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
I think it would go the other way.
Already people can read opinions for themselves if they actually cared about what goes on in the courts. So few do. I don't think there's much actual appetite for using A/V to build trust over what goes on in the Court.
BUT, out of context clips of lawyers and justices mugging for the camera would likely further harm the image of the Court.
Unfortunately, given human nature and the social environment, I tend to agree that that public A/V would only farther harm the image of the Court.
That gets the story backwards, though, missing what the case was really about.
The state and its challengers agreed that the map was NOT gerrymandered, and that was the problem. The challengers said that the map needed to BE gerrymandered to comply with the VRA and previous court rulings.
The state proposed race-neutral maps, and the Court said no, race must be taken into account as per the law.
The question before the court was whether it's right to ignore race.
There are downsides to that, though, particularly when it comes to scalability, under the ActivityPub design.
Some aspects of AP scale by instance more than user, so going with one user per instance can really increase resource costs of operating the system.
@Natureshadow@floss.social @bengo @lrhodes @h@mymath.rocks @smallcircles @liaizon
It's one of those cases where there is no perfect system, only tradeoffs among imperfect proposals.
Here, for example, you mention influence of a larger part of the voting body, but that runs counter to my preference of accountability to the smaller community over, perhaps, a national coalition.
But such goals and success metrics of any representative system are pretty subjective in the end, depending on how a person's values balance those tradeoffs of the imperfect options available.
Sure, and that's why I emphasize that mainstream conservative media has had such a huge impact, beyond the polling.
I'd consider the polling to be only a minor indicator since it has drawbacks, which is why I'm really not so interested in tracking down specific polls. The RCP trend is plenty for my purposes when it comes to polling.
@Spicewalla @dangillmor
If you read the opinion, that's not really what the case hinged on. It didn't really show that.
The major question was whether to consider race at all in districting. The state said they had to be race-neutral, and the Court said no, race had to be considered.
It didn't take new technologies to figure out that they could create a second majority black district. In fact, the state points out that the technological solutions to districting all generated the opposite, so long as the process was race-neutral.
Really the question here was whether to or not to gerrymander based on race. Tech didn't really change that legal question.
An illegal election can't elect legal representatives.
Anyone elected under an invalid system would have no legal claim to office.
It would be like me declaring myself the winner of an election and showing up to Congress. I wouldn't be admitted because I wouldn't have the legal claim to office.
Same here.
@gruntyfish@mastodon.social
Yes. Nonsensical submissions get rejected almost instantly, leaving governments without functional representative processes.
There are some pretty big downsides to proportional representation, though, especially in terms of personal accountability for representatives.
I think that would be going in the wrong direction.
We should be holding representatives MORE personally accountable than we do now.
I don't see GIS mentioned once in the ruling. Here it is for your interest.
As I'd summarize it, the Court merely reaffirmed its existing precedents, saying that while Alabama challenged the old rulings, no, the old rulings were legit.
It wasn't really about any new technology but just about reviewing old decisions and saying they had them right the first time.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
The way I put it, Mastodon is centralized around instances, as opposed to decentralized down to users.
So I say it's federated, not decentralized.
How are taxes going to become real in the Bitcoin future?
@Natureshadow@floss.social
It's tricky because ActivityPub made design choices that put instances, not users, at the center of its operation.
It's really hard to fit distributed identities into such a system.
@h@mymath.rocks @pinkyfloyd @smallcircles @lrhodes @bengo @liaizon
A lot of the country regards California as a basketcase, promoting bad policies and demonstrating extreme mismanagement.
At the least the governor is a very polarizing figure.
My claim is that he got a boost by the indictments. The graph shows an uptick around the indictments, arresting the downtrend in his popularity.
I mean this stuff is widely reported and tracked among conservative media, which is largely what matters, but you can also see it reflected in the RCP tracker...
It seems to me his message was the opposite of inciting violence, telling people not to react, to hold, and not to do anything that could be portrayed as aggression.
Outfits reporting that he's inciting violence through a tweet saying not to get violent are misleading their readers.
https://twitter.com/RepClayHiggins/status/1666978397027803142
Wow, if a person is looking to the Supreme Court to establish rights, they're really not understanding the design of the US government.
No, the Supreme Court is not there to establish any rights. That's a job of the democratic process in the US representative government.
The Supreme Court merely recognizes the rights established by the other branch, is beholden to the other parts of government.
Propublica really does a disservice misinforming the public about key issues of basic civics.
So the headline is a bit misleading: it's not that Congress *can't* touch Jack Smith but that with partisan control split between the House and Senate they will almost definitely refuse to pass legislation that might interfere with his work.
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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