🎓 Doc Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@qoto.org

@bonifartius If it was done before, and Ic ant speak to that, then it was just as wrong then.

Here is what is so scary about DOGE... it circumvents the senates power to set a budget which the senate and the president need to approve together. Now the president did an end run around them and is dictating, effectively, a budget with no senate oversight.

#DOGE

@freeschool

Just one comment about (a) for my own purposes (and i encourage people to test this for themselves if they want) I have quite a few accounts that are intentionally anonymous specifically for this reason, as a data point to see how people respond to me vs my reputation. So ill leave all the other points to stand but I want to offer that that one at least is moot.

In the end, if your worried, go try a second account, see what the expiernce is and decide for yourself. The onlyt hing I advice against is people posting the same content to all their accounts, that will certainly get you blocked. But if you use different accounts for posting different topics that is usually well appreciated by the community and gives you a chance to try other servers.

I personally use one server because i dont have time for the others much. They were, as I said, experiments. I do maintain my ACM mastodon account though to show support.

@kopimi Its a hot mess thats for sure. Trump is all over the place, doing things that are good in principle but with god awful execution, and plenty of just bad ideas too to balance it out, lol. Its really a dumpster fire just as it has been for the past 2 decades at least.

@kopimi Everything going on.... There are like 12 things a day on tv that is jaw dropping when it comes to the govt right now.. you are going to have to be way WAY more specific my friend.

@log @kbsez @jeffjarvis

> "...both left and right are evil..." This sounds like one of those "using different definitions for words" statements that makes me question whether I can even communicate without a glossary attached.

You are entierly correct that is extremely likely here because left and right are sadly very overloaded terms. So it may help if I qualify what **I** mean by left and right at least.

I mean the right according to more or less self-described lables int he USa and left more less by self-described labels. As in, the vast majority of those who are in the USA and would say "I am a leftist voter" would fall under this as would be those who say the opposite.

Again, only int he USA, there is a distinction of the left, you have what 98% call the left, which is just that self label, then then you have a small 2% who would usually refer to themselves as libertarians who self describe as "classically left". I would not be including that group here, at least not to the same extent.

> Politics is a multidimensional spectrum, rife with shifting alliances.

Agreed

> The Marxist-Leninists and the Fascist-Plutocrats are both definitely evil. But neither entirely represent Left and Right.

I do not find either of those are representative, entierly of their side. They are botht he most extreme ends of the spectrum of those two sides. I am claiming that while those sides are the "greatest evil" most on either side, even if not to that extreme are still evil, just, less exaggerated is all.

Hmm have a feeling DOGE might just overlook this one.

Them: Who is your greatest idol?
Me: Me....
Them: Umm I dont think you can do that.
Me: That's why it isn't you.

@kbsez @jeffjarvis

They already did that in response to the left-wing loons which is why the whole world is swinging right. I agree with you and wish they now did it too with the right-wing loons and finally realized both left and right are evil and will develop new philosophies born out of reason, compassion, and objective evaluation of the impact of our actions... but sadly I only expect things to get worse so long as both sides remain vile and toxic groups.

@freeschool @invidious

Not sure who gave the impression we arent a mainstream server. We are, last i checked, one of the top 20 connected servers on the whole fediverse (in other words your posts are seen by more people when you post here than most).

You have to understand why, most of the blocking that occurs for QOTO is due to our policy of not blocking other servers. This means you generally have two types of servers, ones that block **tons** of servers(but dont tell their users) and are blocked by few server, or those that dont block any but are blocked by other servers as a result. As such when your on a server that isnt blocked very much you generally still are blocking most of the fediverse.

This is something we havent just measured but ive seen countless times. We often loose users because they hear about this and think like you do. Then when they move servers they loose half their user base (because the destination blocks those servers) and worse yet can not rebuild their follower base. The difference is stark when i watch how quickly our users tend to gain followers based on how slowly people gain followers on other servers.

Ive tested this myself by opening quite a few accounts on other servers and posting content there regularly (but under a different identity).. while here i getr some 10+ new followers a day many accounts on other servers are a year old with barely 50 followers.

@chris

I agree.

A test for yourself, can you think of at least 10 opinions you have that is antithetical to botht he right and the left parties? Certainly I know many of mine are, but I am fairly unusual in that regard it seems.

@johnlogic My response would be, I'm sorry I cant respond to this, I seem to have a panic attack anytime talks about your company or airplanes, I cant even stay calm long enough to consider your very insultingly low offer of only 30K dollars.

"We are god-like in the reach of our actions, but ape-like in having the vision of the consequences of our actions." -- me :)

@freeschool @invidious

In the past at times i have been harsh about your pushiness on certain requests. But i have recently realized it was most likely you just being passionate about your view of a better world and perhaps getting frustrated about people not getting on board and working with you to bring it to fruition. That is an understandable reaction and in the end your goals are and were worthy of discussion and merit. So just wanted to say that.

That said I suspect if you took that passion and perhaps tweaked how you approach people a bit, you could get much better results. Some of it is just working with peoples short comings and not anything wrong you did yourself. For example long messages will automatically exclude 95% of your audience and cause most of your views, however valid, to go unread. Cant fault you for putting time into expressing yourself fully but regardless of how people **should** respond we live in a world where should isn't is. If you adjusted your message to be more easily digestible along with a few tweaks to how you otherwise interact with people I think it could go a long way at getting you a better response and backing to your goals.

@randahl

Trump threw Pence under a bus, and the mob was ready to kill the man.. He lost any chance of pence supporting him 4 years ago, and rightfully so... Not remotely surprising.

That said, obviously Trump is lying, just like Biden if his mouth is moving he is lying.