Does any "influencer" actually influence stuff? Legit, I don't know. Advertising generally is more about raising brand familiarity, it doesn't usually make people go out and buy things.

But I would guess that he has an impact on the tech enthusiast community, and I feel like that would trickle down. And there's people like me, I'm not really an enthusiast, but I like to read up on things before I make a big purchase, so I watch his videos when I'm in the market for a new phone or whatever, and then don't watch his videos for a couple years, until it's that time again.

That person didn't suggest it, it's in OP's list.

There's no benefit to that. Removing the limit on house representatives, that's huge and real, but merging Congress is dumb. There's a few dumb things on the list (eg "abolish gerrymandering" is like saying "abolish speeding"). Choose your favorite!

Edit: Now that I'm not trying to hurry to get ready for work:

Chapter One: the HoRs.

For those that aren't aware of how it works:

There's are two lawmaking bodies with two different purposes. The Senate is equally split among states. There are 2 senators for each state -- as a result, those seats are elected by their entire state (more people voting on each person), and the seats are more competitive (more people want to be elected to that seat). So Senators tend to be more serious politicians, more "universally appealing" (aka centrist). This also makes the Senate the one that gives smaller, or less populous states, more power, because both California and Wyoming get 2 senators, no matter what. These factors contribute to the Senate being a more deliberative body.

The House Representatives are determined by population -- so California has many more senators than Wyoming. They're elected in their district, which can be quite small, so the profile of voters in a district is often very different than in an entire state. (This is why all the crazies are in the House.)

There's a minimum, obviously -- the smallest state will always have at least 1? Or 2? I don't remember. But you can't have a state with no representation, that's not ok.

The problem is, our national population is very very different from what it was. The difference between New York and Maine is much more drastic than it was 200 years ago. But we haven't increased the number of Representatives. And there's a minimum. As the oopulation grows, and the House doesn't, it's becoming more and more unbalanced, in favor of smaller states.

Imagine trying to get smaller states to vote in favor of decreasing their power.

(Also: electoral college votes are on the same system. The electoral college was intended to give smaller states more power, but because there's a minimum, and we haven't reduced the total, it's become super imbalanced. It was a mediocre idea to start with, and now it's even worse. Abolishing the EC is pretty popular, but it might be easier/better to just follow the rules and increase the total number of EC votes. But, again, small states won't agree to it.)

The Constitution says we're supposed to increase the total number of Representatives (and EC votes) but at some point (1929 to be specific) Congress was like nahhhh

Chapter two: why we can't Abolish Gerrymandering.

First of all, it's already illegal.

Secondly, it's hard for outsiders to tell the difference between appropriate "gerrymandering" and actual gerrymandering. If you look at Chicago, where I'm from, there's a weird vote assignment on the west side of the city, it looks manipulated and weird. But if you live here, you know, there's a huge highway that cuts through there that's very hard to cross, so populations on one side are very different from on the other. One side of the highway is there a bunch of Latino immigrants and settled, and on the north side are more affluent (white) people.

(The fact that a highway cuts through a neighborhood isn't an accident, but that's just regular systemic racism, unrelated to Congress.)

If you made the voting map a simple grid, the Latino voters might be split up in a way that reduces their voting power. So the map is weird, but it's actually good that it's weird.

(This is why I said it's like speeding: one, it's already illegal, but two, it's something everyone is doing (and traffic would be super shitty if everyone followed the speed limit), but some people are taking it to an illegal extreme.)

If you look at a state, calculate a percentage of the minorities, and check that number (those numbers -- since there are more than one minority) against the number of districts that vote the way those minorities vote, then, that's what we've decided is "fine" -- and, for real, what else are you going to do.

Illegal gerrymandering is when those blocks of voters ("blocs," is you want to get into Gramsci), are intentionally divided so as to reduce their power. The voting rights act of 1965 made this illegal, and every ten years, after the census, districts are often redrawn. In 2010, we ended up with a lot of gerrymandering. Now,finally, were starting to see some corrections to badly gerrymandered maps, like Alabama, Florida, New York, Wisconsin, Georgia... Louisiana...idr the others, but it's a lot. 2024 is going to have a very very different House of Representatives than the one we have now.

This last point is worth underscoring. The current Republican house majority is due to illegal distract maps. It is, technically, an illegal Congress. So all these ridiculous shenanigans the House Republicans are up to shouldn't be happening. (And, in fact, one could easily make the argument that the high percentage of insane and stupid Republican Representatives is because of the maps -- because the the "depressurization" caused by fair maps would have dialed Congress back to a more centrist stance.

If you want to learn more, check out Democracy Docket, which is a news source from a group of people (lawyers) who are taking bad maps to court.

Look Ma, this guy says it's ok that I'm a full stack dev. He says it's even good!

Also: counterpoint: if you teach your kids to code, you can outsource to them.

Honestly I actually attribute at least a bit of it to MKBHD himself -- he's got huge hands, and he makes large phones look manageable. He's one of the most important tech influencers out there and he makes a 7" phone look like a 5" phone.

I have about average sized hands and I had to do weird juggle-shifting to reach the far side of my old Galaxy Notes. I'm on a Sony Xperia something or other now, which has a narrow but taller screen, and it's a bit better -- but still not ergonomic.

I hadn't heard it either until FD Signifier used it in a video. I guess it originally referred to the "in universe" fiction of professional wrestling, but FD took it out of that context and now I use it all the time -- well, it doesn't come up that often, but it's a concept that's needed a word for a while now... Especially now that "alternative facts" are becoming so prevalent.

I intended to write that just as an intro paragraph to a critique of enlightenment philosophy, since I feel like, while the goal of objectifying the human experience was the natural predecessor to the eventual subjectification of the exterior universe, their confidence in their interpretations of their experience -- or maybe just in the universality of their interpretations -- makes their entire project a bit sus

But then life happened and I just said the thing about coffee.

One of the things that I thought of to help with this problem is, like, what if we figured out how much it costs to meet like all the basics in life - a house (not a rental!), food, soda, internet, heat/hot water - all that stuff. Then add some more, so that people could do nice stuff and enjoy their lives, save for retirement, go on vacations, etc.

Then - now here's the crazy part - we make a law requiring that everyone in the country needs to be paid at least that much money. It would be like a "Floor Wage," or, like, a "Minimum Salary."

If the increase in the cost of doing business didn't eliminate billionaires altogether, I bet people would at least stop giving a shit about billionaires and their gold piles because the rest of us aren't living in debt while they build yachts for their yachts.

Canadians for Trump is possibly the cringiest moment in Canadian history.

I was under the impression Chrome doesn't let you use ad blockers anymore? idk I use ~~arch~~ firefox btw

I mean, if this is a package manager challenge then a distro is just a package manager

And in a lot of ways, it kind of is - now that most distros are using systemd and most distros have all the same stuff in the repos, a distro - in the sense of how different they feel to use - is basically just swapping package managers.

(Distro maintainers, don't misunderstand! You folks do way more than just zip up a package manager! Your work is crazy hard and we appreciate you!)

So if a distro is more than just the package manager, what would that mean:

1. Default desktop env; obv a big one for Fedora since RH drives both Fedora and Gnome;
2. Community; another big one for Fedora since it has one and it's a pretty great one
3. ...? Idk this isn't like an essay I had planned, I can't think of anything else off the top of my head ;)

Point one, yes, OP has betrayed the spirit of Fedora because Gnome isn't featured in the screenshot - but if we didn't know better, there's not actually much in the screenshot that can't be done in Gnome

Point 2: any time you're using a smaller-community WM or DE, yes, you're going to have to reach beyond the distro's community - but for a lot of stuff, you're still in the Fedora community;

Point 2.5 - and, when posting screens to unixporn communities, the F is what matters; it's representation, it's demonstrating what's possible, it's showing that Fedora is a viable choice for new ricers that aren't aware that you can rice any distro; and - maybe most important - it's cool - OP is literally improving fedora's reputation by posting something awesome that uses it

This isn't a comment to argue, it's meant as a discussion - what would make it more fedora-ish and less of a package manager challenge?

I'm no bearings expert but my gut tells me that if I were to start making cheap toys for kids that centered around bearings that had no significant durability or precision requirements, I would probably not opt for a bearing design that was rare or expensive or unique.

In fact, I'd probably go knocking on doors of those companies that do have strict requirements and be like, gimme all the ones that failed inspection.

In fact #2, if i wanted to retire and make everyone in Lemmy threads like this one jealous, I'd start thinking about what other high precision parts probably get thrown out if they fail inspection, that I could buy for next to nothing, and how I could make that into a toy.

Parts of machines are cool. Parts of machines that are crafted to high standards of precision are cool. The toy probably invents itself. Going viral and getting as popular as fidget spinners tho... That seems harder.

It seems like you have a problem with the wild speculation, not the acronym. Which is legit, people don't need to have opinions on every single thing they think about, and they certainly don't need to share them. But it kinda seems like they're going to anyway. And, in that case, what's better, wild speculation or wild speculation that admits it?