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
Yeah, it looks like the design goals of #Bluesky do a better job of finding that decentralization that so many #Fediverse fans are looking for, but I've read some questionable stuff about the implementation that I need to follow up on.
Not that I don't already have very critical thoughts about the #ActivityPub protocol, so I don't know if there is a high ground in that kind of comparison.
@JuanWild@newsie.social
Krugman has been a very slanted political commentator for a while, and it's really a shame. He used to speak from a position of authority but he has given all of that up to be just, well, pretty awful.
This is a perfect example of that.
Puppet Kevin McCarthy? No, it's not a puppet, it's just that people legitimately disagree and legitimately vote differently, and it really does take a lot of effort to bring people together these days just because of how bad the situation has become.
Not quite.
14th Amendment says that the president has to pay debts, and the Treasury has enough revenues to pay the debts, so there is absolutely no reason for the SCOTUS to shoot it down.
So long is Biden does not tell the Treasury to ignore debts the 14th Amendment is satisfied, and if he does tell the treasury not to pay debts, that would be impeachable.
At this point this is all up to the executive branch, again since the Treasury has enough revenue to service debts regardless of whether to that ceiling is raised or not.
That's funny, one of my major takeaways from this was that ACA has proven to be as bad an idea as so many predicted. Doesn't exactly make me want to double down on failure.
So many people I know, myself included, had negative health care impacts from the ACA.
Let's reverse course, let's not keep going down the line that has proven to be so bad for so many.
I think you really missed the part where ownership is fundamentally about people. People own things.
So when you say capitalism is about property, well you follow the trail there a step farther, capitalism is about property, and property is about people's ownership stake, so capitalism is also about people.
The rest is just a restatement of that with more steps.
Hell I would point out that democracy is really even less directly associated with people as It goes through all the steps of governance, all the procedures and bureaucracies, before it gets down to people.
But yeah, I think you really overlooked that point that you hovered around a few times there.
Gotta say, it's really sad to see a person choosing ignorance over information for whatever motivation.
A lot of us criticize ActivityPub as being not so much decentralized as centralized around instances.
I WISH it was more decentralized. Bluesky seems to downplay those concentration points from what I've seen.
Does it make a difference (and I'm not saying this IS the case, I don't know) if the system is actively courting that experimentation, intentionally being open to people answering those questions as best for their applications?
In other words, if this is complete, there's just not as much to it as a person of a certain preference might want?
US Politics
I don't know if you've come across it, but I have: a lot of people were questioning whether Trump had changed, pointing to some recent media appearances and changes to his campaign staffs.
So giving him the hour of air time helped people realize what plenty of us have been saying for years: he has not and cannot change.
The airtime helped people see for themselves that he's just as awful as ever.
If you've talked to people on the fence like that, you might see how beneficial the airtime was for informing them, with their own eyes, that he's not even able to be normal in this setting.
I think she's in a tough place these days.
It used to be she could be just a rather academic administrator, following data to make informed decisions, but her new position is political, not technocratic, so she's having to balance what she knows to be right against what the political system gives her to say.
One could argue that she should just quit if the role is so compromising, but even then, she'd be giving up a major chance to influence the politics in the right direction even if the outcome isn't great.
It ends up being a tough call.
@BernieWonIowa@mastodon.social
Well, Democrats had every opportunity to provide funding for their programs when they passed their appropriations bill, but they chose not to, leaving us in this position.
I wouldn't focus so much on rewarding GOP as holding Democrats accountable for actively setting this situation up... but we reelect the people responsible for it, so I guess we're cool with it.
I do, in fact, think unemployed people should be counted as unemployed people, yes.
BLS chart shows that prime-age participation remains below trend from its pre-pandemic recovery, showing quite a lot of people don't have jobs but aren't reflected in the unemployment numbers you're crowing about, even excluding a lot of the unemployed people you'd rather not recognize.
Echoing a couple of other people here, I can't imagine a different way to get end users the experience they probably want and value.
So to build up, what are the alternative ways of doing this, if not big-data-centralized? Is there a way to get around the efficiencies of having it all in one place for processing?
Just keep in mind that other people have different ways of communicating, ways that are better for them, and #QT is a tool for communication that doesn't really have a functional equal through other features of #Mastodon even after jumping through hoops.
It's fine that you don't personally like QT, and thanks to the federated system we can talk about filters to ignore QTs, to give you the experience you want while still empowering others to publish their content more effectively.
There are criminals on TV. Just because you're on TV doesn't mean you're not one of them.
Heck, it might even be that people on TV are more likely than the average person to be criminals.
In any case, I'd say the big outcome from the appearance was the guy specifically showing, once again, that he's pathologically incapable of being normal.
re: venra.social and fediverse groups
I bet such an extension could be added pretty trivially. It would just take a note of metadata tagging it as a group. And then, of course, UI would need to do something with it.
As I recall, ActivityPub is explicit about entities on the system not necessarily representing individuals, so it seems to be actively intended to be used for stuff like group accounts.
We just need to make sure we implement that functionality well.
Too rarely mentioned is that the #Title42 immigration statute, that's big in the news this week, is a law with certain guidelines, not just something one president made up that another can end.
One reason to emphasize this is, of course, so we can call for revamping of the law if need be.
And to hold presidents accountable for actually following these laws.
The BLS stats call that claim to question. See the link below.
But YES, I want to look at the overall participation rate since otherwise you're just saying, "there's very low unemployment! ... except for those unemployed people, but nevermind them."
If you happen to believe there's good reason to ignore unemployed people in the picture of unemployment that you're selling, great, but just be honest and clear about 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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