Suzanne Leibrick (not currently at a conference)

Also, thalo blue is my absolute favorite pigment. It's so perfectly rich and turquoise, but dark and mysterious.

For anyone who wants to start painting, acrylics like these are cheap and forgiving (just remember to clean brushes before the paint dries)

The canvas was just using up the extra paint and playing around.. there's a common misconception that paintings should look like something, but it can be just as fun to play with color and texture without trying to reproduce something.

Thoughts?

I don't think I have all the answers here - but I do think this is a really interesting way of looking at politics, and understanding why it's so broken - it's broken because winning in this system forces politicians to act against our interests as a whole.

An example might be tying politician's wages to the median wage in their district - the wellbeing of their people goes up, so does their compensation. Maybe it's tied to a happiness/satisfaction index..

We need a political system where the interest of the politician/player and the interest of the NPCs (regular people like you and me) are aligned - where the way to win is to make people's lives better, and your ability to win is directly tied to that.

Think of the best leader you know, the person you really think would be an excellent congressperson/senator/president. Now think about what sort of political process gets those best people into government, while NOT requiring them to sell their soul along the way.

Let me expand on that a bit - right now, most of these strategies give us politicians that are beholden to big donors - that's the easiest way to win, and not many people can grass root their way to success - it's inherently the hardest way to win.

So now we're framing this in terms of a game, and seeing politicians as the players, how would you redesign the system in order to create a positive outcome, where those best suited to govern did so, and where the strategies required to win are aligned with the good of the people

All these approaches are valid strategies to win the game. The game is such that these are the only strategies that CAN win, and each has different levels of reliability and repeatability. If you win by being extreme, it's hard to keep that up indefinitely.

DT is a great example of someone who clickbaited their way to victory "You'll never believe what he said today!" I'm not making a judgement about the validity of DT, or of this approach. Within the system as designed, winning can be reduced to how many people see your content.

From the perspective of politicians, they need to win votes, and they can do that in a few different ways. They can pay a lot for advertising, they can run a 'grass roots' campaign with volunteers, they can solicit big donors by making promises, or they can clickbait.

Because of how this complex game system is designed, money and economic power are basically equivalent to political power. This becomes a compounded problem over time, since every time there are prizes up for grabs, the rich have the easiest time getting them with their advantage

A few key supreme court decisions, a bit of gerrymandering here and there, and a media searching for clicks in service of staying afloat, rather than educating the populace, and you end up where we are today.

What they weren't able to predict/prevent, however, was the way the economy of their game, over time, would lead to exactly the problems they were trying to avoid - people gaming the system, buying their way to victory, one loot-box/lobbyist at a time.