The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine.

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Politics in the Animal Kingdom: Single Transferable Vote has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine.

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@noims -- All rather academic, but I guess that Sanders might alienate some of the hard-line, "establishment" Democrats. But, I feel like the proportion of people that feel like that AND the extent to which it would bother them is tiny compared to the same figures for Republicans that are uneasy about Trump.

Then again, I'm from a pretty solidly Republican red state, so most of what I hear from back there is people that tend to vote Republican being upset with Trump. I wouldn't get exposed to steady Democrats being less enthused with Sanders, because I don't really know any.

So, interesting to hear your take on it but I still tend to think that Bernie's appeal to people in the middle AND Republicans disgruntled with Trump would very likely result in him getting more electoral votes than Hillary will get.

Thank you... You noted the number of recalls of organic foods; would have been even more valuable with a comparison of proportional illnesses/deaths resulting from organic versus conventionally produced foods.

Didn't Hillary also make an implication about Obama being assassinated in 2008? Only I don't recall anyone making as much of a big deal about it back then. Meanwhile, this quote can actually be construed as Trump pointing out that gun owners would be the only ones able to fight back against their gun rights being taken away in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

If you compare both quotes side by side, both are fairly innocuous. It's just that the media blew one of them way out of proportion. Don't let the media lead you by the nose.

(And before the angry comments come, I am FAR from being a Trump supporter. I felt the Bern, and now I'm burning Green.)

You have ZERO proof she was hired quid pro quo. Absolutely zero. Do you honestly think Clinton would risk any bad optics whatsoever if she thought DWS wouldn't help her win? That was the Rodman analogy. Clinton hired her to help win the election, not to regulate elections to be fair.

And even Sanders supporters said the nomination wasn't stolen. He lost. He lost mainly because he didn't appeal enough to minority voters. You have to take a massive leap of cynicism to make that claim.

You're making it sound like Clinton hired Alan Grayson. That's my point.

Then you magically transfer DWS's guilt directly to Clinton. Did Clinton do that, or did DWS? I'm pretty sure it was DWS. I hated George W. Bush as president. That didn't make me magically transfer guilt about the Valerie Plame incident directly to him because there's no evidence he was responsible for outing her as a CIA operative.

And again, you're also talking about the leader of the Democratic Party favoring a lifelong Democrat over a dude who just decided to join for a Presidential run. When I think of a candidate who is personally corrupt, I think of Nixon. He broke a law. Clinton didn't break any laws whatsoever. NONE! She didn't even do anything. DWS didn't break any laws for that matter. She shouldn't have done what she did, but good lord, you're blowing this way out of proportion.

How exactly am I helping Trump win? Because I'm gonna vote for Clinton over Trump, Stein, and Johnson?! You're gonna have to explain to me how I should help Trump lose. Do I vote for Trump?! Do I vote for some other candidate who has absolutely zero chance of winning?

And all evidence does not argue against Clinton being the most qualified candidate out of the remaining candidates. She is BY FAR the most experienced candidate in government. You can sit there and rail about the hiring of DWS to help campaign all you want, but there is no possible way you can possibly make the claim that she isn't the most experienced out of the remaining candidates. She was the most experienced candidate among all primary candidates, too. That's an undeniable fact. All evidence at the very least doesn't say she isn't the most qualified. None of the 2016 primary candidates came remotely close to her experience in foreign policy. None of them came close to her experience in domestic policy.

This isn't to say experience is everything. But you're making a very flimsy argument about her being personally corrupt, and then claiming the ridiculous assertion that all evidence says she's not the most qualified candidate, even though she's clearly the most experienced.

And yes, we don't know how good or bad a President she would be. You also can't know if a specific Honda Accord will be more reliable than a specific Chevy Corvette either. That doesn't stop me from buying the Honda Accord without batting an eye if I want the most reliable car.

Only in this case, it's more like a Honda Accord vs. a lit on fire dumpster on wheels.

Because that's not a car horn, it's a train horn. That can certainly cause hearing damage, or a heart attack if the victim has a condition. The volume makes it violent.
I also thought the reaction was out of proportion...as in too small a reaction....she should have thrown burning hot, grease dripping fries at his face endangering one of HIS senses like he did hers. ;-)

Oh nonono, I didn't mean it was a mistake, that's obvious. I just meant the reaction was a bit out of proportion to the "damage".

...and I'm just being contrary. She's my hero.

At 1:43 the conclusion made from the graph is "5lbs at most" when the graph shows a different story. Those blue shadows on either side of the line show some kind of uncertainty whether it be best case and worst case scenarios or margin for errors.

I know that sounds like nitpicking, but it'd be like someone saying they love cars and know all about them, but when you ask what their favourite type of car is they say "red ones". It presents itself as scientific but then makes a high school level scientific mistake that just scratches at the surface of credibility.

[calories in] - [calories out] = [net calories absorbed or lost]

Calories are directly proportional to mass or weight. If you burn more than you ingest then you lose weight, it is unavoidable. The "best" way to lose weight is to be negative in the above sum, either by increasing your energy expenditure (exercise) or decreasing your energy intake (food). And of course the body needs essential vitamins and whatnot to function and remain healthy.

I have a friend who took tablets to increase his resting metabolism. He lost weight, but also sweated profusely, had a high heart rate that worried him and regained the weight straight after coming off them.

In most cases, absolutely not, but in a few, yes.
For instance, there was nothing besides nuclear war in either '42 or '62 to compare with climate change as a danger to the planet, and while we still have the threat of nuclear war (although it's certainly not as great a threat today as during the missile crisis, but if we have Trump's finger on the button, that threat level changes), we now also have the out of control issue of the climate destabilizing that threatens civilization itself.
Over population comes to mind as another issue that's far worse.

But I do agree, for the most part, we are in a far less precarious position than we have been in the past on most issues, and so many minor issues are blown out of proportion by the media looking for ratings and money instead of looking to inform.

@enoch I agree with what you said (mostly) and agree with @Asmo even more.

The one thing not included in your pretty good analysis, enoch, is my main cri de coeur -- since the very beginning, feminists have been told not to call themselves feminists. From the very beginning. Using a lot of the same arguments that newtboy put forth, but way before there were third wave feminists.

It is a very touchy and real subject to those of us who have identified for decades as feminists despite an onslaught of reasons why that is a wrong thing to do.

I'm sorry that happened to you -- I hope I wasn't one who took you on. It is entirely possible I was -- turbocharged as a lot of us are about that "word." It doesn't take much to set some of us off -- it isn't pretty, it can feel terrible, and it is out of proportion due to the long history of having the very same conversation over and over and over again.

Because I hope I am now clear -- it isn't just a "word." The word has always been a battlefield -- the right to call ourselves that without being lectured, the right to define it for ourselves as women, the right to prioritize working for rights for a particular group and be clear about the subject.

Other than that, yeah, you are correct -- newtboy and I have the right to call ourselves what we will, for our own valid reasons.

Great point at the end by Cranston: "Maybe it's time for a viable 3rd party."

I doubt there has ever been a more golden opportunity for a 3rd party to rise up than right now. Certainly not in living memory.

Half of registered republicans think that Trump is some sort of folk hero in the making. Nearly everybody else thinks that he would be a disaster of near-Biblical proportions. He might get a decent amount of votes from that crowd by people who "just want to watch the world burn", but still. Meanwhile, nearly everybody (including democrats) thinks that Hillary is a sleazy, status-quo politician. Her "supporters" think that she has the best chance of preventing President Trump -- apparently they don't trust polls that show Bernie Sanders being a much more palatable option for everyone, specifically in the sense that he'd easily beat Trump whereas Clinton vs Trump is neck and neck.

Basically, anyone who runs for a third party in this election stands a fantastic chance of doing better than one or both of the presumptive nominees from the two major parties. Jesse Ventura would get a LOT of serious attention in this election. Any other election, probably not so much -- but right now...

Yeah, I think he'd keep truckin' and run on his own as an independent. I think his ego is big enough. Plus, he'd have a pretty legitimate beef which would solidify his supporters and potentially draw in some more who are displeased with the modern GOP. I think he'd take somewhere between 30%-60% of the republican votes with him all the way to the general election.

That thought made me wonder what other independent or 3rd party candidates have done in presidential elections, and I found this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third_party_performances_in_United_States_elections#Presidential

I think he'd be somewhere between Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 and Ross Perot in 1992. Roosevelt got nearly 30% of the vote, took 88 electoral votes, and placed 2nd of 6 in the race. Perot got almost 20% of the popular vote, but took no electoral votes and placed 3rd of many.

I think Trump running as a 3rd party could take somewhere between 20%-30% of the popular votes (40%+ of Republican-leaning voters, semi conservatively). It would be hard to match Roosevelt's percentage of electoral votes, but he'd get at least *some*, unlike Perot, because of states with proportional rules about allocating electoral votes. And I think he'd place second, like Roosevelt. In that sense, you could argue that the Republican candidate (whoever that would be) "stole" the election from Trump, rather than vice-versa as would be the GOP's narrative.

--I should note that I'm not an expert about any of this, these are just my thoughts--

About Reid Fleming, I hadn't actually heard of that before -- but I got my handle from a character from a different (web) comic called Red Meat:
Homepage
Milkman Dan comics

Well, I'll agree with him to this extent:

Parties need to be concerned with choosing candidates that are at least a baseline level of acceptable to the whole range of their usual voters.

Republicans have a big problem with that, because the biggest single segment of their base (at least 40%, probably more) wants Trump, and will be (pretty legitimately) upset / mutinous if the party tries to foist someone else on them. The rest of the party might hate Trump, but they have utterly failed to present an alternative that appeals to a bigger segment of their base than Trump's 40+%.

On the other side of the coin, the Democrats have issues with this also. Not as severe, but Hillary has a really high proportion of haters / mistrust even among registered Democrats.

Assuming Trump and Hillary are the final candidates, I hope that however it turns out there is a huge amount of blowback to *both* parties in terms of drastically higher numbers of people voting for 3rd party "also rans", write ins, or people otherwise clearly voicing their displeasure. Both parties have to do better than this pathetic set of choices.

As a bass player I've tried playing some Babymetal for an internet forum challenge before. Not really my cup of tea, but some of the songs are fun. I don't think I've ever seen a video of them before, or if I have they tend to focus on the singer girls and not the band. So it was fun to see the bass player jamming out.

Dude's 6 string bass looks like it has a massively wide neck. Or maybe he's just proportionally small? I play a 5 string, and the neck seems like nowhere close to 5/6ths as wide as that beast... I thought maybe he was rocking an exotic bass with 8 or 10.