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Cake day: September 15th, 2024

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  • There isnt a debate.

    One of the major parties in the USA knows that they are able to get power only because the 1929 Apportionment act artificially buouys the power of less populous states in the House and by extension the electoral college. The other one is just fine with actual proportional representation.

    Not t metion that the EC doesn’t encourage presidential candidates to campaign nationwide: most states are ignored, and focus is on the minority of swing states.

    (and Lincoln had a clear plurality of the popular vote. He woukd have won a national vote too.)



  • In order to blame the bad actions of the United States for the “polycrisis”, you really need to excuse all of the bad actions of everyone else.

    To pick a timely issue : blaming the USA for the actions of Israel in their* Gaza territory we would need to excuse Israel for the actions of Israel.

    If a general strike would have any effect id support it, but the target should be the specific actions of our country rather than the actions of other sovereign nations.

    (*: If the govt of israel does not recognize a distinct Palestinian state, and the pseudo-governments of Palestine cannot exert sovereign control to keep Israel out, then Palestine is [unjustly] and [occupied] territory of Israel.)


  • Bail is not money you get back. It’s money that a bail bondsman doesn’t have to fork over if you dont show.

    Either you are so rich that the opportunity cost of tieing up the whole amount is more than the fee (so you just pay the bond fee) or you don’t have enough and need to ask someone to lend it to yoy (that is, you pay the bond.)

    New York tried to largely ban cash bail (becaue its essentially just a way to lock up the poor), but because of Republicans and police unions (i repeat myself) who whined about offenses while out on bail, the state poked a bunch of holes in it instead of making pre-trial detention easier.

    Cash bail is ALWAYS indefensible. If someone is so dangerous to civic order they need to be detained pre-trial, then no amount of money should get them out of it.







  • As a seperate top-level answer: no, would not pursue a romantic relationship with a woman who repeats sexist assertions about men. Because i am both a man and a feminist, and my several decades of happy married life have taught me that compatability of strongly held beliefs is a key to romantic happiness.

    I would also not encourage the young men and women i know to either espouse sexist positoons or pursue potential partners who hold such beliefs. And i would probably also ramble for a bit about how all labels are imperfect and you should not necessarily dismiss someone just becsuse of a label.

    If you want to date someone who describes themselves as a “radical feminist”, a date might be a good way to discern if they are an “all men are evil” feminist or a “men are awesome and also victims of the patriarchy” feminist.


  • Feminists dont say things like “all men are potential rapists”, save for those who also say “all women are potential rapists.”.

    An actual (traditional) feminist would say something like “society encourages rapy behavior from men”, which is functionally the same but rhetorically a far different animal. Women and men who say that men are categoryly dangerous are also implicitly telling boys that they are bad just because they are boys.

    Sexist statements about how women are good and men are bad isnt feminism, it’s just sexism in disguise.





  • 1: FPTP is a terrible term as its literally not an accurate way to describe a “single-vote plurality wins” systrm like most of the USA has. When you use the phrase to someone who doesn’t already agree that there are better ways its just inaccurate enough to sabatoge any point you might make.

    2: the UK and other parliamentary systems have embedded rewards just for being “a party”. There are only two parties in the USA becaue parties on their own have institutional recognition, and in our politocal contests there is no prize for second place.



  • It’s not a question of wanting competition or not. Political parties by nature will attempt to get as strong a coalition as they can, until they reach a size large enough that bisecting the party still leaves one half in power and some internal disagreememt triggers the split.

    Fringe parties in America, like the Green and Libertarian parties, arent oppressed by some conspiracy between Rs and Ds. Rather, they are left at the fringe because they do not have any power worth pledging to, for the simple fact that in the american single-rep plurality-wins system tbere is no prize for second place.

    Voters who like the current office holder work to keep them in power and those who do not work with the opposition to remove the incumbent from power. Anyone not joining one of these sides serves only as a tool for one side against the other, since anything but a vote for the runner up is an effective endorsrment of the eventual winner.

    The American system is imperfect and could be a lot better, but fringe parties and vanity campaigns do nothing to actually encourage systemic change.