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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I don’t know if you realize how condescending it sounds to hear you say you “don’t want to ruin whatever enjoyment she gets out of it” by telling her… what? That you arbitrarily look down on the use of this absolutely grammatical construction?

    The thing that bothers me most about stuff like this is that it is effectively some kind of “gotcha” that makes people feel foolish, like their natural, completely grammatical speech has errors, or something they should feel bad about.



  • This is probably a fool’s errand, because it’s all or nothing, making it inherently unstable. If we ever get within striking distance of having enough states to cross the threshold, the law will be fought tooth and nail to prevent passage, and this battle would continue in perpetuity in every remotely purple state that has the NPVIC law in place, trying to get enough overturned to stop it.

    Maybe it accomplishes something useful simply by bringing the conversation about reform to the forefront? But as an actual solution I’m completely skeptical, as much as I like the idea.










  • This is the ignorant “I don’t understand statistics” take. If Nate Silver had given Clinton a 100% chance to win, then maybe you’d have some sort of point. But, in fact, the 538 projection gave Trump a much higher chance than most of the major election models, to the point that I remember Nate having to defend himself against angry people on Twitter over and over. He wrote an article ahead of the election pointing out that if an outcome has a 30% chance of happening, not only is it possible, but in fact you expect it to happen 3 in 10 times. I was very nervous on Election Day 2016 specifically because I had been closely following 538 projections.