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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Not particularly, but I can at least recognize that electing a third party practically requires getting rid of the electoral college.

    If no one gets a majority of EC votes, the winner is picked by the house of representatives. So any third party president needs to get a majority of the vote in a majority of states to win. No third party candidate has ever come remotely close to that.

    Under STAR, score, condorcet or IRV? It’s unlikely but possible. With the EC? It’s essentially impossible.


  • There’s a pretty good Wikipedia article on it

    As mentioned, it’s the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. It’s been used by Palestians since at least the mid 60s in a number of different chants, e.g. “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free/Arab/Islamic” (technically, the latter two are “from the water to the water” because otherwise the Arabic doesn’t rhyme).

    Hamas’s charter says

    Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea

    While Netanyahu’s far-right Likud party’s 1977 manifesto says

    between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty

    It’s historically been somewhat controversial, with Zionists typically saying that it calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and/or the expulsion of Jews from the area. CNN fired a political commentator for saying it ~5 years back, and it’s regulated as hate speech in some places in Europe. Most pro Palestinian activists think that’s ridiculous, but it’s worth being aware of.


  • This is specifically talking about mitigation for highly pathogenic avian influenza. HPAI kills chickens fairly quickly, so to contain the spread and minimize the risk of zoonotic spread to people, they kill every bird on every property that it’s detected on.

    This is one of those situations where no one thinks it’s a great solution, it’s just a pragmatic one that minimizes the risk towards workers while quickly depopulating the barn. The problem is that this is one of the cheapest and least humane ways to depopulate a barn, and shouldn’t be allowed. We should insist that barns allow humane depopulation, or at least less inhumane methods.