iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Wren, I am @wren.im · 3h

What could have been...

Close up of the above BART proposal map, showing the section in Marin County that was never built.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 6h

The hospital was named in memory of Horny Nurse.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 15h

An AI made of tin? I thought they usually used copper.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 21h

Thank god they were blocked before the countdown reached "."

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 16/10/2026

I probably will rank Matt Schulte; he seemed decent at the Sellwood event. His idea was to encourage more light industry downtown.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 16/10/2026

When I asked @drmitchpdx.bsky.social about who would make a good moderate choice he did mention Arnold for environmental reasons. I'm sorta tempted for no other reason than to have *some* churn.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 16/10/2026

It doesn't help that FPTP is *dirt-simple* to understand, but the problems with it are less obvious and require some explanation. But I think the hook to getting people interested is the frustration with the two-party system and explaining that FPTP entrenches that.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 16/10/2026

...For Tax Purposes?

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 15/10/2026

I discovered r/PDX exists the other day so I guess that's three?

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 15/10/2026

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids For Tax Purposes

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 15/10/2026

I've heard of this model, and I do see the benefits, but I wonder how hard it would be to sell people on it if they are used to having it picked up at their house.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 15/10/2026

Yes, please unite against these gross-ass perverts.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 14/10/2026

Why do you suppose the separatists are pushing it? Just to try to sway voters?

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 14/10/2026

I was a little surprised to the see the senate question in there. Is senate abolition a right-wing cause in Canadian politics?

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 14/10/2026

On the other hand, turn is generally lower in midterm years compared to presidential election years. I've always been kinda skeptical of staggered election. The entire city should get to weigh in at the same time.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 14/10/2026

My mother called these "rooster-tail sprinklers" and it wasn't until my late twenties that I learned that wasn't a general term for them.

Photo from Wikipedia of an impact sprinkler.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 12/10/2026

Oxygen doesn't want to be breathed either, you ever consider that?

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 10/10/2026

Of course this was about Gaza.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 09/10/2026

What you have them do though, in a situation where they could no longer stand by their endorsement but also had to protect confidentiality?

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 09/10/2026

Or #6. There is no penalty for skipping numbers so you can mark him off at the start while you decide how you want to rank your actual preferences.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 08/10/2026

Blocker was not in a headspace to receive information that could possibly hurt them.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 08/10/2026

But that's partly an artifact of only having six slots and wanting to reserve the sixth for a worst-case "it's between these two" scenario.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 08/10/2026

I would agree except that I would narrow it to preferences between candidates who are viable. I didn't rank Rene in 2024 and put Mapps at #6 because even if there were worse candidates on the ballot, they were fringe options who would have already been eliminated.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 08/10/2026

As for what people are asking for, from my experience people want an alternative to the two major parties but not to switch to a system that make third parties viable. They want to allow a wider range of voices but only voices that have mainstream support. Classic median voter stuff.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 08/10/2026

It's something that trips a lot of people up ("wow, someone is getting elected with only a quarter of the vote???") and it's not an easy, one-sentence explanation. CGP Grey's STV video explains the "wasted vote" part decently, but it took me while to wrap my head around the Droop quota.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 08/10/2026

I think it's done because they want something simple and easy to convey in a slogan for campaigning. Same reason during the Newsom recall campaign the Democrats told people to leave the "who should replace him" field blank.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 08/10/2026

25%+1 is the optimal threshold for three members*, and have fewer than three reps wouldn't really make sense to me. * If a candidate clears that threshold, they would guaranteed a seat anyway, and any further votes for them would be "wasted", so we redistribute.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 08/10/2026

This yeah. I really hope people don't blame the city's problems on STV and vote to switch to having single-member districts (which would mean a lot more people feeling unrepresented).

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 07/10/2026

I dunno, this feels like a lot of reform attempts where people think they can get around the problem of politics by pretending they are doing something that isn't politics.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 07/10/2026

But how though? What would a community body look like that's more resistant to capture than a regular legislature? And how could we be assured that such a hypothetical body was actually what we got, given that this measure delegates its creation to the council anyway?

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 07/10/2026

Looks like it didn't make it to the final draft at least (link to text in replies)

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 07/10/2026

Seems weird to delegate those questions to the same legislature that supposedly isn't listening to The People though. But what model would actually be an improvement over letting elected councilors appropriate the funds? What wouldn't suffer the same lobbying/influence problems we already have?

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 07/10/2026

Blockee is spamming this reply to multiple accounts. If you click through to their profile Bluesky gives you a rather unhelpful "content warning".

Content Warning: this user has been flagged: Content Warning. Learn More.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 06/10/2026

Translation software has been using LLMs for years (well before the current AI boom) so I'm sure that's the origin. I just found it mildly interesting. Implies the training set has a lot of translations with different standards of punctuation.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 06/10/2026

Hmm, yuri... Sappho? Charity and Sylvia?

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 06/10/2026

Made some graphs comparing vote counts and the actual seat breakdown, figure some folks here might find it interesting.

Three pie charts for the 2026 Quebec National Assembly election, showing the proportion of the popular vote each party won, the number of seats they would be entitled too if those votes were allocated proportionally (D'Hondt) and the actual proportion of seats each party won.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 06/10/2026

Well I guess as someone who is also both of those things I'll have to side with you.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 06/10/2026

I wouldn't. I've only ever seen "mating press" as two words, I can't think of any style guideline that would recommend a hyphen there. There *would* be a hyphen between the first two words if that were indeed the correct grouping, but it's not.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 05/10/2026

And now this account has also blocked me. Strange world.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 05/10/2026

The parsing is "(anal) (mating press)", the latter being a sex position.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 05/10/2026

Mildly interesting that Google Translate added an em dash to this sentence.

Google Translate into English:
"Free Palestine"—and the cops couldn't care less about the kids.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 05/10/2026

...it was in reply to this post (NSFW account) which...really doesn't help with context. If blockee a bot? Or was responding to something the blocker said elsewhere? White is one of Cornell's colors; that's the only other connection I can think of (bot redacted the Cornell7 and IamJaneDoe hashtags)

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 04/10/2026

...linking to legal resource does not require a law license. And that site was created by @legaleagle.tv, who is an actual lawyer. Not sure where you are getting the "ai" part from.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 04/10/2026

It would still be an uphill battle for any openly Republican candidate, but a threshold of 25%+1 is much easier to cross than 50%+1.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 04/10/2026

A lot of right-wingers complain that STV is just a tool to get "radical left" types into office, and I'm just sitting here thinking, "you know this is literally the best shot a Republican has at winning a race in Portland, right? You aren't drawing a majority-GOP district in this city otherwise."

Map of Oregon State House districts around Portland, showing a massive island of blue stretching into the suburbs.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 04/10/2026

The blocker deleted the post before that picture one, but I suspect they were *also* misusing the concept of "death of the author".

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 04/10/2026

This is a weird case where blockee was on the right side of the overall argument (JKR is bad and supporting Harry Potter means supporting her bigotry), but is also technically wrong about the concept of "death of the author" in its original incarnation as a critical framework.

"Death of the author" quite literally cannot apply while the author is alive.

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Wren, I am @wren.im · 04/10/2026

Blocked by the citizens of Raven Country.

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