Cuberoot

I used to live in Ohio, and had three presidential candidates visit close enough to conveniently get to. I went to the Edwards, Obama (primary season), and Romney events. I didn't order advance tickets for any of them. Both Democrats had volunteers outside the security trying to get everyone who showed up with or without tickets through security and into the main venue. At Romney's I didn't get in and just loitered around the outside fencing. That might have been the better experience -- I could still hear the speeches, and the outside crowd had better signs and more colorful commentary than the inside ones.

You can find just about anybody's Social Security number. (Equivalently, they can find yours.) Amazingly, some institutions still use knowledge of this number as proof of identity for purposes of extending credit to a stranger.

Not encouraging violence against anybody. Just observing that some businesses routinely treat their customers worse than prostitutes treat theirs, and that courtesy isn't always reciprocal.

I think sex work is more honorable than many lawful professions. It's really unfair that prostitutes have higher rates of workplace violence than insurance sales.

Gotta shake a tit.

Sometimes it means "We don't want to spend a lot of money training this guy who we won't be able to retain if he gets a better offer."

At really entry-level jobs like fast food, where training is quick and turnover is always high, it sometimes also means "This guy might be able to read the workers' rights poster on the door and explain the workers' comp program to the idiot who spilled boiling grease on his foot.

I think FDA rules explicitly prohibit paying blood donors in the US. Ostensibly because if you do, the donation centers fill up with junkies who'll lie about not having hepatitis so they can get paid, or steal IDs so they can go twice a week until they die of anemia, raising the costs of safety testing and generally being injurious to public health. Of course, everyone else involved in the process gets paid, just not the donors -- quite dearly, as you'll learn if you're ever on the receiving end of a transfusion.

Plasma is paid because it falls under a different regulation and their research and industrial customers don't care that the plasma came from a crack whore.

I really like approval among single-winner methods. It's a clear improvement over plurality and encourages honest over strategic voting with 3+ candidates. Promoting candidate diversity without punishing voters for supporting them is the best way to help minor third parties become relevant.

Among ranked voting methods, I prefer Condorcet methods over others.

Instant runoff voting / single transferrable vote has some merit in the multi-winner proportional representation case, but isn't fit for purpose as a single-winner method.

I'm not a Libertarian, but I sympathize with some of their economic viewpoints -- significantly more so than tends to be welcome here. Unlike some of you, I don't speak to the motives and attitudes of all libertarians, only my own. I'm not a Republican. I don't smoke pot. I did vote for Jo Jorgensen in 2020. I do give a flying fuck about liberty. I don't confirm or deny being a myopic cunt.

Oddly enough, I do support some form of public healthcare. I'm well aware that most libertarians don't. A hundred years ago, maybe even 50 years ago, I wouldn't have either. The problem is that medical science has advanced to where a free market insurance model doesn't work as well as it used to. Health insurance used to be a luxury when lung cancer would kill a rich man almost as quickly as it killed a poor man. That's no longer the case, and the costs have accelerated to where the treatment can bankrupt an uninsured middle class man.

The real sinker however is pre-existing conditions. You can't insure a house that's already on fire, and we don't ask homeowners policies to do so. Waiting periods for costly conditions sometimes almost work, except for patients born a pre-existing medical condition. If the insurer had the choice, they'd just refuse to write the policy, even if treatment is cost-effective from a public policy standpoint.

So I support free market solutions where they exist. Health insurance may be one of the few situations where it doesn't.

Myself, where a reflexive pronoun wouldn't normally be used, typically near a conjunction where it is less obvious whether an objective or subjective pronoun is appropriate. eg "Jane and myself ate Bob's donuts." or "Bob brought donuts for Jane and myself."

Buy three non-venomous snakes from an exotic pet store. Paint their scales with labels #1, #3, and #4. Hide them in one of her desk drawers. After she overcomes the initial shock, she'll spend the rest of the day wondering where snake #2 disappeared to.

I recently read a collection of novels by a prominent 1960s science fiction writer. In three novels and 400 pages, I don't think there was a single female character who advanced the plot other than by sexually entertaining a male character (Despite one of the books having a female title character, and another had a lot of minor female characters.) I know it's a product of its era, but even then, there were more woman PhDs than men who'd been to space, so I think a good science fiction author ought to be able to at least imagine the possibility. I have nothing against female sexuality, but the most interesting women supplement it with some other talent.