Maybe, kind of sort of. This quickly gets into the particulars and is strategy dependent and also dependent on the other parties.

If you look at the passage of the Enabling Act in Weimar Germany, you see the Nazis seized control with the assistance of Zentrum and other centre and centre-right parties. The NSDP “only” had 33-43% support, considering the coercion around the March 1933 election, I expect the 43% figure is a little skewed. If there had been a Weimar version of the cordon sanitaire wrt the NSDP, would that have staved off the passage of the Enabling Acts? Maybe, but by that time you had Nazi paramilitary gangs engaging in open coercion and intimidation, with a dash of domestic terrorism. Of course the KDP (Communists) were behaving similarly, so you could arguably lump them in with the Nazis as destructive influences on democracy. Either way, when somewhere around a quarter to a third of your electorate doesn’t want your democracy to continue, you are in a troubled spot.

Looking at FPTP, I think the US right now offers a good insight into how a motivated group of the electorate with around 25% support could take over. The two big parties are essentially coalitions that are already locked in ahead of the election, and there have always been different (albeit less formally differentiated) camps within the parties. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Democrat, but she is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is also a Democrat, but is not supported by the DSA. In a PR system they would be in different parties, that might often (depending on electoral outcomes) form a coalition. When you have something like the Tea Party and now the MAGA movement, you can see how one of these discreet groups within a larger party can essentially take it over, through the primary system. Liz Cheney, daughter of former Republican Vice-President has been pushed out by Donald’s MAGA supporters. Former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney retires from politics, pushed out by the MAGAts. If you consider the population that actually votes in primaries, a much smaller, more organized movement within one of the two major parties potentially has a better chance of seizing control.

Exactly. If enough of your voters want it, it will eventually happen in any democratic system. The only difference is tactics and thresholds.

If 33% of your population wants Fascism, it’s 33% of your population that’s the problem, not the particulars of your voting system.

I think the association came from emulation. IIRC, you can sometimes play Colecovision ROMS with the MSX emulator in RetroArch, although it’s been a while since I dealt with this.

For some reason I’m reminded of the Colecovision and the Colecovision Adam. Did those share any architecture with the MSX devices?

I’ll add that once you are on the island, there are a lot of medium sized communities, plus lots of more rural areas. Housing prices are still kind of high from a historical perspective but can be pretty cheap by Vancouver standards.

Likewise, the Okanagan, Kamloops and Shuswap regions have lots of more affordable communities up in the hills around fairly decently large population centres by BC standards.

Finally, if you start heading north it gets positively affordable. Prince George, Vanderhoof, Terrace, William’s Lake. Long drives are needed to get places though. Still, where else would you get something like the Sandblast?

I think an actual official government instance would be a good idea. Probably Mastodon would make the most sense, since it would mostly be one-way announcements. With federation, easy enough to get that viewable wherever it’s needed.

I’ll take it. The sentiment was solid.

That’s mostly what I said. In the US, a few swing voters in a few swing states decide the President. The President has outsized power within the US. This is even more pronounced now that Trump seems to be pushing a veritable Presidential monarchy.

Aside from the Presidency though, with FPTP you tend towards two parties, with power flipping between them. Consider Canada with the Conservatives and the Liberals. Gun registry, no gun registry as an example.

In PR systems, there can’t be the same amount of legislative lurch unless the population at large changes their voting. Even if a less mainstream party is the largest in the parliament/legislature/whatever, unless more than 50% of the population voted for them, there will have to be a coalition government. Even in the “big upset” of the 2023 Netherlands elections, Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party only got 37 seats, less than half of what was needed for a majority government. So a coalition was formed and compromises were made. Yes, Netherlands changed tack, but it wasn’t as drastic as in a non-PR election, and arguably more accurately reflects the concerns of Dutch citizens overall.

Lest legislative lurch. We’re seeing an extreme version of that with the US. Tough to deal with a country long term when everything can change every four years.

I think CANZUK can be faster. Still, even while pursuing CANZUK, we can also pursue closer EU integration. We’re going to need to do more business with the EU, and the UK is already in a position where despite Brexit, they need to maintain business with the EU.

Even if Canada was to formally join the EU, I think it would take quite a while. EU member nations haven’t even finished ratifying CETA. CANZUK can move faster for sure. Unfortunately for CANZUK, what Canada’s biggest contribution would have been is what is being undermined, integration with the North American market.

I don’t think it’s intentional on Xitter’s part, necessarily. It’s a bit of an arms race, and Xitter under new management had cut back on all sorts of staffing.

I also don’t think many people stick on Xitter even notice. The algorithm seems to create a bunch of parallel silos, with outside intrusions provoking a swarm response almost.

In the case of Trudeau posts, most engagement seems to be from MAGAts and Qonvoyers, with probably some choice comments from “Joe McDonaldski” from the Canadian Oblast of Ontario or something.

From Xitter’s perspective, a bunch of MAGAts and Qonvoyers reply, upvote, and engage with “Governor” Trudeau, viewing ads while a bunch of the flock pay for the Xitter check mark.

I think clearing the bots would be difficult, require continuing investment, and possibly reduce revenue in the short term.

I’m just on Xitter for legacy purposes, I rarely see anything meaningful. Granted the algorithm mostly has me figured out, and will show me stuff I already agree with, but just a bit further towards the edges of discourse. I’m under no illusion, I’m certain bad actors are influencing discourse all along the political spectrum.

Love Vime’s Boot’s theory, but I’m wearing $18 Urban Star Jeans from Costco, at work, in an industrial facility, that are over 5 years old. There needs to be a serious step up in quality to justify $165.

I still have my Xitter account and pop in now and then. It’s declining steadily. It’s just weird if you step back and look at the difference in discussions on different topics, combined with what gets boosted. They’ve locked down their API Access, so it’s harder for researchers to measure, but it’s my impression that it’s got to be over 50% bots.

I’m sure most of that is going to be old school, using basic swarms to upvote content you want to boost, but with LLM AI getting more sophisticated by the day, and more cost effective, there’s going to AI driven bots actually writing plausible posts soon.

I think the crypto and scam space shows the leading edge, since scammers tolerance for lower quality means they can be early adopters.

But what do I know? I’m no expert. The Dead Internet Theory might stay be true, or we might have a few more years.

Also, good to get into the Fediverse. It may soon be the last refuge if humans.

Also, Twitter has a lot of bots. More than ever before. This shapes discussion in many ways. Most basically, posts meeting certain narratives get more upvotes, quote tweets, etc. resulting in an algorithmic boost. Add in Xitter’s desire to “boost engagement” by bidding controversial content. Finally, so many people are leaving Xitter, or at least using it less at it’s quality declines.

Modern power is based on more than having a bunch of people carrying swords. It’s based on having the economic capacity to build more advanced fighters, tanks, ships and having some soldiers to work it all, while maintaining the infrastructure to advance the technology that all those toys use.

The US didn’t crush USSR in the jungles of Vietnam. It crushed it in the kitchens and living rooms of Europe and much of the rest of the world.

Now Trump is attacking the very source of the US’ strength. The US never needed to occupy any of their allies capitals, to put tanks on the streets of Toronto, Manchester or Munich. NATO countries (despite Kremlin talking points) willingly joined NATO. Now, Trump wants to destroy all that because he doesn’t understand it. A real estate developer of the worst kind.

The real nail in the coffin is that about 1/3 of the people of the US are cheering him on right now. Another third don’t bother to vote. And Presidential authority is now akin to that of a monarch.

I’m less offended by the overall designs than the pointless gimmicks. Pet peeve is those flat door handles. What’s wrong with boring old regular handles?

So many EV’s are designed as luxury vehicles mostly. We need more Chevy Bolt and less Tesla.

Vibes of “Whatever he says, I said it first, honest! Trust me bro.”

I’m assuming interactive fiction means more along the lines of Choose Your Own Adventure books or Fighting Fantasy game books.

Article mentions text adventures as well, but old school like Zork and such wouldn’t work well without a keyboard. Maybe more the nineties era Gabriel Knight and Beneath a Steel Sky,but that would suffer from a black and white screen.

I think of you look at Poland especially, they aren’t messing around. The UK and France have kept their militaries somewhat up to snuff. Sweden, Finland, the Baltics, lots of other countries are pulling their weight. Germany defence spending is up as well.

Germany’s problem is their procurement is so slow. Europe’s problem is they’ve lost a lot of defence production capacity,and don’t have a lot of surplus taking up space on the shelves. Europe’s even bigger problem is that there are Russian friendly politicians on the inside.

What’s inexcusable to me is that Ukraine is still short of artillery shells. It’s three years in, it’s been long enough to spin up a crash production line, but did I mention procurement is slow? The US has ramped up artillery shell production, but it’s still not enough and Trump will probably ramp that back down.

Europe needs to get the lead out. Maybe there needs to be a Visegrad style group of Hawks, countries with decent military capacity that want to coordinate production.

NATO and the EU have been profoundly beneficial, but in times of crisis like this, the need for consensus can really slow things down. A Visegrad style “Hawks” group of EU+NATO countries might allow the more capable countries to cooperate in filling the power vacuum the US is likely to leave on the world stage.

They won’t be able to afford our medical isotopes soon. These are raw material inputs into high value industries. This will damage US aerospace, automotive, etc.

Don’t tariff your inputs! This means Boeing will pay a lot more for any aluminum (domestic capacity insufficient, and less price competition vs. eat the tariff).

It’s going to suck, but at least I can revel in the schadenfreude as the US shoots itself in the foot.