Gabriel Bodeen @gabe@qoto.org

The two-party system is created by our voting methods. Rather than ranking or rating or approving candidates, we are only allowed to vote for one, and only one candidate wins in each district. Strategically this forces voters to collect into two parties and fight over the median voter. You've probably heard about voting reform proposals to rank or rate or approve multiple candidates.

I propose instead: Vote For One, Top Two Win. Strategically, this forces voters to collect into *three* parties that all fight to pull voters from each other.
5/

So it's worth thinking about what further reforms can mitigate the harms of polarization -- but without anything like the terrible injustice that 20th century depolarization was built on.

Fortunately, I think there's a simple answer: Bring back a three-party system with three roughly equal parties. That will bring back the requirement for compromise plus the huge, uncomplicated coalitions that make governing possible and effective under our Constitution.
4/

But of course it was all built on terrible injustice. The civil rights movement fought for & won a great moral victory, for which we as a country can remain proud, & we can honor their struggle.

We can simultaneously recognize that in restoring relatively free elections to the South, the reforms set the stage for re-polarization. There are always side effects. Unfortunately, polarization in our political system makes the system work terribly. I think we can lay part of the blame of our current political disaster on the political consequences of polarization.
3/

No one of the three factions could pass anything by itself nor hope to gain a majority, so coalition or compromise were the only strategically valid options for party leaders to pursue. But with a coalition of nearly two-thirds, they could very easily pass laws on matters that the coalition agreed about. Furthermore, the coalition was formed of only two factions, so coordinating the factions was relatively simple, much more so than for the many-party coalitions that sometimes occur in countries with proportional representation.

So this period was characterized by high levels of compromise, and political depolarization between the parties.
2/

US politics has been highly polarized at both ends of its history except the early-mid 20th century when the Dixiecrats ran one party states in the South. The rest of the country was contested in relatively free elections, so the GOP and liberal Democrats split the seats between them. Then the Dixiecrats & liberal Democrats formed a Congressional bloc consistently controlling about two thirds of the seats.
1/

Ever since reading the #TerraIgnota books, the only political reform I'm excited by is joining the Utopian Hive. The only problem is to create it first...

All the "It's a coup!!!" chatter is so obviously, blatantly wrong that I kinda wonder if it's a psy-op to undermine opposition. It's damn hard to unite opposition around such utter bollocks. Surely no one who actually opposed Trump & Musk's wanton criminality would choose "coup" as the central idea, right? When words like "saboteur", "highjacker", "embezzler", "burglar", "infiltrator", "mole", "usurper", etc are accurate and all there for the taking?

I just learned today about the Vito Russo test for LGBTQ representation in film. It's similar to the Bechdel test for representation of women. Both are really low bars to step over, and very simple to apply. So they miss lots of nuance, but they're a reasonable start. Neat!
https://glaad.org/sri/2014/vitorusso/

Hot hot 2024! It was the hottest year on record, as I'm sure you heard. These graphs stuck out to me.
https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2024/

Hot hot 2024! It was the hottest year on record, as I'm sure you heard. These graphs that stuck out to me.
https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2024/

Ok ok, back on this app. Bluesky is a nice alternative to Twitter but its centralization has me concerned.

Dream sequences in TV shows are invariably extremely bad. Dream sequences in movies are usually also bad.

Bad writing of dreams treats them as "easy mode": anything goes, there are no consequences, and it doesn't even make sense. But in good writing, dreams are "hard mode"! Most importantly, the writer needs to justify the dream's inclusion in the story by making it achieve something in a way that's better than a lucid scene could provide. Then additionally, the writer needs to creatively supply their own limits, consequences, order, and coherence, which is genuinely difficult.

Season 2, episode 1 fell flat.

Much of it was wasted on a meaningless dream sequence with everyone's least favorite character (Seldon's broken ghost). Someday I hope that TV writers will realize dream sequences are self-indulgent and invariably *suck* for audiences, but sadly that day has not yet come.

The remaining scenes were better but still didn't make any progress or develop any characters. It felt like they were just rushing through a few obligatory scenes to get to something more important. Whatever it is that's more important to the story though, that also has not yet come.

Foundation, the TV adaptation of Isaac Asimov's famous sci-fi books, had a surprisingly moving and beautiful first season. It departed from the books in many ways, but it worked. Its intimate arc about the Emperors was especially well crafted. Overall: a strong show, highly recommended.

This summer so far I enjoyed a Facebook group for nostalgic memes from our youth. Sadly it got taken over by two people (out of thousands) having a bitter political argument on an unrelated subject that started in various comment threads, as Internet arguments often do.

It's not the first time I've seen the admin role on Facebook groups get infiltrated & taken over. It makes me wish they had a democratic system. (Though they might have to limit it to users they've managed to authenticate are real human beings.)

Yes it's a trivial issue. But it's also kind of a funny way to be reminded of the power of democracy to better guard against self-serving leadership. 🙂

At home we've slowly been watching Mrs Davis, a new comedy about a nun trying to kill a powerful AI. 😁 There have been many surprises within the show, but one of the chief surprises of the show to me is how deferential it is to Christianity.

I would have expected a popular show so close to the "bad nun" trope to lean into the dark side of religion & spirituality, and especially the dark side of the church. But Mrs. Davis does not. The protagonist Simone is an unconventional nun but her faith is straightforward and realistic.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt14759574/

The future could be unbelievably full of life. 🙂

> Our familiar, warm, yellow sun is a relative rarity in the Milky Way. By far the most common stars are considerably smaller and cooler, sporting just half the mass of our sun at most. Billions of planets orbit these common dwarf stars in our galaxy.
>
> To capture enough warmth to be habitable, these planets would need to huddle very close to their small stars, which leaves them susceptible to extreme tidal forces.
>
> In a new analysis based on the latest telescope data, University of Florida astronomers have discovered that two-thirds of the planets around these ubiquitous small stars could be roasted by these tidal extremes, sterilizing them. But that leaves one-third of the planets -- hundreds of millions across the galaxy -- that could be in a goldilocks orbit close enough, and gentle enough, to hold onto liquid water and possibly harbor life.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230529171755.htm