VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
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User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
There are too many possibilities to reasonably jump from a report of a burst pipe to fraud.
I was talking with a local friend who works elections in [red state] and apparently at the end of the night they loaded the local machine-counted sums for the precinct into the back of a personal vehicle (in tamper-sealed boxes) and drove them to the county central counting facility to hand them off. Apparently last time it was just the driver, and this year they were instructed to at least drive together in pairs, potentially followed by the poll watchers.
My thoughts were roughly (1) I think I mostly trust these folks to do the right thing, but (2) it'd be really easy for anything dramatic here to make national headlines, and I'm kind of surprised it hasn't. I guess you have burst pipes as an example, but "DC ballots stolen when election worker gets carjacked on the way to deliver results" seems quite plausible as a random happenstance but also looks a lot like deliberate election fraud. We're IMO lucky that doesn't seem to have happened.
Also that securing a distributed secret ballot is a fundamentally harder problem than most would give credit for.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
Do you think Jones would have escaped the huge damages if he claimed that, I suppose, his bipolar disorder made him do it? I don't know if he's ever been diagnosed with anything like that, but there also seems to be to be at least a vibe that those sorts of protections don't apply to red tribers like Jones, but do to the in-group sometimes.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
I guess I'm not a political consultant, so I might be very wrong (then again, so are the consultants sometimes), but my visceral feeling here is that politicians that have previously staked out now-seen-as-extreme positions won't be able to just sweep history under the rug. Harris tried, and while it wasn't the only argument against, plenty of Trump campaign hay was reaped from her stated 2020 policy positions and Senate votes. I can't see AOC winning without a huge vibe shift back to 2016-2020 Democrats' values (not impossible if the next term goes very poorly, I suppose) or explicitly talking about why crying in front of border fences was good then but doesn't conflict with an immigration stance that isn't "open borders" now.
But of her generation of left-leaning politicians, I don't find her the worst.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
In at least a few non-Ivy schools I keep tabs on, student-led BDS efforts last year got forcibly pushed aside by non-student university leadership, presumably concerned more about federal law regarding national origin discrimination (and maybe also in response to major benefactors grumbling). Generally this took the form of "student elected leadership may not even debate this motion" and while there was (and probably remains) some grumbling from some students, it seemed that the university won.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
Probably because they need to actually pass a technical interviews to get in rather than just being able to con their way through informal interviews.
This has been my experience in (non-FAANG) engineering, although most of the South Asian ancestry engineers I've worked with have been citizens or at least permanent residents that studied at good schools in the US, so it's probably not a representative sample of the space. I've had no real complaints about working with them, and many have been quite talented and motivated.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
I don't know if trying to turn Reddit from 95% pro-Democrat to 99% pro-Democrat was worth what the Democrats invested in it, but it might be.
I've come to the conclusion that local political censorship ("evaporative cooling") within a community is something that probably has pretty strongly nonlinear behavior. Badgering, for small values of badgering, works in terms of swaying consensus -- it probably shows up great in academic studies or commercial A/B ad testing. But it reaches a point of diminishing, or even negative returns: at some point, maybe even between your 95 and 99 percent numbers, where the evaporated community starts condensing and forming its own alternative structures, eventually re-establishing a more representative balance.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
And as a result there's not a whole lot of competence on display among the federal government workforce.
While there are certainly plenty of examples of this, I don't think it's as universal as is often claimed. I've known government technical folks that are incredibly competent and focused, especially in leadership roles. Sometimes you get folks in over their heads, but I don't know that the general low-level public-facing employees (social security office staff?) should be taken as typical examples. And honestly I've had pretty good experiences even with my local mail carriers and park service rangers. I've seen general-level officers speak a few times and always been impressed -- memorably, one gave an hour long technical keynote with slides without ever glancing at anything but the audience.
There is a lot of pride and patriotism, and to be honest not even that bad of pay, in the federal service in at least some areas. On the other hand, they are hamstrung by a very risk-averse culture -- nobody ever got fired for adding an extra protracted approval process or required training -- and by complicated rulebooks cooked up in response to the last few thousand times someone defrauded the government. There is certainly room for substantial improvement.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
Was that a deliberate attempt to kill pedestrians (terrorism) or just complete reckless disregard in the heat of the moment? The degree of premeditation wasn't clear to me from what I read of the press coverage at the time.
There was also the 2014 incident at SXSW that killed 2 and injured 23, although that seemed to be reckless disregard while fleeing police, rather than ideologically motivated.
Not sure if it makes a difference to me in terms of the relevant criminal punishments, but it seems like it would be relevant for trying to categorize similar events.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
Using a truck rental as a weapon wasn't a thing until that Nice attack.
As a ramming weapon, yes. But there was a spate of using them in bombings in the '90s. The 1993 WTC bombing and 1995 Oklahoma City bombing both used Ryder rental trucks. But I suppose that just proves your point that people crazy enough to commit mass homicide are rather derivative in terms of their methods.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
'Luxury' housing is just the word we use to describe the most expensive houses, it's not a characteristic of the houses that makes them qualitatively different.
It's even worse than that: it's a pretty meaningless marketing adjective that makes you feel better about paying a lot for something. Everyone slaps on the label except those at the cheapest, er "Value!" end of the market looking for price-conscious customers, and the polar opposite of brands that are well-known to the point where using the label is déclassé. And this doesn't just apply to housing.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
As much as I hate remakes in most cases, I keep imagining a modern take on Back to the Future featuring a Cybertruck and an oblique reference like this to the "Who is the president in 1985?" "Ronald Reagan." "Ronald Reagan? The actor?" gag.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
I believe the official position of both Taipei and Beijing is that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of it. They disagree on which government is legitimate for it, though.
As such, I'm not surprised the US endorses this stance (although it does have some relations with Taiwan). I do hear that the vibe in Taiwan is shifting toward more acceptance of standalone independence, too.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
Color me also skeptical, because otherwise one might expect to see noticeable IQ differences between the towns that don't add fluoride (famously, Portland) and the rest of the country.
Now, I have heard people suggest that "there must be something [not] in the water in Portland", but that is never followed by "and it's making them smarter than the rest of us."
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
Are you sure? The phrase that comes to mind is "wine-dark sea". I've seen academics suggest that the notion of blue is a surprisingly modern invention.
although it's hard to measure by design
I've been wondering recently if there is a term for the science/art/engineering of organizational structures for a specific goal. I know it very peripherally in how IT security engineering starts overlapping with physical security (two factor, physical access control, social engineering attacks), but I haven't seen a collected book or corpus of "how to design your organization to align incentives and ensure people can be kept honest". Does such a thing exist? Or is it too broad and disorganized of a topic? On the gripping hand, would I even trust something based on psychology and human factors research given the replication crisis?
Unsure, but interested in reading more.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
I can't speak to the exact systems they are using, but my laptop from 15 years ago had two levels of BIOS passwords. You could set one (and I did) to prevent booting without the password, and another to actually making changes to the system. Assuming this is similar, I'd bet it's the password to just turn the thing on, not change it.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
because their opponent is Trump.
It's probably a little early, but maybe someone should start collecting bets on whether the next Republican candidate gets tarred as uniquely evil in the same way. Seems quite likely to me, but I guess a lot depends on next week there.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
What has always amused me is that we've spent quite a bit of effort nationally tamping down discrimination in the basis of national origin, but I've never seen it applied domestically. Saying "Georgians need not apply" and rejecting job applications from those born in Tbilisi is actually against federal law. I don't know of any case law if you do that for Atlanta.
Is there some for Puerto Ricans? They are American from a national origin perspective. You could make an argument that it's a language and cultural thing, but nobody is up in arms about California banning contracts with Texas (because inadequate social justice) for a disparate impact on Spanish-speaking Tejanos.
We've become so fixed on rooting out certain discrimination, but turn a blind eye to it domestically.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
True, but I have about as much faith that Tony Hinchcliffe was joking about a legitimate solid waste management problem (which is, at best, only really only funny to an audience familiar with its existence) as I do in the administration's apostrophe in the Biden transcript.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
On the other hand, much of the Biden-turned-Harris campaign's message has been focused on how Trump is morally dangerous and demonizes people. If your message is that even people who disagree with you should vote for you because of your Moral Superiority™️, debasing yourself and even dipping a toe in the waters of open hatred makes it really easy to show the moral claims are a farce.
If you're an on-the-fence voter here -- maybe even disliking both candidates -- but leaning toward holding your nose to vote for Harris on account of "decorum", her boss calling your friends (the neighbor with a Trump sign on the lawn) "garbage" probably gives quite a bit of pause. At least it does to me.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
To be fair, allowing the government to (we assume, fairly) sort out crap registrations is probably better than allowing organizations running registration drives the flexibility to "lose" or unfairly reject applications in a biased manner. "Whoops, we misplaced all the [other side demographics] voters" should be avoided too.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
I actually have the opposite opinion: it prevents local shenanigans from swinging the overall vote except in niche cases (which admittedly have happened at least once in my lifetime in Florida). National popular vote means that any ballot box can be stuffed to swing the result, subject to mostly local rules on elections.
Although I will concede that it's disproportionate weighting of votes between states is probably not ideal.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2yr ago
WALZ: You can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. That’s the test. That’s the Supreme Court test!
Narrator: It is not, in fact, the Supreme Court test. That would be "imminent lawless action".
What sort of spin bike are you using? There is a reason serious cyclists (both mountain and road) use "clipless" pedals. The name is historical: it refers to cycling shoes with a cleat that locks firmly into the pedals. For very maximal force efforts, track cyclists then often add straps ("clips") even now.
I've seen spin bikes with the hardware to optionally connect to cleats (usually Shimano SPD mountain bike cleats) on pedals that can also be used with regular shoes. But sometimes they just have flat pedals.
There is probably also something to be said for good technique. Are you having trouble at high cadences/efforts specifically or more broadly?
From what I've read, she was effectively working for the company from its founding until it was self-sustaining in the late 90s, doing everything from negotiating logistics deals to even shipping packages when it was still operating out of a garage.
If your comparison is the first dozen employees at Apple or Microsoft, she probably deserved pretty hefty compensation just for that effort alone. But there are probably other reasonable perspectives.
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