Phenomephrene

You’re right. Sorry about that. I don’t want to put words in your mouth.

I recognize the problem you bring up, and that’s exactly why I’ve said what else I’ve had to say in this thread. The person you were responding to still has a point in what they’re saying. I’m not convinced they were asking for absolution of the Dems as a whole.

What are your ideas for enacting ranked choice voting that don’t involve leveraging the Democrats to make it happen?

It could maybe happen in individual states that allow citizen introduced ballot measures. That would be great. The scope and efficacy of that idea is pretty stunted though. You’d have to hope the measure passes in the first place, and counting on it to act as a catalyst for every other state to adopt the same is unrealistic. I’d expect a much longer time horizon on that approach than engaging with Democrats as far as making it the standard for the country at large.

That’s the other alternative I can think of to get the foot in the door, but I’m very open to hearing anything else that’s feasible.

The left in the U.S. seemingly has such a poor grasp of coalition oriented politics despite needing exactly that in order to become viable at all as political entities. It’s maddening. If people on the left en masse could put their ideals on the back burner long enough (and we’re only talking a couple/few election cycles) to force through issues of vote reform and campaign finance reform by working through the Democrats they could spend the rest of their lives voting for people that a) actually represent their values and b) actually have a shot at being elected.

Edit: That time frame may be optimistic, but the point stands. Cooperation/consolidation amongst the genuine left as a voting block/political force, and doing so through the currently actionable political channels, is what it’s going to take to get to where we want to go.

RCV will still have an effect on gerrymandered districts. It disrupts the clear funding strategies of lining up behind a single/pair of candidate(s). It becomes either a lot less guaranteed that your funding dollars are being put to good use, or a lot more expensive to make sure that they are. [Caveat: this obviously assumes some depth of a viable candidacy pool in a given district/race.]

Legit, if you have never contacted your reps in Congress before to let them know that they should be supporting a bill this is the time to do it. Make as much noise as possible on this one. It has the potential to be more impactful on every issue than most any other bill concerning a single issue. The only contenders I could think of would be campaign finance reforms or possibly some prohibitive action against regulatory capture.

Hum-diddy-hee-hee Hoo-ah Hoo-ah

There’s a rule against that, yeah, but it’s easy to get around the rules. All he needs to do is get one of his colleagues to scratch it for him.

Deli-sliced turkey, muenster cheese, honey mustard, and my home-made pickles, on wheat.

Beta testing a system update. Lots of improvements here. This beta has been open for quite a while, and it seems to be catching on. It’s already more or less stable. I expect mass adoption with somewhat regional distribution at the 1.0 release. Of course you’ll have the stragglers insisting the out-dated version was better. In comparison I find it clunky, restrictive, and demanding. Our processing power has increased in orders of magnitude; why we’d want to keep using an archaic way of doing things like this is a head scratcher.

Yeah. While I think it unlikely enough that anyone from the Vatican is using the fediverse, I think I’m safe in completely dismissing out of hand that anyone with the official capacity to represent the Vatican is here posting about their dissatisfaction with the Olympics.

This is mostly me as well. The only difference is that I’ve pretty much stopped drinking soda. Everything else is accurate though.

Pro tip: Have other people do the scratching.

The only way to become a billionaire is to exploit the labor of others.

Aye. It helps with my anxiety, can be an excellent escape and provide a different frame of reference on things, is a way I deal with extreme pain, and overall just enhances quality of life.

Highly recommended.

All of the above depending on what your budget is.

Many software emulations are more than serviceable, and again depending on your budget can offer some really advanced parameter controls to mimic different types of speakers in differently sized cabinets being recorded with different types of mics in different recording spaces.

Pedals can still vary widely in quality, but there are some really good ones out there that can serve as a backup in case there’s any on-stage technical problems, or even serve as a completely fine fly rig in and of themselves.

Kemper makes the top of the line stuff these days (so far as I know, it’s been a couple years since I payed very close attention to cutting edge tech). Their profiling amps allow you to make complete profiles of real amps and cabs through recording a series of signals through that rig. These profiles can be shared online and downloaded straight onto their “heads” which can be rack mounted in a studio setup. For stage use they have versions that serve as a typical amplifier head would, or use the form factor of those multi-effect floor units. They sound incredible.

Guitar tube amplifier emulation.

I love it because as absolutely horrid as it was when it was emerging tech, those sounds along with every other link in the chain comes with certain nostalgia for music that was created using it in whatever intermediary period it was at in that time. Today we’ve basically hit endgame in that the emulations of today’s tech are so close to the real thing that they’re basically indistinguishable from the genuine article. We have access to the full range of sounds from Boss DS-1’s to the old Line6 Pods to modern Kempers. If you’re a guitar player who likes experimenting with the over all sound of your rig, this is the good stuff.

Aww, and here I thought I was contributing to a discussion. I’ll leave you alone now since I ruin your fun. Hopefully you can feel free to be a bit more lighthearted in my absence.

No.

I’m in the camp that believes that Jesus was a real person. And being that he was a real person, he did not rise from the dead, because that doesn’t happen. So, Jesus was not a zombie.

If Jesus wasn’t actually a real person… sure, knock yourself out. Zombie, Lich, whatever else you want to call it. Doesn’t really matter if we’re just making up stories with no real historical basis.

Yeah, can’t be certain, but it would have had to have been one of four that I remember from my earliest years:

Pong Space Invaders Super Mario Bros Duckhunt

Yeah, that’s fine.

I’m just saying there was plenty going on between '86 and '94 to challenge the limits of chugga-chugga as you put it. And I won’t argue against Destroy Erase Improve being a watershed album, and I’d even consider it a respectable stance if you want to say it might be the heaviest record ever if that’s your opinion, but it’s not like it’s an unquestionable monolith that no other records from around or before then could stand up to.

I wouldn’t say the Foo Fighters are any kind of Nirvana, let alone a MOR version. There are a lot of significant differences between the two. Probably the biggest one being that the Foo Fighters have a decent number of songs that are listenable from beginning to end, whereas Nirvana only ever came close once with Lithium, but still fucked it up by making the bridge vacant gaze, drooling mouth agape level stupid.