You can find the sizzle in your area here: https://democracysausage.org/nsw_local_government_elections_2024/m/
there might be multiple candidates from each party as well
That's true, but I don't think multiple candidates would have any effect, in the contrived scenario above, on the result of either a by-election or the appointment of a runner-up.
If you modify it so that each candidate is instead a party ticket of two candidates (and assume people vote according to the party ticket), the result in the elections (original and one-seat by-election) would just be 1. BLUE, 2. RED, 3. GREEN, 4. BLUE, 5. RED, 6. GREEN. So the original election would still result in one BLUE, one RED, and the one-seat by-election would still result in two BLUE. And appointing the next runner-up would still be GREEN - I think!
I say 'I think' because I'm guessing they determine the next runner-up just by the final place results, in which case, yes, GREEN gets it. However, if they actually do a re-count of the ballots, except immediately excluding the resigning councillor - RED candidate #1 - then all of that candidates' preferences would flow to RED candidate #2 (again, this assumes that people voted according to the party tickets). The will of the voters - on that day, had RED candidate #1 been struck off the ballot - would be expressed, and the result would be exactly as proportional (in terms of party preference) as it was originally.
I'm guessing they don't do another count, though, because that would take time and money, and the option of appointing the next runner-up seems intended to be the no-spend, no-fuss option.
As an aside, if the process for a vacancy was running another count of the original ballots, it'd mean each ticket would probably want to run at least one more candidate than they expect to win, so that they'd have a backup candidate for preferences to flow to in the new count.
That'd look a little weird if your ticket expects to win all the seats in an electorate, because you'd be running more candidates than seats available. In Ipswich, because there's only two seats per ward, it's not out of the question that one ticket could realistically expect to win all seats (because they'd only need ~66% of the vote). In that situation it'd make sense to run a third candidate - one more than the seats available - in case their #1 or #2 candidate ends up vacating their seat before the next election.
They should probably have a by-election for both seats to be balanced
I think many would argue that kicking out a councillor and making them re-run, through no fault of theirs, is unfair. It forces councillors, who might be independents with limited resources (money, time, volunteers), to spend those resources on a whole extra election, when other councillors don't have to.
It also gives parties an even greater advantage over independents than usual. Parties can, for example, use all their volunteers from the other wards, or even neighboring council areas, to campaign in one single ward, instead of having to spread them across all councils and wards as they must when there is a full local government election on. This is actually an issue with by-elections in general, but it'd be more egregious if you were actually kicking out an independent, who was elected at a general local government election, for no fault of their own.
Ruby:
a || b
(no return as last line is returned implicitly, no semicolon)
EDIT: As pointed out in the comments, this is not strictly equivalent, as it will return b if a is false as well as if it's nil (these are the only two falsy values in Ruby).
I was glad to see this bit at the end:
The number of payments with tips has remained stable throughout the last year with 0.52% of payments including a tip in August 2023, according to Lightspeed.
Still, we really do have to be vigilant in our efforts to prevent tipping being normalised. You can bet restaurant owners are going to be pushing it whenever they see an opportunity, so we need to be pushing back harder.
Well, if it's shitty things you want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Matthews_Band_Chicago_River_incident
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
From https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
if this is to protect kids on your network
Sadly, I suspect this is to protect adults on the network...
Go ask a chimpanzee 😆
Okay, so forgive the glib answer, but yeah, obviously on the macro level our genetic differences with the other apes contribute massively to our difference in intelligence with them.
At the micro level - i.e. between individual humans - my understanding is that the evidence also suggests that genetic variations lead to variation in intelligence (of course, as mentioned by other commenters, the usual caveats of how exactly you define and measure intelligence apply.)
Researchers found that the IQ of children adopted at birth bore little correlation with that of their adoptive parents, but strongly correlated with that of their biological parents. What’s more, this association became stronger as the children grew older.
In fact, hundreds of studies all point in the same direction. “About 50 per cent of the difference in intelligence between people is due to genetics,” he says.
Although each gene associated with intelligence has only a minuscule effect in isolation, the combined effect of the 500-odd genes identified so far is quite substantial. “We are still a long way from accounting for all the heritability,” says Plomin, “but just in the last year we have gone from being able to account for about 1 per cent of the variance to maybe 10 per cent.”
Also: https://www.une.edu.au/connect/news/2022/10/multiple-insights-in-a-decade-of-twins-data
The longitudinal Academic Development Study of Australian Twins (ADSAT) is the first project of its kind in Australia and has amassed revealing data on 2,762 twin pairs, 40 triplet sets and 1,485 non-twin siblings. Using the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), and regular parent surveys, it has given researchers a unique picture of the behaviours and demography that contribute to educational achievement – and the extent to which our genes influence them.
Genetic differences among students are the single biggest influence on differences in literacy and numeracy standing and growth, accounting for half or more of that variability across tests and across time.
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