Interesting Links for 21-02-2015

[andrewducker]

• Would you like 5 million votes and 4 seats, or 1 million votes and 56 seats?
  (tags: politics uk voting )
• Netflix : Netflix Long Term View
  (tags: netflix )
• This is what happens to your brain when you give up sugar
  (tags: sugar )
• Who wants to see otters chasing a butterfly?
  Spoilers: it's you!
  (tags: otters cute )

Original post on Dreamwidth -

Comments

[momentsmusicaux]

The downside of non-linear TV is 'what the fuck are we going to watch'. We've often ended up wasting 30 minutes of watching time scrolling through the huge catalogue that Netflix has (and yet not quite huge enough -- lots of things it doesn't have). Because there's so much, anything that doesn't immediately get a positive vote from both of us is discarded, and we move on, looking for better. Eventually, we give up, or run out of time. 5 channel TV is crappy when there's nothing on, but with less choice we'd have compromised on something semi-decent, which would have still been more enjoyable than just debating what to watch.

Maybe we should timebox the discussion...

[bart_calendar]

"We strive to be extremely straightforward. There is no better example of this than our no-hassle online cancellation. Members can leave when they want and come back when they want."

Wow. That is the least "straightforward" thing to say possible. The reason it's easy to cancel is that when they raised their rates suddenly a couple years ago and it was hard to cancel the government threatened legal action against them.

[f4f3]

Of course if you win most of the seats you stand in, you'll get a lot of seats...
I thought the whole point of this here United Kingdom was that we all vote for our own MPs, who can best represent our individual constituencies.

The argument that "first past the post is bad because you can be second in every seat in the country and not get a single MP" has merit, but it has nothing at all to do with how votes cast in a particular constituency elect an MP.

[andrewducker]

"I thought the whole point of this here United Kingdom was that we all vote for our own MPs, who can best represent our individual constituencies."

That's certainly not the point, as far as I'm concerned. That's the stupid system we're stuck with, but it's not one I approve of.

[f4f3]

As it happens, it's not a system I agree with either, but it is the selling point for parliamentary democracy.

[andrewducker]

I've been thinking about this, and I'm still confused.

Surely the point of electoral reform is that the current system is bad, and that we should reform how votes that are cast in _every_ constituency elect their MP?

[heron61]

Would you like 5 million votes and 4 seats, or 1 million votes and 56 seats

That article sounds like the single best argument I've seen for (at least in the current UK) keeping first past the post voting, because the alternative means both considerably more UKIP seats and the possibility of a UKIP+Tory coalition government.

Of course, the larger problem is that politics inevitably distorts badly when you have one or more of a small number (sadly in the case of the US, one of two) political parties are actually monstrous and is supported by moderately large number of people who are in favor of monstrous policies.

[andrewducker]

If you're arguing for a particular voting system because it keeps out party X then that makes you, from my perspective, one of the bad people.

Politics should be there to ensure that everyone in the country is represented. The answer to "People having awful opinions" isn't to deny them their representation, it's to educate them and improve their situation so they don't have them any more.

[heron61]

I rather expected that response and I definitely sympathize.

My perspective is very much shaped by both the fact that for anyone remotely progressive, the last decade of US politics has largely consisted of working to keep people with deeply monstrous views and goals from being elected to national office than it has been working to elect anyone you actually support - combined with the fact that while my two highest categories in Jonathan Haidt's morality sorter are fairness & avoidance of harm, the second is, for me, considerably higher than the first.

[andrewducker]

I can understand that.

I just think that the result of the good guys saying "It's ok to limit some people' political representation, because we don't like those opinions" is for the bad guys to revisit this on them, sevenfold.

(See also, when "good" politicians say "Yes, this law we just passed could be used to bad ends, but trust us, we won't use it that way!")