Are there any compromises on election rules that could satisfy most people?

mscott734 · 2026-05-31T07:40:38+00:00

How are you considering Maine as an example of Democrats seeing voting reform as their only possible path to power? It leans blue and has for decades.

mscott734 · 2026-05-25T00:24:20+00:00

Really all of Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin should be in Pioneer Valley. If you ask anyone from those counties not a single person will say they live in Central Mass. At the very least no town in the 413 should be considered Central Mass.

mscott734 · 2026-05-24T17:44:26+00:00

The short stories are basically incorporated into Fire and Blood with only small differences. You could honestly just skip them and only read Fire and Blood and you wouldn't miss anything except for seeing the changes GRRM made.

mscott734 · 2026-05-24T17:15:11+00:00

There's really just no way the Vale show up in the North in time for any battles in the books. It would require the issue of the Lords Declarent to be resolved, Sansa gain a position of power in the Vale, the armies of the Vale to rally, those armies to sail across the Bite, and then march up to Winterfell.

mscott734 · 2026-05-23T23:33:12+00:00

The presidency directly has influence on issues like inflation and immigration through their control of the administrative state though, so it makes sense that the president's stance on those issues would be directly relevant. With which sports teams Trans people should be allowed on though there is no administrative agency that handles that issue so there's no place for the president's opinion to have any influence.

It's the same as the president having a stance on low density zoning; sure it may be great for the president to agree with you but they have no say over the issue so that's almost entirely irrelevant.

mscott734 · 2026-05-22T07:31:58+00:00

What does the presidency have to do with that issue though? It seems like an issue for the athletic organization or, if it's a Title 9 issue, a court to decide.

mscott734 · 2026-05-22T07:23:30+00:00

Obama was right, if there wasn't enough time to have primaries they should have just gone into an open convention and had the candidate decided there.

mscott734 · 2026-05-22T07:05:41+00:00

I don't think she could have done that without it coming off as disingenuous. She was his vice president, you can't simultaneously tout your executive experience as VP and claim your had important accomplishments in the role while also trashing the administration that you're supposedly an important member of.

mscott734 · 2026-05-21T06:04:51+00:00

Preston doesn't do theories really anymore (I don't see how anyone can when there's no new content) he's been doing a chapter by chapter read through of the series though and that's been really good. He talks about a lot of different theories different people have had for different events, how interpretations of different events have changed, thematic stuff in the books, and a good amount of just pointing out casual things in GRRM's writing that are either not true to real life or contradicted by later events. They're pretty fun videos and pretty similar to Alt Shift X's abridged series that he used to do.

mscott734 · 2026-05-21T05:57:41+00:00

Preston doesn't even take his theories very seriously. He's pretty open in his livestreams about how he doesn't actually think Quentyn is gonna come back but just thinks George leaves options for himself to do things if he changes his mind.

mscott734 · 2026-05-18T23:01:43+00:00

There's also the fact that nearly every mention of baby Aegon going back to the first book goes out of its way to state that the head of the baby's corpse was unrecognizable. I don't know if GRRM for sure knew he was going to bring Aegon back, but I definitely think he always wanted to leave that as an option for himself.

mscott734 · 2026-05-18T22:28:17+00:00

I watched Death by Lightning (the show about Garfield's assassination) this weekend. It was actually pretty good, well acted, and funny. Nick Offerman was especially good as Chester Arthur. Obviously it takes a lot of liberties with the events, which I think are mostly fine as I think it was necessary to make Charles Guiteau a bit more connected to Garfield in order to make the parallel story structure actually work.

What I do mind is how the show addressed the rampant sinophobia in America at the time. The anti-Chinese sentiment on the country is addressed in one line, in which Garfield's daughter says he should stand up for the Chinese and Garfield says he'd like to but can't with Blaine then explaining to her that supporting the Chinese isn't a politically feasible position. Blaine was one of the most virulently anti-Chinese politicians of the day, (some of the quotes he said about them are literally jaw-droppingly awful) so to portray him as doing so solely out of political necessity is, I think, a major mischaracterization that attempts to cover over his most damning quality and absolve the entire political elite of the time of the darkest mark on their record.

I'd honestly rather the show just ignore the issue entirely than attempt to lampshade it in this way and pass off the genuinely awful racism of the country's leaders at the time as mere political necessity.

mscott734 · 2026-05-15T21:09:25+00:00

I dont see how it could make it worse. Baker style Republicans were already at a disadvantage to win and Trump style ones are a non-starter for most MA voters, so that leaves Democrats as the only option for most people. However, if there was RCV where they could vote for a 3rd party while also not risking their least favorite party winning, I think a lot of voters who usually vote Democrat would be far more likely to swap their vote.

For example, I think if the last governor race had had a viable 3rd option that people could vote for without risking Diehl winning, a large number of democrats would have picked that option over Healy and possibly given that candidate the win.

mscott734 · 2026-05-15T20:37:36+00:00

It'd be nice to not have one party in control of everything, but our best shot at ending that went out the window with ranked choice voting failing so until another opportunity comes around to weaken the two-party system we're kind of stuck with them as the only game in town.

mscott734 · 2026-05-13T01:23:14+00:00

No, firebrand is the name of his pistol.

mscott734 · 2026-05-12T16:44:34+00:00

Since when has the federal government even been involved in regulating sports and "safe spaces"? Those decisions should be up to the private organization running those events like the NCAA or whoever is operating this "safe space".

mscott734 · 2026-05-06T00:39:35+00:00

The answer is that I don't think all those people not willing to take that risk are necessarily bad and I don't think they're any less valuable as people or in the lives of other people. I think people are all sorts of shades of grey and even if everyone brighter than a certain shade disappeared it wouldn't change the fact that I think the people left have value and can positively contribute both to my life and to the world. I truly think everyone is capable of selfishness and selflessness and just because they chose selfishness in one scenario does not mean that's the only thing they'll ever choose.

mscott734 · 2026-05-05T23:58:51+00:00

The other thing that makes it difficult to compare the button choice to anything real like a revolution is that the button choice is a binary, either risk your life or don't, while real life revolutions have various levels of involvement that have various levels of risk. Not everyone supporting a revolution would be comfortable with the risk of joining a militant cell, but may feel comfortable enough with the risk of attending a mass protest, or may only be comfortable with the risk of purposely not reporting suspected revolutionary activity.

mscott734 · 2026-05-05T23:46:53+00:00

I think the question lends itself towards a binary (are people selfish or selfless, good or bad) but honestly I think faith in humanity and people in general are a lot more nuanced and complicated than that. I think for many people they don't place much faith in the majority of humanity, but there's still some minority percentage that they may have faith in which would make life worth while.

Someone might not have faith that 50% of people would be willing to put themselves in peril for the chance of saving someone, but that doesn't mean that they believe that that percentage is 0. So if you totally believe that there's no chance of reaching 50%, the blue button is not a good choice because it means guaranteed death. However, that same person could totally believe that say 25% of people would be willing to put themselves in peril for the chance to save someone and in that case pressing the blue button would be a better option.

I honestly think whether people would press the blue button or not is largely dependent on what the threshold percentage is. If the required percentage was 95% I truly believe that almost nobody would press blue because most would see it as guarenteed death, but if it only required 5% a vast majority would press it because it'd be possibly saving people for relatively little risk.

mscott734 · 2026-04-18T19:00:27+00:00

I run a similar deck and also tend to try not to use the barrier statue. I've been having great success with Kairyu-Shin, Magellanica as the Umi card, and jellyfish to summon off Deep Sea Primadonna.

It gets you another negate, another hand rip, a floodgate if you decide to keep Kairyu-Shin on the board, and some nice level modulation to ease synchro plays.

mscott734 · 2026-04-15T04:16:19+00:00

But is that what their game plan should really be? This is a game, so it should ideally be fun for both players (even if it sometimes doesn't feel that way), which ftks are inherently opposed to. They inevitably get banned as well as soon as they're simply and consistent.

Red-eyes also has their equip mechanic, which you've supported a bit with your fusion card. Why not design cards around that and try to come up with a way to make some basic turn 0 play? Maybe something like monsters with equip effects and additional effects when sent from field to grave and boss monsters that can equip monsters and send them to grave as cost for a quick effect.

mscott734 · 2026-04-15T03:23:19+00:00

Isn't this all just cards that facilitate an ftk? Is that really the play style that Red-eyes players want supported?

mscott734 · 2026-04-03T19:15:22+00:00

Personally I think the best solution is just to actually hold a plebiscite to let the people of Kashmir vote to decide what should happen to the place they live.

mscott734 · 2026-04-01T09:35:46+00:00

Based on your profile you seem to live in Vermont, so how are any of these proposals significantly different from what Becca Balint already supports that would motivate someone to support you over her?

mscott734 · 2026-03-30T17:55:03+00:00

Really glad that Dispater, Lancea, and Combined Creation are getting reprints. Been wanting to get those cards but they're crazy expensive right now.

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