FOSS, govtech, and open data.
Approximately 437,237 Philadelphia residents will not be able to vote under Pennsylvania’s controversial new voter ID law. Statewide, it’s 1.6M people, or one in five voters. This law was pushed strongly by Republicans and—damnest thing—it’s mostly Democrats who are disenfranchised by this law. It’s no wonder that the U.S. Attorney General is investigating whether the …
Continue reading “43% of Philadelphia voters lack photo ID.”
Pennsylvania is defending their voter ID law in court, and they’ve just dealt themselves a serious blow. In a filing, they’ve admitted that there “have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states,” as …
Some conservatives have long argued that Medicaid doesn’t actually help people—that private charity is sufficient and, anyway, most doctors don’t accept Medicaid. Many others, of course, argue that privacy charity is far from sufficient, and people fare much worse without health insurance. Oregon accidentally provided the first test of this with a control group, for …
Language Log had an interesting discussion about the language construct “yeah, no.” It exists in a bunch of language, and it seems to serve at least a couple of purposes in conversation. →
Let’s put on our best surprised faces. There is one interesting bit. Republicans support voter ID laws no matter how much they dislike non-whites. The biggest variable comes among Democrats, among whom it’s the racists who support voter IDs. →
I have no doubt that I would have been a member of the NRA as it existed a few decades ago. Every time I think about joining, they do something absolutely insane. It seems they tried to do just such a thing in Tennessee, and it’s backfiring on them. The NRA tried to get a …
In India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, they don’t group numbers by three decimals like we do, but by two. That is, while we have thousand (1,000), million (1,000,000), billion (1,000,000,000), etc., they have lakh (1,00,000), crore (1,00,00,000), etc. Sometimes there are two decimals between each comma, sometimes three. Somebody with 10 million rupees would have …
The Washington Institute for Public and International Affairs Research has analyzed the DNA from a sample of men convicted of sexual assault from 1973–1987 and found that somewhere between 8–15% of them were wrongly convicted (depending on how you count). This should result in some serious soul-searching about how the Virginia justice system works. →
This should sound familiar to those who followed the debate in the Virginia General Assembly over forcible vaginal probes. Republicans are deeply uncomfortable with the word “vagina,” and once Democratic legislators started tossing that word around, Republicans basically gave up the debate. So go for it, elected Democrats—vagina vagina vagina. If you can’t say it, …
Continue reading “Michigan representative barred from speaking on the floor for saying “vagina.””
A bridge on a major road outside of Charlottesville had to be replaced, shutting down that road for weeks. VDOT offered an incentive to finish ahead of schedule, and the full-time employees of that contractor worked their asses off to make that happen. They’ll wrap up tomorrow, way ahead of schedule. Their reward? They’re getting …
Continue reading “Finish VDOT contract work quickly, get laid off quickly.”