EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Frankly I've never understood the argument for early graduation as "success". Or even skipping so many early-level college courses. To some extent I understand this, as time in college = money spent, but if you spend less than 3 years doing your undergrad, part of me wonders if that's a partial waste, because as the pop psych things says, your brain isn't fully developed until 21 (I know to the extent this is accurate it's more like important growth tapers off nearer to 25 but still)... If you're already graduated by 21, maybe you missed out on something? Plus, as we all know, the skills/knowhow is only half the benefit. While we definitely don't want schools to become purely a social/life experience, the networks and friendships you gain are surely important. Too much acceleration only weakens these.
On the other hand yes we know that even a 15 year old historically is plenty capable of working on something important, even if it's more of an apprenticeship, so sure you can accelerate. Part of me wonders if we should really be experimenting with some other part-time supplement in those years for youth besides pure traditional educational attainment. I'm not sure exactly what that would be.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Although I'm biased as someone with a statistics degree, we'd get much better research if we either outright banned people who are bad or inexperienced in math and statistics from doing research, or significantly raised the standards for anyone wanting to do research (or as a compromise simply bit the bullet and mandated collaboration with a more math/stats-aware consultant). The number of statistically-illiterate or inexperienced questions that show up on reddit's askstatistics subreddit that mention offhand that it's for a paper they intend to publish is, frankly, frightening.
The big open question as I understand it in educational circles is how would we even implement something successful if the traditional mechanisms are non-functional? Any implementation requires some trust, and that trust is very diminished by administrators mandating often terrible programs or ones with onerous and impractical requirements to be implemented, which teachers understandably sabotage after paying lip service to. These programs or pushes always seem to cycle every 5 years so there's little consistency or follow-through. A lot of it is milked by educational consultants who have never taught in their lives and who have suspect financial incentives to sell things. And it poisons the well for actually-good initiatives, because they also can't get good compliance. It's almost a similar model to how dysfunction occurred in Soviet planned economies.
So in that light your point about cooperation is key.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
IMO this comment is way too uncharitable. It's like, 80% solvable, but you're right that solving it requires work. But it's actually a decent amount of work. I'd hesitate to call it laziness. I think a lot of people underestimate the typical teacher workload. Many teachers would probably do much better work and especially more efficient work if you increased pay by 30%, staffing by 30%, and reduced class sizes by 20%. (Part of this could be offset by slashing the administrative/pseudo-support staffing by 60% or more, but this still might require a net investment). This would give them much more time to plan lessons (instead of rolling out the greatest hits over and over without adapting to the times) and importantly, assign (and create) tests and homework assignments that are AI-resistant, if not AI-proof. It's just that these types of assignments and assessments are much more time-consuming to create and grade, plus as I mentioned the requirements to create them custom-tailored to your class and curricula make for the need to constantly be tweaking them (which again, most teachers don't have sufficient time budget to properly perform).
With that said there are certainly some school districts and even some teachers who are scared to fully grade work, but IMO most of the resistance is more from administration or parents, even, than the teachers themselves. A lot of teachers probably would prefer to hand out bad grades more, not less, current philosophy alleging this is psychologically damaging somehow notwithstanding.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
Oh man, looking at the pictures I can totally see what they were going for but… it’s still so painfully ugly. I wonder if that’s one of those cases where if you stare at something long enough and tweak it in minor ways enough times you become blind to the overall impact it has on someone seeing it for the first time.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
The chances of actually striking it down in its face are actually zero. I mean that completely. Zero. If it happens I will shave my head and never comment anything about politics again ever on any website. Zero.
The chances of them weakening it via some kind of practical or legal obstacles, to the point where it is effectively dead is extremely low but not impossible. Under 5% surely. Maybe 1-2%? Still quite a reach. Maybe still that’s high.
The chances of some other procedural weakening where it is merely super annoying, that’s a little higher. I’m not sure exactly where to peg it.
The chances of practical and legal burdens and even unalterable mistakes for those currently giving birth in the next year or so are actually kinda high. But that’s by definition temporary. Not much comfort if you or your wife are pregnant right now and lack papers. Honestly I think this is the true target and goal of the administration. If you are cruel and capricious enough you might get enough people to self deport, or not make the trip over, and this helps the near term numbers and politics.
The long-term outlook for birthright citizenship is not really under any actual threat. You still need an amendment to change it. At most, beneficiaries will have to budget a little bit more on practical or legal bills surrounding the birth, but that’s already the case to some extent with any new baby birth (it’s never free)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
You mean the literal exact argument that leads to authoritarianism and the destruction of democracy? I think Democrats obviously freak out over stuff way too often and too loudly, but this is a pretty classically un-American view. The irony is rich here.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
It’s not actually. This was briefly mentioned in the dissent, but birthright citizenship was already very established and practiced English law for a long time pre-Founding. So I’m sure you can continue to argue against it morally, but in a constitutional sense this is one of the most clear-cut issues ever, if you are an originalist OR a textualist OR even a living-documentist. Want to change it? You sure can! It will take an amendment, however.
You do have to remember that immigration now is very different than what it was. Just to name three of many reasons, generally if you immigrated somewhere you were effectively settling and living there, and two, international remittances were much less practical and common, and three, there was limited to nonexistent welfare.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
Per what the majority seemed to strongly imply, class actions are the new method, though Alito wants the requirements to remain strict for class certification. The somewhat jarring thing for me (not a lawyer) is that class action suits are NOT constitutionally mandated or enforced. It’s national law set by Congress authorizing them. So it was a little strange to me to see the SC “take away” the universal injunction ability from district courts on constitutional-ish grounds (really just a bit of semi tortured originalism plus some practical consideration) in favor of something decidedly extra-constitutionally grounded. For all the too-casual tone criticisms of Jackson’s dissent, she’s not really wrong in the narrow sense that this gives the administration permission to routinely ignore rulings against it in all non-party districts even if the action is blatantly illegal. Seemingly the majority is fine with this, and feels the delay created by class creation and certification and the actual arguing of the issue and the ruling (remember all this wrangling is over what to do in the time period before a case actually gets argued in full even at the district level) won’t be too excessive. That’s… honestly a little questionable. Kavanaugh wrote that he hopes the court will fill the gap somewhat by being more willing to take actual action, and action sooner, but it’s unclear if his fellow justices are actually on board with that. I think this is an error and they probably should have been okay with universal injunctions as long as they complied with some kind of fairly strict test.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Hmm. I was going to disagree, but some back of envelope bayes-rule calculations actually do seem to agree I understated the case so I guess I stand corrected on that front.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Tangentially related and a bit more on-rails, but you might really like Suzerain, a sort of amalgamation of a little bit of political simulation, a bit of choose your own adventure, a bit of visual novel, and a bit of Paradox. You basically guide your country, fresh off of a lifelong dictator's one-party rule, into the sorta-democratic era, and decide if you want to be a dictator yourself, maybe a commie, maybe a capitalist pig, maybe in the middle. But it's not all country-simulation: you are you, the leader. If you promise to reform the constitution, you sort of have to follow through, unless you're savvy enough. The chief justice of the supreme court might try to bribe you at some point. Your son sometimes acts out. A cabinet member might get embroiled into an affair or a scandal. Terrorists sometimes attack. You have neighbors including one who might invade you, and a sort of cold war analogue going on internationally (where you are not one of the big dogs).
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
I'm not comparing with the Bidens, though. To me that's too much selection bias, of a sort, but there's more than that besides. We should compare Trump's progeny to other business magnates - the original claim from faceh was that Trump is underappreciated for having well-adjusted progeny, and I reply that no no, he's merely doing par for the course. Billionaire kids, near as I can tell, aren't poorly-adjusted all that often. Politician kids, which were lumped in the same category, are not the same category. They are in fact on the spectrum that leads toward celebrity kids, which is definitely not the same category, despite conflation in that same comment! Trump is a businessman who, in the twilight of his life, decided to be a politician (and some think didn't even fully intend to, alleging he expected to lose). That's a very different thing than a political dynasty family. And even then... you know, children of major politicians being an embarrassment is probably still the exception rather than the rule.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
I think you’re going from the wrong assumption here. Kids and grandkids of Trump have much more in common with stereotypical children of wealth than they do children of celebrities. Confusing the two is a common mistake, but they are extremely different. A child of wealth learns that they have a parachute if they screw up. A child of celebrities learns that attention = survival, and are clearly poised to learn counterproductive lessons.
Speaking of children of politicians as a sort of weird third category doesn’t make sense. Either they are kids of the attention seeking variety (where some craziness is expected) or wealth (where they largely turn out fine). And I think you far oversell the number of crazy kids of wealth. Now I grant you part of that is wealth does better at hiding even after being busted for something (eg the children of the Reuters guy and their nanny). Despite that it’s impressive how relatively few wealthy kid screwups there are.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
He must have been working on it a while. Feels like it's been actually over a month since we had an actually good post? Maybe it's just me
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5d ago
Salary load can be notable in some industries, but I think it only rarely takes down entire companies (more than capable of causing problems on a per-location basis of course) because it's not often actually the biggest cost on the balance sheet (just the most "controllable" which is why so many emphasize it a lot). It is pretty "sticky" though, so it can compound otherwise controllable problems when a major financial shock happens (this has happened to a few airlines, for example). That's not quite a single point of failure, though it might depend on how you parse the question.
The big thing to note is how the problem used to be worse when pensions were a thing. Many, many companies would go down because they didn't have enough in the bank earning investment return to cover pensions and didn't have enough from revenue to pay it either. Part of why so many companies dropped pensions in favor of the 401K as soon as they could. But even then, you'd still have legacy stuff - GM in 2009 comes to mind, Wikipedia says "For each active worker at GM [in 2006], there were 3.8 retirees or dependents in 2006". Yikes.
The other failure mode is start-ups who hire too much too fast, but that's not really what we're talking about.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
Right, I did mean to mention how Cuomo was basically hiding because he was so sure the name-ID and perceived experience/steady hand/moderation would carry him, but I forgot. But to be honest, usually that strategy works! Also, great point about heat, I did see that mentioned in the lead-up as something that would hurt Cuomo, who is stronger with older folks. Will have to wait for numbers to see how much of a difference that may or may not have made.
Despite thinking Mamdani's (general) election to office would be a disaster, I'm encouraged. I absolutely hate political dynasties, despite thinking they often result in decent governance. One of the few exceptions to my rule, along with poor personal judgement of the candidate. Cuomo basically illustrates that dilemma perfectly: exactly the kind of establishment figure even an avowed moderate, "the establishment actually kind of works" person like myself would normally favor, but where my hate for dynastic figures and corrupt individuals overpowers what would normally be my main interest. I would definitely be a Brad Lander voter (maybe a Mamdani 2, followed by blanks?) though this is double moot because first I don't live in NYC/don't intend to ever, but secondly locally still refuse to register with a party even in my own area, so I'm not ever voting in primaries anyways. Is this somewhat contradictory with my position as a pragmatic moderate who thinks working within the system is almost always the best choice? Yes, for sure, but I like to think I more than offset that by actually volunteering for campaigns (usually state, occasionally local, seldom national) with some regularity. I do sometimes wonder how many people actually to fit in my same boat, though. Probably not many. Though the electorate is far more diverse than most pundits give it credit for, so less-predictable people like me (but on different issues than mine) I think are more then norm than party-line types.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
Vans or, it must be pointed out, it's pretty darn common for a pickup truck to have one of those pop-up covers (some of them extremely stock or permanent-looking). I'd say the actual contractors get a nice cover more often than a van, especially if it doubles as a personal vehicle. True minivans are basically reserved for secondhand purchases by the illegal immigrant.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
Oregon: Ask the locals where the good tidepools are at! Washington has some, but there are some great ones in Oregon too, and poking sea anemones is never not fun. Also, dress WARM, and prepared for rain just in case. The beach is often cold (and windy), though not always; the water is always super-cold, wetsuit territory, suitable for "how long can you stay in" competitions. Kites are fun for the wind! And the scenery is pretty, and you can still do sand castle things if that's your jam. Speaking of wind, if you want to try wind or kite surfing and are in the right spot, the Columbia gorge has some of the best in the whole world, but there are a few places on the coast that do it too. And yeah, of course there are great hikes everywhere, including waterfalls.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
The traditional argument is that US voting systems are mostly first-past-the-post (aka FPTP, single winners on plurality), and this naturally creates a two-party system due to fears about third parties just being spoilers/wasted votes (see Duverger's Law for the poli-sci theorizing). However, there is a counter-argument in that some other countries did not turn out this way despite similar voting systems, like Canada or India (for now). The traditional answer to that is that the US selects a president directly, while the PM can be chosen via some more indirect process. This is on purpose! Historically, although Parliament was kinda-sorta democratic, there was this weird interplay with the King. Baby America vehemently hated kings, and was trying to challenge the whole idea altogether! A directly-elected president is the ultimate rejection of a king-model. The modern reality of directly elected presidents being more powerful than confidence-of-Parliament heads of state was a bit unforeseen.
However, I want to make a different appeal, beyond structure: it might just be the way history shakes out! Remember the US is inventing representative democracy almost from scratch! Now-common ideas like political parties weren't even concepts yet, much less actual practice. The specifics of history have had very strong impacts on how the vote has gone. The first two pseudo-parties formed pretty early on over a mix of national vs state power, with a dash of foreign policy disagreement, pretty natural. One collapses and you get a brief mega-party period. Then Jackson shows up and is Trump-level controversial, setting up Democrats vs Whigs, partly stylistic but economics plays a big role here, and this starts to create more noticeable party-level mechanics as well (beyond voting blocs, you start getting them more involved in vote-getting, persuasion, and financing). Worth noting that at this point voting also starts to expand to non-property owners. Slavery eventually guts the Whigs a bit more than the Democrats, and you almost get a three-party scenario developing, or even a four-party one. It was probably the most likely electoral outcome for a while!
...and then a literal Civil War happens instead of waiting to let elections resolve things. At the end of which, you get two parties again, and surprise surprise for a while these line up neatly with the boundaries of the two actual contenders of the war. And yes, one of the two (the winner) is more powerful for a while. Also, every time an international war happens, you tend to get dominance by a party in the nationalist afterglow (sometimes backlash), and the US has had semi-regular wars. Since then, many of the issues have been packaged in such a binary way that arguably the "need" for a third party wasn't super strong. There's an interesting scenario where the Civil War doesn't happen and you do get some more regional powers competing, maybe even forming individual parties. However, circling back to one part of the "structure" argument: only one person can win the Presidency outright, otherwise the decision goes to the House. This happened, but was messy and unpredictable, so no one really wanted that to happen again. And remember, the president is increasingly powerful, and drives the big issues in politics, rather than reflects it! So there's motivation for regions to group together if only for convenience.
Since the US was first, many other democracies formed since then sometimes deliberately structure their democracies to be multi-party, such as via proportional representation or so such. Historically, though, again the US was first, so not only was our system the only one in town, but parties had to be "invented"! It took like 40 years for them to start to take shape, and the issues that became big deals in the US were also often of a very specific flavor: how to use the national apparatus to help specific local regions. Thus state-level and national politics are very intertwined. Also, due to the historical structure of state government, as well as state loyalty and identity, municipal power would very rarely be competitive with state power, so those elections were often done in tandem. And national issues almost historically have very often driven voting enthusiasm more than municipal issues (!!), so splinters in local approaches within one party almost never lead to local-only splinter parties. Furthermore, state and national candidates have to come from somewhere! If you have ambitions to be a bigger fish, why would you join a smaller party? I buried a lede for voting expansion in the earlier paragraph. It's my (weak) understanding that some important "third-party" groups in Canada formed in the aftermath of increasing suffrage. In the US, these new constituencies were often rapidly absorbed.
India is the other major counter-example of the FPTP theory. Duverger notes that FPTP works on a district-level, and this is low-key the case in India. However, India has also had extreme local social, religious, and economic stratification! This pairs with fewer major wars and international crises (we are in the post-WWII era exclusively, remember), which also means that there are fewer overpowering national questions. To some extent, there is economic motivation to create more national party-coalition blocs, but local identity politics is very strong to this date. While in the recent decade the BJP is showing early signs of a dominant party, it is yet to be seen if and how that might trickle down to state and municipal contests. Finally, India has a president, but they are also chosen indirectly, and are mostly ceremonial, but it's still worth pointing out how they are chosen: members of parliament (!) combined with locally elected leaders (!) use a secret ballot (!) of RCV-IRV ranked voting (!). The president in turn works basically like the Crown does for the UK, where the PM is chosen, again indirectly, via a confidence-based coalition approach (and can lose said confidence), and then basically appoints all the top level executive branch themselves.
So in short: I'd argue history mostly, which has heavily involved the president. A typical political scientist might say it's structurally all FPTP, with the constitutional role of President being relevant as a tiebreaker. Furthermore many modern democracies deliberately construct themselves to be different than the US in some way, despite the obvious influences, so it's not really a fair comparison in the statistical-causal sense.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
Per Politico, Zohran Mamdani set to topple Andrew Cuomo in NYC mayoral race, at least the Democratic primary. Live results here if that changes. The general election is in November -- Cuomo left the door open as he conceded tonight already to run as an independent; current mayor Eric Adams already is intending to run as an independent. This is nothing short of a massive political earthquake. Here's what I see as the most important questions raised:
Did ranked choice (and associated strategy) make a major difference?
We don't know yet quite how much. In percents, Mamdani leads 43.5 - 36.4 with 91% reporting as of writing, this means on Tuesday ranked-choice results will be released as he didn't clear 50% alone, since Brad Lander who cross-endorsed Mamdani has 11.4, Adrienne Adams who did not for anyone has 4.1. But it seems a foregone conclusion he will win. I'm not certain how detailed a ranked-choice result we get. Do we get full ranked choice results/anonymized data, or do we only see the final result, or do we get stage by stage? The voter-facing guide is here which I might have to peruse. I think the RCV flavor here is IRV (fewest first-place votes eliminated progressively between virtual "rounds" until one has a majority)
In terms of counterfactuals, I believe the previous Democratic primary system was 40%+ wins, under 40% led to a runoff between top two, so Mamdani would have won that anyways. But the general election is, near as I can tell, not ranked choice, it is instead simply plurality, no runoff. This creates some interesting dynamics. Of course, it's also possible the pre-voting dynamics and candidate strategies of this race were affected.
My thoughts? It seems Cuomo was ganged up on, and I think ranked choice accelerated this. It will be very interesting to see how this did or did not pay off for Lander specifically -- was he close-ish to a situation where people hate Cuomo most, but are still uncomfortable enough with Mamdani to hand Lander a surprise victory from behind? Statistically this seems unlikely in this particular case, but it could still happen, and how close he comes could offer some interesting insights about how popular a strategy like this might be in the future.
Will Democratic support and the primary victory make a difference in the general election?
The literal million-dollar question. Cuomo might very well run again as an independent -- otherwise his career is kind of extra-finished, no? I suppose he could always try and run for Congress later, but this is a black eye no matter how you spin it. Eric Adams, the former Democratic candidate, has also had his share of scandals, so potentially there is some similarity with Cuomo on that level. But he does have an incumbency advantage, and has expected some kind of fight for a while. Republicans might back him more, however, depending on how much they dislike Mamdani. It's hard to say. Also, Mamdani would have the Democratic party machinery and resources behind him. How much will they pitch in? That's an open question for sure. It will certainly help to some extent, for legitimacy if nothing else.
Will these results generalize nationally? And if so, what part of the results?
First of all, you must see this as an absolute W for grassroots. Cuomo is a political super-insider, despite being a major bully who is widely disliked. Yet many former enemies have backed him anyways, especially more "moderate" ones. Interesting article link. Bloomberg for example backed him. He formed a super PAC "Fix the City" and it spent a ton of time on negative attacks against Mamdani, especially on his pro-Palestinian comments framing them as anti-Israel. There's that angle of course. I'd rather not get into it personally, but I'm sure there will be some observations about if the Israel-Palestinian issue was big or not, whether it was fair, etc.
Then there's the socialism angle. Do Democrats want more extreme left candidates? Are socialists ready for the big time? Was this Cuomo's unique weaknesses? Was is just crazy turnout among young people? Did AOC and friends help a lot? All things we will be thinking about for a number of months to come. Personally, I see this as Mamdani doing much, much better among kitchen-table issues for the median voter. All about affordability. Of course, the merit of his attempt is a separate question. He's pro rent control (economically sketchy but not unheard of), wants to create public supermarkets (horrible idea all around, supermarket margins are very small), taxing the rich (will they flee or not?), and is obviously young and not super experienced.
Mini-rant of the day (am I repeating myself or do I have deja vu? must be getting old): While I appreciate the intention behind occasionally using "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun in cases where the gender is unspecified, the amount of reading fatigue it generates is underrated. First let me say that my actual preference might be a somewhat stupid-sounding but actually refreshing/mildly helpful habit of simply using the opposite pronoun as a habit. For instance, in the financial column "Money Stuff" (great reading BTW) the author when talking about an imagined or generic CEO will use "she" as the pronoun. I'm not really a believer in the whole micro-aggression literature, but I can still see that subtle and low-key (non-mandatory) attempts at gently pushing back against stereotypes can be nice. Handy little reminder not to jump to assumptions. For fairness, this should be more generalized: teachers are mostly women, so use "he" as the general form. Doctors are mostly men, so use "she". College grads are mostly women, so use "he". "They" can still work in a pinch, or perhaps in official documents, but I feel like the tradeoffs involve are favorable on the whole.
But nonbinary people in fiction? That's a whole different story. Consider the following sentence ripped from a story I am reading:
This sentence is a total mess, and a nontrivial cognitive load, for no good reason. Well, not zero good reason, but here the tradeoffs fall very strongly against a generic pronoun: the loss in clarity, the mental burden, the flow disruption, the forced "backtracking" through the sentence to clarify meaning are absolutely terrible. The first "they" isn't immediately clear on the subject - is it the two people, or the nonbinary person? Okay, contextually, we figure out it's Jherica. But then we have an implied subject (who is doing the giving?), the next "them" needs context that takes a moment to process (Jherica again), and then another "they" also referring to Jherica, but needs double-checking. The wonderful thing about this sentence if Jherica were given a normal gender is that "they" clearly refers to the pair of people and not the individual. It's a useful tool in sentence mechanics that is completely ruined. "She" or "he" might induce a small amount of confusion (did the author accidentally chop up the pair and is referring to just one of them?) but partly that would be the author's fault for substandard sentence construction, and I still don't think it is quite as bad. It's far from uncommon to be referring to a group of people alongside an individual, and super useful to be able to casually and implicitly differentiate the two via pronouns.
To be clear, the story is wonderful, and there isn't any big deal or mention made about gender here at all (at least if there was I have no memory of it), and authors can make mistakes especially when self-edited (as is likely the case here). Or, in fact, I'm not even positive the author did make said character non-binary in the first place, since the author occasionally uses "he" in the next chapter, but not always. So it's not some massive culture war thing in this particular case. I think the point remains however that some progressives have tried to gaslight people (including myself) that gender-neutral pronouns are a minor inconvenience at best, and leverage already-existing rules of English. It's true that "they" already can serve this purpose (e.g. "Who's at the door and what do they want?" when it is fully unknown) but there are still some significant burdens if it becomes popularized.
It seems that it really shouldn't be a big loss to perform some nonbinary erasure here. Many forms of fiction already do things to make it easier on the reader (and I always notice when they do) such as giving main characters names that begin with different letters, or in anime they will color the hair differently not just for aesthetics but to make characters more differentiable. Sure, these semantic and visual 'collisions' happen IRL quite a lot (e.g. two Joshes on your team at work), but it seems to me the loss in realism is more than offset by the practical benefits. Note that this isn't purely an anti-woke position, in my book: I think giving characters some identifiable traits can make them more memorable. So there might be good reasons to throw in an unrealistic number of non-straight or mixed-race people into your TV show beyond deliberate representation! I don't think I'm advocating for anything too extreme.
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