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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: December 5th, 2023

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  • Short answer (that clears things up for most non-Americans): There is no national ID card.

    When you register to vote, you’re expected to provide proof of citizenship, which for most Americans (who don’t have or have use for a passport) means a birth certificate plus some photo ID (which ultimately proves that a person with your name and your birthday was born on US soil and you are in possession of their birth certificate – so it’s very likely you). Bringing your birth certificate to vote would be kind of risky, since it’s the origin of all of your other ID and pretty much the only record that you’re a citizen. (Work visa holders and permanent residents get social security cards, for example.)

    Funnily enough, if you’re an adult immigrant it’s almost safer, because there’s a huge federal paper trail of photos and records proving your citizenship (versus this flimsy piece of state-issued paper that native-born citizens have).

    Of course, if election officials have some discretion on who needs to prove their citizenship, it’s rife for abuse.


  • What national ID?

    The US doesn’t have a national ID card. I have a federally-issued ID card as a lawful permanent resident, but the typical US citizen has what? Their main proof of citizenship is their birth certificate, issued by their state, and doesn’t have a photo (and if it did, would probably be a baby photo). The people with passports tend to have enough money to travel internationally, which is a pretty small proportion of the population (as it’s a big country, so even a lot of people who can afford vacations will vacation in the next state over at most).



  • What I’ve read in recent weeks is that people have been donating to the “Biden-Harris campaign”, so Harris has access to all that money by default.

    While I would love a stronger candidate (Whitmer, perhaps), I understand that Harris is a lot less complicated. My understanding is that she can just take the money and run (for the presidency).

    Edit: Personally, I think (and thought back in 2019/2020) that Biden should have pulled the same move as James K Polk, and declared upfront that he would be a one term president. Then we could have had a competitive Democratic primary, which would have stood out against the Republican coronation.



  • While kids are now more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD due to increased awareness and better diagnostic methods, this can also lead to an interesting “reverse echo” effect where their parents have a sudden realization that they’re ADHD too.

    Hearing about the symptoms from a doctor talking about your child can be an eye-opener that stuff we called “laziness” and “being too sensitive” back in the 80s might have a better name.



  • msfroh@lemmy.cato196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneDon't rule
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    8 months ago

    The ASF has renamed their conferences from ApacheCon to Community over Code, so foundation leadership seems receptive to moving away from the Apache name.

    I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the name is changed in the next couple of years.

    The name was originally just a silly joke, since it was “a patchy web server” (as it was an open source web server abandoned by the original author, but kept going by a community sharing patches to fix bugs and add features).


  • msfroh@lemmy.catoThe Onion@midwest.socialWe need The Onion movie
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    9 months ago

    Honestly, I’d love to see a real, factual documentary about the Onion/Avclub over the years.

    From what I’ve seen, there’s some fascinating stuff there, from the college town founding through the internet highs and the acquisition by Gawker (after the Hulk Hogan lawsuit), with some employee unionization along the way. Maybe they could even interview the clearly unqualified forum dev who jumped on a live chat to talk about how the Gawker system that replaced Discus was a clear improvement.

    I used to be a big Avclub fan until about 2018 or 2019. Then it became way too ad-ridden and clickbaity. The Onon was equally ad-ridden, but felt like it kinda retained its soul.