Jeff, can you please write the takedown of George Clooney's The Midnight Sky you've clearly got bottled up inside? Your piece on Megalopolis was one of your best IMO.
For gerrymandering, if you don't want a good solution, what's the argument against a "good enough" solution that all districts have to be convex? (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convex_set). That pretty much matches the intuition of what's fair, it wouldn't be hard to program a computer to redistrict that way, and it doesn't require a vast overhaul of the current electoral system.
That doesn't actually solve gerymandering. this video shows that you can make perfectly reasonable looking borders while still being gerymanderd (https://youtu.be/Lq-Y7crQo44?si=xduR2aM-JsxWVEBc). The problem is you can't not gerymander because any line you draw give someone or some constituency an un fair advantaged.
Sure, but isn't the issue not gerrymandering but excessive gerrymandering? That video even acknowledges that there is a clear limit if the shapes must be "normal".
Also, easy fix there is to remove the human element, and make districts based strictly on population, with no reference to voting demographics.
That violates laws designed to protect minorities witch require minorities not be split up. It can also leads to confusion when voting because you could draw a district line across a residential street.
What I'm contemplating is a city criss crossed with voting districts with no rhyme or reason. Consider a district line witch splits old town from new town vs one witch splits the town into three and for witch there is no easy short hand to describe.
Very cogently expressed. So much of this goes back to all of us holding a technology in our pocket that delivers Trump's latest stupid missives directly to our brains, distracting us from literally anything that's more important. I lay a lot of blame at the feet of smartphones and social media: they've fundamentally warped our discourse and polity in possibly irreversible ways. Too many people seem incapable of untethering themselves from these long enough to thoughtfully focus on actual problems in their community and talk to other people face to face. They'd rather scroll through sycophants dunking on their Twitter enemies all day.
I guess I feel pretty cynical at the moment. All I try to do each day is apply my energy toward my family, friends and neighbors with love and patience, and tune out the rest of the noise.
Not only Trump, but many national controversies have increasingly monopolized far too many people's understanding of our collective reality(s) in general, to the public detriment.
On another note, you say part of the answer to bringing down high costs in some casses might involve immigration. While this might well be true in some speciffic areas, there is also a strong corralation between higher costs relative to incomes: Regions with more immmigrants per capita tend to be less affordable for a number of reasons, with the kicker being higher housing costs without sufficiently higher wages in the bottem half (or more!) of the wage/salary spectrum.
The hands holding the telescope have reversed the ends: "Our president — though a big, dumb, dummy — is ultimately a very small man." And one would like to have it explained how a "big, dumb, dummy" became the most consequential man in the world and of the century. Just dumb luck, I guess, couldn't possibly be anything else.
It may be because a large swath of the electorate has given up their interest in self-governing liberal democracy and just wants a strong-man to punish all of their perceived enemies for lols.
Could be, I suppose. Or it could be that a majority of the electorate is fed up with the incompetence, corruption, and perversion of the previous managerial class and sees Trump as the only person strong and determined enough to actually change the prevailing culture of failure.
I don't disagree that no administration is above the voters' reproach; that's how democracy should work. The issue here is that Trump is, indeed, changing the prevailing culture, but not toward anything resembling healthy democracy: he's instead leveraging it for his own petty grievances, corruption, and extraordinary incompetence. It's akin to having a doctor who's not treating your gout properly, and having another one come in to saw both your feet off and punch you in the dick instead.
I just do not experience Trump as you do. I cannot explain it, two reasonable people both hoping for best outcome for the country but disagreeing completely on what is actually happening, especially the Trump incompetence part. He is doing just what I voted for and in even better measure. As many have noted, it is as if you and I are watching the same screen but seeing entirely different movies. Most remarkable. Doesn't make either one of us an intrinsically bad person . . . but, wow, what a dichotomy.
My suggestion would be to stop letting trump live rent free and start working locally on those issues. The federal government doesn't need to be elbow deep in every municipalities business. You can build housing without Trump's approval.
People are completely ignorant about local issues. I do local organizing, and even they want to keep changing the conversation to Trump. It takes constant reminding that we're talking about zoning and schools.
Philip K. Dick nailed the" “feel” of the present in his science-fiction novel THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH (1964)… which takes place in the future year 2016. (Replace his theme of “drugs” with “the Internet” and you get what I mean.)
Just spent 3 days off the grid. Missed Jeff a lot, but so nice not hearing that dreadful name. From now on I'm going to get all my news from I Might Be Wrong, hopefully avoiding the ongoing trauma altogether.
Trump’s only consistent policy seems to be making it impossible for political satire to think up any hypothetical crazier than what I’m going to actually do tomorrow.
Unfortunately, Trump has been greatly assisted in setting the terms of the conversation by the Democratic leaning media. MSNBC and the like would rather spend hour after hour chewing over every despicable or stupid thing Trump says or does than initiate a intra-Democratic dialogue on the kind of issues and trade-offs that Jeff lists above, much less on pushing back on any idea, no matter how dimwitted or unpopular outside the elite bubble it may be. The result is that the Democrats have no articulable plan or position that has been tested or refined through open debate. And the Fox News’s of the world can present the dumbest of the left voices as the voice of the Democratic Party. But tut-tutting over Trump’s outrage of the day keeps their traumatized audiences tuned in and watching those profitable pharma ads.
It really is remarkable how much better off our country would be if there was just an empty chair in the Oval Office for the next 3.5 years.
"Blast the Budget in the Butthole bill" is excellent 😁
Jeff, can you please write the takedown of George Clooney's The Midnight Sky you've clearly got bottled up inside? Your piece on Megalopolis was one of your best IMO.
What about a special, paid subscriber only, viewing party?
I feel like this is gaining momentum
The voters have established that they will only vote for a cantaloupe with googly eyes if they can be sure it isn't one of those "woke" cantaloupes.
For gerrymandering, if you don't want a good solution, what's the argument against a "good enough" solution that all districts have to be convex? (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convex_set). That pretty much matches the intuition of what's fair, it wouldn't be hard to program a computer to redistrict that way, and it doesn't require a vast overhaul of the current electoral system.
That doesn't actually solve gerymandering. this video shows that you can make perfectly reasonable looking borders while still being gerymanderd (https://youtu.be/Lq-Y7crQo44?si=xduR2aM-JsxWVEBc). The problem is you can't not gerymander because any line you draw give someone or some constituency an un fair advantaged.
Sure, but isn't the issue not gerrymandering but excessive gerrymandering? That video even acknowledges that there is a clear limit if the shapes must be "normal".
Also, easy fix there is to remove the human element, and make districts based strictly on population, with no reference to voting demographics.
That violates laws designed to protect minorities witch require minorities not be split up. It can also leads to confusion when voting because you could draw a district line across a residential street.
What do you mean "could"? A voting district line in any big city is _typically_ across the street, or is America a special snowflake here too?
What I'm contemplating is a city criss crossed with voting districts with no rhyme or reason. Consider a district line witch splits old town from new town vs one witch splits the town into three and for witch there is no easy short hand to describe.
That's the Blast the Budget in the Butthole Bill act, thank you very much.
Very cogently expressed. So much of this goes back to all of us holding a technology in our pocket that delivers Trump's latest stupid missives directly to our brains, distracting us from literally anything that's more important. I lay a lot of blame at the feet of smartphones and social media: they've fundamentally warped our discourse and polity in possibly irreversible ways. Too many people seem incapable of untethering themselves from these long enough to thoughtfully focus on actual problems in their community and talk to other people face to face. They'd rather scroll through sycophants dunking on their Twitter enemies all day.
I guess I feel pretty cynical at the moment. All I try to do each day is apply my energy toward my family, friends and neighbors with love and patience, and tune out the rest of the noise.
Not only Trump, but many national controversies have increasingly monopolized far too many people's understanding of our collective reality(s) in general, to the public detriment.
On another note, you say part of the answer to bringing down high costs in some casses might involve immigration. While this might well be true in some speciffic areas, there is also a strong corralation between higher costs relative to incomes: Regions with more immmigrants per capita tend to be less affordable for a number of reasons, with the kicker being higher housing costs without sufficiently higher wages in the bottem half (or more!) of the wage/salary spectrum.
The hands holding the telescope have reversed the ends: "Our president — though a big, dumb, dummy — is ultimately a very small man." And one would like to have it explained how a "big, dumb, dummy" became the most consequential man in the world and of the century. Just dumb luck, I guess, couldn't possibly be anything else.
It may be because a large swath of the electorate has given up their interest in self-governing liberal democracy and just wants a strong-man to punish all of their perceived enemies for lols.
Could be, I suppose. Or it could be that a majority of the electorate is fed up with the incompetence, corruption, and perversion of the previous managerial class and sees Trump as the only person strong and determined enough to actually change the prevailing culture of failure.
I don't disagree that no administration is above the voters' reproach; that's how democracy should work. The issue here is that Trump is, indeed, changing the prevailing culture, but not toward anything resembling healthy democracy: he's instead leveraging it for his own petty grievances, corruption, and extraordinary incompetence. It's akin to having a doctor who's not treating your gout properly, and having another one come in to saw both your feet off and punch you in the dick instead.
I just do not experience Trump as you do. I cannot explain it, two reasonable people both hoping for best outcome for the country but disagreeing completely on what is actually happening, especially the Trump incompetence part. He is doing just what I voted for and in even better measure. As many have noted, it is as if you and I are watching the same screen but seeing entirely different movies. Most remarkable. Doesn't make either one of us an intrinsically bad person . . . but, wow, what a dichotomy.
My suggestion would be to stop letting trump live rent free and start working locally on those issues. The federal government doesn't need to be elbow deep in every municipalities business. You can build housing without Trump's approval.
People are completely ignorant about local issues. I do local organizing, and even they want to keep changing the conversation to Trump. It takes constant reminding that we're talking about zoning and schools.
yeah it's sad.
Seattle just had its mayoral primary and I think probably 2/3rds of the ads I saw mentioned Trump in some fashion.
Philip K. Dick nailed the" “feel” of the present in his science-fiction novel THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH (1964)… which takes place in the future year 2016. (Replace his theme of “drugs” with “the Internet” and you get what I mean.)
Wait, what's gay about a ballroom? (Puns aside.)
Tighten up your prose. The phrase “sadists and Intuit” is tautological.
Just spent 3 days off the grid. Missed Jeff a lot, but so nice not hearing that dreadful name. From now on I'm going to get all my news from I Might Be Wrong, hopefully avoiding the ongoing trauma altogether.
Trump’s only consistent policy seems to be making it impossible for political satire to think up any hypothetical crazier than what I’m going to actually do tomorrow.
Unfortunately, Trump has been greatly assisted in setting the terms of the conversation by the Democratic leaning media. MSNBC and the like would rather spend hour after hour chewing over every despicable or stupid thing Trump says or does than initiate a intra-Democratic dialogue on the kind of issues and trade-offs that Jeff lists above, much less on pushing back on any idea, no matter how dimwitted or unpopular outside the elite bubble it may be. The result is that the Democrats have no articulable plan or position that has been tested or refined through open debate. And the Fox News’s of the world can present the dumbest of the left voices as the voice of the Democratic Party. But tut-tutting over Trump’s outrage of the day keeps their traumatized audiences tuned in and watching those profitable pharma ads.