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
An issue is that #ActivityPub was more or less designed centralized around instances, for better or worse, so ideas like SSO or other ways of using accounts across instances is a bit incompatible with the underlying technology.
There are ways to kludge it on, but it wasn't designed with that objective.
This is one area in which other systems like #Bluesky might be better, having made their different engineering choices in their cores.
Maybe one way to think about it is that any distributed system is necessarily less efficient, but now costs in terms of computing and storage and network capacity have gone down so far that we are making a transition to a new phase where we can afford that inefficiency.
It used to be that a website could only operate in a very capital intensive form, but it's no longer so capital intensive, so we no longer have to rely on that infrastructure to amass capital to make it work.
Well it's slightly more complicated.
In the Fediverse content doesn't live on just one instance but is instead distributed to different instances that are following the discussion.
However, that content is not distributed to ALL instances, nor are instances required to preserve all of the content that comes in through the fire hose.
So it's kind of in between.
If that instance goes down there will be some content preserved in some other locations.
Definitely Fediverse over ActivityPub.
The former is the platform that they are going to join, while the latter is just the language that makes the platform work.
It's like saying join me at that coffee shop for a chat versus join me to speak some English.
volkris
boosted
The International Standards Organization has defined a new time measurement, the fedisecond, which is the shortest humanly-measurable unit of time.
A fedisecond is defined as the interval between the announcement of an exciting new #fediverse application and the discovery that the project's lead architect and principal developer is actually Satan.
Meh, it's one of those terms that I'd just go ahead and own.
"Why yes, I am engaging in both-sidism because I can about sorting out what's true, and I can think critically and hold two ideas in my head at one time. You don't, or you can't?"
They are two different transactions.
You spend money to me purchasing the idea that I'll pay back the loan with interest.
I spend money to you when I write you a check in exchange for retiring my debt.
The fact that I might not write those checks (I might die or drag us through court or have a president unilaterally declare that I don't have to) shows that those are independent transactions.
In this case, the US already spent the money on these loans. For better or worse. That's over and done with.
Now the issue is whether debtors pay back into the US Treasury as per the legal obligation, so it's no longer about the US spending but rather the US receiving.
Wooow, I see her ragequit reply, where she effectively said "nu uh!" and insisted that we all knew she was right.
I would assume she's one that has outstanding student loans so she has a vested interest in loan forgiveness.
And so I'd guess that the education she wants us all to pay for didn't exactly do her thinking skills a world of good.
I wonder if she ever ragequit a class... and how that worked out for her.
Ha, don't overcomplicate things :)
No need for geometry here!
If I need to know what a Supreme Court ruling says, I should simply go read the Supreme Court ruling from their website.
No sense triangulating with multiple people at the bar. Simply go read the primary source!
No, forgiving a loan is not spending. That's getting the math backwards.
If I don't bring in money I haven't spent. Wrong side of the balance sheet. My lack of income isn't an expense; it's a lack of income.
Yes, sometimes people engage in legal or accounting fictions surrounding this, but I think we need to push back and remember when we're speaking in convenient analogies.
It's like saying if I don't mug my neighbor I've lost the $100 that's in his pocket. No, that's just funky accounting.
There are two different types of federal judges in the US government, the Supreme Court, established by the Constitution directly, as an independent branch and those serving on "inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."
Arguably Congress has command over those inferior courts since it's up to Congress to establish them, but it'd be a breach of judicial independence and a violation of coequal branches for Congress to be able to order around the Supreme Court.
Check out this link. I find it useful both to understand how Mastodon behaves AND to illustrate how ActivityPub engages with platforms in general.
This is a summary of how Mastodon maps ActivityPub protocol elements into its user experience.
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/activitypub/
@jupiter_rowland
I'd say think of it like how the same website might be sent to both a modern web browser displaying to a large screen AND to an ancient greyscale cellphone.
ActivityPub takes care of broadcasting content to different applications, but after that it's up to the application to figure out what in the world to do with it.
Yeah, the ancient cell phone interface might not do too well with a modern webpage, but http leaves that up to the phone to figure out :)
I've heard (but not confirmed) that some lemmy domains are having issues with firewalls blocking them, maybe as DDOS avoidance features, so your instance is unable to reach out and see if the user exists.
I've heard that from multiple people and forum posts at this point.
Well, it would be a violation of the coequal branches design of the US government, not to mention a violation of judicial independence, so I'm thinking it wasn't something to be taken seriously.
Keep in mind that Congress wrote their appropriations bills based on reliance that these student loans would be paid back.
By law, Congress regularly cites these payments as part of the legal budget, no different from any other tax.
Biden cannot legally decline to collect this money any more than he can just decide not to collect corporate taxes any more.
That these student loan payments are part of the legal funding of government is a point all too often overlooked.
The problem is that so many of those people formed their opinions based exactly on those other sources that you rightfully criticize.
In this Internet age we have so many public records instantly available at our fingertips, directly from primary sources.
That's where I'd suggest to go looking for truth.
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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