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
Right, and such arguments misunderstand how the federal government actually operates, if nothing else overlooking that the government NEVER actually spends exactly what Congress has authorized.
The executive branch clearly has the authority to pick and choose which spending will be honored seeing as it always does not to mention separation of powers not to mention this particular case where it literally cannot conduct the spending that has been permitted.
Ha, I honestly wasn't trying to play grammar police. It's more that I honestly had trouble understanding what he was trying to say, and even after reading it a few times, I'm still not quite sure I interpreted his message the way he meant it to be interpreted.
But it did give me an opportunity to once again criticize character limits, so :-)
@louis@emacs.ch @downey
@louis@emacs.ch I think it's funny how the verbiage in the screenshot is barely intelligible, possibly because he was trying to get under a character limit, which just goes to show how stupid character limits are, and a good reason for people to use something other than #Mastodon
I don't *think* he's really taking a stance on mid-sized instances here, though. More a stance about what the average users wants.
Did you see the reporting that Thomas consulted with SCOTUS ethics officials to see how he should comply with the branch's ethics rules?
A key point to that headline: the branch DOES have ethics rules. If it didn't there wouldn't have been anything for them to consult over.
There's so much misinformation in this oversensationalized drama...
I like how I pointed out that you're overlooking voters, and you reply with a bunch of articles that... overlook voters.
I see nothing bonkers in saying the first half of 2A is functionally irrelevant. It merely echos the preamble as being a little aside.
Anyway, a huge problem with a privacy amendment is figuring out a way to frame one that wouldn't directly impact so much longstanding and well-regarded functioning of the government.
For example, how do you say a person has a right to take an abortion pill but not a right to take prescription drugs without a prescription? Or do you give up all drug regulation? All medical device regulation?
The real issue here isn't the amendment. It's figuring out some theory by which government can regulate some things we do to ourselves but not others.
So to be a bit more concrete, when I originally read the ActivityPub standard, it struck me as having a tremendous amount of overhead and being based on a design that would not scale well.
That's just looking at the technical side. There are other major issues, for example the lack of any guarantee of limited audience for a post.
But when I read the standard I wondered if the people behind it had any experience analyzing distributed systems for scalability, or if they'd even heard of Big-O analysis. (A professional programmer friend of mine says it's not necessarily even taught in college these days).
Sure enough, as the flight from Twitter took off, I heard case after case of instances literally crashing under the strain of those poorly designed protocols.
These issues are core to the AP design. You can't switch to lighter-weight signaling or more scalability-optimized distribution approaches without ripping it all out.
I'm hoping Bluesky hasn't made the same mistakes.
And yet, voters did, indeed, vote for candidates who won.
You can talk all day about WHY voters voted as they did, but at the end of the day, it was their decision whom to empower.
No, separation of powers doesn't allow the president to unilaterally borrow money without authorization.
It's exactly the opposite:
BECAUSE of separation of powers, the Congress cannot stop the president from performing his constitutional duty to service the debt, as per the 14th Amendment, when when the Treasury has the cash to do so.
And it's just shameful that Biden has been using those threats to duck his 14th Amendment responsibilities to push for greater borrowing power.
That is incorrect since the Constitution recognizes that the appropriations power is distinct from borrowing authority.
It's also incorrect since the Treasury is the one that issues debt, not Congress. Wrong branch of government.
You talk about buying a TV on a credit card, but you're overlooking that in this analogy the TV has not yet been bought.
Well there are parts we can compare and parts we can't.
For example, we can look at the overall design, how user accounts are managed, and see how different it is from how ActivityPub manages user accounts.
Yep, we'll have to wait to see how other parts compare as they shape up, but at least we can look at the parts of the design that have been publicly outlined.
Ha, well, there are two sides to this, objective and subjective. And please read the following in the lighthearted tone I mean it.
Objectively, it would take so much work to add in the features missing from ActivityPub, the user-empowering stuff, because AP is just that focused to the core on instances.
Subjectively, my personal opinion, AP is so ugly, so badly designed, so bloated and inefficient in its use of layer after layer of kludged-in standard, that I'm happy to throw it overboard.
I say this to respond to your strikes me as odd statement. To me, it doesn't strike me as odd at all, as from my perspective the alternative is a lot of work to maybe have new features sort of function in a system that's not work keeping in the first place.
And now to go take a vehicle to a mechanic to try to salvage a car that, if I'm being honest, is really not work keeping in the first place :)
I think you overlook the existence of voters in the US system of government.
Stories of purchasing elections have been generally debunked as nothing more than conspiracy theory.
Keep in mind that there's absolutely nothing preventing ads on a ActivityPub instance or even being sent through the network.
Your instance can start showing you ads this very second if it wanted to. Heck, I could even reply to this thread with an ad :)
Bluesky is still in development. I expect that once it's ironed out there will be federating instances (or whatever they call nodes).
We will see, though.
@uniquitous @RogueLodge @hakirsch
But what of Bluesky's focus on users over instances?
One reason I'm interested in Bluesky is precisely BECAUSE I really care about decentralized media and was disappointed that ActivityPub centralized around instances.
@supernovae@universeodon.com Well, populations have grown, markets have grown, and there's really only so much that managers can do to scale.
If a CEO (well, his staff) is receiving 100 letters a day one year and then 1000 letters a day a few years later, the secretary only has the same number of hours in the day.
So much in the world is about matters of scale, scaling up or down.
@rolle, thanks for sharing this link to a one paragraph summary of #Bluesky 's reason for existing.
Although I would push back that things like increased portability means LESS control, not more.
@uniquitous @RogueLodge @hakirsch
The problem is that ActivityPub has some real deficiencies built into its core, that can't be simply extended away.
To address those issues--ranging from privacy through the focus on instances over users--requires an incompatible protocol.
The concern I have is that the reduced scrutiny meant less people involved to give input and point out weaknesses in the design of the system.
ActivityPub has some serious deficiencies, for example when it comes to privacy, decentralization, and resource usage.
Had there been more scrutiny and eyes on the development, maybe we wouldn't now be saddled with those issues.
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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