aminewatcher @aminewatcher@qoto.org

@freemo
"They can not actually dictate the ruling for the lower court however, but they can throw out of invalidate a lower courts ruling."

Ah, okay. Got it. That's what you meant.

"Butt he question of "did he murder x" is not even being considered."

In one sense yes, in another sense no. They are considering whether or not the ruling made by the lower court is valid, which should in many cases require, at the very least, a consideration of whether or not the evidence given was properly considered.

But I guess I do understand now what you are saying.

Perhaps the supreme court is not the correct court of focus on for this case.

@freemo That doesn't make much sense.

The supreme court definitely rules on far more than just whether or not the process of lower courts was followed properly. The supreme court very obviously itself gives rulings directly on the cases appealed to it, not simply on the processes of the lower courts. Yes, it's rulings set direct precedent for the lower courts rulings, but that doesn't mean that every ruling the supreme court makes is only about how the court process should work.

I feel like we're perhaps talking about two entirely different things and not just understanding each other?

@freemo I agree for most cases, but in this case, involving an incredibly important and visible constitutional process, they really do need to take the amount of evidence into consideration, specifically because they don't want to risk it being a situation where they could be said to be "choosing the president", which would violate the separation of powers.

Certainly it more than likely needs to go through the lower courts first, but the supreme court isn't going to take any appeal without having so much evidence that they have no choice but to take the case.

The supreme court really needs to be careful with this situation because if they just get involved in election process appeals willy nilly, they will be seen to be stepping outside of the authority of their branch.

Assuming that the claim Trump's attorneys are making (that Trump actually won more than 70 million votes and got over 400 electoral votes based on the data from the server they got in germany) are true, that would be an absolutely incredible scandal.

They definitely need an overwhelming amount of evidence to prove it though (and for the supreme court to take up the case for constitutional reasons). Supposedly they have that evidence because Trump definitely hasn't given up yet, despite a few courts denying to hear the case.

If the supreme court takes up the case to investigate, then it's highly likely that they do actually have that evidence.

Just have to wait and see what happens.

Looking forward to recounts.

Getting tired of seeing Biden celebrated when there are hundreds of thousands of votes that need to be recounted in each state.

@Wally45
The recounts will be good, at least.

That is assuming they didn't get rid of too many "spoiled" ballots.

HERE COMES A RANT, DO-DO-DO-DOOOO!! 🎶

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Man... backdating mail-ins, throwing away spoiled ballots, machines miscounting thousands of votes...

Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Google all censoring and suppressing anything favorable toward Trump or condemning any democrats.

The online masses collectively branding anyone right of center as racists, homophobes, tyrants, and liars.

Academia, Hollywood, MSM...

It's just a complete takeover.

How did we let this happen?

Like, half of the reason I'm here is because I want to see all of the views from all sides. It's impossible anywhere else, where only left leaning views are allowed.

I have to go to podcasts and independent news sites for all my news because everything else is either just speculation or entirely left leaning.

Anyone in academia who advocates for traditional conservative values like those that the constitution was founded on are mocked, ridiculed, shunned, and never let back into the exclusive club that is academia.

We're almost reaching 1984 levels of deception and control, but nobody is aware of it because they are either protected in their little bubbled from it, or they're the ones that get banned and deplatformed, never to be heard from again, dismissed as crazy conspiracy theorists.

And now we've got dems like AOC openly advocating keeping a list of evidence of everyone that ever supported Trump in any way so that it can be used against them in the future.

The mask is already off of these people, and yet everyone just goes "Yeah, that's fine. Not a tyrannical concept at all. It's the republicans who are the real tyrants".

If after the recounts, Biden is still the winner, he's not going to last more than a few weeks at best until they shuffle him out of office and replace him with Kamala, who is from the extreme left.

They'll shout "It's a victory for women everywhere! The glass ceiling is shattered!" while they work to ban guns, implement universal healthcare, raise taxes to astronomical levels, force the public education system on everyone, and more.

It will be calm, it will be slow, it will be "for everyone's good", and it will destroy us in the end.

But everything will look perfectly fine to the average person up to the moment it does.

...

Luckily, we've got time. We can still push back.

Demand recounts by hand, create and encourage the use of alternative social media (like this!) and search engines, create new news sources (like The Blaze, The Daily Wire, and more), invade the academic space and the entertainment spaces with our own high quality alternatives, and just generally live braver about our views in our day to day lives.

Certainly it will be a virtual balkanization, but it will still allow people to be themselves and speak openly.

The only difficulty is getting the word out.

With all of the current main sources of information controlled by hostile forces, we need to find another way. Simply asking who John Galt is isn't going to get enough people fast enough.

So that's the big question now.

How do we let people know that they don't have to constantly hide and be afraid? Let them know that there are other places that they can hang out with the other 70 million people who are on their side?

Once that's done, how do we convince them to leave the old corrupting system behind?

How do we make it worth it?

And how do we do so quickly?

@freemo
I guess "wrong" is the incorrect word to use. "Unreliable" or "inaccurate" would work better here.

Let's say that the average poll said a 10% chance for Trump winning in both elections (in 2016 they said 5% even up to election night).

That's a 1% chance, according to the polls, that Trump would win two elections.

And yet, Trump still comes out on top in both.

So sure, the polls weren't wrong, but I'm going to see their "10% chance" and know that the chances are most likely much higher than that.

So yeah. Not that it matters that much, but in short, I'm not gonna trust polls again and there is no reason to.

@freemo
Most of the polls that I saw, at least up until yesterday, were saying that Trump had a 5% or less chance to win. They can't say 0% even if they want to, because, well, 2016 where they tried to say almost 0% and were wrong.

It was only yesterday that the polls started to tighten to something like 14% or even 30% in some polls, probably to save face when the election actually happens.

Polls are just unreliable at this point, and trying to predict elections on them is about as accurate as predicting the weather based on tea leaves.

Regardless, it doesn't matter. Nobody is going to trust polls anymore, and it's possible that nobody is going to trust the election process anymore either.

That latter thought is the scary one.

I'm going to bed but I'm going to make a prediction first.

My prediction:

PRESIDENT: Trump with 277 or 273 (PA and MI can trade out, but I think he'll win one of them. If he loses both though, which I find unlikely, Biden wins.)

SENATE: R, but barely

HOUSE: R by a lot.

I could be wrong though. There are a lot of games being played with the numbers right now so it's difficult to get reliable information from anywhere.

One thing is true regardless though: The polls were once again, COMPLETELY wrong.

I'm never trusting polls again.

Also, Jo Jorgensen taking over 1% of the vote (1.5 million votes so far) as a third party is spectacular. Huge kudos to her! More third parties please!

#electionday #election #trump #biden

Remember kids. #linguistics is a dangerous profession.

@ravenclaw
There are a lot of things that it depends on, but I would actually recommend starting with something like Python or Javascript in order to learn basic principles in a semi-safe environment.

Beyond that, it depends on the platform and purpose you want to code for.

As far as tutorials go, I always recommend w3schools.com

@likho
Both!

My non-fiction is usually just rants about my nerdy interests to some degree. Some of them are large enough they could probably be published as books. :P

As for my fiction, I've finished a few short stories, and actually taught creative writing for a short while, but I haven't writing any fiction for some time, mostly because I'm still planning the worlds and characters for one particular piece of fiction.

I've always wanted to try nanowrimo, but I always end up way too busy in november for one reason or another. 1,700 words a day is a surprisingly high bar when I'm so picky about how I word things, in fiction.

In non-fiction, I can just pump out fact after fact and only worry about being understood. But in fiction, I always get incredibly caught up in polishing the pacing and the dialogue, and it takes me 3 hours just to write 1,000 words.

And I've rambled out way too long an answer for such a short question. Sorry :P

@freemo
Interesting! I'll definitely look into that! Thanks for the info!

@freemo
Oh! I am unaware of of any country with similar election processes that hasn't been to some degree reduced to a 2 or 3 party system. Or at least a system were 2 or 3 parties run most of the show.

And I guess it is possible for more than 2 or 3 parties to be stable so long as each of those parties is able to maintain a base of significant enough size to compete on some scale with the other parties. It would also require that each of the parties have policies unique to that party that the base is unwilling to compromise on.

So I do think it would be possible, especially in countries that may have strong religious diversity. But again, I haven't heard of anything like that.

Could you tell me about some?

@freemo
I totally agree. In fact, these are the reasons I voted third party in 2016, even knowing they had little to no chance of winning.

However, I want to note two things:

1. Even if I don't support a two party system, this does not prevent me from believing that the candidate of one of the two big parties is still the best choice and voting for them.

This year, I sincerely believe there is a good choice among the two who is better than even the third party choices. And so I voted for him.

2. (and this is where things get tricky) A two (or three) party system is nearly inevitable.

The reason a two party system comes about is because of the power in numbers. People are willing to compromise on a few of their principles in order to reduce the risk of an opponent winning.

With that understanding, even if 10 parties were all to start out on a level playing field of recognizability and promotion, inevitably, some of them would be close enough to each other in policy that they would realize they are more powerful together. Once this realization occurs, the field quickly reduces itself to 3 or 2 parties that generally cover most people's policy preferences, even if they're not perfect.

In such a case, smaller parties stand very little chance of winning anything against these consolidated bases.

And so everyone is left with a choice. They can either A) vote for the candidate that they truly believe is the best candidate even though that candidate has a really small base, or B) vote for the candidate who may not be the best, but has a much better chance of winning against a worse candidate because of the size of their base.

For most people, B is the optimal choice to make, especially when one believes the opponent candidate is a destructive evil force for some reason.

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So in short, I agree, however, I don't blame anyone who sees the two party system and votes within it because they want to mitigate the risks of someone winning who they believe is evil.

#introductions

Interested in all things nerdy, often obscure things as well:
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Feel free to poke me with conversation!