In Canada, polling stations are also run by members of the public. I think they get paid, but it’s a small enough amount that most people think of it as volunteering. In my experience, it’s usually retired people. They also sit there for the day. On election day itself, they’re also responsible for counting the ballots and making sure that the ballots are preserved. (I was once a volunteer scrutineer for one of the political parties, so I got to be there to watch the ballot-counting process.)

Regarding early voting, my recollection is that a subset of polling places were open on two or three specific days in the weeks leading up to the election. Like, if my riding had 25 polling sites, only maybe 4 (one in each “quadrant”) were open for early voting. On the plus side, I think the early voting days were usually on weekends.

On the topic of “remote voting”, my wife is Romanian and used to vote at the train station in Iași, since her official residence was still her home town. I always thought that was an interesting solution to the “voting outside your home district” problem, since it kind of implies that you’re away from home because you’ve been riding a train. That said, since Iași is a university town and most people never seem to update their official residence (like, most of my tech worker friends officially “lived” in their hometown, even if they’d been in Iași for 10 years), the lineup to vote at the train station during a presidential runoff could be hours long. Of course, nobody needs to “register” to vote at the train station, since they just show their national ID card to prove they’re eligible to vote.

Not saying that he won’t try, but the president has no (constitutional) say in the sitting of congress.

I looked it up and in Powell vs McCormack (1969), the Supreme Court ruled that the speaker of the house has no authority to deny a representative sent by their respective state. So, unless the current Supreme Court decides to overturn that precedent, it would require a 2/3 majority vote of the newly-seated house to expel someone, assuming I’ve understood correctly (which is questionable).

Tl;dr: I think even this couldn’t necessarily prevent folks who win in November from serving.

I never registered to vote in Canada.

Since I was moving a lot before I left (student, then early-career renter), I would always show up to my local polling station with proof of address (usually a utility bill in my name) and proof of citizenship (usually my passport). They would copy down my details and give me a ballot. (I wasn’t a douchebag who would do this on election day. I’d always go for early voting when the polling station was empty.)

Exactly.

Most of the comments in this thread are accusing him of trying to take credit for the work of a machine that’s just imitating other work. It’s the FuckAI echo chamber and people who didn’t actually read the article.

In this case, it’s more like he’s claiming to have created a genuinely creative being that deserves rights previously reserved for humans (like copyrights and patents).

It’s a completely different (and IMO, much weirder) story than people are assuming.

Yeah… Checking his website at https://imagination-engines.com/founder.htm, he certainly seems like an “interesting” character.

My understanding is that he did do the work of creating the AI. This isn’t just someone using ChatGPT.

In this case, it’s not that he’s trying to claim copyright for himself based on coming up with a prompt. He’s spent years applying for patents and copyrights with the AI listed as the creator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DABUS

I like to think that James van der Beek, Aaron Paul, and David Tennant are all different facets of the same person who acted with Krysten Ritter.

California is pretty strict about taxing you if you spend too much time there.

I’m in Washington state (no state income tax) and have had colleagues who’ve spent a lot of time in California warned by payroll that they’re approaching the limit on time before you’re deemed a tax resident (maybe 180 days per year, but I’m not sure).

In particular, any part of a day spent in California counts as a whole day, as I understand it. So if you fly in on Monday evening, spend Tuesday and Wednesday, then fly back Thursday morning, it’s 4 days.

Spinal Tap II just came to HBO on Friday. Rob Reiner was amazing in that.

This came up a few months ago when people were saying “But wait, congress has power to set tariff policy”. That was true until the Smoot-Hawley act that is often blamed (probably correctly) for triggering or at least greatly exacerbating the Great Depression. After that, congress ceded tariff control to the executive. AFAIK, there’s nothing stopping congress from taking it back, but I can’t see the current congress doing that.

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).