Same for me with boxing. I once sparred with a natural champion of my country. The speed and power were just incredible, actually frightening. And that guy was far away from Olympics level or top professionals. It’s hard for a normal person to understand how good the top people are.
Another one: when I was a kid. There was a guy a few years older who would basically win the matches in his youth league alone. He would often score 10 or 20 goals per match . He finally made it to the pros. There he played a few matches and didn’t get another contract because he wasn’t good enough. Now imagine how good somebody like Messi must be.
The two main parties in the US are way too happy with the status for any change to happen. If there is one thing they hate more than each other it's another party.
I don't think that is actually true. It is in part redistricting that lead to the ascendancy of extremism, by putting all of the strategic emphasis on the primaries in uncontested constituencies.
"Redistricting" isn't a new recent thing, it is a process done by state legislatures to state and federal legislative district every decade that has been used for both personal and partisan advantage since the founding; the word "gerrymander" was coined in criticism of a particular instance in 1812.
I think there is a primary-related problem going on right now that could change historically held positions on the value to financial backers interests of uncontested general elections.
1. The original 1787 apportionment would result in a House of Representatives of ~30k members[1].
2. That's obviously unwieldy, and so we haven't had a bump in seats since ... 1910.
3. 'Factions' were viewed dimly by the Founders. I would argue in favor of two immediate changes:
- Term limits for everything, including shorter max civil service careers. Capitol Hill, like any compost heap, benefits from regular turning.
- A "bidder bunch" rule, whereby if Congress can't manage its key function--that of producing a budget--then none of these goofs (even the ones I admire) get to run for their seat when next up. There are copious talented alternative people to put on ballots. Do your job or face corporate punishment, say I.
> A "bidder bunch" rule, whereby if Congress can't manage its key function--that of producing a budget--then none of these goofs (even the ones I admire) get to run for their seat when next up
This creates an obvious and huge perverse incentive to throw a wrench into the works any time you want a do-over.
Not having a real budget is just a parliamentary procedure tactic, creating pressure opportunities when various continuing resolutions come up. If they have to make a budget they’ll make one, that doesn’t mean they’ll actually stop being partisan fools and put together a good one. It'll still be subject to all the usual nonsense.
How? You don’t think you could find Democrats, today, who wouldn’t roll the dice on a new Congress? The proposal essentially gives a narrow minority the ability to call no confidence.
So, you're saying that a large number (say, 100) of minority members of the House would scuttle their current seats in order to blow away the majority party's seats?
I remind you that, under the current regime, Sen. Schumer (D-BY) played along with the GOP Continuing Resolution* not because he fancied the CR, but to avoid giving the Treasury the power of the purse that would come with a shutdown.
I find it hard to believe the House of Reps could be any more unwieldy than it already is though. More seats would make it far harder to buy and corrupt legislation votes and make it easier for independents and 3rd parties to gain seats.
You can't physically seat them in the current venue, for starters.
Also, for all of the defects of First Past the Post, it's well-understood and supports entry-level participation.
The theoretical superiority of Ranked Choice Voting is overshadowed by the hidden assertion that everyone casting a ballot in RCV has done the homework.
Having served as an election officer for the last 12yrs, the KISS superiority of FPTP is the least-worst alternatives. I wouldn't want RCV even at the county level.
Even then it’s still superior. Even if everyone ignores the individual candidates and votes for a party in e.g. a 5 member constituency where the vote is split ~70:30 the minority party would likely get at least one seat when now votes are effectively thrown into the thrash bin.
> Having served as an election officer for the last 12yrs
The implication being that it would make the job too hard for you?
FPTP is a horrible system any way you look at it. It results in almost 50% of the votes being outright discarded and permanently entrenches a 2 party system.
> It results in almost 50% of the votes being outright discarded and permanently entrenches a 2 party system.
I don't see how either of these assertions follow.
The size of the mandate is important, and the connection between a 2 party "system" and FPTP is something that you'd need to elaborate upon, because there is nothing about the ballot as such stipulating the number of parties. I. Fact, other parties are frequently on the ballot, so the dominance of 2 parties is not obviously connected to FPTP as such.
Hypothetically that was true. Until those founders started engaging in actual politics and became rabidly partisan.
There was a brief period when the Federalists collapsed and US effectively became a single party state with the Democratic-Republicans controlling everything but that was decades after the constitution was signed.
with 30k electors in the house, I expect it would be much more predictable.
It seems plausible to me that it would decrease corruption. It is a lot easier for power brokers and interests to lobby a 435 member house, than 30K member house. Inversely, it is a lot easier for a citizen to lobby their representative when they are 1/12,000 instead of 1/800k.
30k members--that's a couple of Army Divisions--is more likely to form rigid authoritarian groupings simple to get in and out of the building in a reasonable amount of time.
People don't scale. The overhead of coordinating among so many people would be stifling.
No, the correct approach in my view is to delegate as much as possible back to the States.
We need another one whose motto is "Country Over Party," and is backed by locked down solid ethics that always follows right vs. wrong with right (not politically right or left) guiding everything this entity stands for and is guided by. Present day it's neither party standing for right vs. wrong it's the b.s. Right (politically) vs. Left(politically) or Left vs. Right! Gross, there's neither party today cares about right vs. wrong or integrity just divide the country further!!!
> locked down solid ethics that always follows right vs. wrong with right (not politically right or left) guiding everything this entity stands for and is guided by
As in?
People can legitimately disagree about what is right and wrong, or what even falls on a moral continuum. Nailing down a moment’s broad truth is among the most revered roles in any society.
Can they ... poll a group of people (right and lefties) and ask...
If vandalizing a Telsa and vandalizing the US Capitol are both wrong and my focus is only the act of vandalism in asking this question. Overall, both acts are clear cut wrong!
Those who refuse to say both are wrong their brains are driven now by political emotional mind control babble where they've thrown out knowing and standing for right over wrong.
Not driven by feelings or political emotional babble as it's hard to believe anything when it comes to politics. Im all about clear cut right from wrong and clear cut facts, as well that was a wrong act! It was something that led to the revolutionary war, which is a clear cut fact!
I guess you showed that your mind is driven/controlled by political emotional babble & narratives made up by the right (tho maybe your left or an independent who leans right) & it's media (right or left .. all make up narratives) you consume. But I don't want to jump to conclusions.
> you showed that your mind is driven/controlled by political emotional babble & narratives made up by the right
I rest my case that models that cast the world in black and white are the wrongest of the bunch, as they’re essentially a hard default for legalism and the status quo.
They are not the same though. Equating both acts is disingenuous and at the very least distasteful. One is destruction of private property other is an attempt to overthrow the government and possibly murder politicians the mob does not agree with.
The closest equivalent would the a mob breaking into Tesla’s HQ while shouting stuff about hanging Musk.
I can easily imagine a myriad of situations where vandalizing a car is ethically the right choice, e.g. if it is made by someone who is the sieg-heiling number one supporter of an president struggling to overthrow democracy.
And I studied ethics. Meanwhile you have supporters of Trump vandalizing the capital because they couldn't accept the result of a democratic election with the goal to force their minority opinion onto the majority.
Those who don't equate the two simply realized that context matters in ethics. Example: Stealing is wrong. Not stealing when a child is starving and no one can help is more wrong. However stealing from someone whose child is starving is more wrong than stealing from a faceless multinational corporation that exploits millions. This is btw. something you can also observe in real life ethical decisions. That doesn't mean the excuse people find for themselves is always factually correct, but in US politics one side sees actively making shit up as a strength now, so that should tell us something about how much care is given for reality.
You likely tricked yourself into equating the two (vandalizing a symbol of a unelected fascist billionair VS a mob trying to force the senate to ignore the will of millions) by drawing a mental bubble around the word "vandalized" and assuming two acts are the same because their description may contain the same word. This is quite frankly an astonishingly simplistic stance to take. Words are things used to describe reality, yes, but reducing real acts down to one word, removing all the context and then equating words is not how ethics work.
Maybe you remember the trolly problem craze from a while ago. The original trolly problem premise is that murder is wrong and you have a lever where you can save 5 lives by switching the lever to a track with only one person stuck. The variations on the trolly problem are essentially a mental experiment to explore the ethical context of a decision. Our ethics prof e.g. liked to propose a variation where you have to push one person off a bridge in order to stop the trolly, suddenly everybody would deem it wrong. Turns out whether it is a lever or you have to touch a person makes a huge difference in how close to murder it feels.
I'm not sure you've really demonstrated the ethics of vandalizing the car. In this trolley problem there's a billionaire that you're upset about riding in the trolley and the lever you suggest pulling just destroys some random dude's car without affecting the billionaire. Elon Musk doesn't own the Tesla cars you see driving down the street, they're owned by people who wanted a car that doesn't create smog.
Consider the point the parent of this side conversation was trying to make: What if there was a party with the guiding principal of keeping the country together and pursuing policy based on sound principals rather than "what will own the libs" or "stop the fascists"? The things you complain about are happening because of divisive politics. Trump is powerful because he listened to people who were being ignored or attacked by the political hegemony, and it turned out that was a small majority of the country. It's a shame that someone with admirable personality traits didn't think of it first.
How would you reform the political and voting system to improve the total happiness in the united states?
Another ethical question for you: that mob believed the election was rigged and that the senate was ignoring the will of the nation. Based on that belief, were they acting ethically? Keep in mind that this is bigger than the trolley problem. Sort of an iterated trolley problem, if you will.
Not that it justifies burning random cars but it’s not entirely irrational. If some people stop buying Tesla just because they are afraid that someone would vandalize it etc. that does achieve something..
Im being downvoted by those who love the division and do not want unity! They've all lost sight of being able to stand for clear, cut right and wrong as if i told any them a story saying my friend's car got vandalized then they went into their office building where they work and that was vandalized too they'd definitely agree that is wrong. Yet add politics into the mix and they lose their minds/ability to properly judge/stand for right and wrong cause they allow their minds to be bought and sold to poltical emotional babble/narratives in which they have zero way of verifying if any are true!
I think AI should be the next party where people and all their b.s. cant affect it's rock solid moral and ethical code. It follows clear cut right over wrong, it is all about unity, peace/love for all human beings of all different types of backgrounds and it uses massive amounts of data to adjust how its ethics changes over time. So, it's M.O. (one i described) remains updated to per how society changes. Of course that could lead to an even worse system but just thinking out of the box as i do and getting downvoted for such thinking as usual lol
As well AI could be used to monitor all politicians day and night routine to ensure veracity in everything they do/push for and ensure those politicians are following the AIs ethical code of law and they're serving the people not the politician or any of the politicians cronies or interest groups that do not serve the people as a whole!
> California could make this change by referendum.
No, it could not, because Article I, Section 3 (emphasis added): "The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators." (the last part of that about choosing Senators has its effect eliminated by the 17th Amendment, but that isn't important here.)
And Congress has exercised its authority in U.S. Code Title 2, Section 2c (emphasis added): "In each State entitled in the Ninety-first Congress or in any subsequent Congress thereafter to more than one Representative under an apportionment made pursuant to the provisions of section 2a(a) of this title, there shall be established by law a number of districts equal to the number of Representatives to which such State is so entitled, and Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative (except that a State which is entitled to more than one Representative and which has in all previous elections elected its Representatives at Large may elect its Representatives at Large to the Ninety-first Congress)."
> why would they if other states retain a system that disproportionally skews sits towards one party?
Because your constituents are better represented. California strikes me as a potent place to do this because I could see a constitutional amendment passing at the ballot box.
But they aren't better represented unless everyone else does the same.
Suppose California were to do it, resulting in a proportional allocation of seats in the House for its delegation. If this causes the House to swing from Democratic majority to Republican majority, the net effect is the opposite of what most Californians wanted.
Don't get me wrong, I get the point that it is a more fair and equitable way of doing things, and in principle, I agree. But if you play fair at a table where everybody else cheats, you lose. My state (WA) also has referendums, and if such a proposal would come up, I would absolutely vote against it - unless it was some kind of interstate compact where another similarly-sized red state were to implement the same reform at the same time.
I’ve had this exact thought: that Texas and California should have some sort of compact to do it at the same time. That would be a boon for Texas Democrats (of whom there are many) and California Republicans (ditto).
" find my mind just doesn't want to go beyond about 5-10 minutes of breathing, vs the 30 minutes I did in breathwork sessions."
Same for me. I did a workshop with Wim Hof and the breathing exercises were great with really profound effects. But I couldn't make myself practicing at home with the same intensity regularly. I also developed a pretty bad cough after a few weeks. Probably from the dry air where I live.
I think it’s ignorance and arrogance. The US seems to be on a path to lose technological and science leadership. The current leadership doesn’t seem to understand things that aren’t flashy. I wonder when they’ll dial back on food safety. I am sure RFK knows some vitamins that protect against salmonella
important to note: the US's food safety is already really bad. salmonella isn't a thing you have to worry about in first world countries. can't wait to see what plague demon spawns out of a food industry running amok after the FDA gets gutted.
> important to note: the US's food safety is already really bad. salmonella isn't a thing you have to worry about in first world countries.
There were 65,000 cases of salmonellosis in the EU in the most recent data I could find (2022). Thats a lower per capita rate than the US, but definitely not zero.
I agree that it’s not zero, but according to CDC, the US sees about 1.35 million cases per year in a population of about 346 million, which is about 390 cases per 100,000 people. Your figure for the EU over a population of 447 million in 2022 gives 14.5 cases per 100,000 people, or more than a factor of 26 less.
Being 26 times less worried about something translates, at least for most things, for me, to not being worried about it any more.
Salmonella and it causes are very regional in EU. Places like Finland have basically 0 cases of salmonella caused by domestic poultry products per year. If there salmonella is found from any chicken in the flock, the whole flock will be quarantined and generally fully slaughtered (meat & eggs must be pasteurized after the slaughter if they are sold). In 2023 0.1% of the tested flocks had salmonella.
"The vast majority of chicken processed in the United States is not chilled in chlorine and hasn't been for quite a few years," says Dianna Bourassa, an applied poultry microbiologist at Auburn University, "So that's not the issue."
I don't think he's considered a small gov conservative. He increased spending last time and has continued so far this term. His tariffs are one of the biggest expansions in gov interference in modern history. They are also attempting to significantly expand executive power beyond even 9/11 terrorism days.
My read is that started as anti colonialism against the French but then the big powers took sides so the Vietnamese started fighting each other.
The sad thing is that a lot of problems could have been avoided if the Americans in the 50s wouldn't have been so scared of any kind of communism or socialism. They messed up Iran, they drove Egypt into the arms of the Soviets, and they may have even had friendlier relationships with Fidel Castro.
Ah but you forget that the economic exploitation of the former colonies was supposed to continue. It is not so much communism that frightened the West as it was nationalism.
Vietnam’s independence took a back seat after WW2 for the US because France made regaining its colony contingent upon playing along with NATO. France floated the idea of aligning with the USSR to scare its Western allies. So for the US it decided Europe was the more important sphere.
The US’s main strategy with the communism was one of containment - see George Kennan’s Security Council memo.
Why containment? Because the USSR was exporting revolution. The US could take the stance of doing nothing, but then the USSR would have free rein. And it wasn’t a matter of “let the people in those countries go communist if they want to”, because with USSR support a minority of people could impose communism on a population that wasn’t interested in it. Hence containment - just slow or stop other countries from going communist by matching what the USSR was doing - bankrolling and training political groups in those countries.
So doing nothing with Vietnam and letting France regain their colony aligned with containing further expansion of communist in South East Asia. If Vietnam went back to a French colony, then communism wouldn’t take hold (or it would at least be difficult for it).
"I have seen people (one was a VP of Engineering) escorted out of the building, sent in a cab to home along with a security guard (this was in India), not allowed access to computer or talk with other employees. "
Some companies are just paranoid. My company has now had several rounds of layoffs, people were kept on for a few months, got severance and everything went as harmonious as layoffs can be.
The cruelty the way some companies and now Musk with DOGE are doing it is simply not necessary and reflects a lot on the character of leadership. To me it looks like they are deeply insecure and hate their people.
“ There is no expectation, for example, that a billionaire should provide welfare or build a stadium out of his own pocket and provide free entertainment to the masses”
It’s the other way now. The taxpayers are paying for stadiums so the billionaires can charge a ton of money for entertainment
Another one: when I was a kid. There was a guy a few years older who would basically win the matches in his youth league alone. He would often score 10 or 20 goals per match . He finally made it to the pros. There he played a few matches and didn’t get another contract because he wasn’t good enough. Now imagine how good somebody like Messi must be.