mos_basik
65 USD for a passport card (2) (the cheapest passport option).
Both require attending in-person appointments.
For contrast:
Voting is compulsory in Australia. Citizens may register to vote entirely online, and may prove their identity using a Medicare card or citizenship certificate (or driver's license or passport, ofc) (3). (Aside: this page of FAQs explicitly calls out that these two means of proving ID have been added as a response to increasing feedback from young people, disabled people, and people living in remote areas about having less access to driver's license or passport.)
Obtaining an Australian Medicare card is free, and citizens may prove their identity using a birth certificate (no need for it to be certified) and submitting their application + supporting documents by email (or by mail, but that costs postage) (4).
Free, and no in-person appointment.
1. https://portal.ct.gov/dmv/licenses-permits-ids/get-non-drive...
2. https://travel.state.gov/en/passports/apply/adults.html#acco...
3. https://www.aec.gov.au/faqs/enrolment.htm
4. https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/enrolling-medicare-if-y...
Plethora of options, really
I've tried using the Firefox integration in the past - more than once - and I don't know... it had so many warts that I got fed up with it and turned it off. And now I have 1Password (from work) also doing its best to feed me credentials all the time. So trying the KeePass integration again is going to have them both drawing suggestion dropdowns all the time..
But ok, I'll give it another honest shot. Because of your comment.
Thanks for that, it's been a few years and I'd forgotten about this.
"[the statement] was oversimplified... In reality, the tests involved “red teams” of N.S.A. analysts who were using Mythos in a highly tailored environment that would be extremely unlikely for an adversary to replicate, officials said. The red teams began their tests within classified N.S.A. systems designed to be accessible only from certain computers and completely cut off from the broader internet.
The tests found that Mythos was able to identify cybersecurity flaws within that classified network quickly, but it did not actually break into those systems, the officials said."
Unfortunate that we'll lose that one to the ocean in the next 10-50 years.
(Much irony, given the topic of TFA.)
That I would so well internalize the "big brother is always watching what you click, what you hover, what you rewatch, what you comment on, what you pause to read longer than average, what you favorite, what you thumbs-down, etc" default experience provided by facebook/amazon/youtube/streaming platform/short form video platform/etc
that when I stick my head back into 4chan from time to time (to see what the motorcycle thread is talking about these days, or get idea for a show to watch) it's a like a physical weight lifts off me as I realize that no one and nothing gives a toss about what threads I open, or what posts I respond to, or what images I save or post. It won't change any feeds in opaque ways. It won't pollute my recommends (jokes aside about how how the choice of website already polluted matters enough). It won't do anything.
Blew my mind when I put my finger on what I was feeling and realized how pervasive this sort of thing has gotten in most every big tech online product.
I haven't read up on it much myself, but any discussion along the lines of this subthread re: "handwriting > typing" is probably discussing research that's starting to be talked about more and more in the past 5 years or so (maybe the pandemic and online learning accelerated interest?)
here's a 5m clip of a neuroscientist presenting to the US Senate this year on correlation between dropping academic performance and use of tech in classrooms in many countries over many years, and asking for more research into mechanisms and causation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U
and here's a paper from a couple years ago describing differences in observed brain activity between handwriting and typewriting and some discussion of how this could be a mechanism of the kind the video was talking about https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
>Is there something stopping you from...
No, but I feel like it's not hard to argue that default are important.
I'm saddened that my culture has formed me into a person whose first reaction to your comment was "wow, that's harsh" - because I mentally (and unwarrantedly) translated your comment into something like "if you have attention difficulties perhaps you should just accept that you are a low-value human who is hard class-locked out of many of life's joys and you should (quickly) figure out how to live in the way that least inconveniences your betters."
And my brain does this even though I'm gainfully employed and comfortable and happy (happy modulo general anxiety re climate, politics, war, and future generations)
My second reaction to your comment was more like "bingo, but it sure would be nice to have more clear directions about where one's actual place is." And it sure seems like there might be more such places and they'd be easier to find in a culture whose incentives were slightly (or significantly) different than those of mine (USA).
Good job OP!
I think the Sunset Boulevard quote is used twice: for 32 and 40.
I spent my childhood in the Kasaï-Oriental - my parents were aid workers - and though I lived through some of the key periods of the country (Kabila Sr's rise and assassination) I was young and had no idea of the more general goings-on beyond our town. I've been trying to learn more about the period and I imagine these will be very helpful.
I wonder if my French is still good enough for Les guerres à l'est de la RD Congo...
If you've ever heard a line like "Mr Chair, I make a motion to X the Y" and then someone pipes up from a different part of the room "I second the motion!" and then someone important-looking says "A motion has been made and seconded, you may have the floor" - They're doing Robert's Rules.
And that's most of what I knew about Robert's Rules a minute ago, until I looked up the distinction GP was making above:
Point of Order: When a member thinks that the rules of the assembly are being violated, s/he can make a Point of Order (or "raise a question of order," as it is sometimes expressed), thereby calling upon the chair for a ruling and an enforcement of the regular rules.
Point of Information: a request for information on a specific question, either about process or about the content of a motion. A point of information does not give the speaker the privilege to provide information. If you have information for the body, raise your hand to be put on the speakers list.
from https://www.sheridan.edu/app/uploads/2018/11/Roberts-Rules-M...
After solidly internalizing the messaging of "teen pregnancy is the worst thing ever" & "sex leads to teen pregnancy", there's no "switch" to make those thought patterns disappear without a trace at the point at which it's "ok" (by whatever metric is relevant to the individual) to participate in sex, child-rearing, etc. So individuals find themselves dealing with long-term guilt at having sex and/or aversion to having children, neither of which is "rational" according to their values but which nonetheless is real and affects their behavior.
It'd be a pity to get heated up over a misunderstanding of the Australian election system.
OP said (somewhat confusingly I admit):
>[Australia has] compulsory attendance at voting booths for eligible citizens, you can spoil your paper or walk away but we enforce with a fine,
and I think you understood that to mean:
>Australian citizens must choose: drop a valid ballot in the box or be fined
but I think what OP intended was (and this is consistent with the Australia Electoral Commission website [0]):
>Australian citizens must choose: drop a ballot (spoiled is fine) in the box or be fined
(As an aside - one WILL get fined if one appears the polling place but refuses to drop a ballot in the box - see [1].)
Then, believing (incorrectly) that casting a spoiled ballot incurs the fine, you said "Then my refusal to vote should be counted [for the system to be anywhere near reasonable, given that I went to the polling place and exercised my civic duty to the extent permitted by my moral fiber, fully expecting to be fined for it]" (emphasis and context added).
And Australia does keep track of how many "informal votes" (their term for what we're calling spoiled ballots here) are cast. See [2] for an official results page breaking out informal votes by count and percent. But informal votes have no bearing on the election results; they are thrown out and only the valid votes contribute to the result.
So I think you're fundamentally asking for the "informal votes" to have a first-class mechanism for contributing to the election result (specifics TBD, maybe a threshold to meet, maybe an disqualification of the candidates for a period of time, maybe a re-do, whatever).
And that's a valid ask and an interesting discussion to have!
But given that the reason you asked for that was based on a misunderstanding, do you even still want that? Do you still think the AUS system is unreasonable as-is?
----
0. https://aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Publications/voting/index.htm#c...
>Under the Electoral Act, the actual duty of the elector is to attend a polling place, have their name marked off the certified list, receive a ballot paper and take it to an individual voting booth, mark it, fold the ballot paper and place it in the ballot box.
>Because of the secrecy of the ballot, it is not possible to determine whether a person has completed their ballot paper prior to placing it in the ballot box. It is therefore not possible to determine whether all electors have met their legislated duty to vote. It is, however, possible to determine that an elector has attended a polling place or mobile polling team (or applied for a postal vote, pre-poll vote or absent vote) and been issued with a ballot paper.
1. https://www.aec.gov.au/about_aec/publications/backgrounders/...
in Krosch v Springell, at the polling place, Mr Springell handed the presiding officer a note saying, paraphrased, "none of these candidates deserve my vote". He was fined, because it could be proven that he didn't uphold the "duty of the elector" as defined in [0].
2. https://results.aec.gov.au/31496/Website/HouseInformalByStat...
I first saw this idea at https://jmw.name/projects/linear-clock/ and then later I wrote a TUI version for myself
I had tickmarks for stuff (when to go to bed to sleep for 7.5h and wake up near sunrise, things like that). I was working on adding a config file format.
Then I lost the project due to a mishap with a pipx flag... https://github.com/pypa/pipx/issues/1324#issuecomment-211885... ;_; o7
One day maybe I'll come back and do it in Rust.
>>>notmyjob: Even if they don’t [perform circumcision]? You're proposing violence to punish thoughtcrime. And violence to punish free practice of religion.
>>OutOfHere: No, I proposed prison to punish realcrime. And violence is not acceptable simply because religion says so.
>notmyjob: Ah, but you've contradicted yourself! You've proposed prison, which is violence, which you just said is unacceptable.
Man, that's twice now you've mischaracterized their statement to argue against it. Could you not? (Or you misunderstood them badly, in which case I apologize.)
OutOfHere's claim was "religion doesn't make violence acceptable."
I assume they'd also claim that violence in the form of "prison for punishing illegal behavior" is acceptable.
But moving on, sounds like the crux of this disagreement is whether a state should be allowed to punish behaviors permitted by a religion practiced by some of its citizens. A classic question. The whole separation of church and state thing in the US, and elsewhere. Easy to agree on the extremes:
"Should the state punish performing infant baptism in the catholic church"? (sprinkling water on baby's head) Probably an easy "naw, go ahead".
"Should the state punish human sacrifice as practiced by [insert least ambiguous historical example on relevant wiki page]"? Probably an easy "yeah, that's murder".
Harder to agree on other cases: Female circumcision? Polygamy? Going on a 2 year proselytizing mission? Male circumcision?
A state reaches those agreements through some political process. A religion reaches those agreements through ??? (process varies by religion; don't think I've heard of a religion that has an equivalent to California's Ballot Propositions--maybe that's a good thing).
(An aside here; a probable contender for ??? is "divine revelation", but that of course leads to the question: how come a decent number of neolithic etc religions condoned human sacrifice, but no modern major religion does (again, according to the wiki page)? Did the divines change up the rules on that for us? or did states exert pressure on religions to comply? or was ??? some human-driven process?)
Assuming the goal of most human organizations (examples: states, religions) is to improve human experience (i guess both now and in the hereafter)...
you know what, lunch break is over and ain't nobody got time to talk about the tensions and similarities between state and religious goals on the internet with random internet people.
might as well drop my 2c on the topic at hand - I consider circumcision a major body modification, similar to tattooing. I think it's reasonable for it to require informed consent, which a minor cannot grant by themselves. I think it's reasonable to allow circumcision of minors with the consent of a guardian. But then my thoughts get less well defined; I don't want infants circumcised period, but also I don't want teens with medical issues fixable by circumcision to be forbidden that option until they're 18. It's tough.