Gerrymandering is indeed a powerful tool. I'm just saying that it can backfire under the right conditions.
Barbarian
joined 2 years ago
Gerrymandering
Gerrymandering can be pretty brittle. It relies on accurate models of who will vote and for whom. If the underlying assumptions are either wrong or change, then it can backfire. Here's an extreme napkin-math example to illustrate the point:
You have 3 districts. Candidate A is extremely unpopular. You split the voters to get 2 out of 3 districts for candidate A.
District 1:
Candidate A: 5%
Candidate B: 50%
Not Voting: 45%
District 2:
Candidate A: 20%
Candidate B: 15%
Not Voting: 65%
District 3:
Candidate A: 25%
Candidate B: 20%
Not Voting: 55%
As you can see, even though if you add up all the voters for candidate B they heavily outnumber candidate A's voters, by siloing them into one district you can win. But look at the margins for the other 2 districts. It doesn't take many new voters who you assumed wouldn't vote to upset your scheme. Depending on exactly how unpopular your candidate is, the margins for this might be pretty tight. It only takes an extra 10% of the voters moving from not voting to candidate B to cause a landslide 3 district sweep in this example.
I think it's about the level of wealth and power. A small business owner is very clearly a capitalist, but is also definitely not an oligarch. An oligarch is a capitalist by definition though.
Oh, absolutely. That would be an instant massive humanitarian disaster. I was more trying to respond to this though:
just pointing out that since the first human put an animal skin over their shoulders we’ve been developing technology to live in places that we’d otherwise not be able to exist in.
I think there is a big difference between the passive warming / cooling of clothing vs the huge energy requirement, spent resources and emissions required to basically run your entire home / office / factory / hotel as a giant fridge.
Essentially going through some of the ancient technologies used for cooling buildings.
The stabber is a loser and his actions should be denounced by the Muslim community. That guy who got stabbed isn’t responsible for the actions of politicians in a different country.
Aren't these 2 sentences mutually contradictory? If your argument is that people aren't responsible for the actions of others of the same ethnicity, then logically the Muslim community has no obligation to say anything as they're not responsible.
A lot of evangelicals hate me because my ancestors apparently killed Jesus
That was the official catholic church doctrine until 1965 as well.
I've found it funny that historically Christians hate Jews so much. They worship one, after all.
Ancient people developed technology to cool their buildings long before electricity. Windcatchers, awnings, evaporative coolers combined with good old-fashioned thermal insulation were all very effective technologies for keeping cool in otherwise inhospitable places.
There are serious talks about reintroducing these in some places to reduce ballooning electricity use from AC.
Nah, that's not incompetence. You didn't know a thing, you asked, and now you know that thing :)
Israel's blatant disregard for life is inflaming antisemitism and making life actively more dangerous for Jews abroad that have nothing to do with Israel's genocide.
Some news sources are saying it's a tire fire. Not dangerous to the power plant at all, likely just an attempt by Russia to scare people.
I meant to imply that thermal insulation is a prerequisite to any cooling tech, new or old. Looking at my comment again, I just worded it badly.
That's pretty cool. Getting modern insulation on older apartment blocks here in Romania is an uphill struggle. You need every occupant of the block to sign off on it, and that always results in massive headaches from someone who doesn't want to pay the 30 Euros per person.