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
But again, you say they buy back stock in their own companies? So they give up their money for that stock certificate? So they redistribute their wealth?
Rich people buy things. They give up their money because they want things to buy. They redistribute their wealth.
Again, I just don't think there's any use in denying this obvious fact even as we talk about ways to make society better.
For example, yeah let's tax rich people to pay for government. We can simultaneously say taxes on the rich are probably a good idea even while we recognize that the rich people do give up their money as they buy things and contract services.
The headline is simply false, though.
The Supreme Court didn't say anything about those prescriptions, so if doctors, pharmacists, or insurance companies are taking the step of refusing to serve these prescriptions, we need to call them out on it, and tell them to shape up.
We should not let them shift blame to a Court ruling that doesn't apply to the job they're supposed to be doing.
At this point Democrats can't get legislative majorities for their bold proposals, so without even the democratic branch on their side, it's kind of silly to start talking about packing the court.
It's not political interference, but rather the firewall that provides judicial independence in the US system of government.
The system of checks and balances prevents the legislative branch from imposing on the judicial branch like that.
IF the legislative branch thinks a justice is misbehaving, they should impeach them. Otherwise, that's that, and there's nothing left for them to do.
Yes, Republicans don't believe Thomas should be impeached. Well, that's that. Without widespread consensus that he should be impeached, that's really the end of the issue.
Ever hear of a rich person buying something? Maybe even buying stock?
Congrats. You've seen the rich redistributing their wealth with your own eyes.
It does no good to deny simple, obvious truth.
Same for press orgs, FWIW
Here's a link directly to the Citizens United ruling where you can see for yourself that Kennedy, not exactly a diehard conservative, laid out that the government could not stand in the way of voters receiving information from each other, ESPECIALLY as such restriction favors big, rich, and powerful voices who could get around them.
Citizens United was a decision in favor of voters.
The rest of your conspiracy theory rant holds just as little water as your misinformation regarding CU.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep558/usrep558310/usrep558310.pdf
If the voter does not matter in voting, then none of this matters anyway so why talk about it?
Fortunately, yes, voters do matter in voting, and it's pretty ridiculous to say otherwise.
@gwfoto@newsie.social
I really don't think we should be talking about the Court as if it is just another legislature.
For one, that's not how it functions. For another, that overlooks how frequently justices cross these supposed party lines to vote along other alignments.
But I guess we can go ahead and point out that RBG openly tried to game the system, and her strategy led to this situation.
@wherephysicswentwrong@universeodon.com
It's up to Congress, not Biden, to set the size of the Court.
@gwfoto@newsie.social
And heck, It might even be a good thing in some cases to make it harder for users to move between instances. It might be good for growing communities If people stick around for a little bit.
On a different note, we have seen scalability issues with ActivityPub where instances have taken a lot more computation and storage resources to run than was expected, again because of the core engineering designs of the protocol.
I hope Bluesky is designed to be more efficient, but I haven't looked into it enough to know whether it would be.
Today I came across somebody helpfully sharing this link, where the developers gave a nice one paragraph overview of why they didn't just use ActivityPub, the protocol behind Fediverse
Basically, the core protocol and design of Fediverse is all based around instances. All the trust goes to instances, basically all the power goes to instances.
Bluesky at its core protocol design empowers users, having users keep hold of their content and identities and stuff like that.
The important part is that this isn't just a minor feature difference like the design of the onboarding experience. It's not like the homepage is blue and we might want to change it to purple.
In the very core of the two platforms there were engineering decisions made differently. Maybe both have their own advantages, but the instance focus instead of user focus is a difference I've always held against Fediverse.
https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/issues/255#issuecomment-1287953987
volkris
boosted
Someone around here recently linked to this two-second explanation explaining why they wrote Bluesky.
With ActivityPub the Fediverse has us all counting on instances.
Sure, we can sort of change from one instance to another, but it's a kludge. We don't really move but rather start a whole new account and set up a note on the old instance pointing to the new one, IF the old instance decides to cooperate. See how tied we are to instances here?
I always thought this was a huge issue, a huge mistake in the core design of ActivityPub, one that can't really be changed at this point.
Bluesky does this better, putting the power in users' hands and allowing users to actually move from one node to another, decentralizing all the way down to the user.
https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/issues/255#issuecomment-1287953987
Someone around here recently linked to this two-second explanation explaining why they wrote Bluesky.
With ActivityPub the Fediverse has us all counting on instances.
Sure, we can sort of change from one instance to another, but it's a kludge. We don't really move but rather start a whole new account and set up a note on the old instance pointing to the new one, IF the old instance decides to cooperate. See how tied we are to instances here?
I always thought this was a huge issue, a huge mistake in the core design of ActivityPub, one that can't really be changed at this point.
Bluesky does this better, putting the power in users' hands and allowing users to actually move from one node to another, decentralizing all the way down to the user.
https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/issues/255#issuecomment-1287953987
@pussista@mastodon.social
Bluesky's engineering design focuses more on users than instances, giving users more control over their content and flexibility to change servers more transparently, etc.
Fediverse involves some engineering choices that are not compatible with those features.
Well to be clear, the debate over Fediverse vs Bluesky is it just about the people or the environment. Anybody can fork their own Fediverse after all.
These other options offer features and technology that this platform just can't offer, even with modifications around the edges.
@Seth @louis@emacs.ch
Ha, well normally I would avoid making things personal, but the guy has often made comments that seemed pretty unimpressive to me, for example his reasoning surrounding certain Mastodon UI issues.
I just think he's a pretty unimpressive person
I might even say you may be giving him too much credit by saying he is going full startup when really he's just messing around without much of a larger plan at all.
Right, and the Treasury by its own reporting says that it has the funds necessary to service its debts
So it's ridiculous for the president to be talking about defaulting. Should he order the Treasury not to pay debts out of the current account balance would be impeachable, IMO.
Ha, so much for me giving him the benefit of the doubt :-)
Thanks for the clarification though.
@louis@emacs.ch
Well one little detail to keep in mind is the difference between an open source software package versus the operation of software.
For example, bad people operating open source software is still going to be a bad situation.
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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