Mostly_Gristle

@Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does US "early voting" works logistically speaking ?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In my state (Colorado) early voting works exactly like regular voting, just, you know, earlier. Registered voters get their ballots automatically sent to them in the mail. You can return your ballot by mail, drop it off at an official drop box, drop it off at a voting location, or you can show up at one of the early voting locations in your county and vote in person the traditional way if you prefer that. Right now in my county there are six locations where you can do in-person early voting. There will orders of magnitude more in-person voting locations open on the day of the election, but I think most people choose return their ballots by mail or drop box.

  Every voting/counting location is staffed with a bipartisan team of election judges, and election observers. I believe the locations are run by paid county officials, but largely staffed by volunteers who have completed a training program. I’ve never heard of there being a shortage of volunteers

  The voting drop boxes are big reinforced steel boxes which are securely anchored into concrete. You would need some seriously heavy duty cutting tools to get one open without the key. They are placed in front of city offices like City Hall, the Department of Motor Vehicles, or the city library. They’re usually in open high traffic areas, and are under 24/7 video surveillance. I believe they’re also emptied multiple times per day. I wouldn’t say they’re impossible to tamper with, but it would be extremely difficult to do so and get away with it. To my knowledge, so far nobody has tried. I’m not actually sure what it would really accomplish. I guess you could destroy ballots, but stuffing one with counterfeit ballots would probably be caught almost immediately.

  There’s a pretty robust system in place to track who has cast a ballot, how, when, and where. If multiple ballots show up in the name of the same voter, that gets automatically flagged and triggers a fraud investigation. Also there’s signature verification system. Every ballot that’s returned by mail or drop box must be returned in its security envelope, which has the name of the voter and several unique QR and bar codes containing information tying that envelope to that specific voter. This envelope must be signed by the voter for the ballot to be counted. If the signature on the security envelope doesn’t match the signature on file, the ballot gets flagged for investigation, and doesn’t get counted until the voter can be contacted to verify it was them casting the ballot and not someone pretending to be them. Voter fraud is really pretty rare here, but it’s taken very seriously, and gets seriously investigated. When it does happen it’s usually someone trying to cast the ballot of a deceased spouse, or family member, and even that usually gets caught.

  There are a lot of safeguards and redundancies in place here that make getting away with voter fraud extremely difficult, but lot of the reason why our system works as well as it does is that people genuinely care about their votes being fairly counted and so are willing to staff and fund the offices who investigate voting irregularities. Our voting system is considered kind of the gold standard for the United States, and I’m lucky to live in a place that has that. Voting systems in other parts of the US are unfortunately not run with the same vigilance or sense of equity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Did the mushroom learn to control a robot, or did the scientists figure out how to connect a robot to a mushroom in such a way as to make the regular processes happening inside the mushroom trigger a set of robot legs? Because the article makes it seem like the mushroom is intelligent and has agency, and was thus far only lacking the proper robot body in order to express that; but the video makes it look like the legs were all pumping in unison, and the resulting movement was more or less coincidental.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NASA's Curiosity Rover Uncovers Trove of Yellow Crystals on Mars⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, the saltpeter (potassium nitrate) is really the key ingredient here. It’s the rapid oxidizer compound that gives your anti-Gorn cannon its boom boom. Without that, mixing all the other stuff together is just going to be smelly and disappointing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2954: Bracket Symbols⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  ))<>(( Back and forth forever.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 11 is now automatically enabling OneDrive folder backup without asking permission⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean specifically a cloud storage account. Setting up the computer required me to supply an email address and set a password for microsoft.com. There was nothing in that process that I recall mentioning OneDrive, or that would have suggested every file on my C drive was about to be indiscriminately uploaded to a Microsoft server somewhere. I didn’t even know OneDrive was a thing until I had to google how to stop it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 11 is now automatically enabling OneDrive folder backup without asking permission⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thankfully I noticed what was going on before it got to that point, but when they start vacuuming up all your files and data like that without telling you and without giving you control over it, you kind of have to assume that whatever is going on is not being done for your benefit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 11 is now automatically enabling OneDrive folder backup without asking permission⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This bullshit was basically my first experience with Windows 11 when I got a new PC last year. Literally, “Why is my internet so slow? What’s this OneDrive thing? Oh, holy shit fucking stop Jesus Christ!”

  Just automatically started uploading literally everything on my hard drive to an account I didn’t set up, without even a prompt telling me it was happening, and no obvious way to make it stop. I didn’t even know Windows had added a cloud storage option. I literally had to uninstall OneDrive to finally make it stop.

  I might have liked having a native backup service in Windows if it was like, “Hey look at this handy cloud storage tool we’ve added to Windows! Would you like to pick some files to save?” But as it is, it might as well just be another piece of spyware.

  There’s a big long list of reasons why I hate Windows 11, but this OneDrive shit is the thing that’s making me think maybe it’s time to ditch Windows for good.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2929: Good and Bad Ideas⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, for people with hemochromatosis (too much iron in the blood) the main treatment is still bloodletting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The privilege is being able to choose to eat that way out of a sense of morality or fashion rather for the reason that it’s literally all there is to eat. The privilege is being able to turn your nose up at perfectly edible food for no other reason than that it’s got a bit of egg, honey, or butter in it without having to worry about starving to death. The privilege is also having access to such an abundance and variety of food that you can maintain a vegan diet year round and not have to fear that you won’t meet all the calorie, protein, and vitamin requirements you need to stay alive and healthy while much of the world is in a constant struggle to scrape together enough calories of any kind to stay alive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reddit must share IP addresses of piracy-discussing users, film studios say⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, well, if the film studios say so then by all means…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Oh hey, I heard Star Trek got mentioned on the news! Let's just go check and-⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t forget that the Federation is supposed to be a post-scarcity socialist utopia.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japanese researchers identify protein with potential to prevent aging⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The state of science reporting has been absolute dog shit for decades. The vast majority of the time when you track down the study an article is based on, the claims of the article are either massively exaggerated, or sometimes even completely different than what the article claims. It seems like a whole industry of taking fairly mundane studies and punching them up into some exciting pieces of short fiction. So many years of garbage reporting has me immediately skeptical of any article with a bold claim, or which mentions any kind of significant breakthrough.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hyperloop One to Shut Down After Failing to Reinvent Transit⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So the guy who notoriously despises public transit failed to come through on his promise to revolutionize public transit?

  Wow.

  I mean, who could have seen that coming?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨More than 15% of teens say they’re on YouTube or TikTok ‘almost constantly’⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So… 16%?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that chiropractors are not medical doctors and "Systematic reviews... have found no evidence that chiropractic manipulation is effective"⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s definitely happened. I think the technical term is “vertebral artery dissection.” I don’t think it’s like a daily occurrence or anything, but there is a very real risk of it happening whenever you get a chiropractic adjustment on your neck. Basically you have some delicate arteries running through your neck bones and the sharp sudden movement of certain chiropractic adjustments have the potential to rupture them. It can cause a stroke and some various other bad things that can happen when blood flow through the spine is interrupted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What "sacred Bajoran trinket" do you suppose this is?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The list of subreddits I really miss is actually pretty short, but one of them for sure is ThatsABooklight. Not the most active sub, but you could lose most of a weekend scrolling through all the weird stuff that got dressed up as a movie prop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do the people in Reniassance festivals pccurring in Brotain also speak with faked British accents, or do they ise faked French/Iralian accents?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  That is Larkspur. I’m from Denver, and recognized it immediately (also I image searched Larkspur ren faire to double check I wasn’t misremembering what it looks like). I’m sure other ren-faires have similar things, but that castle facade has been there since at least the 1980s, and I kind of doubt that was something you could get pre-fabricated back then.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US agency sues Tesla as Black workers report “swastikas, threats, and nooses”⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  On the one hand, finding out the openly fascist rich kid from apartheid South Africa shaped a company into a place where bigotry and racial discrimination are rampant is one of the least surprising things I’ve ever read.

  On the other hand, that is an absolutely shocking level of racism for any kind of modern workplace. Like, fucking wow.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there any prince movies for kids?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s also Under the Cherry Moon, and Graffiti Bridge.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Fuck. I never noticed this outfit had a codpiece. Holy crap.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is "Burn Notice" worth watching?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  His ex-girlfriend is an IRA bomber

  An IRA bomber who couldn’t do a convincing Irish accent if her life depended on it. Seriously, it’s so bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I have an apartment where the dumpster is a car's drive away, and taking trash down involves 4 staircases. What is the best way to ameliorate this situation?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m guessing they live in a large sprawling suburban apartment complex whose trash facilities were designed to be out of the way and unobtrusive rather than functional and convenient.

  My last apartment was in a place kind of like that. It sat on a lot that was probably about eight city blocks. For the entire complex they had eight dumpsters in four trash enclosures around the perimeter, two of which were toward the front of the complex, and the other two toward the middle. If you lived at the back of the complex you’d have to carry your trash for at least a block and a half to dispose of it. It wasn’t uncommon to see people driving to the trash enclosure with bags of trash balanced on their car’s trunk lid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  A TOS from the perspective of Lursa and B’Etor would be like episodes of Scooby Doo or Inspector Gadget or something.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Word meaning health-related?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I would say, “These products are found to have health risks,” or, “These products may negatively affect your health.”