• 2 Posts
  • 28 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • I wouldn’t call it a bug, just that a naive ranked ballot naturally favours the centrist voices. I don’t even mean this in an extreme way: in Canada we basically have three centrist, neoliberal parties running parliament, and this would mean that the Liberals just win a majority almost every time. NDP voters generally won’t vote Conservative, Conservative voters won’t vote NDP.

    This can turn into a bug because it ends up pushing other voices out: if the popular vote suggests equal support between left, right, and center candidates, you would typically hope the make-up of the government reflects that, but more likely it would look like a center majority. There are ways to mitigate this (large number of parties, electing multiple candidates on a ballot, proportional components of the vote, etc) but ranked choice on its own tends to be a centralizing force, not a way to get a more representative democracy.

    Again, not a bug, and I definitely wouldn’t call it worse than FPTP, just making it clear that it has its own biases that are worth taking into account.











  • There are lots of ways to approach meaning, and more broadly spirituality and community, without theism.

    This is a weird take on atheism that reads like you’ve only seen atheists online creeping out of /r/atheism or some similar place. There’s no more reason that “why” should be answered by Christianity than by any number of philosophies that don’t require a god, and pegging someone as arrogant for ascribing to those beliefs is silly.


  • Got a fancy new Timemore Sculptor 078s grinder this week. Noticeable upgrade from my Baratza Encore, but I’m still working on sorting out grind settings and general methodology. Static is definitely more noticeable now, hot loading is a new concept for me, still sorting out what the RPM settings are doing, etc.

    Was at a farmer’s market where Catfish Coffee was selling bags so I’ve been drinking their Sunny Side Up roast this week. It’s a “normal” tasting light roast, I’ve never gotten any super exciting flavour profiles out of it, so it’s actually kind of nice as a way to play with the new grinder. I can play around quite a bit and still get a pretty solid cup of coffee, but I know it well enough that I can sort of tell whether I’m doing better or worse.


  • It’s tricky for sure. The plain text is great, and all the functionality is built off of plain text (even the canvas!), but replicating the functionality isn’t trivial by any stretch of the imagination. Migration is easier because of the text files, but will it be as easy to see the links between notes? Or query all the notes I need more detail in? Or map it all out visually?

    I think reimplementing the core obsidian functionality in a FOSS clone would be fun… except I already have a queue of projects and not a lot of time, so here I am complaining instead 🤷


  • It’s a good philosophy, to be sure. It doesn’t take many migrations to realize that keeping your files in open, easy to read formats is preferable.

    I also use obsidian, but I do sometimes worry that the linking and metadata will be difficult to work with in the future when the software goes away. It’s all there in the files, but my vault is slowly linking together in interesting ways that rely on obsidian functionality.



  • I think this article starts with an interesting premise (basically: RSS works to support podcast content creators, how can we make it work for written content creators?) and… misses the point.

    Podcasts can make a lot of money off of sponsors and advertising that listeners are less likely to skip over. Maybe you’re busy doing something else when the ad comes on, maybe you don’t clue in that it’s an ad right away, maybe you just don’t know how long it is so as you skip around you hear enough anyways. Advertising works in an audio format.

    Text content can’t advertise as effectively. Your eyes can just skip over to the next part you care about. Adblockers work pretty well. A reader is way less likely to engage with advertisement, so it’s going to pay less, so written content creators are going to make less. Usually to the point that they can’t support themselves with it.

    None of the author’s points really address that. The problem isn’t with the RSS standard, it’s with the format and how it can make money.



  • For my V60 pourovers I mostly set my Encore to 16, sometimes varying by +/- 2 for different beans at different ages.

    I think this is neat idea, but some days I’ll just vary it based on what I’m feeling, nevermind any fixed variable, so I personally just like knowing the starting point to play with for different grinders/brew methods.