@FinchHaven@mastodon.sdf.org @GottaLaff
When a person makes a claim but is uninterested in providing any evidence for the claim, the best response is just to ignore it.
So that's really your option. If you're not interested in supporting your own perspective, that's fine. But keep in mind that at that point you're just whistling into the wind.
If you're not interested in convincing anybody over to your point of view, or showing that your point of view has any basis in reality at all, then you're doing it right.
Just be sure that's what you're going for.
So that's pretty much what I was talking about.
As Kennedy wrote in the CU opinion, a huge motivation for him was taking power away from the already powerful, leveling the playing field.
Again, yes I know there has been so much backwards reporting about the opinion, but if you actually go read the opinion you'll see just how backwards the reporting has been, and that CU explicitly recognized your concern and was emphatically all about taking down the already powerful.
Whether you think leveling the playing field is good or bad is a separate issue.
Yes, loan forgiveness is certainly an option that Congress should consider.
The problem is that so far Congress has gone the opposite direction, relying on the loan collection to fund government.
There's also the issue that when presidents act without going through Congress, it has the side effect of relieving Congress from having to consider the idea.
We could have had Congress enact loan forgiveness in the last couple of years, but since the president announced he was going to do it unilaterally that saved Congress from having to consider it.
No, Bitcoin is just a currency, and like any other currency it can be used for Ponzi schemes, but to say that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme is just as wrong as saying dollars are a Ponzi scheme merely because Ponzi schemers can use them for that.
It's misunderstanding what Bitcoin is.
Congress did pass a bill. One dispute is that the bill Congress passed didn't authorize the forgiveness of loans, and furthermore, Congress went on to later spend money based on those loans being collected.
If the president unilaterally forgives those loans then the money to fund government programs will be missing from the budget.
@GottaLaff @FinchHaven@mastodon.sdf.org
Yes you are misinterpreting.
I don't particularly support Citizens United as much as I really wish people knew what the opinion actually said, since there is so much misreporting out there that gets it exactly backwards.
It's unfortunate, but these days there is so much reporting that says the opposite of what The Supreme Court actually rules, and CU is a case of that.
It's unfortunate how often I've been told by people that it doesn't matter what the Court actually ruled, though.
@FinchHaven@mastodon.sdf.org @GottaLaff
I appreciate that you're not quibbling, but It sounds like you're also not giving any particular examples, which is what I was interested in hearing about.
A thought into the void: #Mastodon and other #Fediverse clients need a filter option based on number of hashtags to avoid hashtag abuse.
I'm seeing posts with something like twenty irrelevant hashtags today from trolls.
And emphatically public :)
It's a drum I beat that more people need to realize that everything they post here, no matter the privacy setting, is effectively public.
I'm afraid users don't realize just how little privacy there is here on #Fediverse
When you use that many hashtags it comes across as spamming the feeds.
When you use that many hashtags it makes it hard for people to tailor their feeds using them.
Wow, no, you have that backwards.
Those members of the FBI were more worried about, if anything, giving Trump fodder for his campaign through an unnecessary raid, since the FBI was already involved and already had the national secrets under control.
They knew that Trump and his supporters WANTED such a raid since it would help put him in national headlines and get cheers out of his supporters, who'd use it as evidence that the guy needed to be reelected.
And they were proven correct.
The FBI was already all over the national secrets. They were in the process of recovering them quietly. DOJ insisted on making headlines, and the Trump team reveled in it.
SCOTUS is deciding whether the president has legal authority and whether parties have access to the legal system.
It's up to Congress to decide what, if anything, to do about the cost of education.
The Supreme Court doesn't and cannot answer that question.
Well, I guess, let us know if you figure it out?
The Social Security trustees have said year after year that the program is unsustainable, and that changes have to be made.
So what is your solution?
Once the money runs out, the program ends.
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 ;)