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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • CoggyMcFee@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlDating apps be like
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    1 month ago

    I don’t know what country you are from or how your voting system works. But I will guess that your country has many parties and after the election, a governing coalition is formed.

    In the US voting system, similar parties get punished by stealing votes from each other. So, in effect, we have to form our coalitions before the election and choose the single candidate that will stand for all of us. So, you can think of the Democratic Party as the Democratic Coalition, made up of some truly left-wing factions, as well as some not very left-wing or even centrist factions, and so our candidate will be much more watered down than what you’d see in a different system.



  • I don’t know if you realize how condescending it sounds to hear you say you “don’t want to ruin whatever enjoyment she gets out of it” by telling her… what? That you arbitrarily look down on the use of this absolutely grammatical construction?

    The thing that bothers me most about stuff like this is that it is effectively some kind of “gotcha” that makes people feel foolish, like their natural, completely grammatical speech has errors, or something they should feel bad about.



  • This is probably a fool’s errand, because it’s all or nothing, making it inherently unstable. If we ever get within striking distance of having enough states to cross the threshold, the law will be fought tooth and nail to prevent passage, and this battle would continue in perpetuity in every remotely purple state that has the NPVIC law in place, trying to get enough overturned to stop it.

    Maybe it accomplishes something useful simply by bringing the conversation about reform to the forefront? But as an actual solution I’m completely skeptical, as much as I like the idea.




  • This is the ignorant “I don’t understand statistics” take. If Nate Silver had given Clinton a 100% chance to win, then maybe you’d have some sort of point. But, in fact, the 538 projection gave Trump a much higher chance than most of the major election models, to the point that I remember Nate having to defend himself against angry people on Twitter over and over. He wrote an article ahead of the election pointing out that if an outcome has a 30% chance of happening, not only is it possible, but in fact you expect it to happen 3 in 10 times. I was very nervous on Election Day 2016 specifically because I had been closely following 538 projections.



  • CoggyMcFee@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlFeline!
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    2 months ago

    It is genuinely amazing. I have watched it multiple times since I first saw it! It feels like something that would be funny but should get old after a few minutes, and yet it never does.

    The whole talk appears to be done in one continuous take!







  • If “literally” means “figuratively,” then we literally have no word for “literally.”

    It’s worth pointing out that you just used the word for “literally” and we knew which sense of the word you meant through context. Just like the verb “dust” can mean to put a layer of small particles on something but can also mean to remove the small particles from something. Humans are able to sort these things out.

    However, one of the best things about language is that if a need actually arises for more clarity about “literalness”, a solution will naturally emerge to address it.

    Even the word “literal” started out as a word that pertained specifically to the written word, and scholarly things, and its sense evolved to refer to things not necessarily written down, to the present meaning of “the most straightforward interpretation of what I’m saying”. A need arose and a word filled the need.