Can we just let gender-neutral toilets be the default so we can all stop worrying this? The fact that the stranger shitting next stall over may or may not have a penis is not a problem. Having to scrape turds off my shoe because someone followed this guy’s advise and shat on the sidewalk makes it my problem.

Not sure about MIchigan in particular, but other states have, in relatively recent history, given ballot access to presidential candidates who were unambiguously constitutionally ineligible for the office. It doesn’t make much sense to me either, but apparently neither the 14th amendment, nor any other federal law restricts who can run for president, merely who can hold the office if elected.

I usually promote approval for its simplicity and intuitiveness. STAR also seems respectably decent, and a significant improvement over plurality and IRV.

I really wish IRV advocates would stop lying about things like:

since voters can feel free to support them without fear of inadvertently helping a candidate they definitely don’t want to win.

There is absolutely a spoiler effect in IRV, and it isn’t just theoretical – it happened in one of the elections the article praises as successful.

Any election system works well with only two choices. IRV improves very slightly on plurality and works well with many choices, provided only two of them matter. But as soon as you get three competitive candidates, exactly the thing many election reformers want to see, really counterintuitive things start to happen.

Two is the only even prime number, which makes it the oddest prime of them all.

La Disparition by George Perec in French, translated to English as A Void. Neither version uses the letter ‘e’. I think the French original is better since the translator had to cheat a bit with the numbers (5 and 26 appear frequently for self-referential reasons, and when spelled in French don’t use e, but are translated as numerals.) but was still impressed. I read the side-by-side translated version, although I’m only marginally literate in French.

High hundreds for sure, maybe about 1000. Some on bookcases, some in boxes, some stacked on the floor.