. The electoral college helps make sure the less populated have a voice in those states too.
Virginia was the most populous state largely because roughly 40% of its people were enslaved and they couldn't vote.
While slaves could note vote, they contributed to the number of representatives in the House. Slavery helped Virginia get a greater representation in Congress. Similar with all slave states.
That's great! I'm sure apps like this will be fine, but the software developer will have to officially support the platform for businesses to adopt it. Overall Windows on ARM has less compatibility than WINE so there is a lot of work to do.
That's just a chicken and egg thing. Getting past the early adopter stage where Windows ARM was pretty much restricted to surface pro machines with meh Qualcomm CPUs. It's more of a beta test stage IMO. Now that the Qualcomm exclusive contract has ended, and we can get more interesting ARM CPUs, developers are more likely to recompile and support.
Look at Apple, The most modest Apple Silicon CPU, the original M1, generally performed nearly twice as fast as its contemporary Intel i5. Making a transition to ARM feasible. NVIDIA is far more capable to replicate similar performance improvements than Qualcomm on the Win11 side.
When?
When?
Long ago. The above was easier then, but working can still significantly reduce debt. STEM majors are still able to get better part time jobs. Ivy League on credit is still a rather poor decision, private as well too. Again, many student graduate without debt and debt is far far from the 6 digits numbers often thrown around today. Here is the historical perspective mentioned previously:
Here are the numbers for previous decades, average debt for those that borrowed, adjusted to today's dollar:
"1989: \(\$21,400\)
1999: \(\$26,100\)
2009: \(\$33,760\)
2019: \(\$34,920\)
2025: \(\$27,420\)"
What can you do about the small states? Give all states one person = one vote for the presidential election. Then its fair to everybody.
No, it allows the Presidential candidates the focus on the bigger more populous regions and ignore the smaller less populous. It forces the President to consider everyone.
And yes, you're right that the framers built counter-majoritarian features on purpose... no argument there. But three things:
First, that's the Senate, not the Electoral College.
Its both, as explained above.
Second, one "region" that protected was the slaveholding South.
That's a misrepresentation, there were many smaller less populous states in the north as well. And slave holding Virginia was one of the large more populous states that would have dominated.
It weights geography, treating a rural Wyoming voter and a rural California voter completely differently.
Slightly differently. Equally represented in the Senate and the Senates contribution to the electoral college. The real failure, the real distortion in public representation is California's winner take all elector policy. That is where the real problem is, not in the electoral college itself.
Minority rights are protected by the Bill of Rights, the courts, and federalism, all of which survive without it.
And also by the constitutional definition of the structure and operation of the us government that exists in the US constitution. Which includes the electoral college. Flaws that cause distortion as more at the state level, outside the US constitution and the federal government. Matter of fact these state level shenanigans demonstrate to proclivity of politicians to let the majority abuse the minority.
It does not provide any checks and balances.
It presidential candidates to pay attention some attention to the smaller groups, rather than focus one the larger more densely population regions and completely ignore the smaller less populous. It make the President consider all.
Ok, so no answer there. It being the oldest actually cuts against your argument, other nations looked at our system and decided not to use that system.
Other nations were more monocultural, not having the diversity of the United States. Not having the minority communities that needed protection from the majority, or the majority was already so entrenched they had no opportunity to enshrine protections as we were able to do.
Our founding fathers were students of Ancient Greece and learned from their early experiments with democracy.
Not an answer.
LOL. Right, Ancient Greece demonstrating the flaws in direct democracy is not an answer.
Our system does what it was designed to do, force compromise. Extremism is minimized.
Popular vote for President doesn't change that. Again, we have just one election that has to operate this way. The Senate and Congress and all that still operates the same. This is just about President, one office, one person. One vote per citizen.
Nope. What happens due to the electoral college, Presidential candidates have to pay some attention to the smaller less populous states. They cannot merely focus on the big dense regions. That is working as intending.
This is why I feel like the arguments against popular vote are all vibes and Republicans who want to maintain minority rule.
There is no minority rule. There is the minority receiving some attention, not being ignorable.
And I would say that it sounds like "checks and balances" but really, what is it checking?
Described In the above. You argument that these things aren't much of a threat, but that reality is in part due to 250 years of having the check and balance present.
As you said yourself the EC was a compromise and logistical solve, not a legal one.
Untrue, it is part of the US Constitution, that is a pretty strongly in the "law" category. And it implements a compromise necessary to create the United States, it is part of the contract.
Also it's form today with winner-take-all is far from how the Founders imagines it in the Federalist
Most likely, but the problem here is state level winner take all.
I would have to hear how the peoples interests and states interests are not represented in a nationwide popular vote.
Thoroughly discussed previously. In summary protecting small states from the tyranny of the majority, the larger and more populous.
The point was that "republic" simply means "not a monarchy". The state is a "public thing/matter", not a private concern.
That is an erroneous definition of 'republic'. Google:
"A republic is a form of government where supreme power resides in the citizens, who elect representatives to govern on their behalf according to law."
Note "on their behalf", that is a critical difference with this form of government. A buffer from "mob rule".
Meanwhile, X.AI has asked the EPA for permission to release up to 100 million hyperfecund pesticide-resistant male mosquitoes in California and New York over two years to own the libs.
The P in PC means Personal which means affordable for the average man.
Nope. When the term was created the Personal Computer was not affordable for the average man. Not for years, not with the first clones, only a bit later than that.
I suspect these devices will not be.
I suspect otherwise. The CPUs will be no more AI than Intel's and Apple's latest CPUs. What we are seeing is Windows trying to deliver a non-Intel Windows to the general PC population. Something we have not really seen since WinNT 4.
How does that contradict what I said? In the end, both parties candidates are vetted by the establishment, so you get an establishment candidate no matter who wins.
Normally candidates are chosen by all the party's voters. The insiders cannot stop determined voters. That is how we got Barack Obama. He was introduced by the Clintons at a previous convention as a young up and comer. In a later election cycle, Hillary was supposed to be the next candidate. She had the backing of the insiders, the establishment, inserting Bill's political machine. Obama was an upset candidate chosen by the voters, defeating the establishment insider Hillary despite Bill's machine backing her. He jumped the line, he did not wait his turn, he beat the party establishment.
APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I can't read any of them. -- Roy Keir
