Here’s where it was added to PrivacyGuides - https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/issues/36.... The person opening the issue is the CEO of ente. So the CEO of ente gets his company mentioned in PrivacyGuides back when it was new and that makes it more legit?

Generally nonpartisan commissions prioritise contiguity and compactness. There is an element of “I know it when I see it” because you’re trying to avoid both packing (packing minority voters from disparate areas into one) and cracking (distributing a minority district like Salt Like City into its 4 neighbouring districts, ensuring the city can’t vote for … whoever cities generally vote for).

So there is a human element involved, but these commissions generally do a reasonable job. You know how we know? States that move from nonpartisan to partisan commissions cause a dramatic change in the results of the next election. If the nonpartisan was biased like you imply with your air quotes, we wouldn’t observe that effect.

Also there are algorithms to draw fair districts without needing human judgement. See this paper[1] that expounds on one such algorithm.

1 - Swamy, R., King, D. M., & Jacobson, S. H. (2022). Multiobjective optimization for politically fair districting: A scalable multilevel approach. Operations Research, 71(2), 536–562. https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2022.2311

FWIW, one party generally deferred to nonpartisan commissions to draw boundaries to avoid gerrymandering. So one “side” did far more than propose a solution, they did the right thing even when the other side wasn’t.

Gerrymandering is the worst example to pick when you’re pushing both-sides-bad.

More than the war, they’ll feel the peace. More than 100% of the economic growth of the last few years has gone into war production, meaning the civilian economy has shrunk. When the weapons factories are scaled back the economy is going to hurt something fierce. Even Muscovites will notice.

This is why Putin can’t stop fighting. When the fighting stops Russia will face a reckoning. Better to postpone that day hoping that Europe runs out of steam.

- Military - their regional proxies destroyed, missile and drone stocks low, provably weak air defences.

- Economically - the currency is worthless, extreme inflation for seven years and hyper inflation for a few months, the economy is currently producing nothing due to unrest, they have a massive water shortage of their own making. They have no goods worth exporting. Their oil is sanctioned, meaning only China will buy from them and at a steep discount. And oil is extremely cheap at this minute.

- Politically - they have no friends willing to bail them out. Russia has no money to spare. China doesn’t care about anyone outside of China. North Korea is even poorer. All sections within Iranian society detest the mullahs running the government. They’re hanging on by killing tens of thousands of protestors.

Trump bets that Iran’s leaders are at their weakest since their war with Saddam ended in 1988. Meaning now is the best time to negotiate a deal where they hand over their fissile material and uranium enrichment equipment. In return they could get a heavy water reactor(s) that produces energy but no fissile material.

If he lets this opportunity slip Iran could fix all of their many problems in a year or three. Manufacture more missiles and drones. Build up their proxies once more. Maybe the price of oil recovers. Russia’s war ends and they aid Iran best they can. The economy recovers and the Iranian people stop trying to overthrow the government. Maybe a conflict starts elsewhere that draws America’s full attention.

Will Trump get that deal? Probably not. That fissile material is the only leverage the mullahs have. If they give it up they’ll be toppled like the other dictators who gave up their weapons programs - Gaddafi and Saddam.

But if you don’t ask you don’t get, right?

Citizens were loyal to Rome. Soldiers were loyal to their commanders. If commanders wanted to launch rebellions, the soldiers would likely support them.

A commander who commands the loyalty of legions by convincing a handful of drone operators would be very dangerous for democracy.

OpenAI will likely keep their billion users, and likely monetise them fairly effectively with ads. Their revenue will be considerable. It’s less clear that OpenAI will “win” and their competitors won’t.

Educated people can read as many books as they want about manipulation and still be susceptible to it. The manipulation works on a much deeper emotional level. We can’t change who we are, no matter how much education we get.

Being told by a brand “you’re fat” hurts no matter how many papers you’ve read or published and “you’re still thin and beautiful and desirable!” feels amazing.