• n1ckn4m3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    1 day ago

    If we ever have another elected president, I hope that one of their first acts after undoing literally everything that the orange menace has done is to replace every picture of trump in any government building with this.

    • Liz@midwest.socialEnglish
      5·
      22 hours ago

      Gonna need fundamental change to make the president less powerful and make it so that no one party ever holds a majority in Congress ever again. The first would follow the second, so we should be pushing for something like Sequential Proportional Approval Voting for every legislature we got.

      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        1·
        4 hours ago

        Not a fan of SPAV, in part for the same reasons I’m not a fan of STAR:

        1. It doesn’t eliminate strategic voting. For example, imagine you support two candidates for a multi-seat election. Under straight AV you vote for both of them because there’s literally no incentive to do otherwise. Under SPAV, you might decide that since one of those candidates is much more popular and thus a foregone conclusion to win that you should avoid voting for them so the value of your vote for the other isn’t reduced. Too many doing this can cause negative effects, like strategic voting in other methods.
        2. You can’t tell me how my vote will actually be counted until every other vote is counted, because how the ballot will be measured in the end depends on every other ballot as depending on how everyone else voted your votes for some candidates may be worth less than your votes for other candidates. Straight AV doesn’t have this problem, your vote is exactly what is says on the ballot and is counted exactly as it is on the ballot. The extra math also makes it more complicated to explain to voters en masse, which is a problem with other systems that have transferable votes.

        I get that the goal is apparently to make every state elect a split legislature/congressmen by making so that if any seats are even vaguely competitive the parties will essentially be forced to take turns.

        • Liz@midwest.socialEnglish
          1·
          3 hours ago

          1. While this complaint is technically true for SPAV, the likelihood that a popular candidate would fail to win a seat because everyone thought they were too popular is just… Not gonna happen. We already know from real-world AV elections that voters largely prefer to vote honestly, there’s no reason to think they would get more strategic when it gets harder to figure out the optimal strategy.

          2. This is a problem inherit to nearly all systems designed to produce proportional results. I honestly can’t think of a worthwhile system that doesn’t have this problem. Anyway, the goal is not to make the parties take turns. It’s to make it possible for minor parties to win seats in the legislature. In the end, no single party would ever have a controlling majority, and they would be forced to form coalitions to pass legislation.

          • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            1·
            2 hours ago

            We already know from real-world AV elections that voters largely prefer to vote honestly, there’s no reason to think they would get more strategic when it gets harder to figure out the optimal strategy.

            In plain AV, voting honestly is the optimal strategy - there’s no incentive to vote any other way. It’s not for SPAV. And yes, strategic voting in SPAV is harder to figure out than strategic voting in FPTP, but it’s far from impossible - basically you don’t vote for a popular candidate you support so your vote for other candidates counts for more, relying on the assumption that enough other people will vote for the popular candidate you support to allow them to win anyways.

      • Xande@discuss.tchncs.de
        4·
        20 hours ago

        Start with reforming the ways your elections are held. To the rest of the world it seems like a 250 years old system to keep those with money in power. I thought the american revolution was held to get lost of a king and his henchmen?

        • Liz@midwest.socialEnglish
          1·
          15 hours ago

          You’re going to have to get more specific if you want a response beyond “yeah man, it is 250 years old.”

          • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            1·
            4 hours ago

            He’s probably talking about the electoral college, and likely supports abolishing it in favor of a direct election which would mostly just shift the epmhasis away from the largest states that are close to flipping over to emphasizing a handful of the largest cities.

            There’s actually a bill that’s made the rounds to several states that makes it so that once enough states (read a number equaling half plus 1 electoral votes) pass a similar law they will all switch over to assigning their electors based on the national popular vote rather than what they’re state does. Unsurprisingly, California and New York jumped on this, as did some smaller solid blue states that are willing to hitch their wagon to “whatever California wants” going forward, but it’s probably never going to actually take effect because if it could get to that point because if it could then we wouldn’t be worrying about the GOP winning another election for the foreseeable future.

            Or they aren’t a fan of House apportionment. Or both. Though electoral college apportionment and house apportionment are related, so…

            If they’re from the EU, I’d have a question for them: Do you feel like Germany isn’t given remotely enough power by the EU parliament, or that Malta has ridiculously too much to throw around? Because it’s literally the same problem - if you try to represent people with a fixed number of seats apportioned between territories, and you try to minimize the mean difference in voters/representative, and there are a couple of territories that just blow the curve on each end that’s what happens.

            Still think merging the Dakotas and creating Montoming (merging Montana and Wyoming) is a good idea… Maybe go whole hog and if your state gets one House seat and is adjacent to a state with one House seat, you get merged to be one state from here on out. Where multiple options present, join the ones with the largest shared land border. Repeat until no examples remain, recalculate House seats and do it again if necessary. It probably won’t help California much just because of how much CA blows the population curve, but it would likely push the states with the worst population/representative ratio up by one. Should probably pull out the math and see.

    • M137@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 hours ago

      But why did you post a weirdly cropped version? I just can’t see how that happened.

      Here’s the full painting:

    • vala@lemmy.world
      5·
      23 hours ago

      Imo in this original painting Saturn is horrified either to be doing this at all, or to be seen doing it.

      So I don’t think the poetry transfers to trump here.

      I know this is shit posts but we’re also discussing high art so…

        • vala@lemmy.world
          3·
          14 hours ago

          Yeah I’ve heard few different intersting takes. I think most people agree the expression is mechanical like you said.

          This is just my impression. It’s the lighting more than anything that makes me feel this way. The painting seems to be illuminating the devourer in a way that suggests he might be seeing his own act for the first time himself.

        • Liz@midwest.socialEnglish
          4·
          22 hours ago

          He certainly wasn’t horrified about doing it in the original myth, as far as I remember.

          • vala@lemmy.world
            3·
            14 hours ago

            Yeah, I’ve always seen Goya’s version (if this is even Saturn at all) to be an inversion or some kind of commentary on the original theme. There are a few famous paintings of this scene from before Goya’s time.

            If anything it feels to me that Saturn was in the darkness doing this act but now there is a bright and sudden light being shown on him and he is shocked or ashamed. Almost like he has possibly “snapped out” of the state he was just in and is now maybe seeing what he has done for the first time himself.

      • vala@lemmy.world
        3·
        23 hours ago

        Yeah he didn’t even actually name this painting. We really don’t know who the subjects are for sure.

      • NielsBohron@lemmy.worldEnglish
        30·
        2 days ago

        I dunno, I think that’s part of the magic of the Black Paintings. To me, what makes them truly unsettling (in the best way) is the fact that he painted them exclusively for his own desire and that we’re limited to guessing the subject matter (which, although ambiguous, was undoubtedly dark).

        • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
          5·
          2 days ago

          Insanity created some of the most definitely gothic images ever. Goya is so slept on. I’m especially partial to his etchings

        • samus12345@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          True, I just always want to know the facts about everything, no matter how insignificant, for historical posterity and my own curiosity.

          • vala@lemmy.world
            3·
            23 hours ago

            Part of this art is that there really are no “facts”. It was painted on the wall of his home some time before his death but wasn’t found before he died. He never gave it a name or said anything about it.

  • abbadon420@lemm.ee
    27·
    2 days ago

    This is a really good reference to classical Roman mythology. Something that the US government usually appreciates.

    • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
      2·
      1 day ago

      On the other hand, he’s well known for eating things he wants to hide. He eats notes after meetings.

      I would be surprised if he hasn’t had someone redesign the US flag for him, based on his ‘vision’. So eating the flag to hide it is totally on brand.

    • LousyCornMuffins@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      2 days ago

      why do you think he’s eating it?

      h̸̤̻͐͆ȩ̷̃̕ ̶͙̎l̵̈̾͜i̸̥̥̾k̷̡̝̀̈́ë̶̬͕́ṡ̴̩͖ ̶̡̰̊̀t̴̮̎̈́ḩ̶̿ê̵͈̻ ̶͇͌t̸̨̘͒a̷̙͉͐s̶̗̄̈t̷̻̻̔é̴͓̼̕

    • adj16@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      Maybe you’re thinking Alan Moore in V for Vendetta?

      Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up.

      • JacksonLamb@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 days ago

        Definitely didn’t originate with Alan Moore. I’ve seen it attributed to Pablo Picasso but I think the first is probably Aristotle.

        • adj16@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          1 day ago

          I was actually expecting it wasn’t him and was hoping that I would find the original when I searched it but he was the only one that showed up - for my query at least. Thanks for the extra info!

          • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
            3·
            1 day ago

            Cunningham’s Law:

            The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.