volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
It strikes me that this once again confuses working fine with working the way I personally want.
Yeah, our system gives the people what they want, and you know what, the people kind of suck. It's garbage in garbage out, to use the computer term. Just because we're getting really crappy results doesn't mean it's not working. It just means, well the problem with democracy is the people.
This system is working fine. It's doing exactly what it is supposed to do. And it's our fault for electing these people, and reelecting them, and putting this garbage in.
We need to stop re-electing these same representatives, because we're just telling the system that we once it to deliver us these results. So it does. Like it's supposed to.
Well, what of the Court's perspective that statute specifically withholds that authority? Specifically where do you think the Court gets the law wrong?
No, that kind of claim has been circulating in certain circles, but it really doesn't match when you actually sit down and read the rulings that have been coming out of the Court.
The Court has been pretty consistent in their arguments ruling for Trump and against Trump based on legalities.
But you have to actually read directly from the Court to avoid sensationalized stories that amount to conspiracy theories.
volkris
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@drweb2 It's not a rare loss, and it's important to emphasize that.
The Trump administration loses pretty frequently, Trump himself is a loser, and the more we point that out the more he will be undermined in the eyes of his supporters.
To say it's a rare loss is to build the guy up as some kind of winner, it's how he got reelected.
@gmoke No, that's not how the US government is designed. Co-equal branches of government mean that Congress doesn't have authority over the Supreme Court.
So no, it would set up a conflict of interests if Congress tried to impose on the Supreme Court like that through such a council. It's unconstitutional.
@Lyle The thing to keep in mind is the difference between government force and social choice.
They are vastly different contexts.
It's one thing for us to enjoy the privileges of the wealth of the societies that we live in, but it's a completely separate thing to talk about policy makers at the top using force to impose political preferences on members of society.
@RachelThornSub they're not that competent.
Trump is not up to speed on this kind of thing. If he was he wouldn't have faced trial, and he wouldn't have been found guilty over really basic paperwork issues.
The thing to emphasize is how silly all of this looks, so Trump is losing whatever spot in history he ever had.
Always emphasize that Trump is a loser who can't manage his own business, not that he is some fascist who is getting things done.
That only buys into his support crowd.
@Teknevra I think you're missing that it's a huge value of Amazon that it is simple and streamlines everything for the shopper.
Fediverse is the opposite.
The value of Amazon is specifically that it is monolithic and centralized.
The way I see it, part of the answer to your question is that #Twitter itself wasn't very great. So other applications that are better might actually sort of transcend Twitter, being a worse copy of Twitter but a better application overall.
In other words, an application that is more powerful and has more features might be a worse copy of Twitter because it's more powerful than Twitter ever was.
@ElwoodCity honestly at this point Star Trek is in such a bad shape that the answer is no.
It doesn't have anything to do with CBS or its management.
Star Trek is not going to recover so long as people keep watching the slop.
No, you're getting that backwards in very important ways.
There IS a Department of War. The thing is, it doesn't have any budget or authority, and anybody working in such a department immediately gives up budget and authority.
It's not that the department doesn't exist. It's that it doesn't have legal authority to do anything, so if the president really wants to give up his ability to do anything that the Department of Defense can do, well, have at it.
He cripples himself.
This is absolutely one of those cases where we need to be calling out #Trump for, through incompetence, giving up the authority to do the things that his supporters want him to do. He needs to be called out as undermining his own political goals, as that is the way to start showing his base that they are backing the wrong horse.
If you read through the arguments, it shouldn't be shocking at all, it's just an expression of pretty common understandings of the way the US system works, and in particular the role of the federal government, and the limits placed on the federal judicial system.
It's mainly a matter of understanding the exact question before the court, the question that they are answering, and not confusing it with a legislative answer.
If we want a different outcome, then we need to elect different representatives to change laws through the law making process. SCOTUS cannot be used as a shortcut that way.
I've seen PDFs used as an archivist format, professionally, so I actually don't think that's very surprising.
This kind of thing is worth calling out because it emphasizes how many of these influencers are just mindlessly parroting rhetoric.
I actually think a lot of them are in mental decline at this point, and yet they are setting policy for the country.
At least some of them used to be able to make coherent arguments, even if they might not have been particularly compelling. But at this point, they have more trouble putting sentences together, and they make more mistakes like this.
#LarryKudlow, among others, misspeaking often in the last week:#Affordability is coming down!Recent commentary on the right is missing that afford...
Even mainstream Trump loyalists are calling him out on this one.
@wjmaggos Why don't you think Bluesky relays are supposed to be independent?
Seems to me that's the whole point.
@justinas It's complicated because there are both engineering and administrative sides to the question. There's the technology, but there's also enormous human factors.
Technologically, I'd say no, it's not resilient at all to mass bot accounts. In fact, the way the system is structured allows bots to impose serious resource costs on others. That's not a good thing.
In theory it's left to the humans to decide to do things like block instances that host bots, and then the humans running those instances have to figure out ways of keeping bots out if they so desire. The human factors side of the system punts the ball downhill without any solid solution.
I've always been a huge proponent of web of trust solutions to this kind of problem, but that just doesn't exist here.
So in the end I would say no, there is zero resilience against it here.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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