Thoughts on the Disappointing Result Out of Georgia 6. – Talking Points Memo
What Democrats need to resist at all costs is the temperamental inclination to fall into spasms of self-loathing over this defeat – specifically, the idea that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the party because of this loss. I saw one Democrat on Twitter tonight ask if Ossoff’s loss didn’t mean “the Democratic party apparatus needs a total overhaul on every single level?”
Source: Thoughts on the Disappointing Result Out of Georgia 6. – Talking Points Memo
Jon Ossoff’s narrow loss means Democrats are on track to take House and Senate in 2018 midterms
“So while this was certainly not the outcome that the Democratic Party and its supporters were hoping for in Georgia, tonight was further evidence that the Republicans are completely screwed in the midterms. The Republican Party will struggle to retain seats in even the solid-red districts, while the Democrats are in position to make major gains in the moderate districts, while retaining all of their existing blue district seats. Any Republican who thinks tonight was good news, and any Democrat who thinks tonight was bad news, is misunderstanding the math.”
Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here’s how we fix it.
I get it. I do. And I agree that no other big issues can be truly addressed, until we fix the root cause. Our systems for collectively making choices (elections) are pretty broken. They are only responsive to money.
But. Lessig says we need to legislate some massive change. But why do we need to wait? Why would we expect congress to ever make such a decision? They won’t. But can’t we invent something just as effective without legislation?
Imagine: A community website for nominating a person in a district to primary a sitting congressperson. Anyone in the district can “run” in this online nomination system. And anyone in the district can “vote”, although alternative voting methods might be used (ranked choice, single transferrable vote). And importantly, anyone can put actual money into the pot. The winner of this virtual election gets all the money to mount an actual run against the incumbent. Lots of missing detail, but strikes me that if people had to put down money and pledge it to the winner of the online election, it could pump a lot of dollars toward the winner.
Map of Educational Attainment in America
Amazing map of educational attainment.
http://personal.tcu.edu/kylewalker/maps/education/#9.04/33.5166/-112.1434
Compound interest applied to learning
“What Bode was saying was this: “Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.” Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity — it is very much like compound interest. I don’t want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.”
What Is Technology Doing to Us?
https://castro.fm/episode/qSKY0W
The ‘Complex Systems Theorist’ Who Predicted the Arab Spring
“”Our ethanol policy by itself has lead to, by now, a doubling of global food prices. The deregulation of the markets leads to peaks that lie on top of a gradual increase that’s due to the ethanol policy,” he said. “The peaks are the triggers of the food riots and the Arab Spring, but the underlying increase plays an important part as well.””