Fix your link. No one wants reddit tracking tokens.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/2024/11/02/iowa-poll-kamala-harris-leads-donald-trump-2024-presidential-race/75354033007/

Zebulon – traditional Biblical name. Maybe still used in Israel, but not many Americans have used it since the days of Zebulon Pike (Pike’s Peak) and Zebulon Vance (Civil War era NC governor).

I used to play a LAN game. Run around exploring a dungeon, find treasures, weapons, etc. and use them to whack on other players. One of the things you could find was a magic feather that let you walk through walls when wielded. Useful but not too powerful since it was expended with use. After about 15 minutes, if nobody had won, the game went into Armageddon mode by teleporting everyone to a small hostile room to cage match until only one survived. So I used the feather then and hopped into the wall. I could still hit and be hit by adjacent players, but was immune from all the environmental hazards that only existed inside the room.

Next game we played had a house rule to not do that anymore.

Political speech has stronger 1A protection than commercial speech and one could argue for a ‘fair use’ exemption. Strong enough to win on its merits? I don’t know – I’m not an IP lawyer, probably not. Strong enough that a well-funded legal team could get a federal judge, hesitant to make a ruling certain to be criticized as ‘election interference,’ to delay a decision until after the election when the signs are all being taken down anyway? I think so.

Historically, the EC protected the women’s suffrage movement. In a straight NPV, you couldn’t allow progressive states like Wyoming to just double their electoral influence by letting women vote until conservative states like Massachusetts are ready to do the same.

Maybe the modern equivalent is ranked choice voting reforms. Under EC, it’s no problem for Maine to choose electors by IRV, and if other states see it working, they might follow. Under a NPV, or even the NPVIC, they’d be forced to revert to a plurality system so their votes could be added to the national total.

This isn’t the preferred survey methodology of pollsters who care about the statistical validity of the results.

I suspect that text was from someone more interested in your money than your opinion and wouldn’t give them either.

Winning a domestic sports league and calling yourselves “World Champions”

Search engine optimizer – The entire industry, intentionally and with malice aforethought, exists purely to make it more difficult for search engines to provide quality output to search users.

I used to live in Ohio, and had three presidential candidates visit close enough to conveniently get to. I went to the Edwards, Obama (primary season), and Romney events. I didn’t order advance tickets for any of them. Both Democrats had volunteers outside the security trying to get everyone who showed up with or without tickets through security and into the main venue. At Romney’s I didn’t get in and just loitered around the outside fencing. That might have been the better experience – I could still hear the speeches, and the outside crowd had better signs and more colorful commentary than the inside ones.

You can find just about anybody’s Social Security number. (Equivalently, they can find yours.) Amazingly, some institutions still use knowledge of this number as proof of identity for purposes of extending credit to a stranger.

Seems like these sort of hacks always involve the company’s data about its users, and never their own confidential contracts, trade secrets, or other leaks that could directly damage their own operations.

It makes a guy suspect they actually have a very good understanding of information security, but just don’t think yours is worth the bother.

This might have been 20 years ago. Some civic organization, probably on Martin Luther King weekend, held a tribute honoring some famous black men. One of the most prominent famous black men they invited was actor James Earl Jones – reasonable enough so far. So they called him up to the stage to present him with his honorary plaque made out to James Earl … Ray.

Making election day a holiday probably won’t have the effect you’re hoping for.

Best case: Almost everybody goes to work as usual. A few of them get a pay differential for working the holiday.

Worst case: Holiday means holiday. We’ll give all bus drivers the day off to vote – and hope the bus riders live within walking distance of their polling location.