It’s been 15ish years since that polysci class. The project assigned a geographical location on a fictional continent, and other class members’ countries were on the same continent.

The final work required a fully written constitution, a history outlining relations with other student’s countries, a flag, and a travel brochure.

As I recall, I did get an A on the project.

There would still be things like police departments, federal bureaus, etc; all managed by… you guessed it: a council.

I had more details fleshed out, but this was 15 years ago and some details have been lost to time.

When I was in college, this was literally an assignment in my political science class - come up with a country and a new form of government. Write out a constitution for the country, and then write a travel brochure for it.

What I came up with is a lottery-based council government. The system is designed with none of the “gentleman’s agreements” that the US systems seems to be based on, and assumes that if it’s possible to abuse the system, then the system WILL BE abused. So it’s designed to minimize the ability for the system to be abused.

You want to get rid of career politicians? Make it so they don’t even have the option of running for office in the first place.

Councils

The way my system worked is that all governmental tasks are performed by a council created for a specific purpose. Every council is made up of an odd number of members, with a minimum of 5. Councils can be created to manage a geographical area, such as a state, county, or city, or for a topical purpose, for example, medical oversight. Each council has the ability to create lower councils that report to it, but only within the purview of the parent council. For example, a State Council can create a Municipal Council for a city within the state.

Sitting at the top of the entire structure is the Prime Council, which always consists of exactly 11 members. Decisions of the Prime Council are final except in the case of a supermajority overrule as detailed below.

Lower councils are subject to the decisions of higher councils with one exception - a parent council’s ruling can be overturned and vacated if a supermajority* of child councils that existed at the time of the ruling vote to overturn it. For example, if a State Council outlaws gambling, but 75% of Municipal Councils vote to vacate the ruling, it is overturned. But, for example, if a Municipal Council votes to allow prostitution, the state or national council can overturn that ruling on its own. Again, however, this overturning can be overridden by a supermajority of child councils. However, the chain ends there. A parent council CANNOT vacate a supermajority vote passed by the collected child councils. Child councils must have a reason for existing can cannot be created simply to stack a supermajority vote.

A singular case can only be tackled by ONE council at a time and cannot be interfered with during the proceedings by any other council at any other level. For example, if a Municipal Traffic Council is considering a motion to raise a speed limit on a road, no other council (Municipal, State, or even the Prime Council) can interfere in that case or tell the lower council how to rule on it. However, once the case is complete and the ruling announced, THEN a higher council may take up the issue and/or vacate the lower council’s ruling.

Decisions of lower councils can be appealed, but a parent council has no obligation to take up the issue and can simply deny the appeal.

Courts

Courts, as we understand them, do not exist in this system, per se. Civil and criminal cases are handled in the same way; there is no separation between the case types. Likewise, there is no differentiation between the natures of the decisions that can be handed down. Every court case is presided over by a council created especially for the purpose of hearing this single case. All the other rules surrounding how councils work detailed the Councils section still apply.

The Lottery

Council members are selected by lottery from all eligible citizens. Each lottery is specific to the seat being filled. To be considered eligible for a given lottery, a citizen:

• Must be a member of the geographical area that the seat’s council represents. For example, if the seat is on a Municipal Planning Council, the citizen must live within the city.

• Must meet the qualifications defined by the higher council when this council was created. In this case, perhaps, qualification requires that the citizen hold a bachelor of science degree in any subject.

• Must NOT have previously served on this same council.

• Must NOT have been declared unfit for service by a medical professional.

All citizens of legal age are automatically in the lottery pool by default, and the lottery operates on on opt-out basis.

If a citizen is chosen for a council, they have the option of declining the position. In which case, another eligible citizen is selected.

Additionally, a citizen can elect to be removed from the lottery pool for any or no reason for one year at a time. This election can be renewed indefinitely, but it must be renewed UNLESS a medical professional declares that they are unfit for service. An unfit-for-service declaration can be made for a specific amount of time or on a permanent basis.

Antagonistic Resignation

Any council member can resign their position on a council at any time before their term is over. In addition, a council member may enact the right of “Antagonistic Resignation” whereby they remove both themself and ONE other member of the council. There is no veto or override process allowed. To clarify, any council member can remove any other member from the same council by also removing themself at the same time. The replacement council member(s) will be chosen via the lottery.

Antagonistic Recusement

A council member MAY NOT vote on or interfere with the vote on any issue the results of which they may directly benefit from. That is to say that if a council member could personally benefit from a decision on a matter, they are REQUIRED to recuse themself from the case and may not interfere with the case in any way, including but not limited to public discussion or press releases related to the matter.

A council member with a conflicting interest in a single case must either resign from the council or recuse themself from the case. As with Antagonistic Resignation, the recusing council member chooses ONE other council member that must also recuse themself from the case to preserve the odd number of council seats. Again, there is no veto or override process allowed. However, unlike Antagonistic Resignation, the recusing council member MUST choose one other member for recusement - they do not get the option to decline. If the number of active seats on the council would drop below five for this single issue, interim seats will be created and filled by lottery for this specific case only, after which the additional seats will be removed from the council and the interim council members’ terms will be considered complete.

Protection and Compensation

Serving on a council is a full-time job and may require taking a sabbatical from work. While an individual citizen has the ability to decline a council seat, NO other entity, individual, or organization may punish or otherwise act against a citizen for choosing to accept the responsibility of service. Therefore, it is considered unconstitutional for any entity to retaliate against a citizen for accepting a council seat, punishable by a fine of not less than 50% of that entity’s yearly income. It is understood that this is a harsh penalty, and the severity and calamitous nature of it is intentional and intended to avoid even the outward appearance of impropriety or retaliation. If a citizen CHOOSES of their own accord to decline a council seat out of a sense of duty to an organization, that’s allowed, but it is absolutely not acceptable for an organization to demand, tell, ask, or even imply that a seat should be declined.

It is required by law that an employee (and this shall be construed loosely, to include any person who is in any way a member of an organization) of an organization be reinstated at the end of their council service to their same position, pay, benefits, and tenure as though no sabbatical had been taken at all. This is inclusive of any required “re-onboarding” time.

Council members shall be paid the greater of 125% of their reported yearly income or 200% of the average salary of the relevant lottery eligibility pool. This shall be to incentivize citizens to fulfill their duty and serve on a council.

Councilar No-Confidence

At any time, the citizens may petition a geographical council (Prime, State, County, Municipal, etc) for a status of Councilar No-Confidence. This petition shall require the signatures of 55% of the individual citizens of the geographical area represented. Upon submission of a completed petition, the council will be dissolved, and a new council will be chosen by lottery according to all the requirements for the council being replaced. This action is automatic and cannot be vetoed or overruled.

Branch No-Confidence (The Nuclear Option)

If instead, the No-Confidence petition contains the signatures of 75% of the individual citizens of the geographical area represented, the council and ALL LOWER COUNCILS created by it, directly or indirectly, are dissolved and replaced as above. This is akin to pruning a branch from a tree - every branch and leaf connected to the branch is also removed. Note that this applies to EVERY level of the system, so a No-Confidence petition signed by 75% of the citizens of the entire country and submitted to the Prime Council results in the entire system being wiped away and reset.

It went a lot deeper than that, but I’ve already typed a LOT and think this mostly gets the gist of it.#

Tai’shar Malkier!

Good luck with that. .local is reserved for mDNS calls, and not every OS treats it the same way. Ask me how I know.

My mom uses those.

Answer: they’re not for fully disabled people. A fully disabled person will have their own. The type of person who needs one can walk for a little bit, stand up sit down, all that; but staying on their feet for the time it takes to grocery shop would be either extremely painful or maybe they’d get really weak and eventually collapse.

As for returning it — either somebody with you returns it or you leave it in the cart corral like any other and the store employees get it later.

Ah, kind of like a Waffle of Indra type situation.

That’s not what a conspiracy is. A conspiracy is a bunch of people working together in secret to do something illegal. A conspiracy theory is when you put a bunch of seemingly random or unrelated facts together and they give the impression of a conspiracy causing something to happen.

You can’t just say “dogs can smell the color blue” and call it a conspiracy theory.

You need to have something to back it up. Even if it’s not hard proof, there needs to be a string of coincidences or suspicious actions or something.

So what makes you think Andrew Tate is an illuminatus? That’s where the meat of a good conspiracy theory is - form your answer to “why do you think that?”

Also the bulbs that last forever are majorly undervolted. They last forever because they’re not run anywhere near their current capacity, and as a result, they emit way less light and their filament doesn’t degrade as fast.

If you take any old off the shelf incandescent bulb and only run it at 50v, it’ll last decades.

Actually, come to think of it, it’s not just toasters… it’s coffeemakers, microwaves, stove knobs, thermostats…

HE’S SUPPORTED BY BIG BIMETALLIC STRIP!

Then why are the employees at one Waffle House near me always high, but another near me across town is normal? Well… normal as Waffle House gets, anyway.

Dude… write a book. This would be a great plot to a thriller novel.

I…. Uh….

This makes way more sense than any other crackpot 911 theory I’ve ever heard.

What if was less a structural weakness than actual demolition charges built into the superstructure of the building that few knew about that could be used in just such an event?

Different materials burn at different temperatures, and a raging inferno near the top wouldn’t affect structural members near the bottom, so a fire might not be guaranteed to trigger the weakness, but charges could be placed to guarantee the outcome if the worst happened.

Would explain SO much of the “evidence” that 911 conspiracy theorists talk about - the smell of chordite, the flashes in the windows, the clean collapse, that whole “the decision was made to ‘pull’ [building 7]” but no way they could have placed charges that quickly in that situation thing…

Then, this begs the question - What other structures might be similarly equipped?

That’s fair. I can get behind a neutral view of it.

Now there’s a conspiracy theory I can get behind. He’s financed by big toaster.

That’s so oversimplified that it borders on being a lie. Yes it happened, but the why of it wasn’t as simple as just “sell more lightbulbs”.

I can’t link it right now, but go on YouTube and find the channel technology connections. He does a deep dive into the history of the light bulb and the phoebus cartel. TLDR: believe it or not, it was actually a good thing.

I bought a cheap used Dell R710 on Facebook marketplace for like $100 or so, as well as an ups, rack, 10g switch, etc, from various other sellers. All told, I’ve got about $500 in my server setup.

Installed proxmox on it. It’s “free” if you don’t buy a license. You just have to put up with a little nag screen when you open the control panel but it still works 100%, much like winrar.

Works great.

Edit: just realized this is in c/selfhosted AND I misunderstood the post. I’m gonna leave it here just on the off chance it’s useful to somebody, but I acknowledge it’s not what you’re looking for.

Oh. Yeah. If it’s a manual valve turn system, not a central hvac, then a Nest or ecobee won’t work for you.

Eh, I mean, clearly I’m not OKAY with what happened. It was a goddamned tragedy. But apart from initial shock and disbelief, it didn’t really affect me psychologically at all. It had been 4+ years since I had last spoken to him, and I wasn’t actually involved in any way apart from getting updates from my mom when she’d talk to his mom. So it didn’t leave any lasting effect. Not on me at least. I feel terrible for Maddie’s family and completely understand why they’d want him to rot in prison forever.

I’ve got two kids now, and if somebody did that to one of them… there’s a good chance I’D be the one in prison forever once I got ahold of the guy who did it.

Link works for me. I think the parens in the link target are borking it for some people.

As for what it’s like…. It’s weird. I knew him when we were both like 10 or so. My mom and his mom were pretty good friends, so I’d go over to his house any time they wanted to hang out.

He was a normal kid. He liked Nintendo and was trying to learn to play guitar.

His dad though… his dad was a raving psychopath. He used to beat the shit out of both him and his mom. I damn near caught a beating from him once until mom declared that if he was there, we wouldn’t be.

Eventually, I moved to another state, and his family moved to Florida.

A few years later, I was in freshman English class in high school (year 9 for the Brits), and an office runner came and told me I had a phone call.

It was my mom. “Josh killed a girl.” I’m not sure why she thought it was necessary to tell me at school since there was nothing to be done about it, but I guess she wanted to break the news to me before I saw it online or something.

The story on Wiki is pretty accurate from there. His mom was cleaning his room while he was at school because it was starting to smell when she noticed a wet spot under his bed, investigated, and found the body of a missing neighbor girl.

She had been missing for a week or so, I think; it’s been a while. While she was missing, he had even participated in the neighborhood searches for her.

I remember following the story as it developed. It was weird af to be reading about the kid I used to play Mario with on cnn. There was a whole media circus about him. We weren’t involved in any way since we had been moved apart for years.

In hindsight, knowing what I know now, there’s still ZERO indication that he would do something like that. He wasn’t a problem kid, he never let on about any weird sexual things (even hints of budding weirdness), if anything, I was a bad influence on him - he was a well behaved kid and I was the friend that was always like “hey, let’s go throw rocks at cars” or something because I was a little shithead.

I 100% believe the “scared dumbass kid” story the defense put out. I don’t for a second believe any of the “sexually motivated” shit. Every 14 year old had porn hidden in their room in those days. That doesn’t make him a crazed sex killer.

He was a scared kid with a terrifying abusive father that panicked and did something horrifying that can never be taken back.

Did he murder a child? Yes. Is he to blame? 100%.

I do not condone, approve of, or support what he did in any way whatsoever. But knowing his dad, I understand WHY it happened.