Care to comment on Alaska and it’s Ranked-Choice Voting system?

Honestly, I was going to be a little snarky and say “No.” all petulant-like and leave my response as just the quote of your question and my dumb response but I did a quick skim of the headlines about it because I, well, forgot they passed ranked choice. I know, at a time of upheaval, pandemic, and highly mediocre personal depression, I should have been thinking of Jewel’s home state.

But it’s kind of interesting, right? A citizen-led ballot initiative passed in the 2020 “blue wave”, and using ranked choice in 2022, Alaskans elected their first Democrat state senator in over 50 years. And Republican aligned groups are now repeatedly bringing petitions forth to to to get it overturned - which have so far continued to fail.
That’s a solid counter to my “Americans are hostages” line of thought. Unfortunately, Alaska represents less than 2% of elected officials, and about 0.25% of the U.S. population.
But those ballot initiatives won’t stop. Talking points from the strategists trying to undermine ranked choice will be played, parroted, and drilled into people’s heads. Until enough folks rethink their decision to vote for ranked choice on one of the upcoming votes to repeal it. And then what happens. Is there a political party that will fund ballot initiatives until it gets passed again?
Nah. Just two parties, pretending to oppose each other while pocketing a paycheck. It’s pro wrestling. Scripted fights. Misdirection. Anything to turn a profit and keep the show going.
Fitting that Trump sits at the top.

It’s not necessarily that the U.S. is bad, or is choosing the worst option.

There are undoubtedly a lot of very intelligent and deep analysis on the topic, but here’s a pretty simplified explanation that I’m going to try to rush through because I should be doing something other than commenting a whole novel.

The American electoral system is completely fucked.
It was not designed for or implemented with the concept of political parties, and some of its fundamental assumptions are predicated on political parties not existing in order to function as a working democracy. However after the first election, political parties formed, and began working on codifying and entrenching their power. It’s like game theory run amok. The win condition is first past the pole, so there’s only one winner, and by default, if there’s more than 2 contenders, then the vote is split inefficiently, so naturally there can only be two major parties at a time. And the two parties must exist such a way that they do not dilute or share their power, so they do not modify the system to allow for the inclusion of other parties, or allow for the vote to be split. It’s unlikely the parties would pass laws that they know would dilute their own power, even if it also diluted the power of their opposition.
As a result, voters in the U.S. must either: Vote for the party that most closely aligns with their interests, vote against the party that aligns against their interests, or abstain from voting.
With only two options, it’s sometimes challenging to find a party or candidates that represent your interests. Many people in the U.S. feel that no party represents them, or that their vote simply does not matter. In 2024, a little more than 2/3 of eligible voters did not vote.

The process of financing and prosecuting elections in the U.S. is completely fucked.
Well before the 2011 Citizens United ruling, the U.S. had a lot of issues with voter suppression and voter turnout: Election Day is not a national holiday in the U.S. and many employers will simply tell their employees to figure out a time to vote that isn’t during work hours. Every state, and sometimes individual cities can execute elections differently, with different laws, however, so the experience is not consistent. Some places make voting more approachable, and some make it more difficult, but the federal government has limited authority over states when it comes to the election, so decisions about voting hours, whether to allow mail in voting, and the reasons for which mail in voting is allowable, are left up to various municipalities, creating a confusing patchwork that is a challenge to navigate by citizens. This lowers turnout to those who have the time and ability to navigate it all. Since 2011, unlimited corporate bribery has become the norm, and politicians are now nakedly bought and owned by corporate interests. Studies show that regardless of party or political belief, that most politicians align with donors way more than than the ‘rank and file’ voters, so the average person does not have the ability to impact the outcome of the laws that are passed.

The third leg of this, which I’m unfortunately out of time to really discuss, is the media, and the internet. But the U.S. isn’t shutting down TikTok over user data. It’s shutting it down because it could not influence the algorithm to viewpoints that were favorable to the political goals of the U.S. and its corporate sponsors. All the major platforms in the U.S. are somehow beholden to the U.S. government, save for, well, Lemmy.
And beyond that, you have corporate control of the media, and corporations that own vast swaths of the information that comes into the U.S.’s TV’s, newspapers, and inboxes. It’s impossible to get viewpoints that are not influenced or controlled by (again) the U.S. government or its corporate sponsors.

So if the public perception is controlled, the ability to vote is hampered, and the political parties have a noose braided out of dollars around their neck, then what does the average person do?

Go shoot a healthcare executive and watch major news networks freak the fuck out trying to villainize you while the government throws every possible law at you? Try to start your own political party and be drowned by the conspiracy of the two in power? Citizen-led voter initiatives, that are routinely challenged by monied interests and even the government themselves, when the citizenry don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees to fight frivolous lawsuits? Try to start an armed insurrection against the U.S.? Psh.

The citizenry of the U.S. are hostages, whether they believe it or not.

Frodalf is just Tom Bombadil

Gimlum is the wizened old meth head that steals your hubcaps and tries to sell them back to you.

So for $200 USD they’re selling an 80’s retro version of a GameboyPi case ($50 on amazon, includes battery) with a slightly larger screen and fewer buttons. For $10 more, they’ll add in a keyboard that they haven’t developed yet.

Seems like an overpriced stepping stone between a flipper and a steam deck.

Fine. I’m calling it Gulf of the Americas and reminding everyone that the Americas are the continents, not the country.
A visionary and inclusive move!

—

^{the increasingly loud hum of cognitive dissonance in the face of a nonsensical reality grows slightly higher pitched}

God‘s Gonna Cut You Down, by Johnny Cash

I mean, look — If your kid can’t tell the difference between a merlot and a malbec by the time they’re ready to order from the adult menu, can you say you’ve succeeded in preparing them for adulthood?

I thought it was an Adidas reference, based on the logo.

Ha! I’ve definitely done that, too.

It’s just the above story makes for more interesting reading.

I did that once and cost someone their job.

Back in the bad old days of 2009, the company I apprenticed at furloughed the secretary and made me enter in job tickets. We had a special relationship with one client and they used us like one would use a drop shipping company – they sent us their customer orders and we fulfilled them. It was low volume (per job), high frequency work. About 80% of our tickets originated from PDFs that always followed the same pattern. As my first serious foray into programming, I automated the ticket intake for just their tickets so I didn’t have to type them up manually. At the time, I did not realize reducing a 10 minute task to 10 seconds (repeated about 15 times a day) would mean they never brought her back to work full time.

I don’t feel that bad about it: In the 5 years there she’d never been given a raise, the healthcare plan was atrocious, and she found out she was pregnant during the furlough. However, she decided to look for another job, and found one as a secretary at a school just down the street from her house. It was a dramatic pay increase, much better benefits, and better job security.
I left a few months later, and a year or so after, the business folded.

I started playing No Man’s Sky again recently. My game from XBox didn’t transfer to Steam and I didn’t feel like trying to troubleshoot it, so I just started fresh. I’ll probably play that until my new character has unlocked everything.
I also picked up Stray and haven’t yet gotten into it much. I also recently bought Everspace, but haven’t even started the game yet. Soon, though.

Growing up, we just like, inherited each other’s old stuff, like clothes, stereos, and even cars.

Gonna be a weird time when kids these days grow up and tell stories about handing down or receiving handed-down body armor.

This is a bit of a left turn, but I’ve started to note random articles like this when I see them.

This might sound a little tin-foil hat~ish, but I think that some of Ukraine’s intelligence and war efforts are informed by the media. Starting back with the NordStream pipeline sabotage, which happened just after the media began covering how Russia could use the threat of shutting down the pipeline to hold Europe hostage, I’ve noticed that there’s sort of a back and forth. The media will focus on something as being a resource or asset to Russia, and Ukraine will target it. Right now it’s Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ - the merchant marine fleet that only travels between Russian allied countries, so the ships do not have to undergo international inspections. Not only have 3 of those ships recently sank due to weather (They were 50+ year-old river tankers that had undergone substantial modification, being used as transfer vessels to move oil for the military and were operating in the Black Sea - well outside the conditions they were built for due to threat of Ukrainian attack.), but the 4th was a newer vessel operating in conditions it was built for and it sank due to an explosion in its engine room. That last one really complicates some things for Russia - it had vital parts to another ship (a nuclear-powered icebreaker), as well as cranes from their Syrian Port (that they might be losing?) that were going to be repurposed at their Vladivostok Port.

Anyway, I guess all that is to say, I’m sort of expecting to hear within a few weeks that the factories that make these chemicals have been bombed.

While I was standing there in the kitchen, the smart TV started playing an old movie randomly, blasting the audio through all the smart speakers in the house. The Roomba hit me right in the ankle, just as the door to the stove fell open and the speakers yelled “Feed me Seymour!”
But I mean. It’s a Roomba, and the stove takes time to preheat, even if I had fallen in. The cat helped to blind the Roomba while I unplugged everything. Now I’m huddled in the dark, fighting against the cold, wondering if I should chance the thermostat.

Ahh. Interesting. I don’t think I’ve seen the HIBP one!

Now it’s going to bug me, trying to remember the one I was thinking of. (Unfortunately, I’m out and about today and can’t really take a moment to hunt down what I’d previously seen.)

There’s one by …. Microsoft, I think?

It actually requests your password (vs email for HaveIBeenPwned) and checks it against rainbow tables. It doesn’t ask for other identifying information, so it’s okay, but feels super sketchy.

No clue!

The power almost never goes out at my house, which is nice, but there are 4 appliances with clocks in my kitchen. The microwave runs fast and is usually about 12 minutes ahead every time the clocks change, the stove is always rock solid, the coffee pot is never set (despite being the only appliance with a timer mode that would actually be useful), and the air fryer is only accurate during summer because I can’t remember how to set it (and I don’t care enough to fix it).

I tried not to, but it formed a mesh network with the neighbors toaster, and that connected to someone’s dishwasher the next street over, which connected to a washing machine down the block, and so on, until they found a self-aware microwave that just happens to be benevolent but sort of mischievous, and now whenever my toast is done, the Grindr chime sounds off and the toaster asks me to put it back in.

Currently stuck in the prison lair?

audience groans, throws vegetables. A copy of The Communist Manifesto sails through the air, just past my head