Pat @Pat@qoto.org

@jaysonmassey

Yeah, that worked out well for the Black Panther Party, didn't it?

#sarcasm

@danb

qoto has a character limit of 65535 characters so don't have to split up a long toot like that. FYI.

@tonic

Ok. Where's your data?
How many people were killed by COVID-19 in the US? And what's your source for that number?

#press #humint #econ #finance #slang

-
Fun Fact:

In the world of economics and finance the word “press” is slang for a source of money.

In the intelligence community, “press” is slang for a source of information.

@Deglassco

Regarding "moving too fast", here's the ending of a recent major Hollywood motion picture by Paramount, directed by Travis Knight with Steven Spielberg as EP. This film was produced 50 years after Loving v. Virginia.

And Hollywood wonders why everybody keeps saying that they are racist.

@freemo

>"Spying on superpowers is fine. Its the spying on the citizens that is the bigger issue IMO"

You mean like the government tracking virtually every cell phone call that everyone makes and storing that data indefinitely?

@rastinza @zleap

@tonic
>"it’s because I too believe official statistics from communist countries that just got a huge Covid wave and food riots 😉😅🙏🏻 "

I don't think that the US is a communist country. (The source of the information was from the US, JHU.)

@DocCarms

Dead people don't wear masks and dead people get to looking pretty ugly after a while. They probably weren't included in the study, so it's biased.

@freemo

I think you sent out a pic of her before. I remember seeing one here before.

@hasmis

#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #trains #power #future #climate #change #CW7 #class #postApocalypse

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Snowpiercer (2013)

I don’t like this film but I’m including it in the series because it’s original and a lot of other folks like it. It’s a post-apocalyptic film about a train that, as the title suggests, rides through a wintry Earth that has frozen over when an attempt at climate-change mitigation goes bad. The train is an ark that carries the last survivors.

Quite a bit of suspension of disbelief is required to watch the film because the entire premise is ridiculous, but it's really just a metaphor anyway, so that’s how you need to see it. The acting is really well done and the writing is very good for what it is, but the cinematography – particularly the lighting and exposure – is done in a way that makes it nearly impossible to see what is going on. A lot films do this to try to invoke a depressing or fearful mood, but its just irritating to not be able to see what's going on.

If you like post-apocalyptic movies about trains, big naked metaphors and poorly lit scenes, then you’ll probably like this one, otherwise I’d skip it.

Note: When this film was first released, Weinstein demanded that 25 minutes be cut from the film, however due to fan requests, a director’s cut was later released under TWC’s house brand, Radius-TWC. I think a review of both versions might give insight to how Hollywood censors and molds the messages in its films.

@admitsWrongIfProven

Jest. I don't want to argue about this. It was just a joke.

Take care.

@tripu

@khird

To clarify, in my toot, “ they never have” means “ they never have voted for president”.

>”A bit pedantic, surely?”

No, I don’t think so.

>”If we're going to be pedantic, under a popular vote system the states have nothing to do with picking the president; only the individual voters do. The fact that a sizable number of them live in this state or that is incidental, really.”

A comparison between the current system and the proposed system implies that the effects on particular states can be evaluated. Also, as a practical matter, under the proposed popular vote system candidates would likely focus their campaigns on dense population centers, buying ads in larger media markets, and making promises to the benefit of the states that have those large cities. (Under our federal system, federal benefits and subsidies are usually distributed to the state governments who in turn distribute them to the businesses and people in their states.) The way it is now, candidates need to visit the smaller states during a campaign, which provides more fairness. Under a popular vote system, they could just ignore those poorer states which would exacerbate the problem of “fly-over country”, and wealth would further concentrate in the high-populations areas.

@trinsec @peterdrake @sojournTime

@admitsWrongIfProven

To me it is. I don't buy status symbols.

@tripu

@GeorgeMari

The US is going to take China to the international court for a trial about this.

A trial balloon.

You need to make some assumptions, e.g., that the room is on Earth and that "no air in the room" means a vacuum (until the smoke is introduced). Also, smoke includes both particulates and gases, so the assumption is that the gases are not significant and would not cause Brownian motion (which is what causes smoke remain suspended in air for long periods).

So, I think the most correct answer is one second. If the smoke particles don't have significant vertical motion when they are "scattered" in the room, then they would just fall to floor just like a hammer, which would take less than a second for a room that was less than few meters high. (This is because there is no air resistance, like the lunar experiment with the hammer and feather). Some of the particles may come in contact with the walls or ceiling in which case they would likely adhere to them via electrostatic attraction.

However, if any particles were near the floor and had just the right amount of positive vertical velocity, they could first move upwards toward the ceiling coming close to it but not touching it and then fall back to the floor, which would take more than a second for a room with a 3 meter ceiling.

There is also a rare scenario in which a particle could be at just the right distance from the ceiling that the electrostatic attraction from the ceiling would balance out gravity and the particle would be suspended there. However, thermal motion in the molecules in the ceiling and the particle would quickly alter the balance so that the particle would either be pulled to the ceiling or fall. I don't know if this process could take more than a second or not.

So, the most correct answer to this puzzle is "less than a second", but "less than a minute" and "less than an hour" are also correct.

Thank you, @khird, for the background. I think a lot of people who take a position on this issue really don’t understand the history of how the electoral college came to be and the reasons for it.

A couple more points to add to what you’ve contributed...

>”organising a single nationwide vote of the general public was logistically impractical.”

It was more than just logistics. At the founding, the states were 13 separate, individual countries. Over time, those separate countries developed a closer and closer association. First they were in an alliance to fight the British, then formed a loose organization under the Articles of Confederation; then a tighter federation under the Constitution; then even tighter under the 14th Amendment; then tighter again under the New Deal court rulings; and tighter still under further court rulings and legislation.

In the beginning the US was like the “United Nations of the Colonies”. Imagine if the United Nations of today had a lot more power over the countries of the world and they decided to elect the Secretary General with a popular vote from all of the people in the world. China and India would decide who was to rule over the whole world. (That’s an imperfect analogy to get a feel for the history and structure of what this is about.)

>“The general public casts their votes for Electors… but this isn't codified and the details are left to the states.”

States aren’t required a have a presidential election at all. They can just say that the governor picks the electors, or that they are picked at random. It’s totally up to the state legislatures how they pick the electors.

Part of the problem is that people don’t realize that they aren’t voting for president, they never have (unless they were one of few who were selected as an elector). They go to the polls and in most states it just has the name of presidential candidates and they cast a vote not realizing that they are not voting for president, they’re voting for an elector who will go to the state capitol and vote for president. And the development of realtime media like radio and TV added to the illusion that people were actually voting directly for the president during elections.

A huge problem with a popular vote is that California and New York will essential pick the president because of their out-sized populations. Do you really want Wall Street and Hollywood and Facebook and Amazon and Google to pick the president?

@trinsec @peterdrake @sojournTime

@tripu

>"What the hell do you need a $1K cell phone every couple of years for?"

Status symbol.

#sarcasm

@pwinn

If the slaves had guns, they wouldn't have been enslaved, would they?

During the 1960s, when the Black Panther Party started to carry guns, the establishment went berserk because they knew that they were willing to fight for their freedom. The racist establishment only wanted white people to have guns. If black people didn't have guns in the 1960s, willing to fight for their freedom, I don't think the civil rights movement would have seen the progress it had at that time. MLK's message of non-violence was backed up by the willingness of the Black Panther Party to fight for their rights if necessary.

right to self-defense = freedom

#2A