you really might not.

before there were mobile phones there was analog dtmf wired telephones. they replaced pulse dialing and allowed for all kinds of additional signalling and triggering. ring a bell, operate a relay, kick people off so you could call the president, entire automated analog switching centers, you name it.

when mobile networks came on the scene there were all sorts of additional triggers but because the (second gen? the ones that could do sms) signals were actually digital, there was a much wider array of possibilities. dtmf had a handful of frequencies it supported and if you wanted to do something more you had to basically make sure the entire network you were using could send, transport and receive those frequencies.

now imagine instead of sixteen combinations of frequencies played at the same time you have access to thousands of possible triggers. once you have simple stuff like the basic receiving of text and lighting a led or playing one of several legally distinct jingles covered, you could do do much more. and people did. there were all kinds of things pagers could do through combinations of local interface and digital communication with a cell tower, all mediated through a handful of baseband chips on the pager pcb that could have the pins for stuff they wouldn’t be used for disconnected.

but how would you make a pager set off an explosive?

well, the same way you use a casio f91w wristwatch to. you use its built in functionality (the speaker when the alarm goes off) to trigger a battery that can deliver enough electricity into a resistor to heat it up enough to make your (primary) explosive detonate.

in the case of a pager, those baseband chips have all kinds of on and off switching built in. it’s not hard to imagine that basic, out of the box functionality would include pulling a pin high when it gets “*97” or some such. now tie that pin to the base of a transistor across the positive and negative terminals of the battery and sitting against a little petn and you got yourself a remotely triggered explosive.

you wouldn’t even need a pcb.

there’s probably a lot of stuff thats incorrect in this reply. it’s late and this is off the dome.

gotta start somewhere. i’m not really interested in trump or what makes him happy.

I’m bloodfart and I’m voting third party this election!

The party for socialism and liberation is running on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to weapons shipments for Israel.

lol, lmao.

I don’t understand what you mean here.

I’m planning on voting for the party for socialism and liberation in November and you can too!

They’re running Claudia de la Cruz on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to Israel.

Stop trying to make him sound cool.

in order to make it easier to track all this, i’ve got a spoiler block with links to the posts you referenced and my responses to them. it’s at the bottom of this post. there’s four, two of them were replies made to people other than me and one was a top level comment. the fourth and biggest one is a conversation i’m in, responding to the other person and engaging with what they say in good faith.

so no, i’m not ignoring everyone who’s responded to me, and i’m not ignoring you.

in order to keep this from descending into minutae, i’ve recognized a few broad responses to “i’m voting third party”:

“You can’t win and winning is all that matters.”

“You can’t have any effect.”

“You’re gonna spoil it.”

the first is false, the second and third contradict each other and are also false.

If you think there’s a broad type of argument against voting third party that i missed, let me know.

since i never got to actually break this one out: if the democrats want my vote, they can adopt the policies i want.

I think people who claim “a vote for x is a vote for trump” are just trying to shame me into voting for their candidate using manipulation and falsehood. they usually don’t respond or give up that tack when i say “no, that’s not how it works”, so i don’t know what they actually mean because i never get to really dive into it. feel free to dive into it.

you wrote about spoiler effects using popular vote, but we’re talking about the electoral college, so that’s pretty moot. seems like its hard to blame candidates losing on the spoiler effect rather than the electoral college being fundamentally undemocratic.

I’m not against taking part in elections.

When I brought up theory of power it wasn’t to handwave away the strategic value of participating in elections, but to specifically critique the lack thereof on the part of the greens.

Winning an election isn’t enough. Simply participating in an election as a voter, party member or organizer or official is also not enough.

Under a theory of worker power like what we see from looney lefties of yore and today, election participation in all these roles is useful because it builds worker power and unity.

If you think I’m ignoring the facts, lay them out.

If the case is as straightforward and clear as you say it is then you’re a copy-paste away from converting someone away from voting third party.

Actually talk to me about this instead of calling me names.

Now there is the possibility that I’m not seeing a surfeit of replies because someone’s defederated from my instance, but I think in that case they wouldn’t see my comments and be able to reply to them.

No, but I’m beginning to suspect that you don’t.

Do you think effects outside of winning a particular race are made up?

Do you think the way to build representation is to work at the grassroots level except for in elections?

So do the simultaneous edges my vote gives both Harris and trump cancel out or explode?

Before you asked about the article, I asked how third party votes are the same as trump votes. I explained that the votes aren’t counted for trump so they can’t be the same and that they are counted so they’re not thrown away.

Instead of asking incredulously if I’d read the posted article, why not just engage with what I’m saying?

if you think you have a coherent explanation how third party is throwing ones vote away i’ll ilsten.

it seems like most people rely on “your party can’t win” and dont engage with how there are effects outside winning involved with american elections. i also get a lot of accusations of helping trump win that break down under the slightest questioning.

Wait how is it throwing my vote away? The ballot is tallied for my preferred party. The ballot doesn’t give trump an edge because it isn’t cast for trump.

By your logic that same third party ballot gives Harris an edge and the two edges combine and cancel out. Or explode. Or something.

How am I to blame for trumps ostensible victory when I don’t vote for him? Are all voters to blame just like me? Are democratic strategists who author Harris’ rightward move to blame? Is Harris herself to blame in the case of a trump victory?

lol. Two party-ailures btfo

Wow, is voter turnout used for anything else?

No. You?

Do you think winning the electoral college is the only effect that a third party vote has?

Especially for a party like PSL that runs down ticket candidates there’s much more than winning the ec.