empireOfLove2
A Reddit Refugee. Zero ragrets.
Engineer, permanent pirate, lover of all things mechanical and on wheels
moved here from lemmy.one because there are no active admins on that instance.
Motorcycles and mopeds are amazing in urban areas that haven’t built up public transit, honestly. They can be crazy efficient, have a ton of electric options now, and give people the range and speed to use existing infrastructure and not need dedicated lanes/shallow grades like bicycles.
I’ve not owned one since I grew up in a rural area and I’m not suicidal enough to ride one on a 65mph highway. but am planning to move to an urban area in a few months, I’ll probably get one for going downtown.
Me dropping $1350 on an impulse purchase of a 3D printer was probably “irresponsible” when I got my first engineering job paycheck.
That said, I’ve had a bunch of hours of fun with it, and am now starting to design possibly marketable items with it that I could make income with later, so it hopefully won’t be too stupid. Could be worse, I could spend $1300 on alcohol a year and have nothing for it but liver damage.
that’s like the least irresponsible purchase. even at a high interest rate, you are still paying on a principle that creates an asset with equity that increases your stable wealth. When you rent, all that money you pay just evaporates and you never see it again. A mortgage payment is almost always the better financial choice, unless you need to move frequently for work.
Hmm, so I did a little research on STAR. It seems to basically just be “weighted” voting, where candidates are given a vote with a weight per voter just to select two runoff candidates. Then it goes to normal FPTP (decided by individual voter ranking) once the runoff candidates are selected.
I really do like the flexibility of the ranking system, and I think it could work very well in an actively participating citizenry. BUT:
I feel like this would just end up with American voters falling into the same 2-party trap, and 3rd parties once again splintering themselves across a bunch of different candidates that will not total up enough to make it into the runoff. Since there isn’t multiple chances to coalesce 3rd party candidates into the “most preferred” one, voters will most likely just once again pile into two big parties.
The major benefit I do see is that voters can give multiple candidates the same high rating, meaning the visibility of said 3rd party candidates could be a lot higher and end up eliminating the entire first problem I just mentioned. However, it would be entirely dependent on at least one 3rd party candidate scraping together enough 4 and 5 star votes to make it at least to 2nd place in the runoff before being killed off.
It is also harder to administer and requires a good bit more backend data handling on election workers’ side. That’s probably not a big deal, but it does add complexity and a little more effort for the public to interpret the final results.
One of the reasons I like RCV is because it sort of “filters upwards” thru candidates, giving each one multiple chances to increase their vote share.
Theoretical: If you had 5 candidates in a smaller local election, and the 1st choice results were 35%, 25%, 20%, 10%, 10%; you probably expect typical Americans used to FPTP to pile Republicans and Democrats into the upper 35 and 25%'s, and through each elimination round their first-choice votes will not change.
But if the 3rd party 20/10/10’s, now empowered to not accidentally throw away their vote in FPTP, coalesced into a single voting bloc through their second and third choices not choosing the R or D, they’ll easily hit 50%. In STAR, the election is already over; it’s a runoff between the R and D again, and now we still have the same 2 party problem.
I’m trying to be realistic though, and as an Oregon resident I want to get at least something that is better than FPTP. There were a couple STAR proposals around the state at county/city levels and they’ve failed each time, but RCV seems to be getting some momentum this year. At least enough momentum to actually make it to a statewide ballot measure, which is more than any other alternative has gotten so far, so I’m gonna fight like hell for it.
I hate that “he owns a big rifle” is basically a dog whistle only associated with these troglodytes now. I like firearms myself, but I like human rights too. :(
Well, if you go strictly based off his positions on paper, or as posted on his website, he hits all the “progressive” points that would seem very attractive to a progressive independent or some more left democrats. Its a legit honest mistake to think he might be fairly left, based off when I was researching him a bit.
But every time he opens his mouth in front of a camera it’s the most asinine right wing brain worm vomit you’ve ever heard, and I think they figured that out a little too late.
