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
@amaditalks @simontoth @rlux@hachyderm.io
If that's what the phrase means then I'd say it's a poorly worded phrase that could use some tweaking to better communicate with people who aren't already in the particular choir.
@ArenaCops @SrRochardBunson @thejenniwren
It's always funny when people start to treat the Constitution as if it was a Nostradamus composition to be decoded through some special set of steps to find the secret hidden meaning between the lines.
No, the Constitution was very clear on this particular point. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.
It says absolutely nothing about ethics or tolerance or harm or anything else there. It simply says Congress shall make no such law.
We are of course free to change this. We could amend the Constitution to actually talk about tolerance and limits and community standards or whatever else we would like. I would say it would be a bad idea, but at least we need to recognize what the document says before we talk about ways we might want to improve the federal government.
@SrRochardBunson @ArenaCops @thejenniwren
I don't think it has to do with morality at all since the power to regulate speech is a very practical power with very real-world implications to the authorities who would naturally want to use it in their own self-interests.
We don't have to get into matters of conformity to values in order to say that powerful people, particularly politicians, would have incentives to control what people are saying if they could.
The US first amendment restriction is one binding the hands of powerful politicians out of a recognition that regulation of speech is not a power that should be available to them, regardless of morality.
@ArenaCops @SrRochardBunson @thejenniwren
Well now you're getting into the differences between laws in different jurisdictions.
In the US it is unconstitutional to criminalize speech period.
But yes, the US has more protections for free speech, including hate speech however that might be defined, than many other countries.
@ArenaCops @SrRochardBunson @thejenniwren
Dogs and cats living together!
I think you have an over estimated opinion as to the power of legal authority (and authoritarianism in general) to make people behave well.
But you also misunderstand a lot of the laws you cite.
For example, you can say anything you want even if you are also held responsible for misleading audiences. That's not a law against speech; it's a likely civil path to recover damages caused by that speech.
But mainly we don't need to promote large amounts of political power out of fear of what might happen should the world not be tightly controlled.
There are dangers down that road.
You specifically said you were talking about a time before the pandemic, so you can't really pivot now and start bringing up the pandemic as factoring into the comparison.
It hadn't happened yet.
We can call out Biden's bad policies regardless of anything involving Trump.
But that's the opposite of his position.
Whether a person agrees with the argument or not, his stances is that some of the material in the course is obscuring Black history by spending course time and resources focusing on other issues like LGBTQ+ interests. He has pushed the College Board to revise the course to focus more solidly on the history of Black communities in the US.
You might reply that LGBTQ+ is part of Black history, and that's fair, but it's important to recognize that DeSantis is actually arguing. Not against Black history but against a course that he believes is insufficiently focused on exactly that.
@shiruken@octodon.social @molly0xfff
*shrug*
Crypto transaction fees can be about the same, or less than, credit card transaction fees.
@ArenaCops @SrRochardBunson @thejenniwren
If you take the time to read the writings directly from the Founders you'd see that they did indeed intend the 1st Amendment to be just such a safe haven for unpopular speech.
No assumption needed. They said so themselves.
They noticed that it would be dangerous to allow people in power to decide which speech was to be allowed and which speech was to be regulated, as that would involve a conflict of interests, giving the powerful far too much temptation into selfish corruption.
"Congress shall make no law" was put there as a blanket restriction on the powerful to police speech, including and especially such speech that would offend the powerful.
Right, but a president can only use the pandemic to escape accountability for just so many policy missteps.
For example, pandemic or no the guy signed into law spending bills that spent money that didn't exist, not even through financing. The pandemic didn't force him into that!
We need to be holding powerful officials accountable for their behavior in office. We should not be making blanket excuses for them like this.
The key that the BBC might not appreciate here is that the congressman was elected by his own constituents to represent them in Congress. It's largely their internal matter, so as long as they think he is doing an okay job representing them, it's really just up to them.
The parliamentary system of government is pretty different from the system in the US, so is the sort of thing that the BBC will often get wrong.
The problem is that the other side of the story quotes NARA and Justice Department officials as confirming that he DID produce documents when requested, providing the receipts of transferring to documents to the relevant officials.
So this is yet another case of people working from two completely different and irreconcilable sets of facts.
One side accusing the other side of not doing something, and the other side producing the evidence that they did do it.
It's the bizarre world we live in these days.
It literally raises taxes on the rich and writes checks to the poor.
People who say it transfers to tax burden to those lease economically equipped sound like they don't know what they're talking about in light of how the proposal actually works.
I really don't know why anybody takes what Jim Cramer says seriously.
He's a funny guy, and he might occasionally have an interesting point, but he's been mainly an entertainer for a long time.
I always emphasize that when an instance puts up a block, that disempowers its own users to decide whether or not to block.
When a user decides to block, they are engaging their power to make that decision.
I think the contrast is stark: empowering versus disempowering people.
For that reason I'm firmly against #fediblock type efforts on #fediverse.
With #ChatGPT having such a buzz I've been amused to notice the similarity between that program and some of the dumber political commentators in #USPolitics.
As I understand it, ChatGPT operates by predicting what word would likely follow previous words and prompts, so it has no actual understanding of any of the words, it just parrots words and phrases that seem right.
The duller pundits do exactly the same thing, often misusing particular words and idiomatic phrases. Heck, ChatGPT probably does a better job! But it highlights how thoughtless those speakers are, and that they work by pandering to their audiences.
My favorite example of this is Sean Hannity appearing to have no idea what the term bellwether actually means as he parrots the term "bellwether state" to mean any state with a close or important election coming up. Well the phrase seems like it should follow whatever else he was going on about, so he uses it in his rambling chain of thought.
Plenty has been said about how ChatGPT is or is not a threat to different occupations, but I'm pretty sure it could replace a whole lot of these morons offering opinions on current events.
(And to be fair, I don't like to use such derisive language, but these people really deserve it: they really are just that ignorant and idiotic in their pronouncements, and their lack of understanding of their own words is both amusing and depressing.)
volkris
boosted
As I thought, quote-tooting is being implemented by apps because so many people want it, it's so obvious UX wise, and so straightforward technologically, that it was inevitable (it's really just a link preview that recognises the link is to a Mastodon post and opens in-app).
Mastodon needs to build in consent-based QTs fast, or it will be irrelevant pretty soon, and we'll just have a QT system that doesn't ask or notify you.
Sounds like you're just describing a platform that avoids one-size-fits-all solutions.
There are pros and cons to distributed systems, after all.
Sure, and the FairTax proposal would do exactly that, doing away with all of the income tax carve outs and mailing checks to the poor to cover their tax burdens.
Republicans have proposed it, but it's never going to gain traction.
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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