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Richard Pund

@rpund.bsky.social
82 followers 69 following 65 posts

Occasional opinion haver. Probably going on about proportional representation or mobility again.

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Reposted by Richard Pund
UBI Works @ubiworks.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Texas U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico is calling for an AI dividend: "we cannot allow all the gains of this innovation to accumulate at the top… you see this in Alaska, they have a statewide dividend for their oil and gas resources."
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Holscher +3 in the latest governor's poll is also a surprise, but a welcome one. Is Global Strategy Group a reputable source?
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Give the evil trillionaires a tax cut?
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Looking forward to the upcoming episode on congressional election reform that's teased in this one!
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Matt Bors @mattbors.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
It was exactly ten years ago today, on my 33rd birthday, that I posted this comic online.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
If he gets mad at France we might get New America, in the state of Americana, on the Gulf of America.
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Missouri Independent @missouriindependent.com · 03/09/2026
Missouri Supreme Court blocks gerrymandered congressional map, orders referendum vote #moleg #mogov
missouriindependent.com
Missouri Supreme Court blocks gerrymandered congressional map, orders referendum vote • Missouri Independent
Missourians will vote on the gerrymandered congressional map muscled through the Legislature in 2025, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Today's motivation comes from Li'l Petey.
Li'l Petey encourages Dog Man to stop hiding in the trash can and Do Good
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
A neighbor recently stopped me to say they appreciated a piece I wrote and it made my week. Knowing how that positive reinforcement made me feel makes me want to pass that along to others.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
May be approaching the point where rewritable DVDs cost less per GB than SSDs
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 13/08/2026
I feel like an issue that would connect well with voters would be doing anything at all to slow the current progression toward "absolutely everything now is a scam"
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Stephen Wolf @stephenwolf.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Republican power grabs in Kansas and Missouri are going down in flames with 18-25% of votes reported so far. Missouri's Amendment 4 aimed to make citizen-initiated constitutional amendments practically impossible. Kansas' Amendment 1 was designed to flip the state Supreme Court to ban abortion
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Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector editor in chief @journalist-sherman.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Early results — as in too early to draw any conclusions — show 71% voting against the constitutional amendment. That's with 126,572 votes posted. #ksleg
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
The arc of the deal
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
My newest opinion piece for @kansasreflector.com featuring Mister Gotcha #ksleg
kansasreflector.com
GOP messaging on Kansas judicial selection amendment has a democracy-sized sincerity problem • Kansas Reflector
It’s not a coincidence that the democracy Republican politicians want voters to choose is one that would give them more influence.
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The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 15/07/2026
The work of building efficient, scalable AI systems hasn't been done, Alex Reisner argues. He explores the the industry's inefficiency, and how it’s costing the rest of us:
bit.ly
Generative AI Is an Engineering Disaster
A shockingly inefficient trillion-dollar project
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 14/07/2026
An amazing quote from Lindsey Graham in this Atlantic story. It really captures an essential truth about politics that too few people ever really come to terms with. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
I'm a fan of Mend It Mark for the same reason! Amazing the things he's able to do sometimes to fix old audio equipment.
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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Buttigieg: Let's talk one more thing, one more radical proposition on the executive branch. What if everybody's vote counted the same?
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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 30/05/2026
“I want to urge my political allies, those who share my commitment to substantive policy outcomes, to adopt this same political orientation, to embrace feminist politics of solidarity rather than personality.” www.liberalcurrents.com/aoc-for-pres...
liberalcurrents.com
AOC for President
Whether or not she runs, Ocasio-Cortez is invoking a feminist politics that Democrats should adopt if they are serious about defeating fascism.
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Brian Phillips @brianphillips.lol · 28/05/2026
And we are live! Massive thanks to everyone who contributed to this. Reading your posts made me so much madder than I ever knew was possible
theringer.com
The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech
The bugs, broken apps, and nightmare customer-service bots we can't escape, presented as a blessed and sacred addendum to Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on AI
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Thank you! I hope it gets more people talking about UBI if nothing else.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Count me in as another AI skeptic and UBI supporter. Thanks as always to @kansasreflector.com for letting me have my say.
kansasreflector.com
As data centers sprawl across the landscape, AI companies should pay Kansans what we're owed • Kansas Reflector
If we want AI to benefit all of us and not just the tech billionaires, then we need different policies to spread the wealth.
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Dennis Lytton @dennislytton.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
"Making [proportional representation] a “hundred days” reform . . . would upend our calcified two-party system. Only a few party insiders and timid squishes would miss this most contemptible aspect of the old republic." "What would a multiparty U.S. House look like? Let me speculate . . . "
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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 11/05/2026
“We can fix our broken system. We can change the structure of elections in America to make them more free, more democratic, and more fair to every voter. Here's how.” @dennislytton.bsky.social today www.liberalcurrents.com/proportional...
liberalcurrents.com
Proportional Representation Would Fix That
We can change the structure of elections in America to make them more free, more democratic, and more fair to every voter. Here's how.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
The last point in the piece is key. Republicans instigated this round of gerrymandering out of self-interest. Even if they don't care about the benefits of PR in principle, if conditions change to where it is a better choice for them strategically then they will likely agree to it.
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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 04/05/2026
"The main problem is the usage of single-seat districts as the basis of representing the population in the House. There is no such thing as a set of maps that is fair, competitive, and representative. Gerrymandering is just tweaking a bad system at the margins."
liberalcurrents.com
Lessons from the Redistricting Wars
Gerrymandering is just tweaking a bad system at the margins.
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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 22/04/2026
sucks that it’s come to this, but if congressional Republicans wanted to put up a national gerrymandering ban or multi member districts etc, it would pass *for sure*. until then fight fire with fire
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
100% agree, and glad to hear you endorse PR as a way to end the gerrymandering wars eventually.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Orban made grand appeals to “Christianity” and “Western Civilization,” but his “illiberal democracy” was just a scam, a way to make him and his buddies rich while subjecting Hungarians to stagnation and robbing them of their freedom. Sound familiar? (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Orbán rode to power on resentment over the economic stagnation that developed under center-left governments. But he leaves office with Hungarians facing falling wages and higher inflation than similar countries are experiencing. Orbán’s sectarianism and intolerance have sparked neither a religious revival nor a fertility bump; Hungary’s population is shrinking and has become more irreligious, even as Orbán has demonized LGBTQ people, “Muslim invaders,” and Jews. Orbánism, in short, did not make Hungarians more rich, Christian, or free—unless you happened to be one of Orbán’s buddies, in which case you may have gotten rich. As most Hungarians felt their economic circumstances worsen, Orbán provided them with relatively powerless targets to hate.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
They're each going to call into the same video call and have to keep muting and unmuting individually to prevent echo.
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Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
One of my favorite things about the Trump Era is that any invocation of civic virtue or decency, no matter how anodyne, is implicitly understood by his supporters as an attack on him and his movement.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
This makes me wonder how bad the global memory shortage would be if these AI companies actually optimized their code. Would there even be a shortage at all?
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
New — I wrote about how journalists proudly using AI to help them write their stories obscures the deeply human process that makes journalism a societal necessity, and one that feeds the soul of those who create it. Hope you’ll give it a read. I promise I wrote the whole thing.
thehandbasket.co
Refusing to accept big tech's AI-poisoned 'future of journalism'
Humans, however flawed, are
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
The US has the fewest parties represented in our national legislature of any country in the industrialized world. We don't just need better candidates--we need a new political system with more parties.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Astepro is OTC, even! Not sure what its cost is compared to prescription Azelastine though.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
With the ongoing mid-decade gerrymandering in many states, are there more politicians from the two major parties in those states or Congress talking about PR as a solution?
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Lee Drutman @leedrutman.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
"There will be an after. There always is. The Gilded Age ended. The boss system ended. The Solid Jim Crow South gave way to voting rights. This era of dysfunction and discontent will end too. The real question is: What comes next?" New from me -> www.vox.com/politics/480...
vox.com
US democracy has repaired itself before. Here’s how we can do it again.
America has remade itself every few decades. Are we due?
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Great piece. I think the end makes a good point. Proctor has been promoting policies that primarily harm voter turnout. By manipulating the electorate like this, he's doing more harm to our election integrity than good.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Electrolytic capacitors and Li-ion batteries would like a word
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Protect Democracy @protectdemocracy.org · 23/02/2026
We need more people to know about this simple solution to gerrymandering ⬇️ Here's how proportional representation could make map manipulation impossible, and it’s actually achievable. Watch and share to spread the word: youtu.be/xN5V0au9Xms
youtu.be
How Proportional Representation Could End Gerrymandering
YouTube video by Protect Democracy
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
That's generally how reform has happened elsewhere. Parties facing a big loss in the next election will sometimes agree to a more proportional election system to limit the damage. www.fairvote.ca/dennis-pilon...
fairvote.ca
Dennis Pilon: Multi-party collaboration on voting system reform
When we examine the history of major voting system reforms throughout the twentieth century, nearly all changes involved negotiation and agreement between multiple political parties.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 07/02/2026
on the balance i think partisan gerrymandering is bad but the only way it ends is if democrats weaponize it against republicans everywhere they can. wiping out republican lawmakers in blue states might bring the GOP to the table to end the practice.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
No proponents? Were the usual out of state lobbyists busy that day?
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Genuinely wonder sometimes how many elite Dems would be Republicans if they were born in a red state instead of a blue one.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs.

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
I've started playing #CluesbySam. It's a fun logic puzzle! 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 cluesbysam.com
cluesbysam.com
Clues by Sam
A daily logic puzzle where you deduce who is a criminal!
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Schooley @schooley.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
If you had predicted with precise accuracy any of our current top stories this week during the ‘24 election, it would have been dismissed as Trump Derangement Syndrome by most of the professional takesmiths.
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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 04/01/2026
Instead of whatever this is, we should have a government getting lots of new homes and apartments built, lots of clean energy built, lots of high speed rail and transit and bike lanes built, human rights for everyone, economic & healthcare opportunities for all, & innovation that leads the world.
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Richard Pund @rpund.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
I resolve to keep advocating for causes that are important to me, which usually means writing testimony in opposition of state bills.
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