If Microsoft can’t figure out how to unlock the taskbar in Win11 so over/under monitor layouts can work (taskbar being bottom/bottom top/top), it will be for me. Drive me up a wall that the whole point of Win11 was a better UI, and basic fucking customization is dropped. I didn’t buy a Mac, don’t try and tell me how I am supposed to set up my desktops.
Even American cats have spyware.
And they have since the 1960’s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty
You apparently believe that the enlightened EU apportions votes by equal proportionality based on population of member nations, but that isn’t true. Germany, with over 84x the population of Luxembourg does not get 84x the number of MEPs. Luxembourg’s population get 8x the MEP representation of Germany’s. It is a degressive proportion system just like the Electoral College, for exactly the reasons I stated.
Point two is literally just you saying you don’t like the way it works and trying to discredit it by calling it archaic, as if the concept of direct democracy isn’t just as old as representational republics. No one is arguing that it doesn’t create swing states and tilt the balance back towards the mid and small sized states, because that’s what it was designed to do: make it so the smaller states must be included.
Really not sure what your last paragraph is about as it’s not very clear, but within a state everything is direct democracy. This means that the large population centers do run the states like you want, which results in situations like parts of California trying to split off because they have no representation. Unless it violates the constitution or other applicable federal law, states get to set their own rules and laws.
And all that is working as intended, because the US is a gestalt entity created of 50 states cooperating in concert with each other. We have an electoral college to balance the power between the biggest and smallest states so that every state gets representation under a representational republic. Extrapolate out to other similar organizations like the European Union. Would Luxembourg join or remain in the EU if votes were done by direct democracy of the population of each member country and Germany alone nearly outnumbers the bottom half of the EU by population? Each member state deserves representation. The same is true for the US, where it’s illegal to leave the union after you’ve joined.
The House of Representatives are the voice of the actual people (unfairly restricted in size which needs to be fixed but that’s another story), the Senate is supposed to be the voice of the States (but we made them directly elected instead of appointed by the state governments making them just a super version of the House but that is yet another conversation), and the President to run the government and act as our figurehead. This is supposed to allow the vastly different needs of each state and for the differing needs between urban and rural areas to be represented. This is why yes, if your amendment cannot convince 75% of states that it’s a good amendment, it probably shouldn’t pass in the first place.
TL/DR: Direct democracy is practiced at the local and state level, then representationally at the federal level because we are a republic of cooperating states that each have their own needs and desires. We have fucked with/fucked up how that representation works in the republic for better or worse, and the system as designed allows the possibility for a tyranny of the minority because it was the only way to prevent permanent tyranny of the majority.
You’re right, which is why it should be slowly and continuously changed along with the times and through the mechanisms in place to do so, not drastically and sweepingly every 50 years or so. You don’t throw out and replace the constitution or other foundations of law without massive societal upheaval, which is just as bad as permanent stagnation.
Do you honestly want to live in a country where the established foundations of government changed every 50 years? That kind of chaos and instability would be crushing. There are places like that right now, and first world countries they are not.
Then get enough of the population to agree with you to convene a constitutional Congress and pass that new constitution. It shouldn’t be hard if at least 75% of the US aligns with you. If you don’t have that much of the population in agreement, then you aren’t communicating your desired constitution well or the current one works well enough for enough of the country.
Otherwise you are either implying that we need war to crush the pillars of our society, necessitating the rebuilding of our institutions like what happened with WWI and WWII for the other “modern” countries I presume you are wanting to emulate, or you want to disenfranchise at least 30% of the population because WE is not everyone and YOU “deserve” a new constitution and fuck the “other side”.
In my case I live in a place where cities are spread out and where it gets cold in the winter. My parents live 40 mile away and don’t have an EV charger or a 220v outlet in their garage. Take 10% max range off in the winter, and I would have to use the only charging station (Tesla supercharger) or spend at least 6 hours charging at their house to be comfortable getting home in case of extra traffic or detours. I semi regularly drive even further, 80-100 miles one way. I’d have to stop to charge on my way there and on my way back in the winter, adding at least 30 minutes to an already 2 hour drive. There is also poor charging density on the route, so it has to be planned.
I drive a plug in hybrid now, and can get to work and home on battery only, but only in the summer and no extra stops or alternate routes are possible. People start getting antsy under a 1/4-1/8th tank of gas, it’s worse with battery. Add to that I am able to charge at home, if you have to go visit a charging station because you live in a ln apartment or townhouse without garage space, you need at least 5 days of charge range between fill ups, because most everyone isn’t going to want to add a 30 minute stop to charge daily.
I sure would, and that is what I’d argue for. I’d love it if both sides would agree to revert to the '67 borders, or even draw up and negotiate new borders if that is required at this point. Both sides have equal “claim” to the area, and this is a needless pseudo-civil war. Without the US and Israel’s surrounding Arab neighbors pouring money and ideology into it, the original '48 plan may have settled into a workable 2 state solution, but who really knows.
I also know that I have no skin in the game on either side, and honestly my opinion doesn’t matter beyond the fact that the US is allies with Israel as a democracy in the middle east that they can leverage towards favorable geopolitical stability, and which I have little power to effect. I just wanted to ask about what appeared to be dishonest propaganda that tries to conflate Israel with foreign colonizers like England, Portugal, Spain, etc, and erase pretty solidly agreed upon paleo and anthropology. We shouldn’t whitewash in either direction.
I think some citation is necessary for the assertion that the Jewish people were not historically from the Levant region, and have no ancestoral “claims” in Jerusalem and the surrounding territory. I would love to see some anthropology studies or papers on the bronze age Israelites being proto-Asyrian or Persian and not one of the Canaanite tribes.
I’d also like to point out that basically every war ever has been and will probably be a land grab, wrapped up in some rationalized or causative skin. That stretch of land in particular has been conquered over and over again throughout human history, and the inhabitants forcibly immigrated and emigrated during many of these changes of power. Mesopotamia has been birthing empires since humans discovered it and it became a cradle of human civilization.
Dear God yes, why the fuck is my Fold trying to install fucking candy crush and a bunch of other games every time it does a software update?! And recently it has a new system app trying to install games as well, that comes back if dismissed in any other way than opening it to get the offers and then clicking on the never option. And apparently never is like 3-6 months according to Samsung, because it does come back.
I really hope the Pixel Fold 2 is a solid phone, because that is where I plan to migrate to after nothing but Samsung phones since the Note 3, which was has been all downhill since TBH (RIP microSD cards).