2024-09-28
2024-09-26
Prop 1 Volunteering
Volunteers can do a number of different things! We have opportunities for phone banks, canvassing, and tabling! If you sign up, you can choose which options sound fun for you: yesforopenprimaries.com/volunteer
Ranked choice voting piece
2024-09-23
2024-09-22
2024-09-21
摸倣子 Settling the Votes in a Ranked Choice Vote
Previous Post on Prop 1 - Macromemetic Index - Math of Elections
Introduction
I wanted to take a closer look at how the votes of the defeated parties get rolled up into the winning parties' totals.
How Ballots Look
Let's say we have the Republican, Democrat, Farmer's, and Green parties running after having made it through the primaries as the top three parties. A ballot has a first pick, a second, a third, and a fourth choice, so a shorthand for a ballot could look like RDFG, where Republican is first choice, then Democrats, then Farmers, then Green. Every ballot looks like this.
There are six kinds of ballots where the Republicans are the first pick: RDFG, RDGF, RFDG, RFGD, RGDF, and RGFD.
How a Vote Might Look
There are 24 different kinds of ways to cast a ballot. Here's a sample vote below. I've marked in Blue and Red the ballots that go to the winning party (Republicans) and the runner-up party (Democrats) when the other two parties are taken out.
Rep | RDFG 1% | RDGF 1% | RFDG 18% | RFGD 12% | RGDF 3% | RGFD 5% |
Total 40% |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dem | DRFG 5% | DRGF 5% | DFRG 2% | DFGR 3% | DGRF 10% | DGFR 5% |
Total 30% |
Farm | FRDG 5% | FRGD 8% | FDRG 1% | FDGR 1% | FGRD 3% | FGDR 2% |
Total 20% |
Green |
GRDF 1% | GRFD 0% | GDRF 3% | GDFR 3% | GFRD 1% | GFDR 2% |
Total 10% |
Coming Back from a Bad First Choice Vote
Rep | RDFG 1% | RDGF 1% | RFDG 18% | RFGD 12% | RGDF 3% | RGFD 5% |
Total 40% |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dem | DRFG 5% | DRGF 5% | DFRG 2% | DFGR 3% | DGRF 10% | DGFR 5% |
Total 30% |
Farm | FRDG 4% | FRGD 3% | FDRG 5% | FDGR 2% | FGRD 2% | FGDR 4% |
Total 20% |
Green | GRDF 0% | GRFD 0% | GDRF 3% | GDFR 4% | GFRD 0% | GFDR 3% |
Total 10% |
模倣子 More Ranked Choice Voting
Previous Prop 1 Post
Introduction
Last time I posited an election between the Republican, Democrat, Farmer, and Green parties in Idaho.
I want to come up with a straightforward way to add up the totals, and see how parties "dropping out" of the ranked choice vote impacts the overall results.
An Initial Sample Vote
From the last post I made, I laid out the votes as follows.
Republicans first |
RDFG 1% | RDGF 1% | RFDG 18% | RFGD 12% | RGDF 3% | RGFD 5% |
Total 40% |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Democrats first |
DRFG 5% | DRGF 5% | DFRG 2% | DFGR 3% | DGRF 10% | DGFR 5% |
Total 30% |
Farmers first |
FRDG 5% | FRGD 8% | FDRG 1% | FDGR 1% | FGRD 3% | FGDR 2% |
Total 20% |
Green first |
GRDF 1% | GRFD 0% | GDRF 3% | GDFR 3% | GFRD 1% | GFDR 2% |
Total 10% |
Adding up the Totals
With four parties, the percentage of votes for the winning party should be:
P1 = total percentage of votes to the winning party
P11 = votes where the winner was the first choice
P13 = where the winner was the third choice
P14 = where the winner was the fourth choice
Each Loser, Pn+1, e.g., P2, P3, P4, with P4 being the first party eliminated and P# the second, and P2 being the party that comes in second place.
P1 = P11 + P13 + P14 > P2
In other words, even if party #3 gets votes from the eliminated party #4, party #3's votes go to the remaining two parties according to the third and fourth choices of the party #4 votes.
Is this correct? Or are eliminated party votes distributed differently?
Losers Votes go Where?
If the Greens lose, then their votes go to:
Republicans GRDF + GRFD = 1%
Democrats GDRF + GDFR = 6%
Farmers GFRD + GFDR = 3%
How Can the Republicans Lose?
The only way for the Republicans to lose is if the net total of the votes for the Farmer and Green parties to be greater than 21%, going to the Democratic party. That is if all the Greens go to the Democrats and more than half of the Farmers going to them. Unless of course the Democrats get eliminated first, which is not possible. It might look like this:
Republicans first |
RDFG 1% | RDGF 1% | RFDG 18% | RFGD 12% | RGDF 3% | RGFD 5% |
Total 40% |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Democrats first |
DRFG 5% | DRGF 5% | DFRG 2% | DFGR 3% | DGRF 10% | DGFR 5% |
Total 30% |
Farmers first |
FRDG 4% | FRGD 3% | FDRG 5% | FDGR 2% | FGRD 2% | FGDR 4% |
Total 20% |
Green first |
GRDF 0% | GRFD 0% | GDRF 3% | GDFR 4% | GFRD 0% | GFDR 3% |
Total 10% |
2024-09-20
模倣子 immunomemetic brutality
The repugnance felt at the admission to the use of an immunomeme is due not only the confession of one’s own deliberate cruelty, but also the acknowledgement of the tacit and cruelly harsh rule set of the social group of which one is a willing part.
Hence it tends to produce cognitive dissonance, ie, the unconscious desire to deny the admission.
This is an application of the Second Law of Immunomemetics, by the way (see below).
Hence my equating of love with the willingness to forego immunomemetic (bullying) opportunities as a practical definition of love.
Shakespeare echoes this sentiment in The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1, in Portia’s famous speech that begins:
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Immunomemetic Bullying
Three Laws of Immunomemetics (applied to critique groups)
2024-09-19
模倣子 SUSPECNA Idaho Contemplates Ranked Choice Voting
Memetics Index - Idaho Bill on Ballot (Prop 1) - SUSPECNA Article & Notes
Introduction
Idaho is talking about switching to ranked choice voting, which is an interesting idea, but I wanted to look at it from a practical standpoint, as it how could it be done by a manual system, as opposed to a computer-only one?
I mistrust any such system (especially to do with voting) that cannot be laid out in a paper-based system (even if such system should be prohibitively inefficient). Also, I want to lay things out so that voters and legislators and party folks can look and see if I got it basically right.
Proposed Scenario
The Idaho law proposes a primary system (already in place?) where four candidates are selected from a relatively unlimited field by traditional first past the post voting.
Let's imagine that four parties get their candidates on the general election via the primary election, for example, the Republicans (R), the Democrats (D), the imaginary "Farmers' Party" (F), and the "Green Party" (G).
Which party gets the "most votes" is not just a simple counting up at this point, as I'll dive into. But to start with we can toss out something for the "first choice vote" which might be suitable for Idaho, along the lines of:
Republicans: 40%
Democrats: 30%
Farmers: 20%
Green: 10%
At this point the Republicans have a plurality, but not a 51% majority. How can they get it?
What I propose, and I welcome comments, is that the total number of "ballot types" is 24, in other words, the election counters at the county and the State Elections Board level can count these and determine the winner of the election.
One question is what is the simplest way to count these up, but first what do these "ballot types" look like?
Every ballot has a first choice, a second, a third, and finally a fourth. This means that each ballot looks something like first Republican, then Farmer, Democrat, and last, Green, or RFDG. A ballot favoring the Greens and then the Democrats might look like GDFR.
So the number of different first-choice ballots are four, R, D, F, or G, and each of those can have one of the three remaining parties as a second, leaving two for the third, and then the remaining party as fourth. Arithmetically this looks like 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24, or twenty-four different types of ballots.
In other words, four different ways to choose the first party, then three to choose the second, and two to choose the third, and then the last is decided. The Idaho law keeps the number of "piles" of ballots down to a "manageable" number. The human brain can deal with what is basically a five-by-five grid of piles, while if it's starting to grow up to fifty, or a hundred (a bunch of piles of ballots ten on a side). A computer can handle any number of choices on the ballot, but it does grow exponentially.
Now for the Ranking Stuff...
Each party can "gain votes" from the second, third, and fourth choices of voters. Can the Republicans get a majority from the above scenario? The Farmers and Greens are probably out of luck, but can the Democrats come ahead and still win?
The ballots look like:
Republicans as first choice: RDFG, RDGF, RFDG, RFGD, RGDF, RGFD = 40%
Democrats first: DGFR, DGRF, DFGR, DFRG, DRFG, DRGF = 30%
Farmers first: FRDG, FRGD, FDRG, FDGR, FGDR, FGRD = 20%
Greens first: GDFR, GDRF, GFDR, GFRD, GRFD, GRDF = 10%
...so that's 24 different choices a voter can make.
Let's make up some numbers for all of these types of ballots:
RDFG: 1%
RDGF: 1%
RFDG: 18%
RFGD: 12%
RGDF: 3%
RGFD: 5%
Total Republicans first choice: 40%
DRFG: 5%
DRGF: 5%
DFRG: 2%
DFGR: 3%
DGRF: 10%
DGFR: 5%
Democrats first choice total: 30%
FDRG: 1%
FDGR: 1%
FRDG: 5%
FRGD: 8%
FGDR: 2%
FGRD: 3%
Total Farmers: 20%
GDFR: 3%
GDRF: 3%
GFDR: 2%
GFRD: 1%
GRFD: 0%
GRDF: 1%
Total Green: 10%
My understanding is that if a party is eliminated, gets the lowest of a given round of counting the votes, all of its votes go to the party who is second in that pile of ballots.
Each of them gets a percentage of the votes. If the Green Party gets the lowest of the first-choice votes, then the remaining parties pick up the Green votes.
Republicans: RDFG, RDGF, RFDG, RFGD, RGDF, RGFD + GRFD, GRDF
Democrats: DGFR, DGRF, DFGR, DFRG, DRFG, DRGF + GDFR, GDRF
Farmers: FRDG, FRGD, FDRG, FDGR, FGDR, FGRD + GFDR, GFRD
So the Republicans now have 41%, the Democrats 36%, the Farmers 21%.
So the Farmers now have the lowest votes, so their votes, and the votes they got from the Greens go to the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republicans get FRGD and FRDG, FGRD, and GFRD, or 17% and the Democrats get FDRG, FDGR, FGDR, and GFDR, or 6%. So the Republicans now have 58% and the Democrats 42%. End of election.
Questions for Later...
Is there a way so that nobody wins? Is there a simple way to express which party is going to win just from some kind of a sum of all of the types of ballots?
2024-09-18
2024-09-16
Cyrillic and Runes
Not surprisingly, looking at my pill counter it seems I somehow managed to miss taking my meds all day yesterday. If anyone feels "unsurprised" by the following missive, I sympathize, but they should "irregardless" turn themself over to the grammar police and throw themself on the mercy of the diction court ;-).
2024-09-14
2024-09-12
Not enough tigers
YouTube video
It’s great that we have the societal knowledge and technology to combat mental illness. However, the way mental illness “works” looks like a kind of systemic shutting down or “checking out” rather like exist at all levels of the organism, eg, there are lots of genes and processes at the cellular level that literally say “we’ve suffered a radioactive or other insult and we need to hit the self-destruct switch before we hurt the rest of the organism” and these switches and mechanisms exist and cancer researchers study them.
Having said that, bipolar and even alcoholism may be “adaptive” at the group level à la “we’re going to lose this war or miss this product deadline or whatever unless one individual can step up and not sleep for weeks at a time, talk a thousand times faster than any of us, have visions, steamroll over social conventions, etc, until we ‘win’ even if that person burns out and dies or is burned at the stake once it’s all over.” The Joan of Arc effect.
Then there’s what I call the “there aren’t enough tigers” effect. Tigers eat the stragglers, the sick, the members of the herd who “just aren’t getting it” but there aren’t enough of them, they’re busy, they can only eat so many, and if there were enough tigers around to get the job done, it would probably be Really Bad.
Hence, I theorize, the individuals do this for themselves. Something clicks, and the self-destruct mechanism is set in motion. One isolates, alienates others, neglects self-care, even commits suicide. That may be the source of the feeling of being so utterly trapped, but at the same time as if nothing is specifically wrong, as such.
That may be a useful description of what one is going through in struggling with a mental illness, or trying to intervene or treat someone, as well as why “hitting bottom” is so crucial, and so heartbreaking to sit by the sidelines waiting for it, and why so many tend to “gallop through the gateways of madness or death” before they reach it.
2024-09-11
Religion and mental illness
YouTube video
Good share—I think I resonate with what you say. Faith is a step into the crazy already, or potentially so, so if one is already crazy, it calls for, as I think you’re saying, rightly so, even more introspection. Another problem is that one’s religious community, also engaged in openness to the metaphysical, tends to be supportive or enabling of one’s mental-illness-fueled flights of delusion, ie, not keeping one foot in the mental illness side of the equation. In other words, one’s community (especially an evangelical/charismatic one—my situation) tends to err on the side of it being connection to the divine as opposed to pathological.
It can also alienate oneself from a lot of (non-religious) people, which can worsen the illness.
By the way, AA is a community which is both deeply spiritual even to the point of absolutely believing in things like temporal divine intervention, ie, mysticism, while at the same time keeping an eye on it and holding everything up to the rigorous real world lens of spiritual, mental, and physical health and well-being.
So AA is not looking for, or supportive of, the Joan of Arc who has visions, leads their armies to victory, casts out the enemy, and then gets burned at the stake, which is something religions have shown themselves won’t to do.
Having said all that, and given my own spiritual and religious journey, I still regard mystical/metaphysical experiences to be very comforting and supportive, eg, praying in tongues, hearing the voice of God, divine inspiration, prayer & meditation, even the gift of healing, but I still keep one foot in “maybe this is crazy” or “other people might think this is crazy” (Slavoj Žižek might term it “hysterical doubt”). Real is real, which means can it be proven by tests and experiments, and do other people think it’s real. Also, I tend to regard these spiritual things as personal, not something that others “have to believe” or I’ll cut them out of my life.
日本語 露仏独の日本語能力試験用
Yes, there are French, German, and Russian resources available for preparing for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) Level 1 (N1). Here's a brief overview of what you might find in each language:
### **French Resources:**
1. **Books and Textbooks:**
- **"Manuel de Japonais: JLPT N1"** by the Japan Foundation is a comprehensive guide.
- **"Le japonais en manga"** series, while generally for beginners, has advanced volumes that might help with N1 preparation.
2. **Websites and Online Courses:**
- **"Nihongo-France"** offers articles, quizzes, and resources specifically for French speakers.
- **"WaniKani"** and **"BunPro"** are English-first, but can be used in conjunction with French grammar explanations and kanji learning.
3. **Apps:**
- **"Obenkyo"** is a popular app with French language support for kanji, grammar, and vocabulary practice.
### **German Resources:**
1. **Books and Textbooks:**
- **"Japanisch Schritt für Schritt"** by Anne Kaneko and Ursula Gräfe, tailored for advanced learners.
- **"JLPT N1 Grammatikbuch"** in German specifically for grammar and kanji practice.
2. **Websites and Online Courses:**
- **"Nihongo-German"** offers a variety of resources including practice tests and study guides.
- **"JBridge"** offers German-supported lessons specifically aimed at N1 learners.
3. **Apps:**
- **"Imiwa?"** and **"JLPT Sensei"** offer German language support and resources for vocabulary and grammar study.
### **Russian Resources:**
1. **Books and Textbooks:**
- **"Японский язык для начинающих"** series has advanced volumes aimed at JLPT preparation.
- **"Грамматика японского языка"** for comprehensive grammar study focused on N1 level.
2. **Websites and Online Courses:**
- **"Nihongo-Russia"** provides resources, including articles, vocabulary lists, and grammar explanations for N1.
- **"Russian Kanji Book"** and associated online resources offer kanji practice specifically for N1.
3. **Apps:**
- **"Kanji Study"** and **"JLPT Russian"** are apps that offer Russian support for kanji and vocabulary learning.
If you’re looking for specific titles or need help finding these resources, I can help with more details or searches.
2024-09-08
TOOL Hiraku Utada First Love
Wikipedia article on First Love
Her name is written 宇多田ヒカル、 in katakana, first name, which is kind of a hippy flourish. I have known カヲリs, which a super-hippy-sixties name, which I would have thought an illegal name under Japanese law (turns out not), kind of like using a number or punctuation as the legal name of an English-language child.
Now she writes is as 光 in kanji.
A young woman, the child of entertainers, returned to Japan while I was living there.
I found this album to be among the most cohesive album I've ever encountered. It seems to paint an arc of "first love" from excitement and hope to the realization of being trapped to pain to resignation. The flipping back and forth between English and Japanese made this feeling more poignant for me for...reasons.
I played it on loop at a tough time when my relationship seemed to be melting down and I was in a not-so-great place, rather like some of the songs depict.
I maintain, semi-flippantly, that Japanese is the only language for properly talking about human feelings and relationships, rather like talking about cooking or sex outside of French is kind of a waste of time. Talking about sex in English has about the same poetic quality as talking about highway construction, for example. One thing about Japanese (and French) is that the parts of the body is less "nuanced" or "loaded" without being clinical--something like that.
I don't know if I want to mention this, but I thought about the subtle difference between, say, "ikanakatta," and "ikenakatta", which Japanese people would totally pick up on.
It's an impression, of course, but it has to do with the head-last default sentence structure, how feelings are literally baked into the grammatical structure of the language (someone else thinking/feeling something has its own verb tense, being made to do/feel something by somebody else and being emotionally traumatized by that, and wanting/not wanting that is a verb tense, etc., etc., etc.), "sentence incompleteness" is much more permissible than say, in English (or French), and the lability with which noun phrases may be plugged in everywhere and modified and also "tagged" with modifiers which are effectively verbals but which act like adjectivals with the compactness and versatility of Latinate/Germanic tags used in English like "non-" or "un-" or "counter-" or "über-" or "-like" and these are everywhere in Japanese, and Utada applies them to the English phrases peppering her songs in the same way (like the "Bonnie & Clyde" reference, which Serge Gainsbourg also referenced, by the way--Bonnie & Clyde really seem to be top-of-mind in some parts of the world). Japanese also has tens of thousands of "onomotopoeic words" (sei-on-go or gi-on-go) that convey things like "that feeling of heart-pounding anticipatory excitement" which may be combined and inflected into a single word such as doki-doki-sasetakute tamaranai (roughly "to luxuriate in the wanting to be made to feel that feeling of heart-pounding anticipatory excitement") which is effectively a single word in Japanese and may also be treated as a single stand-alone sentence. French and Spanish have interesting interjective/prepositionals such as "chez quelque chose" or "Ojalá" and Japanese is rife with these sorts of things, in all sorts of grammatical incarnations.
All this may be why Japan and Japanese are so interesting to us in the West, from Pocket Monsters (Pokèmon), Manga, Animé, Costume Play (cosplay), etc.
In terms of writing lyrics, Japanese has so many different ways of "conjugating" verbs and sentences and the ability to drop whole parts of sentences (especially of already mentioned themes) and adding more and more particles and endings that it makes matching up verses more flexible. The language is phonetically like Spanish however, ie, phoneme-poor, so it's relatively easy to rhyme and establish rhythm, unlike English, where it's a challenge, and also a challenge to squeeze word lengths into a meter scheme, which can make English (and French and German and Russian, etc.) songs "catchier" and I feel that Utada used her peppering of catchy English phrases into her lyrics worked to mollify this.
Some Japanese pop bands have the annoying habit of completing an enjambement by adding the hallmark of Yokohama dialect, i.e., a final "sa". It reminds me of the '80s band HEART which seemed to love this sort of lazy, gratuitous end-rhyming. Mercifully, Utada didn't do this anywhere. I'm sure I would've found it jarring.
I didn't know that this album transformed Japanese pop and was and still is the best-selling album of all time in the East until I read it on Wikipedia. I read it described as "hip-hop." I don't pretend to know what that means, as such.
My desperate prayer is that if we're going to go down the favorite rabbit hole of which musical genres are which and such, that participating rabbits or Alices at least explain what musical features and time periods and regions and bands and music critics and such are involved in determining whether a given song or album was Lower Slobonian Life-Support Metal or Splunge Gizmo Glop-Glop or what-have-you, otherwise the discussion risks to be stultifying for the rest of us. Can this album considered to be "hip-hop" (or whatever) because it "seems" like hip-hop? Since it's effectively a Japanese album, can it be squeezed into such classifications? Or can we look at the influences on Utada, on her parents, on their earlier work in New York? Was she part of a trend or a collection of influences which she then brought back to Japan? The impression in the media in Japan was that it was a kind of "homecoming" of a child of Japan who had been away her whole life, and that this was her first effort and that it was a uniquely Japanese one.
Songs on Album
1. Automatic
2. Movin' on Without You
3. In My Room
4. First Love
5. Amai Wana 甘い罠 "Paint it Black" (Sweet Trap)
6. Time Will Tell
7. Never Let Go
8. B&C
9. Another Chance
10. Internude
11. Give Me a Reason
12. Automatic (Johnny Vicious Remix)
2024-09-05
2024-09-04
漫画 Louise with teeth
Manga index
I’m trying the teeth style from American Dad! I think the hand turned out okay. The curl in the middle of her forehead could be emphasized a bit, maybe.
Next time I can work on other mouth 👄 stuff like the tongue and such.