It amazes me that one of the largest countries in the world, with the most diverse demographics, can only chose between two candidates. This is not democracy. It’s a shit show that has been going on for far too long.
Said by a man who ran a country that outlawed all but the party he was prime minister of. He was probably a little salty about criticism over the lack of democracy in his country.
The USA is proud to have the oldest and longest-standing written constitution. The fact it hasn’t been rewriteen in a long time help explain why there’s still an electoral college, slavery for prisoners (13th amendements), and weak regulation of campaign finance.
Which is honestly meaningless but very convenient for US narrations. There were also older de facto constitutions, which are usually forgotten like the Henrician Articles of P-L Commonwealth. US constitution is famous because it was the one which was loudly proclaimed and imitated later.
That’s not how it works. As long as FPTP exists, it will lock us into two parties. We have had multiple party systems that all demonstrated this principle. Some places are experimenting with alternatives on the state and local level, but it will take time.
You’ve already got one response to this which is correct. I want to add to it to help explain how FPTP voting systems result in a 2 party system and simply voting for another party does not solve the issue.
But first you’re either aware of the problem and want to encourage people to vote third party while pretending not to know how the system works or you’re actually just ignorant to the issue.
I don’t normally like video links in discussions like this but this one is especially good and is only 6.5 mins.
The presidential vote is where it’s fixed. Republicans have already moved to ban other voting types calling them ‘too complicated’. Democrats will join them the second their duopoly is endangered.
Just like how they crack down on student protests and block ballot access for third parties, Democrats have no standards either.
Strange you’re including Republican in there. You believe Biden is winning right? So your money should be on Biden and any other winner would make you lose.
you’re either aware of the problem and want to encourage people to vote third party while pretending not to know how the system works or you’re actually just ignorant to the issu
It is kind of amazing how even those disenfranchised voters will rally to support the hegemony of the “two party” corporatist rule. I suggested recently we could consider rallying behind a single issue 3rd party candidate who would end the legalized bribes and replace FPTP with a more democratic alternative, and was immediately downvoted and told it’s not possible due to FPTP.
It is theoreticaly possible, but praticaly speaking it would be near impossible.
To acomplish this, you need to get 51% of the population (who actually vote) to all vote for one person. However, with FPTP, you get one choice on the ballot. Is the average voter going to risk their vote on a 3rd party, or vote for who they belive to be the “lesser evil” of the two that have a shot at winning?
Even if you do manage to get 51%, there’s the electoral collage. Never forget, our democracy has built in the ability to overwrite the presidential vote.
Your first hurdle is getting any one to name an independent candidate.
I agree with this. But also, this time is the closest to “end of the world” stakes we’ve had in recent memory. We have a literal criminal, rapist, and fraudster who already tried to overthrow the government once leading the polls.
The shitty thing is by the time my states primary pretty much every else has dropped out. We need to run the primary like a real election not piecemeal.
I understand what you are trying to say. Ultimately, there are only two to vote for. Ideally, there should be more than two parties, and more than two candidates. That’s how democracies work. What you have is a dysfunctional system that divides people in two groups, and there are no incentives to cooperate between parties. Proper voting is also suffering due to the two-party system.
In my country, the parties with the majority of votes and the ability to cooperate gets to form a government. We also try to make it easy to get people to vote, insted of your system of gerrymandering.
Yes I know, but the voting system favours the two largest. Thats why they are large. Small parties have 0% chance og getting representatives into the houses, so they are basically irrelevant.
The RNC never intended to run a candidate other than Trump because he controls MAGA, which is what remains of their energized base. The primaries they held were “just in case” Merrick Garland actually did something useful and successfully prosecuted Trump for insurrection, which never came to pass.
The DNC did everything they could to prevent primary elections from occurring in various states, and bullied anyone who was floating a run into submission. This included the state dept making calls to state DNC committees to cancel primaries, or remove certain candidates from their ballots. According to them, it was an insult to Biden admin and their legacy to even suggest another candidate should run. And now look where that’s gotten us.
So no, we didn’t actually vote in primaries this year because the establishment refuses to relinquish the status quo.
Henry Ford’s right hand man had uneven steps in his home as a defense mechanism. he fell down them and died while drunk (apparently this is urban legend)
I think they did that in castles, because it’s generally pretty hard to build castles. If the enemy is inside the walls you are practically done anyway.
I enjoy the idea that some shitass mason hated whatever king hired him, built all the stairs as quickly and poorly as possible, and then to save his ass later had to be all “oh hmm yes the stairs? That’s a feature actually” and somehow it winds up catching on
every time the story comes back up it takes me ages to figure out who I was talking about again. I can never remember the name, but he was featured in an episode of last podcast on the left
You are talking about Henry Bennett. This is a myth though. While he did have stairs like that, he died in a care home after years of declining health. His actual cause of death wasn’t announced, but it was likely because he had been in rapid decline for years and just before going into the care home, had a stroke.
Most areas in the US have that as a building code violation for the safety issue of it. Usually, there’s a “first” when any regulation regarding inherent safety is created.
Not the Mac n cheese for the last like 20+ years. It used to use real cheese and really did taste better. I know the internet got all uppity against kraft a while back, claiming they started making the noodle portion worse somewhere around 2016 or something, but that’s nothing compared to the big taste difference that happened when they stopped using real cheese.
Look, some people just can’t digest it. As you get older, your ability to process mac’n’cheese without dire intestinal consequences drops off substantially. The pros just simply aren’t worth the cons, not by a long shot.
Lactose intolerance is more common than lactose tolerance globally. In the unites states, something like 1 in 3 people are lactose intolerant.
It’s largely genetic. Lactose tolerance can be traced to nomadic tribes that kept milk producing animals as a food source, adapting to tolerate lactose in their diet over time.
Sure, but I figured that lactose intolerance would typically manifest before the age of, say, 20. I didn’t realize that people could become lactose intolerant as seniors.
I hate selfies, so whenever I’m on vacation I just take pictures of my surroundings but never with me in it. Once, my cousin wanted to see my vacation pics, so I showed them to him. He then asked why I’m not in any of them. When I said I didn’t think it was necessary, his genuine confused reply was, “But how do people know you were really there, then?”
This is how I take pictures, I take pictures of the things I am seeing so I can look back at those moments later. I don’t experience life in third person, observing myself from overhead like a video game, so why would I want myself in the pictures?
the neat part is they don’t. unless you tell them about the trip. I too only take pictures of my surroundings, with my camera app, for myself, without the intend of sharing more than maybe one of them. unless I happend to put something on a family group chat or something
I have a counterpoint. I used to be the same way but then I realized I just had a bunch of amateur photos of places where professional photos were readily available, basically wasted effort. So now I try to capture the people I’m with in the photos as a way to remember our trip together. This is also great fodder to make photo books for the grandmas.
Same for me. I took multiple trips as a young adult where I just took scenery photos. Twenty years later I really regretted not including myself and family in those photos. Think of yourself in the future and skip sharing them online.
I’m the same when I’m going on a vacation with my parents! I want to have as much memories captured with them as possible… But it’s only when I’m with them lol. I usually go to vacations solo, and the pictures without me is still memories to me–even if it’s a bad picture and not professional quality, it’s still something I saw and experienced myself. Like maybe my sunset picture I took is crooked or too dark etc, but when I see it I remember the moment I was there; it captured exact hue of the sky that I saw, the birds that I was watching earlier, the clouds that I thought looked like a Pokemon and made me smile. The better pictures that other people took do not have that, so for me personally, it’s not a wasted effort.
The other day I was looking at my solo vacation pictures from 10, 15 years ago without me in them, and the memories are still with me.
Anyway, I think that although we take them differently, we both agree that vacation pictures should be for our memories, and not for “showing other people that we were REALLY there” (as my cousin said, haha…)
One time I found this old home movie my grandma made of their visit to the Grand Canyon back in the 50s. She’s filming the scenery and a couple times you can barely see my dad and uncles run by. We’re watching this in the mid ’00s – 50 years later, near the end of her life. She goes “Why didn’t I point the camera at them? I don’t care about the Grand Canyon."
That’s when I quit taking pictures without people in them.
My father’s parents were told he’d die of polio in the hospital that night. He recovered. The vax was new when my mother got it. I exist because of vaccines and dumb luck. I hate them, every shithead antivax fuckwad for harming humanity.
My grandmother got polio as an adult and suffered from post-polio syndrome. She lived to a ripe old age (mid 90’s), but had a significantly reduced quality of life.
TIL, posts that I post publicly and knowingly so, are the same as app that has 2 class-action lawsuits against them related to privacy and just had an event where they bought your likeness from you for 40bucks while advertising it as a “referral program” and the owner of the app had a malware infested App uploaded to the App Stores and with people claiming that their banking account information got leaked through the app.
Thanks! What would I do without the knowledge that you provided to me?
There is a difference between what I like to watch on YouTube and my banking information.
Edit: I forgot to mention that there is a law that forces Chinese companies to grant the Chinese state access to their computer systems. So everything, I said, plus a whole ass government (with more and less corrupt people) has your data!
Jewelry is also fucking retarded. Once upto a time some guy was like ‘you see this rock? awfully shiny. you want that rock?’ and some dumbfuck was like ‘yes, I do’ and the guy with the rock replied ‘$$$’ and thus, jewelery was invented.
It’s a damn shiny rock. It serves no purpose. And people pay thousands of dollars for tiny rocks. Buy vibrators, not rocks. Cheaper 10 fold, actually useful, great gifts.
Sure, if you want to get super Vulcan about it. But people have emotions, can appreciate craft, can appreciate nature, and like to express themselves.
Granted, the person that buys a $100k watch is usually trying to express “I have money.” So fuck that person. But on the flip side, you have things like the necklace my wife wears, which contains a coin that reminds her of her mom, and was made by a local skilled craftsperson that makes really interesting stuff.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with rocking something that is sentimental and expresses that you value good craft.
The U.S. has been trained to see protesting as a bad thing, so now we all just take the hits and blame neighbors whose political values don’t line up with ours.
It’s amazing how many people I meet who think so highly of the American revolution, but are completely aghast at the idea of fighting against the government now.
memes
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.