Seems 'The Other Bruenig' in the most Other Bruenigy thing ever, has a an NLRB substack for the analysis of all things NLRB. With 12,000 subscribers!
Anyhow, he's lighting up the iTubes (MattY *and* FdB reposting) with an article about how the ACLU is trying to nuke the NLRB's charter in order to save it's clear NLRB violating DEI inspired firing of an employee.
I've harbored a growing suspicion that we are post-peak-DEI and this strikes me as a possible denouement.
I think it is an unwritten code of canon law that all lay boards and committees must be made up of Lawyers and Real Estate developers with one ethnic Restauranteur for authenticity's sake.
Oldest/Youngest sons, youngest daughter and I are all going to the Blackhawks, er, Capitals game tonight -- sort of my birthday weekend present. We like to go to the meat palace called Hill Country BBQ before the game... but some group booked the entire restaurant. Rude.
Now we have to find something else within walking distance of everything. Wish DC wasn't so wonky with good food options.
Last year we duct taped BEDARD over the little guy's Hawks shirt... this year he has an actual BEDARD shirt. Glad his (Bedard's) jaw healed in time.
Sure, I think primaries are a great place to start too.
On the philosophical question, I think the disparity of choices is partly (mostly?) an artefact of the reverse polarization in voting ... which RCV would de-escalate over time.
Regarding the 3rd place person winning, that's not really how it works. Imagine it's a series of run-offs. If A and B are 1 and 2, then C is eliminated. C's votes are divided between A & B. C can't win *even if* they were the #2 choice of 100% of A & B voters.
What RCV is doing in this case is 'polling' C's voters as to *their* second choice and allocating the loser's votes. Sometimes RCV is called 'Instant Run-off' voting for that reason.
The Sarah Palin episode in 2022 is a pretty solid example of how Palin lost in a 3-way race when 42% of the voters who voted for a republican in round one decided that a Democrat was preferable to Palin... so she lost. The point is that we shouldn't simply count a vote for one R as a vote for all R's (or vice versa).
I mean, I'd also be fine with downplaying Parties and Primaries and just having an open Presidential Election with a run-off 2-weeks later between #1 and #2 (if no-one gets 50% + 1). That's the French system.
This is also Georgia's system... you have to get 50% to win and a run-off in meat-space automatically happens. I'm ok with this too... but I don't think it's quite the same as RCV from a secondary benefit of allowing more preferences to be expressed to signal electorate desires. The irony is that RCV would (probably) have delivered 2 R senators in 2020, but the run-off and subsequent Trump nonsense delivered 2 D senators.
First, we don't have a unified election process... at best we have 50 election authorities with varying degrees of complexity and competence. I hinted in my longer response below that some entities have done poorly with change; and some of those entities do poorly with change purely on the technology side in FPTP processes. It's one of the reasons I advocate for incremental adoption... the election agencies in all the states/jurisdictions have to manage the change.
Second, as I said above, you're not required to rank anyone. Period. You can simply vote your only choice. Accidentally spoiling votes is a concern for any voting system, and something that a hybrid electronic/paper system can alleviate with a rules based interface. That is, if you put two candidates as 'second' the electronic system requires a change before submitting. I'm in favor of hybrids that then print paper ballots.
Either way, the goal is effective voting and neither objection is an impediment to RCV, just a process that needs to be managed.
The way to think about it is this: if you vote for Candidate A and ONLY Candidate A, in the event that Candidate A is eliminated you have no further say in the matter. You voted for Candidate A who was eliminated. Thanks for voting.
That's more or less how it works now. If Candidate A does not prevail, your vote for Candidate A was a dead end.
I'm a big supporter of RCV and when I talk to young folks dismayed that there's 'nothing they can do' about politics, I suggest that advocating for RCV has a lot of benefits that they can pitch in a 'non-threatening' way to gain support:
1. It doesn't require a constitutional amendment
2. While it makes 3rd parties possible, it doesn't make your vote a spoiler for a worse outcome, and
a. While it makes 3rd parties possible, it doesn't automatically fragment the electorate (a'la proportional)
3. The effects of RCV would be slow and probably only impact a small subset of races initially
4. Over time, real preferences and voting strength would be revealed for politicians/parties to alter direction
5. It weakens the duopoly only in so far as other parties present good policies/candidates
6. It weakens National messaging in local elections.
7. Advances in technology make RCV simple and fast (ahem, well... once we invest in it)
8. The elimination process is public evidence of voter preferences, even when your candidate doesn't win (see #4)
9. Future candidates/parties can target these preferences
10. and more!...
In some ways, I almost think RCV is better for primaries than general elections... IF general elections then went with a mixed proportional model. Absent any proportional models, I'd settle for RCV in Generals as a first step.
I doubt we'll win any converts with a combination of 'silver bullet' or 'you must be stupid or fascist to not agree with us' rhetorical approaches. The biggest selling point is that the change would be incremental and the effects diffused over time as politicians and voters adjust; the biggest payoff is reduced incentives for bi-polar negative partisanship.
Agreed, I was always baffled by the weird focus on President/Officer, etc.
I have some suspicions that they might have had concerns about a vigorous Section 5 defense pointing out that he could still be tried under the 1948 Sedition Act and/or Congress could retroactively(?) declare Jan6 an Insurrection and therefore went for the whole immunity enchilada.
I'm attributing 'standard operating procedures' that are bad... and you don't 'figure out' the votes after you've written your 'framing/spin'. That's bad editorial practices -- you report on what happened, not the story you're spinning in advance.
Yes, I'm tentatively agreeing that the fact that the *primary* argument of Team Trump that Section 3 doesn't apply to the President was ignored by SCOTUS hints that very extreme ideas of the imperial presidency may come up short.
Edit: I think the fact that they largely ignored the primary Trump defense that he isn't subject to Section three qua President might play in the next case.
Plus, getting the decision at all means getting the vote count. No editor is thinking you're going to need to scoop the decision not knowing how it was decided.
It's just framing and then the framing is called out and they change it.
Well, at some point Spice is the Midichlorian magic of Dune...
p.s. I'm pretty sure that since George Lucas never had an original thought he basically garbled Dune's combo of molecular and spice magic into the whole midichlorian fiasco.
Right... GRRM has (had?) this problem. Even if we allow Dragons as purely an evolved species... the world is riddled with supernatural occurrences that are wildly at odds with the detached scoffer narrative voice he employs. Much moreso than Dune which I think is possible to read in a purely materialistic way.
First the good... I think a director's *real* license is aesthetic... they have the ability, the gift, and the fun of bringing the vision from *their* mind's eye of the author's words to light. DV's Dune aesthetic is coherent and beautifully shot. I especially appreciated the Harkonnen Black Sun aesthetic which by contrast made an otherwise bleak desert landscape sparkle like gold. I think Directors are 'entitled' to this sort of mind palace.
I'm not, however, on-board with DV's (idiosyncratic Quebecois*) 'interpretation' of Dune. There's internal tension in Dune between the mystical/religious and the biological/mechanical worlds we inhabit; Frank Herbert was clearly the sort of spiritual, but not religious zen-seeker that people my age used to know. Dune is weird that way.
But, here's the director's conundrum, if one wants to make a materialist atheistic scoffer version of Dune, then you're really forced to contend with the Biological Breeding program that makes everything go. You can scoff at a messiah as long as you build the ubermench. And that's the thing... the 'fake' prophecies planted by the Missionaria Protectiva are both cynical means to control and prepping the way for fulfillment in the breeding program. The funny thing about the prophecies is that they were fulfilled by literally a superior man bred to have all the wisdom of human past experience plus the power of prescience. The rather heavy handed idea of 'southern fundamentalists' and Paul's 'atheistic' disapproving lover doesn't really provide any meaningful perspective or even correction. And that's bracketing the rather heavy handed 'southern fundamentalists' are the real villains aspect of not getting it.
Paul the 'everyman' hero's journey just doesn't make sense... nor will it make sense as things get even *more* golden path mystical and breeding path centric. To be clear, you can definitely emphasize a very cynical (vs. mystical) reading... but that *really* makes you beholden to the eugenics (literalyl) of the Bene Gesserit (and the Tleilaxu, and Honored Matres, etc. etc.)
At the end of the day, Paul is boring.
[edit: *DV tweeted out that, when you think about it, Dune is really like Quebec...)
We had to go full orc on a section of woods that we'd acquired a few years ago from a neighbor. For him it was the hind end of his property; for us it's the gateway to our woods next to the house.
There were about a dozen misshapen walnuts along the fence line plus untold numbers of invasive species and brambles that needed clearing. Called in a forestry crew and five guys with about seven different machines showed up and made the shortest possible work of a lot of small, medium and big trees of varying degrees of nobility.
Upshot is we have a 12 x 12 x 4 pile of 18" rounds for splitting (mostly walnut) four equally sized piles of beautiful wood chips and a nice maintainable 12' wide path to the back part of the property. The star of the day was what they call the 'forestry mulcher'; it's a skid steer with a massive wheel of steel teeth that 'eats' invasive honeysuckle and tree of heaven and returns them to the earth faster than you'd like to think possible. Churns and improves the soil at the same time... leaving it lightly tilled for reseeding. Which is what I get to do this weekend.
And see Duecedy Dune with Lady Marchmaine. She hadn't seen Uno Duno, so she watched it last night after having read the book 40ish (OMG) years ago. And, proving my point from the other thread, was mystified by lots of things that were in the movie but not explained well enough to trigger 40yo memories. Like, why were the Atreides going to Arrakis, and why did the Emperor move them, then stab them in the back? More words, less pew pew.
"You may recall that the book gets pretty mystical. It’s super hard to show, not tell, a mystical experience."
I liked Dune 1 and am going to Dune 2 opening weekend... so they got's my money.
But, I still stand by my meta-criticism that Dune, the entire original series, is about the inner dialogs that are never spoken. Like, the point of Dune is being inside their heads like the voices and contemplating the mysticism of the path... time... causality.
The pew pew are set pieces that demark the path's evolution. And Duncan Idaho.
So to Jay's point, I'm doing a *lot* of work filling in the gaps of the SHOW with what needs to be TOLD.
Ultimately I think the modern fetish with visual arts is a weakness, not a strength.
What do I want? I want a full BBC/A&E DUNE with CGI. 24 or however many episodes it requires to walk through all the inner and expositional dialog necessary.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/11/2024”
Oops.
"
Seems 'The Other Bruenig' in the most Other Bruenigy thing ever, has a an NLRB substack for the analysis of all things NLRB. With 12,000 subscribers!
Anyhow, he's lighting up the iTubes (MattY *and* FdB reposting) with an article about how the ACLU is trying to nuke the NLRB's charter in order to save it's clear NLRB violating DEI inspired firing of an employee.
I've harbored a growing suspicion that we are post-peak-DEI and this strikes me as a possible denouement.
https://www.nlrbedge.com/p/the-aclu-is-trying-to-destroy-the
On “Weekend Plans Post: Prep (Maybe) For The Eclipse”
I think it is an unwritten code of canon law that all lay boards and committees must be made up of Lawyers and Real Estate developers with one ethnic Restauranteur for authenticity's sake.
"
Owner: InMD? The doctor from Indiana?
"
Oldest/Youngest sons, youngest daughter and I are all going to the Blackhawks, er, Capitals game tonight -- sort of my birthday weekend present. We like to go to the meat palace called Hill Country BBQ before the game... but some group booked the entire restaurant. Rude.
Now we have to find something else within walking distance of everything. Wish DC wasn't so wonky with good food options.
Last year we duct taped BEDARD over the little guy's Hawks shirt... this year he has an actual BEDARD shirt. Glad his (Bedard's) jaw healed in time.
On “Opposing Ranked Choice Voting Is Opposing Representative Democracy”
Sure, I think primaries are a great place to start too.
On the philosophical question, I think the disparity of choices is partly (mostly?) an artefact of the reverse polarization in voting ... which RCV would de-escalate over time.
Regarding the 3rd place person winning, that's not really how it works. Imagine it's a series of run-offs. If A and B are 1 and 2, then C is eliminated. C's votes are divided between A & B. C can't win *even if* they were the #2 choice of 100% of A & B voters.
What RCV is doing in this case is 'polling' C's voters as to *their* second choice and allocating the loser's votes. Sometimes RCV is called 'Instant Run-off' voting for that reason.
The Sarah Palin episode in 2022 is a pretty solid example of how Palin lost in a 3-way race when 42% of the voters who voted for a republican in round one decided that a Democrat was preferable to Palin... so she lost. The point is that we shouldn't simply count a vote for one R as a vote for all R's (or vice versa).
I mean, I'd also be fine with downplaying Parties and Primaries and just having an open Presidential Election with a run-off 2-weeks later between #1 and #2 (if no-one gets 50% + 1). That's the French system.
This is also Georgia's system... you have to get 50% to win and a run-off in meat-space automatically happens. I'm ok with this too... but I don't think it's quite the same as RCV from a secondary benefit of allowing more preferences to be expressed to signal electorate desires. The irony is that RCV would (probably) have delivered 2 R senators in 2020, but the run-off and subsequent Trump nonsense delivered 2 D senators.
"
Two things...
First, we don't have a unified election process... at best we have 50 election authorities with varying degrees of complexity and competence. I hinted in my longer response below that some entities have done poorly with change; and some of those entities do poorly with change purely on the technology side in FPTP processes. It's one of the reasons I advocate for incremental adoption... the election agencies in all the states/jurisdictions have to manage the change.
Second, as I said above, you're not required to rank anyone. Period. You can simply vote your only choice. Accidentally spoiling votes is a concern for any voting system, and something that a hybrid electronic/paper system can alleviate with a rules based interface. That is, if you put two candidates as 'second' the electronic system requires a change before submitting. I'm in favor of hybrids that then print paper ballots.
Either way, the goal is effective voting and neither objection is an impediment to RCV, just a process that needs to be managed.
"
The way to think about it is this: if you vote for Candidate A and ONLY Candidate A, in the event that Candidate A is eliminated you have no further say in the matter. You voted for Candidate A who was eliminated. Thanks for voting.
That's more or less how it works now. If Candidate A does not prevail, your vote for Candidate A was a dead end.
"
I'm a big supporter of RCV and when I talk to young folks dismayed that there's 'nothing they can do' about politics, I suggest that advocating for RCV has a lot of benefits that they can pitch in a 'non-threatening' way to gain support:
1. It doesn't require a constitutional amendment
2. While it makes 3rd parties possible, it doesn't make your vote a spoiler for a worse outcome, and
a. While it makes 3rd parties possible, it doesn't automatically fragment the electorate (a'la proportional)
3. The effects of RCV would be slow and probably only impact a small subset of races initially
4. Over time, real preferences and voting strength would be revealed for politicians/parties to alter direction
5. It weakens the duopoly only in so far as other parties present good policies/candidates
6. It weakens National messaging in local elections.
7. Advances in technology make RCV simple and fast (ahem, well... once we invest in it)
8. The elimination process is public evidence of voter preferences, even when your candidate doesn't win (see #4)
9. Future candidates/parties can target these preferences
10. and more!...
In some ways, I almost think RCV is better for primaries than general elections... IF general elections then went with a mixed proportional model. Absent any proportional models, I'd settle for RCV in Generals as a first step.
I doubt we'll win any converts with a combination of 'silver bullet' or 'you must be stupid or fascist to not agree with us' rhetorical approaches. The biggest selling point is that the change would be incremental and the effects diffused over time as politicians and voters adjust; the biggest payoff is reduced incentives for bi-polar negative partisanship.
On “Supreme Court Restores Trump to Colorado Ballot”
Agreed, I was always baffled by the weird focus on President/Officer, etc.
I have some suspicions that they might have had concerns about a vigorous Section 5 defense pointing out that he could still be tried under the 1948 Sedition Act and/or Congress could retroactively(?) declare Jan6 an Insurrection and therefore went for the whole immunity enchilada.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/4/2024”
I'm attributing 'standard operating procedures' that are bad... and you don't 'figure out' the votes after you've written your 'framing/spin'. That's bad editorial practices -- you report on what happened, not the story you're spinning in advance.
"
That's bizarre that you think media outlets framing their stories is a conspiracy theory.
I think it's worse that they write their stories before the event happens ... and then 'update' them after the fact.
On “Supreme Court Restores Trump to Colorado Ballot”
Yes, I'm tentatively agreeing that the fact that the *primary* argument of Team Trump that Section 3 doesn't apply to the President was ignored by SCOTUS hints that very extreme ideas of the imperial presidency may come up short.
"
Sounds about right...
1. Section 5, 1870 Enforcement act, and Sedition act of 1948 (Section 2383)
2. Patchwork objections.
https://ordinary-times.com/2023/12/19/colorado-supreme-court-disqualifies-trump-from-2024-primary-ballot/#comment-3951370
Edit: I think the fact that they largely ignored the primary Trump defense that he isn't subject to Section three qua President might play in the next case.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/4/2024”
No, I don't believe that at all.
The first thing in any template would be...
" in a [ x to x ] decision..."
Plus, getting the decision at all means getting the vote count. No editor is thinking you're going to need to scoop the decision not knowing how it was decided.
It's just framing and then the framing is called out and they change it.
On ““Dune: Part Two” Movie Review”
Well, at some point Spice is the Midichlorian magic of Dune...
p.s. I'm pretty sure that since George Lucas never had an original thought he basically garbled Dune's combo of molecular and spice magic into the whole midichlorian fiasco.
On “Donald Trump’s Rights as a Criminal Defendant Outweigh Ours as an Electorate”
So many points for defection/veto. Seems a lot harder than parliamentary systems... almost by design.
On ““Dune: Part Two” Movie Review”
Right... GRRM has (had?) this problem. Even if we allow Dragons as purely an evolved species... the world is riddled with supernatural occurrences that are wildly at odds with the detached scoffer narrative voice he employs. Much moreso than Dune which I think is possible to read in a purely materialistic way.
"
First the good... I think a director's *real* license is aesthetic... they have the ability, the gift, and the fun of bringing the vision from *their* mind's eye of the author's words to light. DV's Dune aesthetic is coherent and beautifully shot. I especially appreciated the Harkonnen Black Sun aesthetic which by contrast made an otherwise bleak desert landscape sparkle like gold. I think Directors are 'entitled' to this sort of mind palace.
I'm not, however, on-board with DV's (idiosyncratic Quebecois*) 'interpretation' of Dune. There's internal tension in Dune between the mystical/religious and the biological/mechanical worlds we inhabit; Frank Herbert was clearly the sort of spiritual, but not religious zen-seeker that people my age used to know. Dune is weird that way.
But, here's the director's conundrum, if one wants to make a materialist atheistic scoffer version of Dune, then you're really forced to contend with the Biological Breeding program that makes everything go. You can scoff at a messiah as long as you build the ubermench. And that's the thing... the 'fake' prophecies planted by the Missionaria Protectiva are both cynical means to control and prepping the way for fulfillment in the breeding program. The funny thing about the prophecies is that they were fulfilled by literally a superior man bred to have all the wisdom of human past experience plus the power of prescience. The rather heavy handed idea of 'southern fundamentalists' and Paul's 'atheistic' disapproving lover doesn't really provide any meaningful perspective or even correction. And that's bracketing the rather heavy handed 'southern fundamentalists' are the real villains aspect of not getting it.
Paul the 'everyman' hero's journey just doesn't make sense... nor will it make sense as things get even *more* golden path mystical and breeding path centric. To be clear, you can definitely emphasize a very cynical (vs. mystical) reading... but that *really* makes you beholden to the eugenics (literalyl) of the Bene Gesserit (and the Tleilaxu, and Honored Matres, etc. etc.)
At the end of the day, Paul is boring.
[edit: *DV tweeted out that, when you think about it, Dune is really like Quebec...)
"
Didn't work at all... bad decision for larger reasons.
On “Weekend Plans Post: One of Two Things You Can Be Sure Of”
We had to go full orc on a section of woods that we'd acquired a few years ago from a neighbor. For him it was the hind end of his property; for us it's the gateway to our woods next to the house.
There were about a dozen misshapen walnuts along the fence line plus untold numbers of invasive species and brambles that needed clearing. Called in a forestry crew and five guys with about seven different machines showed up and made the shortest possible work of a lot of small, medium and big trees of varying degrees of nobility.
Upshot is we have a 12 x 12 x 4 pile of 18" rounds for splitting (mostly walnut) four equally sized piles of beautiful wood chips and a nice maintainable 12' wide path to the back part of the property. The star of the day was what they call the 'forestry mulcher'; it's a skid steer with a massive wheel of steel teeth that 'eats' invasive honeysuckle and tree of heaven and returns them to the earth faster than you'd like to think possible. Churns and improves the soil at the same time... leaving it lightly tilled for reseeding. Which is what I get to do this weekend.
And see Duecedy Dune with Lady Marchmaine. She hadn't seen Uno Duno, so she watched it last night after having read the book 40ish (OMG) years ago. And, proving my point from the other thread, was mystified by lots of things that were in the movie but not explained well enough to trigger 40yo memories. Like, why were the Atreides going to Arrakis, and why did the Emperor move them, then stab them in the back? More words, less pew pew.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/26/2024”
Do you have any idea how many tweets it would take?
Nobody reads books anymore.
"
"You may recall that the book gets pretty mystical. It’s super hard to show, not tell, a mystical experience."
I liked Dune 1 and am going to Dune 2 opening weekend... so they got's my money.
But, I still stand by my meta-criticism that Dune, the entire original series, is about the inner dialogs that are never spoken. Like, the point of Dune is being inside their heads like the voices and contemplating the mysticism of the path... time... causality.
The pew pew are set pieces that demark the path's evolution. And Duncan Idaho.
So to Jay's point, I'm doing a *lot* of work filling in the gaps of the SHOW with what needs to be TOLD.
Ultimately I think the modern fetish with visual arts is a weakness, not a strength.
What do I want? I want a full BBC/A&E DUNE with CGI. 24 or however many episodes it requires to walk through all the inner and expositional dialog necessary.
On “On Parenting and Divorce”
The studies show that women persistently report having fewer children than the would like to have.
This is a well studied aspect of family sociology globally. It isn't phrased as happy/unhappy.
"
Like only in the sense that it is his professional life's work to try to figure out why.
https://ifstudies.org/