I'm working on a data-centric site that tracks COVID-19 cases across the world. You won't find any ads, loading screens or slow maps and it's easy to navigate on mobile: https://coronanumbers.com
Next step is adding more data (testing rate, state/county specific numbers, etc.)
Off topic but that leaning exlamation point made me feel a huge boost of nostalgia. Probably for the mid to late nineties when Yahoo was pretty awesome.
I feel like us Swiss german people have a leg up here. We grow up writing anything personal in our dialect (a language that doesn't officially exist in written form), so we're used to writing like we talk. I wonder if it has an effect on our more formal, business-related writing.
It's a browser setting. For example, I'm using Firefox 41 on Windows 7 and in Options->Content->Fonts&Colors/Advanced... it has "Times New Roman", "Arial", and "Courier New" as the defaults for Serif, Sans-serif, and Monospace respectively.
In Chrome, it's under Settings->+Show advanced settings->Web content/Customize fonts... (Times New Roman, Arial, Consolas on mine.)
In IE 11 under Tools (gear icon)->General->Appearance/Fonts it has "Webpage font" and "Plain text font" (Times New Roman and Courier New on mine). It's weird that they don't let you pick the default sans-serif font.
The 'sans-serif' font is an alias for the default sans-serif font, which is simply a system setting just like the default browser or the default whatever. Therefore the system doesn't need to know which fonts are sans-serif and which aren't.
i'm actually excited about the new trackpad. i have some kind of a weird sensation whenever i use a silver trackpad, a sort of tingle in my fingers. this doesn't happen on the magic mouse's white surface... anybody know what i'm talking about? my friends think i'm crazy.
i've been using only the apple trackpad for about 3 years now, and the "sensation" you describe was persistent for the first several weeks / months. the interaction by using the tip of your fingers is a bit wierd at first, but now i could never go back.
trackpad is very superior to a mouse, at least for non-gaming stuff, like coding & browsing the webs
"Unfortunately, no single member of Congress represents these American constituents who together would rank, if a state, 12th in population size after New Jersey and before Virginia. By virtue of living abroad, they are second-class citizens, paying onerous tax burdens without representation."
Compare this to Switzerland that considers its citizens living abroad part of the "fifth Switzerland" (there are 4 official language regions in Switzerland). They can vote online (in some Kantons/States) and participate in government programs to keep in touch with or learn about their roots. All without taxation.
Of course, people here complain about citizens living abroad voting in local elections... Representation without taxation!
I don't agree with what that quote is saying. Americans living abroad can still vote, and therefore are still represented. It's true that Americans living abroad don't all have the same representatives, since they're represented by the elected officials from where they're registered to vote in the US, but that's a far different thing from saying that they have no representation at all.
well you can do that because you have national elections, none of those in America as even the presidential election is technically 51 simultaneous statewide elections (well 50 + D.C.)
I never thought of that, every representative gets elected under a different rule. You could still do something like the Samoa, and get it organized by the State Department. That wouldn't fly with an actual voting power, but for consultative representation, I think that would be good enough. I guess for actual voting representation, either one State should grab them, or make a federal level election for "others" (where probably Samoa and friends, DC and other troublesome situations could be handled as well).
I must be missing something. I don't understand why not having nation wide election prevent the U.S. from having congressmen to represent those living abroad.
seats in congress are apportioned to states who then figure out how to divide them up, so while in theory a state could make an overseas district it's not something that could be done on a national level without some heavy modification to the constitution.
Since we only have two parties, each one doesn't want to do anything in the odd case it would give the other one an edge they don't know about. So things stay shitty.
I'm an american living in Norway. I can vote for president, sure. Supposedly I am allowed to vote in the district I last lived in the states, but trying to get any of this done is difficult, especially since the state I live in requires proof of address for voter registration. I understand the likelihood of the representatives there to care about any issues I have is pretty minimal. After all, americans living abroad are usually a minute slice of a representative's voter base, even if we add up to quite a number overall. I can probably get more accomplished through the embassy 10 hours travel time away.
On the other hand, I can vote in local elections here in Norway simply by living legally here for 3 years:: I cannot vote in national elections until I am a citizen. I do not have to be a citizen to hold local offices either - I can be pretty active and involved if I choose. My situation comes down to having theoretical representation in the states as compared to actual representation here.
How are you voting for President without also voting in the other elections that are up at that time? Presidential elections are technically a local affair, and the ballot will have all the races.
I personally never had any trouble voting while I was living abroad. It was slightly inconvenient to track down a fellow American to witness it, as required by the absentee ballot I was issued, but no big deal.
Living near the embassy doesn't make things any easier. I live about a 5 minute walk from the US embassy in Oslo, and you have to have an appointment to do anything. The embassy is supposed to accept ballots, but for all intents and purposes only does this for presidential elections, so I still end up going to the post office.
It's incredibly frustrating how even when living overseas you have to have some sort of residential address for many things. I use my father's address for this purpose, which is useful since he lives in a state with no local income tax, reducing some of my paperwork.
Yup, came here to say the same thing. Most people who haven't lived abroad for a significant amount of time don't realize the difficulty of trying to vote. In addition to that, the effectiveness of getting your voice heard by your "representatives" (the reps from your last permanent residence in the US) is much more difficult. I used to be able to pick up my phone and get myself heard on issues that I cared about. Living abroad, the best you can hope for is to contact your rep online and hope they care enough to give you a copy-pasted response.
Unless you sleep for 16 hours a day, your waking time will overlap with office hours in Washington at some point. Skype can call to the US for very low cost.
Umm... do you even figure having a full time job into account? One that often goes into the weekends? Also, you are painting broad strokes.
1. With my time difference, I'd have to call my reps at a time when I'd normally be getting ready to sleep just to catch them in the morning.
2. In addition to that, not everyone has good internet connection. Especially if you live in a remote area. Prior to a year ago, my internet connection at home was fairly slow.
3. Yes, I'll admit that I forgot about Skype since it wasn't reliable for me in the first few years I was here. However, cost is cost. And having to manage Skype Credits, which I'd never use elsewhere, is just an extra burden compared to what it was like back in the States.
I get that it's not quite as easy as it would be from the US. But "prohibitively difficult" makes it sound like you're looking for excuses rather than solutions. It might be a little harder but it's not exactly hard. Twenty years ago you'd be paying painful long distance charges just to make that call within the US.
Yes, I'll take back the prohibitively part since I had my internet upgraded a year ago. But prior to that, it was. Can you think of a way to do so without Skype? Or a reliable internet connection? Something that would be possible to do from home since the only overlapping hours are after 9/10pm in my timezone?
And aside from that, it still does not detract from my original statement:
> the effectiveness of getting your voice heard by your "representatives" (the reps from your last permanent residence in the US) is much more difficult
It's not just the contacting. It's also getting them to even care because you don't live on US soil. None of what I'm saying is an excuse, and I don't know why you seem intent on not acknowledging that it can be legitimately difficult.
If you have a phone at all, there are cards you can buy to make cheap international calls by bouncing through a local number. If you don't have a phone, well, you're stuck, but that's hardly characteristic of being abroad, and you'd have the same trouble from a shack in the mountains in the US.
As for caring about your opinion, why would they care any less about you compared to any other voter?
Never knew about or seen the phone card before. Good thing to remember, but do they really have this in every country? But do note that with a shack in the mountains, you'd probably have normal landline access and even possibly cellular reception, so it's not a good comparison.
I said the caring part out of frustration with the current system. I've always felt that if they couldn't map you to a US address within their jurisdiction, then they'd know that you had less of an ability to influence other voters around you via petitions, grassroots campaigns, etc. So discounting your opinion wouldn't matter as much.
I've seen those cards in lots of places, but I'll admit it's far from a complete survey. People love to call home, and there are expats almost everywhere, so I'd expect they'd be available just about everywhere.
As for petitions and such, I imagine that would be much less of a factor now with the rise of social networks and such. But the views of our elected officials may take some time to catch up to that.
“Supposedly I am allowed to vote in the district I last lived in the states, but trying to get any of this done is difficult, especially since the state I live in requires proof of address for voter registration.“
Makes me wonder what would happen if a significant number of expats would agree on some low-population state to remotely take over. How far could bureaucratic friction be increased to fend off that kind of "attack"?
You seem to be agreeing with the quote. Note it doesn't say no one represents them. It says no single member. Influence spread across all members isn't really going to get much work done for them as if they had their own specific to their problems who considered it their job to represent them and talk about them, etc..
I agree with the first part and disagree with the second part. I agree that no single member of Congress represents these people. (Hard to disagree, since that's just a simple objective fact.) I disagree that this somehow equates to "without representation."
We can do this for any issue which is not related to state/district borders. No single member of Congress represents urban Americans, or rural Americans, or WoW players, or hair stylists. Would we say that they pay taxes without representation? Of course not. Why are expats any different?
I lived abroad for several years and I never felt like I was without representation. I voted and had elected officials the same as my fellow Americans. The degree to which I'm represented in Congress (i.e. nobody is really answerable to me, but I can write to them and get a form letter back if I feel like wasting some time, and once every couple of years I get to pretend like my vote matters) was no different at that time than it is now.
"No single member of Congress represents urban Americans, or rural Americans"
Clearly you are unfamiliar with the level of gerrymandering we have implemented, which makes it feel unfair when a distinct property owning group (say, retirees in Costa Rica) don't have their own gerrymandered pet politician just like the yuppies or inner city poor or rednecks have in congress.
Unevenly enforcing a corrupt system feels worse than merely having a corrupt system.
You have at least some which on paper are supposed to represent you and your region. Expats don't, and that was the point made in the article.
The general issue of indirect democracy not representing the will of the voters is a fundamental one and not solvable, also goes to far for a discussion like this. Side remark: JFKs Profiles in Courage is a great book on the topic.
Yes, that was the point made in the article, and it's the point I disagree with. My members of Congress represented me just as much when I lived abroad as they do now. Expats absolutely do have elected officials who are supposed to represent them.
> Expats absolutely do have elected officials who are supposed to represent them.
You yourself stated above that they don't?
I got your argumentation as "I never was represented anyway, so not being represented as expat did change nothing". But the difference is that the other americans have representatives that are supposed to act in their interests. Expats have only the afterthought of being american and that one could think about them sometimes, since they vote.
Who are the elected officials who are supposed to represent them? I do not think that there is one, that is not how your system works.
No, my argument is that expats have representation, because they vote for members of Congress. As an aside, I remarked at how that representation doesn't do a whole lot for any American, living abroad or not.
The elected officials who represent a given expat are those from the district where the expat is registered to vote. For example, when I lived in France, I was still registered to vote in Wisconsin, so I voted for Wisconsin Congressmen, and they are who I would contact if I felt like wasting my time by making my opinion known to legislators.
The article is trying to say that because expats don't have any representatives exclusively for them that they do not have representation at all. I find this to be absurd. Yes, small interest groups have trouble getting action in the legislature, but that's hardly unique to expats, and nobody says that e.g. janitors pay taxes without representation just because there's no Janitor Congressman.
https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/blog/productivity/your-digital-...