DelendaEst
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User ID: 1199
DelendaEst
5d ago
Gerrymandering: California will soon vote on whether to redistrict itself for the express purpose of counteracting a Republican gerrymandering plan in Texas. The rewards from gerrymandering are extra House seats which could tip the balance of House control -- a tasty prize. Democrats had unilaterally disarmed themselves with bipartisan commissions in many states, but that did little to convince Republicans to ease up. Democrats could probably go even if they play hardball, which is a lot better than the status quo where they’re down somewhere between 8-20 seats depending on the fairness metric used.
I disagree that California's independent commission constitutes unilateral disarmament. In 2024 the difference between the percentage of the vote that went to the out party (Rs in California and Ds in Texas) an the percentage of house seats they won was more "unfair" in California, and a commission which is 1/3 D 1/3 R and 1/3 "neutral" parties who all agree with the D side all the time is not exactly the platonic ideal of fair districting. And there are D states where Rs are wildly underrepresented, but the district lines look fair and the Ds say "well its not gerrymandered, what do you want?" as if the problem was squiggly lines on a map and not the unrepresentative outcomes. I am not saying that refusing the gerrymander and have independent commissions is BAD, but getting worse outcomes than Texas and then acting holier than thou about Texas's districting is laughable.
The correct solution for all states with more than 1-2 seats is multi-member districts which would get the ratios better and allow everyone to be represented, but that never seems to be on the table unfortunately.
DelendaEst
11d ago
I thought the same thing at first, had to re-read the first paragraph like 3 times.
DelendaEst
13d ago
If a tranny shooting up a catholic school isn't leftwing violence then neither is a white guy shooting up a black church, and we both know that would be included.
DelendaEst
14d ago
Did you do any spot checking to make sure known incidents were included? I saw claims that the ADL dataset didn't include a trans shooter at a Christian school under leftwing violence despite that incident being included in their timeframe, and that sort of miss makes the whole project seem not just methodologically biased but pure BS from top to bottom.
DelendaEst
16d ago
Yes, America wasn't facing a China sized existential threat at the time of these turmoils.
Those turmoils were in the 60s and 70s, peak USSR cold war era. US and China, while clearly rivals, are more economically and diplomatically interconnected than US and USSR ever were, and children are not doing duck and cover drills because of constant fear of Chinese nukes, nor are we engaged in Vietnam level proxy wars vs China's client states.
DelendaEst
29d ago
I am not surprised that Americans are 60% of the market, Americans are much richer and OF is a global market without price discrimination. Even if Indians and Africans are willing to spend double the percentage of total resources on OF they will still be much lower as a total amount just because they have so much less.
DelendaEst
29d ago
In the 50s there were comic book companies which had series which only had like 24 issues which they cycled through publishing on the same theory, that boys who discovered comics at 12 would age out into baseball and girls by 14 so there was no point in having more than 2 years worth of material.
DelendaEst
29d ago
I think this is arguable either way. The worst negative effects of weed do seem not as bad as the worst effects of alcohol, but I think fully swapping it would speed overall social degeneration even worse. Weed use is correlated with sitting around at home playing video games, alcohol is correlated with going to bars and clubs which while not amazing value adds are at least social situations where single people can meet each other.
But this IS the reason that gerrymandering feels bad, the reason that people instinctively dislike it. Its not that people hate the squiggly lines in and of themselves, they dislike that the lines lead to unfair vote distributions. So it is not immediately obvious to me why having even worse distributions without squiggly lines is better.
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