@SirCumference Yeah, I don't know how popular it is; but it's not like the two party system is frequently celebrated as some great achievement of US politics either; even in US media as far as I see.
Today I learned that moderators see notifications (comments or when they are mentioned) in blue colour. We normal users get a red colour notif. Why? I also want a good colour :(
@Knight Yeah those definitely look like mod flags. Notice that it's beside a blue diamond. He still has the regular paper-basket icon for regular notifications, which presumably have a red number still when he gets notified.
@Loong That's going to be stuck in my head now without even clicking the link -_-
@Knight There's probably some sort of script you could run to make your own notifications blue. I know basically nothing about programming, so maybe it's not as trivial as I think; but presumably it wouldn't be that hard to make a little add-on or something that changes the notification colour.
@SirCumference @JMac The Electoral College fulfills roughly the same purpose as Parliamentary allocation. For example, had Labour won 326 seats, but lost the "popular vote" due to blowouts, Labour would've won the 2019 UK elections. A representative democracy of multiple levels gives more weight to geographical distribution at higher levels. And the EC also includes the 50 States' equal interests, analogous to the US Senate.
@alexchandel Honestly I don't worry much about the difference between an EC and an elected parliament. Both seem to try to accomplish similar goals, although the structure is different. A larger difference to me is the de facto two party system and the issues with election funding (i.e. "money is free speech"). Those factors especially make the process seem very weird from my perspective.
@JMac The 2-party issue is due to IIA, a fundamental feature of non-dictatorial elections (Arrow's theorem). We work around it with primaries, where 3rd parties influence the main parties, & with state & local levels of government. You could mitigate it further by having the electors meet at a national convention & form voting coalitions (if no majority), instead of simultaneously voting from their state capitols.
@Knight No. That's why I'm not actually sure if it's easy. I just think it's easy based off my limited knowledge. It would depend on how they coded the colours. Actually, if you're willing to test it out, can you just respond to a random comment of mine (I'll let you know when I'm done and then you could just delete it)
@alexchandel I mean I get the logic for the electoral college. Give the lesser populated areas a fair amount of representation, especially when their lifestyles are very different from urban areas.
But the current political system as a whole feels broken as hell
From the very beginning of last election, Hillary and Trump were by far the most controversial candidates, yet they both won the primaries
it's a massive issue when arguably the most hated candidates end up being the only choices
@SirCumference Yeah, I think that feeling is exacerbated b/c so much power & responsibility has been elevated from the state to the federal level, a titanic tent over an enormously diverse citizenry.
@SirCumference That's one of the things that sticks out to me. In Canada, we still have the two biggest parties, but the third party is large enough that if the two major parties both screwed up; they would actually put themselves at a high risk of losing the Prime Minister seat; and even then it would likely be a coalition government at best.
@SirCumference But think about it. If the federal government actually restricted itself to Article I §8, you could vote by throwing a dart at a board, Victorian style. Instead, we have dozens of issues we used to handle at the state level, now being repackaged nationally for extra outrage.
@SirCumference tbh I prefer power as local and decentralized as possible. Local politicians have to live in our communities & walk on our sidewalks. My neighborhood can walk to city hall & shout at them / pelt them with vegetables every day if they screw up too badly.
@alexchandel i mean naturally, there are notable benefits to having a strong central government. imo I really just think it needs to not lean entirely toward the federal or state govs
@Knight Huh, this isn't as easy as I thought it would be. I was able to use the "Inspect/Inspect Element" feature to mess with the notification box colours. I'm not having as much luck messing with the red 1.
at this point the federal government has much more power. you get good things like legalization of LGBT marriage, but conversely states can't oppose e.g. the new net neutrality policies
@Knight Nevermind, spoke too soon. I had just clicked the wrong element. It's really easy to change on the end user level. What I did here goes away when I refresh; but it should be trivial for someone with basic coding knowledge (which I lack) to make a script that automatically does it.
@SirCumference But how is that a benefit? You've forced people who don't agree with an inherently local policy to abide by it. You've imposed your will on them via the executive or judicial branch. That's part of why the political system feels so broken, as you said. We used to vote on things. We actually voted to amend the constitution with the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, etc amendments. We have a good track record.
@alexchandel That's true, but it's also really destructive when highly sensitive issues are lumped into the same package with quite unrelated political views. e.g. abortion laws with state vs. federal power
people consider those with political views in the other package to be morally questionable
@SirCumference That lumping happens when such perviously local or state issues are elevated to the federal level. That is indeed destructive. Now we fight to install judges who will rule as we wish, rather than accepting that we should only change the law by passing laws & amendments.
@alexchandel i mean at some level, imo it's part of what comes with being a part of a larger nation. topics like LGBT or abortion rights aren't strictly the business of an individual state, it affects the nation as a whole, e.g. how america is perceived by other nations
@SirCumference 3 options: (1) pass acts & constitutional amendments to settle questions like net neutrality & abortion, or (2) accept that such issues must be left to the states, or (3) impose a uniform federal policy via the courts/executive and further toxify our discourse.
@Knight I learned it from watching youtube! Seriously though, I only thought about it because I've been watching some Kitboga youtube videos lately. He's a "scam baiter", so he deals with computer scams all the time, and the scammers use the Inspect Element feature to temporarily change what pages say and how they look all the time. I figured the same might apply to the colours.
@Knight I usually have something like that in the background when I'm at home. Lately I've been watching his videos. Pretty entertaining if you like watching scammers get mad at a guy pretending to be an old woman, but is actually just trying to waste time.
@SirCumference The constitution left those things to the states & Congress. As I said, I'm all for addressing them nationally, via constitutional amendments & laws. But elevating state powers to the federal level "because we're growing," or legislating from the bench/Oval Office, will only lead to more ever destructive election cycles.
sure
Relatedly, does anyone know the nLab article that argues about the plethora of exceptions in the definitions of classical mathematics & algebra which prevent generalization (it's making a case for category theory)? I ran across it once, but can't find it now.
Are you sure it didn't say "top 16% this year" or "top 16% this quarter"?
I'm quite sure that looking at my profile, I had a similar change, and I believe it's because it was showing me my yearly or quarterly user percent before the new year, and now it is showing the all time percentage ranking...
