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
Because the Supreme Court did not call for a second majority black district.
It laid out requirements for complying with the Voting Rights Act, and there was no such quota involved.
Heck, It's even factually false that Republicans rejected a call for a second majority black district.
They merely followed the Court to make a district competitive and let the voters decide.
What do you mean?
What have they done lately to rub you wrong?
@franktaber@mas.to
The ActivityPub engineering design is JUST that resource intensive as it operates.
It's unfortunate, but design choices were made.
Well, we keep electing the congresspeople who maintain this as the law.
And then we reelect them when they fail to fix it.
We really need to emphasize this: if we want better government we need to stop reelecting the exact same congresspeople who fail to fix it.
Otherwise, well, yep, these are the laws that were passed by representatives that we empowered.
And that's especially sad because a frustrating proportion of educated and even intelligent people are willing to accept the paradox of doing nothing being doing something
and then harangue someone for something they literally didn't do.
Well right.
SCOTUS did NOT order the creation of a second majority black district, despite reports wrongly saying otherwise.
It laid out the conditions for meeting the Voting Rights Act, and the quote in the article pretty well reflects what the Court said: it has to be left up to the voters, and not gerrymandered for a particular result.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Yep. And this sort of sensationalized reporting is why so many have lost so much respect for outfits like the NY Times.
They get clicks yelling and going right up to the line of "dictator" and they get their clicks, but the public ends up mislead as the article doesn't have all that much meat to it.
I think if you listen to conservatives, conservatives make it clear that that's not what they're talking about.
In my experience, the extremely common meaning of "deep state" among conservatives is the civil service, the career employees of the federal government that they have disagreements with.
Of course, half the time the conservative using the word will be so uninformed about how the government functions that they won't know WHO they have an issue with, just that it's someone in there.
Well, I've always thought far too few tech type people are familiar with some of the applications of cryptography, PKI and all of that.
If more knew about it we'd have widespread use of pgp, web of trust, and many other techniques with very practical benefit.
And of course I'm referring to technical people knowing about the crypto stuff. Much of it is legitimately technical, so I wouldn't fault common users for not knowing about all of this magic inside their applications :)
But yeah, someone who's not familiar with it could be excused for seeing those dichotomies/binaries. Without such solutions, the problems are real.
Welcome to the platform that spurns the algorithms that brought them more of a variety of posts :)
There are some upsides for users for good algorithms.
I think they're confusing a want for absolute power with the simple fact that there are separation of powers concerns to protect judicial independence in the federal government.
Yes, SCOTUS gets to police itself, because despite the downsides of that idea, it's better than letting the other branches order around the head of the Judicial Branch.
I think it's more that he's a completely empty-headed idiot who doesn't know anything until someone else tells him what to think, **and that point really should have been emphasized all along**.
People attacking Trump for his beliefs, instead of for not having any, just enamored him to his supporters, many of whom respect the guy for having a spine.
Sadly, so many of his critics bought into the story that he had these strong stances, therefore supporting the myth that got him elected.
volkris
boosted
PSA: Google is deleting some old Hangouts photos this week
It's hard to say exactly what is getting deleted, but it's easy to download.
If they received such poor college education that they'd fall for the line that SCOTUS is to blame for the lack of loan forgiveness, that's just a reflection of failure at the high school level.
And maybe colleges really need to tighten their standards so that students don't waste so much money on educations that they're sadly unprepared for.
Yeah, that's definitely a concern, and I'm glad we did develop stylesheets to address it.
(Setting aside issues of how *well* the stylesheets actually worked in the real world, that is.)
Still, this gets into the different schools of thought as to whether it's more important to convey the author's intent or to give the viewer what they want.
It's a debate with arguments on both sides, but yep, br is the tool for the author's intent and p is the tool to empower the reader.
And of course this actually ends up mattering more than just superficially when accessibility and screen readers come up.
Ha! No! I am [jokingly] horrified by this comment!
So jokes aside, I'd say p and br have very important differences:
p is a semantic label, saying this is a paragraph. Render (or read or anything) it as you think best.
br is a command to insert a line break, saying nothing about why it's in there or what the content is.
Each has its place, and (as I recall) p is especially powerful because with stylesheets you can both say what you've written AND order it to be spaced the way you want.
Honestly, if that's the case it says more about the state of journalism than anything else, if journalists have such weak perspectives of the world that they can be so shaped by social networks.
At that point every single article you read is probably not giving you an accurate view on the world.
It's worth highlighting how much outright misbehavior there's been in the nuclear regulatory space for decades now, up to the point of courts calling out illegality and regulators just ignoring the rulings.
And the misbehavior seems to all fall on the anti-nuclear side of things.
So this isn't merely a case of political disagreement or development of public policy. Once laws are so ignored it becomes a case of outright corruption.
I'd say you're leaving out the most important branch of government.
We need new laws passed to reform the laws around tax deductions, but we keep electing and then reelecting the same congresspeople who fail to do it.
The article is confusing a few different things and in the course misunderstanding the structure of the US government.
For example, you really can't talk about independent agencies in the same way as normal executive branch agencies. One is under presidential control and the other isn't, by definition.
But the big thing I'd respond with is this: the reason the US has a president in charge of the executive branch is because then he can be held to account for executive branch functioning.
If the president wants to fully own the DOJ, then great! He will personally stand for impeachment should the DOJ misbehave.
That's the trade.
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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