Interesting Links for 08-02-2018

[andrewducker]

A Bid to Solve California’s Housing Crisis Could Redraw How Cities Grow

(tags: California housing )

Stephen Hammond: Tory MP vows to challenge Theresa May's Brexit policy with vote to keep UK inside single market

(tags: uk europe Conservatives )

Vegetarian and vegan: A quarter of UK dinners have no meat or fish

(tags: vegetarian vegan uk food )

Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Is a Marker of Anxiety, Depression

(tags: depression anxiety language )

Study Shows Women Have Happier Relationships When Their Partners Aren’t Massive Douchebags

(tags: relationships happiness satire )

How the Republicans rigged Congress — new documents reveal an untold story

Proportional Representation is clearly the answer.
(tags: voting usa politics OhForFucksSake )

Fascinating hypothetical Brexit voting scenarios hereIf Cons were only ones supporting Brexit...If Labour was opposing Brexit...Look at how strategic Remainers are...… https://t.co/QDJVnGszL9"

(tags: voting polls UK europe )

Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

(tags: design ui ux windows microsoft )

Book of Kells: History of world’s most famous medieval manuscript rewritten after dramatic new research

(tags: history religion UK Ireland christianity books )

Woman unknowingly adopts dog she gave up as a child (no, you have something in *your* eye)

(tags: dogs )

Police in China have begun using sunglasses equipped with facial recognition technology to identify suspected criminals.

(tags: surveillance China augmentedreality police )

The "Connect Four" meme makes me unreasonably happy

(tags: meme games children weird )

To know Donald Trump’s faith is to understand his politics

(tags: religion politics usa Republicans )

Sex ed must cover respect and consent, say young mums

(tags: sex education uk )

Abandoned cars on fire in Edinburgh's derelict robot car park

(tags: edinburgh cars automation scotland fire )

European Court of Justice asked to rule on whether UK nationals can keep EU citizenship after Brexit

(tags: europe uk citizenship law )

Leaked AI-powered Game Revenue Model Paper Foretells a Dystopian Nightmare

(tags: games money OhForFucksSake )

How Motivation Works

(tags: psychology motivation brain )

Cognitive approach to lie detection rendered useless by made-up alibi

(tags: lying psychology )

Comments

[momentsmusicaux]

> Typically these are wood-frame construction, cheaper to build than luxury steel-and-glass high-rises.

I can never get over how in the US they build houses and blocks of flats OUT OF WOOD.

[calimac]

What would you use, brick or stone? Wood (or, for that matter, steel) is far easier to make safe from earthquakes, a major concern in parts of the US.

[momentsmusicaux]

Wood just seems wrong for houses. It's a cultural thing, I suppose. Houses here aren't made of wood, sheds are!
I'd feel terribly insecure in a wooden house. I don't think I'd knowingly want to live in a multi-storey wooden structure!

[momentsmusicaux]

Where is that robot car park? The articles all say Morrison Street, but where on it?

[andrewducker]

There are several photos here. Might be enough to identify it
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/2198481/edinburgh-blaze-smoke-city-robot-car-park-morrison-street/

[momentsmusicaux]

My best guess is that it's to the right of the coop supermarket and the left of the shops that include the gaming cafe.

[zotz]

I think it's the back of one of the buildings across the road from Scottish Widows. That's pretty much where you're saying too, isn't it?

[calimac]

No, I don't think PR is really a solution in the US. There's differences which make it less feasible than in the UK, and one point which suggests to me that blaming it all on gerrymandering is a misanalysis.

1) Compared to the UK, the US is a much larger country with a smaller legislature. Our congressional districts are already 7 to 8 times the population of an average British parliamentary constituency, so the problem of distance from the constituents, already an argument against amalgamating constituencies into multi-member districts for PR, is far greater.

2) The US only has two political parties worth noting. In the UK, it's frequent for seats to be won without an absolute majority (i.e. less than 50% of the FPTP vote). In the US, it's very rare. The result is that the threshold for minority representation in a PR system is higher, exacerbating the problem of constituency size.

3) While gerrymandering is a real problem, I'm skeptical when the evidence for increased Republican adeptness at it is that Republicans keep getting elected despite the voters being more Democratic. The same election problem applies to governors and senators, and they're elected not by districts but by states. State borders don't change. They can't be gerrymandered. Whatever's causing this, it's more deep-set than gerrymandering alone.

[danieldwilliam]

I think Duverger's Law has an impact on the duopoly situation in US party representation. Along with the primary system and the internal caucussing. I think this gives a tendency towards large, rather sprawling coalitions. Party funding might also have an influence.

The point about PR and distance from the electorate is interesting. How much of the role of a glorified social worker do Federal Representative's have to take on? How easy is it for them to take the temperature on particular issues from their consituents is it without having to go round and door knock on every house?

Rather than using STV which relies on multi-member constituencies you could use the Additional Member System using each state as the top-up region. The single-member constituencies would grow a little but not vastly and the US already seems okay with Senators representing a whole state.

Perhaps the real difference that some form of PR would make would be if it were common at local and state levels and therefore allow smaller parties and political coalitions to get some practical influence on policy build up sufficient support to gain seats in the House, or at least threaten to. That's perhaps nearly as valuable. UKIP has been a very successful political party without winning a single seat at a UK general election in about twenty years.

Nate Silver's outfit have been writing a lot about gerrymandering in the US but, sadly, I've not had the time to read most of it.

[calimac]

Just as I don't think gerrymandering fully explains Republican electoral dominance, I don't think Duverger's Law fully explains the US party duopoly. The UK and Canada are as much single-member FPTP countries as the US is, but they have multi-party systems. I think differences in social structure, and the presence of an elected federal executive officer, are more responsible for the set-up and maintenance of a two-party duopoly in the US.

You ask how the US handles constituency surgeries. Differently. Because of the size of our districts, all Congressfolk have very large staffs, with established district offices (often several, in geographically large districts) as well as in Washington. They handle the constituent interface. Personal interactions with Congressfolk take place mostly at large open public meetings, usually known as Town Halls (after the name of the traditional public business forums in New England). You may have read of various Republicans hastily cancelling these after being shouted down at them by angry constituents.

In California, where the state legislative districts are about the same size as our federal congressional districts, the legislators handle things the same way. It's probably different in other states with smaller legislative districts. And you're right, PR might work best at the state level in those states. (There are a few cities trying it for municipal elections.)

You suggest that an AMS wouldn't increase the size of the individual-member districts very much. I'm not so sure. In the Bundestag, 50% of the members are top-offs; at Holyrood, it's about 43%. That would mean, without increasing the membership of Congress, approximately doubling the size of our already enormous districts.