I have to agree with you there. I think the Democratic Party was scared of inviting infighting with a primary contest which Harris would probably win anyway, but you’re right—Harris had no mandate from the party membership and even a lightning-round primary conducted online would have been better.

I think I phrased my comment wrong on this. It doesn’t ban the act of gerrymandering, it bans the results of gerrymandering. Gerrymandered maps would need to be redrawn had the bill been enacted.

This bill was no slouch. It directly abridged several states’ voter suppression laws. Had the bill passed, the next phase would have been people being able to use the federal courts to strike back against these incompatible laws.

That being said, if you were the leader of the Democratic Party, what would you have done? Not intended as rhetorical snark, I’m just curious as to what other ideas there are.

The first bill filed in the House of Representatives and Senate after the 2020 election which resulted in the Democratic Party gaining nominal control of Congress and the White House was a bill to ban partisan gerrymandering, require independent redistricting committees, forbid states from imposing onerous voter registration or identification regulations, limit the influence of rich donors and wealthy PACs in federal elections, and generally just make the process of voting better for Americans.

This bill was called the Freedom to Vote Bill and was numbered H.R. 1 and S. 1 for the House and Senate versions, respectively. It passed the House of Representatives in 3 March 2021 and received unanimous support among the 50 Democratic senators when the Senate held its vote on 22 June 2021. The bill was blocked from advancing due to a Republican filibuster.

On 3 January 2022, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York announced plans to abolish the filibuster for legislation in order to allow this bill to advance. President Joe Biden had previously indicated he would sign the bill. Schumer made his move on 19 January 2022, moving to change the filibuster rule to require continuous talking, i.e. in order to filibuster a bill, someone must make a speech and keep talking for the duration of the filibuster, with the filibuster ending when they finish talking. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, members of the Democratic Party representing Arizona and West Virginia, respectively, got squeamish and voted against the change. All Republican senators voted against the change. This doomed the bill’s passage through Congress as the filibuster could be maintained indefinitely by the Republicans.

The bill died when Congress was dissolved pending the November 2022 general election, in which Republicans won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives.

Manchin and Sinema’s terms with both expire when the new Congress is convened on 3 January 2025 following the November 2024 general election. Manchin did not seek re-election in yesterday’s election and will retire at the expiration of his term. Sinema was forced out of the Democratic Party and originally planned to stand as an independent before deciding against it. She will retire at the end of her term.

Due to the innate malapportionment of the Senate, it is exceedingly unlikely that the Democratic Party will ever regain majority control of the Senate.

So I point my finger at these two idiots for sinking American democracy as we know it.

It’s a lot more complex than an ordinary vending machine though. That increases costs. A curry machine is nothing more than a normal vending machine with a heater. A ramen machine is nothing more than a normal vending machine with a tap for hot water. Adjusted for inflation, the pizza machine would cost $8 for a small pizza. You can buy one from Little Caesar’s for the same price and it’s bigger and probably tastes better as well, since, as cheap at it is, the crust is at least fresh.

Think about it realistically. Considering just food machines, what foods popular with Americans can realistically be sold out of a vending machine?

Popcorn is a clear winner. It can be made in advance, stored for a while, and then easily dispensed. Its profit margin is high. You can charge two dollars for a bag of popcorn that only cost you twenty cents in ingredients.

Packaged food like potato crisps is also a good idea for the same reason. You don’t even need to keep the vending machine heated. Similarly, cold drinks and ice cream can also be easily dispensed out of a cooled vending machine, although I don’t consider those different from “packaged food”.

But what other American classics are there to consider? Hamburgers are out immediately. They’re too complex to prepare fresh and most people wouldn’t buy a reheated frozen burger.

Hot dogs might be viable, but a machine that sells hot dogs can only see hot dogs due to the mechanical complexity. I think many people would also question the freshness of a vending machine hot dog unless you cooked it right in front of them and let them see it via a glass window. Additionally, a hot dog has a much lower profit margin. If you charge four dollars for a hot dog, it might cost nearly a dollar in ingredients along with the mechanical complexity of the machine. Most people would expect the machine to also dispense condiments like ketchup, mustard, and relish.

Pizza is also complex and would take several minutes to bake from fresh or reheat from frozen. I don’t think people would stand around for several minutes waiting for a machine to heat up pizza. Unless you can get the cooking time under sixty seconds, forget it. Pizza also traditionally baked at 700 degrees Fahrenheit, or 370 degrees Celsius. It’s not an easy to safely install a component that gets that hot in a machine. Pizza that is pre-cooked and kept warm tends to not taste very good.

Fried chicken tenders will lose their crispness over time, even when kept warm. There is no temperature you can keep fried chicken at where it will remain crisp for hours but also not overcook. Hot oil in a machine is a recipe for disaster. French fries are a possible inclusion (the machine in the post sells French fries), but Americans don’t really eat French fries on their own; they are usually served as a side dish along with something else.

Ideally, a machine should be loaded with frozen or pre-cooked food, which it merely keeps warm and dispenses to a buyer when purchased.

Think about Japanese food. Curry, in particular, can be served just barely hot and still delicious. Rice balls can be served refrigerated, as can cold Lawson sandwiches. Instant ramen is also popular, but that’s just packaged food that requires a hot water spigot. I argue that Japanese food in general is just more suitable to be served out of a vending machine.

The full scheme works like this—

1. Acquire dirty (criminally-obtained) cash or dirty crypto. You can convert dirty cash into crypto easily by buying peer-to-peer. Deposit this into Wallet A.
2. Using a different wallet, Wallet B, mint an NFT and put it up for auction. You might consider paying a small sum of money to have it “sponsored” by a B-tier celebrity to make it seem more legitimate.
3. Using the Wallet A, outbid everyone else and buy the NFT. Pay using the dirty crypto.
4. Dirty crypto is transferred to Wallet B.
5. Repeat this process as many times as desired.
6. In the end, sell the crypto legitimately on a cryptocurrency exchange. Declare the crypto as income and pay tax as appropriate.
7. If questioned by the authorities, you claim that you mint NFTs and that they were sold genuinely at public auction, purchased by an anonymous buyer.

getting their huge sums out of crypto and into something they can use (while thousands watch the money like hawks) is much harder

That, my friends, is what NFT are is perfect at.

“Oh, what, tax authority? No, I didn’t steal this money. I earned it legit by selling my newly-minted monkey NFT to some sucker for 100 ETH.”

While the NFT can’t contain the entire title document, it can contain the hash of the title document, and then the title document is simply recorded elsewhere on-chain.

NFTs of art was really not supposed to be anything more than a proof of concept. I think the original purpose of NFTs was to be able to have an NFT representing title to land or something that you could then barter or sell on the blockchain.

Okay bud. Have a biscuit 🍪

It didn’t say “e-book” when I originally wrote the reply

You can donate books to the library, you know. They’re always looking for more copies of popular books and what they don’t add to their collection, they’ll resell them and use the money for more books.

Paper books aren’t “waste” by any means as they are easily recycled.

Most authors I’ve heard from (through their Internet posts) don’t mind libraries, but they’d rather you enjoy their books legitimately than pirate.

It might not be legal, but in my book, it is perfectly ethical to pirate a copy without DRM if you already own a legitimate copy (paper or DRM-inclusive)

I would be astonished if publishers figured out a way to put DRM on a paper copy of a book.

Here’s a DRM-free copy for sale:

It’ll look like this:

Once you buy this, it is truly yours. Nobody can take it away from you. You don’t have to agree to any EULA to read it. No account needed, no activation, no sign-up. You can even resell your copy if you want. There are no technical restrictions on it whatsoever. You can enjoy it any time of day, anywhere in the world, and there’s no need for an Internet connection.

Don’t do that. Authors make next to nothing from their books. You don’t have to support Amazon, but at least buy a paper copy or audiobook to support the author.

Unless it’s J. K. Rowling. Fuck Rowling.

If you don’t like Vim, you should stop being a milk-drinking sweetroll-eating WUSS

“Add to cart”

“Check out”

.gov and .mil are controlled by the American government and they are reserved for use by American government websites and American military websites respectively.

Maybe someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Wayland’s security model intentionally prevent this type of “tampering” with another application’s display?