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Cake day: January 29th, 2024

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  • The Ubuntu Core Desktop demo at SCALE this year actually got me pretty excited for my desktop in a snap, or at least for playing with that. The closest analogy I have is to NixOS, since it’s way more flexible than just an immutable base.

    If I can get some sort of KDE Neon type distro with immutable apps and desktop, I could potentially switch my family over to that and manage it all remotely (really big deal since my family is spread across 3 continents). Landscape is pretty good at remotely managing Ubuntu Core (I’ve not found anything even close for NixOS), so I’m hopeful this would reduce my management work when my family’s current Chromebooks need replacing.



  • That’s hard to say. With the current makeup of the supreme court, it’s likely they’d simply declare any law protecting abortion rights as unconstitutional because mumble mumble and get away with it. But what’s preventing them from doing even that is that Republicans (thanks in large part to politicised redrawing of district boundaries) have a majority in one of the two legislative bodies, so the Democrats couldn’t pass that protection regardless.

    So likely the minimum that’s needed to codify abortion rights would be a Democratic majority in both legislative houses and a Democratic president.

    On the topic of coalitions: The US doesn’t have coalitions in the ways many other countries have, partially because of the way the president is elected. Voters have a separate item on their ballot to elect (electors who will then vote in the electoral college for) the president. The way this occurs is through first past the post, where the largest portion of the votes (even if a minority) gets all the electors in that state (except in Nebraska and New Hampshire, where the state breaks it into districts). I’m in Michigan, for example. In 2016, Donald Trump got 47.5% of the vote in Michigan to Hillary Clinton’s 47.3% and thus got all 16 of Michigan’s electoral votes (out of 538). Had 11,000 more people voted for Clinton (let’s say, by not voting for the Green party), she would have won Michigan’s electoral votes, which is a 3% swing in the electoral college, but given that most states are pretty much guaranteed to go one way or the other (e.g. Indiana is a safe Republican state while neighbouring Illinois is a safe Democratic state), those 11,000 votes would be massively influential. This is why “swing states” are so stupidly pivotal in US elections.

    So because of all of that, there’s not an option for the Greens to join a coalition, even if they wanted to (which I don’t think they would, as the US Green party is currently under the control of a Russian asset and it’s well known that Putin wants a Trump victory).

    The American electoral system is ridiculously, stupidly backwards and basically designed to empower certain people over others. If there were a parliamentary democracy here the US, and probably the world (given the US’s love for foreign intervention), would be much better off.



  • Voting third party is telling the system that you don’t have a preference between the two candidates who have even the slightest chance of winning. It sucks that there’s such constrained communication one can do (and we need a better voting system), but in the short term, the three options I’ve listed are what you have the options to communicate.




  • you can vote Green or PSL

    You sure can if you believe that making an insignificant point in a ballot box is worth more than the actual lives of people who would die because of a Trump administration but not under a Harris one. But if you want to make an actual difference. the ballot box is one of the very few times you need to hold your nose and do the uncomfortable thing of choosing liberalism over fascism.

    But if you’re okay with fascism, sure. Go and make your vote a spoiler that helps the fascists win. I’m sure the people who die because doctors who were scared to provide medically necessary abortions will be grateful that you did the morally superior, but entirely ineffective, thing.



  • lengau@midwest.socialtoMemes@lemmy.mlDating apps be like
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    22 days ago

    Look, if you don’t care about LGBT folks, women who need abortions, asylum seekers, etc. you can pull that “don’t care” lever. But “I care about making a symbolic, but ultimately toothless, gesture about Palestine more than I care about the lives of thousands, possibly millions of others” is what voting third-party is telling the system right now. If that makes you feel morally superior, we’re at an impasse because I don’t know how to explain to someone that an action to save lives is more powerful than an unrealistic gesture about saving even more lives, but which will realistically increase the amount of death and suffering.



  • lengau@midwest.socialtoMemes@lemmy.mlDating apps be like
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    22 days ago

    Yeah, the “you’re voting for genocide” argument is also ridiculous, as the choices essentially boil down to:

    🔲 One genocide (with a potential of partial mitigation)
    🔲 2+ genocides (and the one being even worse)
    🔲 Don’t care (in green)
    🔲 Don’t care (in yellow)

    etc.

    Genocide is bad. That should not be a controversial statement. I will use my vote to choose the least genocide that it has the power to choose, and I will use my other energy to advocate for less (and hopefully zero) genocide.

    You don’t have to like that fact. I certainly don’t like it. But this is exactly what harm reduction looks like.