Catfood Earth 3.44 is available to download. This version updates the timezone database to 2018i, moves to a new source for timezone mapping an fixes a bug in the volcanoes layer.
Youth turnout for elections is famously dismal. In 2016 less than half of 18-29 year-olds voted, compared to over two thirds as you get to 45 and older (US Census). The impact is an incentive to cater to the old - trying to make America great again (like you remember from when you were young) vs doing something about climate change or house prices.
One fix is compulsory voting, like in Australia. I'm not sure I want to force people without an opinion to vote though.
What if we just weighted votes by the total size of the demographic group?
I took the demographic breakdown of 2016 voters from the US Census Bureau and multiplied these by the age breakdown from CNN exit polls. This gave Clinton a lead of just under a million votes - somewhat lower than the actual result. This is likely a polling error in the exit poll, but it's a reasonable baseline with Clinton beating Trump in the popular vote by 48% to 47%.
To age weight the result I just applied the exit poll percentages to the total population in each age bracket - i.e. what would have happened if everyone in each age group voted the same way as their peers. This obviously increases the size of the electorate so absolute numbers are less interesting. Clinton now beats Trump 48% to 46%, possibly enough to reverse the electoral college outcome (I haven't attempted this projection state by state).
Making up for poor turnout is an interesting adjustment, but what about life expectancy? All of those baby boomers have plenty of free time to vote but are not going to be around to die of obscure tropical diseases in the Minnesotan jungle. So I also weighted each population segment by life expectancy (18-29 year-olds are going to be around for another 55 years, 65+ more like 7). Clinton now has a majority instead of a plurality - she beats Trump 50% to 42%.
All three models are shown in terms of total votes counted in the chart above.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Age and Life Expectancy Weighted Voting #politics#politicalreform What if we solved the youth turnout problem by weighting election results by demographics, or to be completely fair by life expectancy as well.)
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022.
Shot from the Marin headlands, the Golden Gate Overlook and near Fort Point. I used an RX10 IV with an ND3.0 filter. Raw images were captured every four seconds with a one second exposure time. Edited with LRTimelapse and scored with Filmstro Pro.
I was expecting a pretty sunny day but ended up with regular showers and some pretty wild swings between sunshine and cold soggy overcast weather. I think the occasional raindrop and the mood swings work quite well, although the wind caused a bit of wobble on the long zoom onto the deck of the bridge.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Golden Gate Bridge Timelapse #timelapse#ggb#video Time lapse of the Golden Gate Bridge shot from the Marin headlands, the Golden Gate Overlook and Fort Point in San Francisco, CA.)
Shadow Captain (Revenger, #2) by Alastair Reynolds
5/5
Excellent sequel to 2016's Revenger. If you tried to sell this series to me - runaway sisters become fearsome space pirates while trying to figure out various mysteries about the rise and fall of a far future civilization and some truly funky currency - I'd put them someone pretty far down my to do list. But in Alastair Reynolds' hands it's a space opera masterpiece. Can't wait for the next installment.
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today: "Could we have our first four-party election in 2020 — with candidates from the Donald Trump far right, the old G.O.P. center right, the Joe Biden center left and the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez far left all squaring off, as the deepening divides within our two big parties simply can’t be papered over any longer?". Here's my daisyworld analogy from 2010, and a write-up of an Intelligence Squared debate on the same topic from 2011.
Material Design brought bland consistency to the Android ecosystem. Every app had some sort of bold header and a floating action button. There is some value in consistency and at least some personality was retained. It's red, it's probably Gmail. Yellow, I must be in Keep. Boring but tolerable.
Material Design 2 solves mainly for the problem of knowing which app you're looking at. Colors have gone. Every Google app is now an oppressive black list with some oppressive black icons. To add to the misery the icons have a shade of stock-library amateurism and are just a little too heavy. Unless I look really closely or the what-icon-did-I-just-click region of my brain is on top form there is no longer any way to tell the difference between Google apps.
I'm pretty sure Material Design 3 is just going to be a command prompt. What Android customers really want is telnet or wget and some raw JSON.
A short but steep 2.2 mile loop in San Pedro Valley Park. From the parking lot go behind the toilet block and turn right to find the start of Montara Mountain Trail. After 1.2 miles winding slowly up you reach the junction with Brooks Creek Trail at a bench with views to the Pacific. Take Brooks Creek Trail down 1 mile to the parking lot, passing another bench with a view of the waterfall on the way down.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
San Pedro Valley Park Waterfall Loop #hike#sanpedrovalleypark#pacifica#map Montara Mountain Trail to Brooks Creek Trail in San Pedro Valley Park (2.2 miles, waterfall view).)
