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
You're missing that the Constitution also assigns authority to borrow against the credit of the United States to Congress, which is really all the debt limit is, the amount that Congress has so far authorized.
And this is a pretty important authority! Congress should be involved in the issuance of debt since it's about obligating generations of Americans to repaying it. We should at least have the democratic process affirm that the country really does want to take on that debt.
So no, the debt limit is not a manufactured idea that has created an unnecessary stalemate. It is a democratic idea built into the core of the country for really good reasons, and the president needs to get on with paying debts out of the Treasury instead of fighting for more borrowing power.
The debt limit didn't create this stalemate. Political grandstanding did.
Exactly. The 14th says that the debt shall not be questioned, but here we have Biden and other politicians spending months questioning the debt and even threatening not to pay it, and they really need to called out on that.
This is a president explicitly threatening to violate constitutional principle, and no one seems to care.
That's not how that would work, though.
The Supreme Court in the judicial branch can't order the Treasury in the executive branch not to pay debts.
That's really up to the president as head of that branch.
But that's just the checks and balances that the US government was designed around, to make sure no individual or group would be able to amass too much power.
At the end of the day It was always known that it would take pretty serious negative results to force people to seek compromise despite their opposing interests.
If the president wants more power then he has to work with the legislative branch to gain it, and the threats flying back and forth are just part of that political process.
@gwfoto@newsie.social
GOP lawmakers have already voted in favor of the president's request for increased borrowing power, though.
Not to mention, the 14th Amendment doesn't give the president a choice. It's not that he should consider following the Constitution, but that he is required to follow the 14th Amendment. He can't legally turn his back on the Constitution and have the treasury just not pay debts, as he has been threatening for so long.
This whole thing has been made into such a farce.
Also, a lot of it is argument based on incomplete information about the new system.
As far as I can tell Bluesky is still working on developing documentation, so there are large parts we simply don't know about yet, but that's not stopping people from assuming.
Right but one issue is that users aren't aware of how insecure this platform is. I know, I've come across a few people who are really surprised when I point it out.
Yes, security is hard, but users need to know what they are getting into here, regardless of how hard it might be to design a more secure system.
That's the key. I'm just really afraid that so many users of this system don't realize and post private things they wouldn't post if they knew how it worked.
I really hate to think about users being mislead, with that false sense of security.
It's bizarre to see a headline saying that a president is considering a constitutional amendment option, as if he believes he has discretion not to abide by the Constitution.
No, Biden has no constitutional discretion here. He must pay the debts, and if he were to order the Treasury not to pay the debts, well that would be an impeachable offense, so he really needs to knock off the talk of default, of not paying.
We've had months of bluster from politicians threatening default when that is not a constitutionally available option, and we really should have pushed back against them, just to kill that rhetoric from the beginning. It is not helpful.
It's only duplicative if a person doesn't see the difference between spending and borrowing.
The Constitution recognizes that they are different actions with different implications, though, which is why the debt ceiling exists in the first place.
There are very good reasons that we should think twice before obligating future generations to paying off the borrowing of today.
US Politics of dippy
Thanks for the correction.
Yeah I heard the counts read out, and it all seems pretty squared away to me.
Maybe he didn't bother a defense because he knew he wouldn't win, so no sense wasting more money on it.
Oh that's an entirely different problem with the Social Security trustees warning us every year that the program is unsustainable!
Well the ActivityPub protocol is a little more complicated than that, but even just based on what you describe, well it's great that you trust the admin of your own instance, and that you trust his ability to trust everything about his setup, but you don't know my instance admin. You don't know what my guy might be doing with that DM.
And imagine you want to delete some content. That's great that you trust your admin to honor the delete request, but when he sends it over to my instance, my admin isn't under any obligation to honor the delete request.
Heck, my admin might for whatever reason think he is doing the world a favor by maintaining those records.
And that's just talking about the simple case of a DM style post. Anything with any larger audience only compounds those issues of trust.
These privacy issues matter. Or at least, users need to be aware that these weaknesses exist, and legal implications need to be considered as well.
US Politics of dippy
Well a couple more things to mention here:
Firstly the rules vary state to state, as I think this was in state court, right? But sometimes it counts as a procedural error if no sane jury could have reached the guilty verdict honestly, or if the monetary reward was just insanely large.
Trump's people could try arguing one of those, but I don't think appeals courts accept either one except in cases that are clearly, clearly off the rails.
I'm not a lawyer, just saying this based on things I've seen over the years.
Appeals court judges do seem to have some discretion to set aside judgments, but only on extreme cases like clear exculpatory evidence that the jury just ignored.
You mean unfederated? The company sets up their own instance and doesn't connect to any other, so that content never leaves their control?
US Pol, Missouri, Abortion, Student Loans, Lost Revenue, SCOTUS
My impression is that it is relatively uncommon, and that impression is based on commenters I hear doubting that it will pass muster.
If it was common then it seems like people wouldn't have so many doubts about whether the argument will work.
It's complicated for a few reasons, not the least of which being that since it's not the core argument it doesn't necessarily have to stand so solidly.
@allysboredaf@infosec.exchange
I think we're not clear on what you are envisioning.
Are you thinking of a way for GitHub to broadcast notifications to interested people, for example if there has been a commit to a tree?
@FinchHaven@mastodon.sdf.org
Visible to admins of every server the message passes through, which is definitely not just like Twitter, as that unknown collection of individuals won't be in a position where they can be held legally accountable for breaking agreements made with the company.
A company can sign an agreement with Twitter to provide privacy standards. In a system like this there is no point of contact to make that agreement with, and the system is designed from the foundation to broadcast publicly, so such an assurance isn't really possible anyway, even if there was someone to grant it.
US Politics of dippy
That's right. The appeal will have to point to specific claims of procedural violation.
(FWIW I haven't heard about any violations myself, but I haven't really been following it)
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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