FrostBlazer

Functionally, moving to a purple state makes a notable difference. The reason the Michigan Supreme Court race recently mattered so much was because of the courts confirming potentially gerrymandered maps. If enough people move to purple states that they shifted blue, then it could impact Federal elections which could potentially impose legislation against gerrymandering at a federal level. They could even potentially withhold federal funding, in some instances, should states refuse to use non-gerrymandered maps.

Thank you for your reply! That makes sense that it would be more the wider Lemmy to look into it.

Thank you for clarifying this, I was not aware that the Fediverse put pressure on instances to moderate or risk defederation, but that does make sense.

My worry was long term risks for Federated spaces such as if bad actors climbed up to admin or moderator roles, which I have seen happen on Reddit even for big name subs. Although in those cases, it doesn’t guarantee that block/mute lists would be helpful. Your comment does give me hope though since even if one of the bigger instances was taken hold of by bad actors, it could be defederated by the rest and other new instances could take its place which are not operated by bad actors.

I agree that defederation is a powerful tool. I don’t think those outside of Lemmy know a lot about this yet as an added benefit of the Fediverse system. I had a difficult time articulating just how Lemmy and the Fediverse was a better long term system compared to Reddit since I really liked the block/mute list idea from BlurSky which was not on Lemmy. But your comment really puts it into perspective of how we can keep this space thriving.

You can adjust the filter or even disable it.

I’m not personally someone that knows what criteria their filter uses, but I do see what a difference it makes when I compare how my feed looks on BlueSky compared to when I used Twitter.

I believe accounts are flagged for spreading misinformation by users, those accounts then get reviewed. You can opt to show all accounts and content that post misinformation and can optionally choose to have the tag attached to their profile which indicates this profile is one flagged for spreading misinformation.

It gives more weight to their vote. It doesn’t change their situation by itself inherently, but if enough people make these types of moves it could shift the political landscape of the country.

Functionally, a lot of legislation is held back by not having enough votes in both the House and Senate, more so the Senate than the House. Personally, I would want to see the House and Senate rebalanced in the future to be a minimum of five representatives and senators per state, but then scaled up based on population. Assuming we have also changed the voting system in each state to be more representative through ranked robin voting, STAR voting, or score voting then each state will do a much better job of actually reflecting the population’s voting preferences.

Functionally, we should build a media system that people want to engage in. Changing the voting system is a core part of changing the media system as well. As you risk alienating potential voters if you demonize the other side, this would at the very least move politics aware from hyper-partisanship.

To change the media ecosystem, we need the Fairness Doctrine back and expanded to social media. This can happen to some extent on the state level, but we functionally need it on the federal level to see a lasting impact. Democrats/progressives need a majority of seats in the House and Senate to even attempt to pass something like the Fairness Doctrine. Ideally, you would want a 3-5 seat majority in the Senate and at least 10 seat majority in the House to pass a majority of the legislation you want to pass. You need a 10 seat majority in the Senate if you want your legislation to be filibuster proofed.

Economic incentives reward more left leaning politics imo. Left leaning politics is good for the people and good for businesses as well in the long run.

It depends on the state if we’re talking about legislatures that have a big enough majority that they can change the district maps quickly enough to disenfranchise voters. Those new maps usually need to be approved by the courts though. If the courts deem the new maps are gerrymandered, they can at least force the election to be off the old map used in the previous election. I would recommend doing research ahead of time if your goal is to make a voter impact. Encouraging others in your community to turn out to vote can make a difference as well.

Moving to a purple state or a disenfranchised state/district could impact future elections. While maps can be redrawn, those maps need to be approved by the courts to be able to be used. The reason I mention researching ahead of time is because you will be a new arrival in the state, the legislature doesn’t have a record necessarily of how you personally will vote. Even if they do, then you could be in a sea of voters from other political parties. Your vote can make a difference still on the city level, school board elections level, governor level, and the federal level. The state level is the most likely to be affected by gerrymandering, but you can try to not group to a left leaning area that’s easier for legislators to gerrymander out.

Personally, I think some states are close to center, some are further left and others are further right. Rather than splitting the party and the vote share, we can grassroots organize, get signatures for a ballot initiative, and change the voting system away from First Past the Post. Our voting system is what ultimately prevents viable alternative parties from appearing and is causing the “safe incumbent” neoliberals to win out over “risky” progressive picks since people only get one vote and they don’t want to have their least favorite candidate win over their favorite and their safe choice.

Organizing now matters a lot. If we change even a few more states away from First Past the Post voting, like we did with Alaska and Maine, then third parties will have much more stable ground to actually form and win elections on the state and federal level. I still think supporting incumbents in many cases make sense until we act to change the voting systems. Although rallying around potential candidates which are pushing for change can make a difference in some races.

We can try to change the voting system on the county level and city level if trying to get the state as a whole to change has not been working in your state.

Let’s not be reductionists.

We do have a lot of problems and each of these problems deserve attention and care to in order to stop. Many of the problems are a huge deal as well.

What I am bringing attention to is one of the problems that has gradually led to these other problems arising. It is also a problem that requires mutual effort from individuals in 48 states other than my own.

Our voting system has been a main proponent of what has enabled the echo chamber media environment we have and it is partially what has caused politicians to divide the country. Also, we do not have a voting system in all 50 states that enables other political parties to appear as real alternatives.

We should concern ourselves with multiple problems concurrently as we do not need to just focus on only one problem to fix. Yes, we should protest and bring attention to other issues, but at the same time we can also try to grassroots organize to change the voting system to help prevent things from getting worse or from happening again in the future.

I would even encourage you, if you are not from the US, to push for alternative voting systems like I brought up to prevent similar issues from appearing in your country someday. Specifically I would advocate for ranked robin, STAR, or score over ranked choice as there are some unlikely scenarios where ranked choice can be as bad as FPTP.

If we had a different voting system, we very well might not have been in this situation. As other people that normally avoid voting at all, because they hate the two party system, may have come out to vote. Hell, they could have even voted their favorite choice at their first option, but put a second choice as a backup if their favorite candidate did not win.

If people really want faster change politically, then they should move from the deepest red and deepest blue states to more purple states. At least then their votes will have an immediate impact on shifting the power balance away from the coin flip, where land has more power than people. They should look at voting maps ahead of time before they move as well, so that they are not necessarily gerrymandered out of a vote.

Dang, I just got to episode five last week too. Although, I had a feeling they would cancel this even from the first episode, so I’m not too surprised.

I feel it was decent, but it’s a hard premise to pull off imo. Most notably I feel this show would have landed better a few years ago. Some of the bits were cheesy in ways that don’t necessarily land as much these days.

Maybe the issue it had was that it was trying to write to too broad of an audience? It’s going for a niche of nerds that maybe want to learn a bit more about what things are actually like inside these gaming companies, but then I feel some of the humor is washed down to be more palatable for even kids to watch. It had Rob McElhenney and David Hornsby from It’s Always Sunny which were great casting picks, but the writing humor they were delivering was very PG in comparison to It’s Always Sunny.

I can see producers and writers wanting to avoid a comparison to Silicon Valley for instance. I feel this is probably why they went at it from the angle which they did, but the show a much harder time landing with its PG writing. They didn’t give themselves a ton of wiggle room either by writing it to be geared towards WoW and maybe some other MMO fans specifically. As I feel having other game projects the big studio is working on could at least have let them pivot the narrative. I feel at times some of the material could even have been applied to say Riot or Mihoyo, but from what I saw it felt very WoW based mixed with some Big Bang Theory level of humor.

For other parties to spring up, we need to get ballot initiatives going in every state to move away from First Past the Post voting. This only requires getting enough signatures for a ballot initiative in about half of the states, for the other half, writing to your representatives and senators can make a difference. It’s not a fruitless effort either as Alaska and Maine both have managed to move away from First Past the Post voting, which is the main limiting factor preventing other political parties from springing up.

Ranked robin voting, STAR voting, score voting, and even Ranked Choice voting are better than First Past the Post for allowing better representation.

I would say that Reddit’s problems are enhanced by complicit admins. I feel that Lemmy instances can get just as bad as any subreddit power tripping mods can be. The good news though is that users have much more power to start a fresh instance and get it popular as the main name of the instance before the @ can stay the same. This is a big deal compared to Reddit imo, as the ability to hold the name of the community gives a lot more leverage over legitimacy. Take r/manga for instance, I believe most of the mods over there are now inactive. Another head mod has not come in to fill the void, and the subreddit has not posted things like applications for new mods. The userbase feels stuck to that subreddit due to how impactful the name is in attracting users to the community. Sure can offshoot can slowly grow in popularity, but it may be missed by the people that stop their search after typing in ‘manga’ to the search bar.

TL;DR Lemmy has it’s issues, but it is much harder for any one instance’s mods to be overly harsh on their rules as the risk of users jumping to a new instance with the same name is relatively low.

RCV specifically is worse than say Ranked Robin voting, STAR voting, or score voting which all would make the least liked candidate winning less likely compared to RCV or FPTP.

Most countries stopped at RCV, but Ranked Robin or STAR would be a big upgrade.

Fixing the voting system is just one of the key things that needs to happen though. Education desperately needs reforms. Our media desperately needs reforms such as the Fairness Doctrine coming back and being expanded to all media and social media influencers/podcasters as well.

Choosing not to participate is how you become dominated by one of the parties, possibly the one you like the least. The way to actually be able to participate is by trying to change the system itself. By that I mean changing First Past the Post voting in each state, as this is the means through which other political parties would be able to spring up. Another option is to run for government yourself as an actor for change within one of the major political parties.

Make no mistake, changing the system is possible. Alaska and Maine have both done it already. Other states can do it too. I think trying alternative voting systems such as ranked robin voting, STAR voting, score voting, or even ranked choice voting would be a major step towards other political parties and to move away from the most the least liked candidates winning elections.

I’m not sure why this was voted down, real lasting solutions require hard work and organizing to make change. Mind you, changing the system of how we vote alone isn’t the end step, but a starting place for change.

I 100% was sold on the hype, but I think it’s still interesting having had my expectations tempered. I don’t think it could be argued they are original dire wolves. Maybe it could be argued they are a modern rendition of what those researchers believe a dire wolf would look like.

I think it could be argued to be its own unique species now, which could be named as a dire wolf for lack of a better name. Whether or not the changes they made have made them unable to breed with grey wolves is probably also an important question on what these animals are exactly.

The stated goal of the company seems to be to reintroduce similar extinct animals to the best of our ability and help introduce genetic changes to threatened species to better adapt to climate change.

I think the company calling the animal they made a dire wolf is mostly for marketing purposes at the end of the day though. Still really cool research! I hope they continue to get funding for this and other projects.