volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@sesivany well, what do they say when you ask?

Personally, I like the idea of Bluesky over Fediverse because it's not so instance focused, it's more user focused, but that's just me.

I couldn't care in the slightest anything about where any of these platforms are developed.

@tiredaidworker you've overlooking that the Constitution made very clear the distinction between the Supreme Court and lower courts, granting Congress some authority over the one but not the other.

The checks and balances operate differently between the two different types of courts, with the Supreme Court having judicial independence that was not granted to lower courts.

@oldguy52

Well, I'd submit one tweak: since we elect and reelect (and so validate) the members of this Congress, they don't see fit to represent us any differently in such matters.

Either way, these are the people we've chosen to empower, and so there's your answer.

@GottaLaff

@empiricism

The big problem is that steps governments would take to mitigate climate change themselves involve consumption.

But using eBikes, busses, and trains is still on the plus side of the ledger, consuming those services. The cost side is all of the projects that would lose out on the resources being redirected to support those things.

Are people going to willingly give up another use for this kg of steel because it was needed to build that bus? Perhaps not.

Point is, there is no free lunch, and once people are shown the price tag they often decide not to buy.

@IgnatiusJReilly

Not law, regulation.

So the way it works is that Congress writes laws that often allow the executive branch to go through the notice and comment process to specify how they will be implementing the law, so different administrations are allowed to promulgate different interpretations of the law. That can get pretty messy, so it would be nice if we would elect congresspeople who wouldn't put all of that on the executive branch's shoulders, but never mind.

So a lot of people in the national labs were recently told by the executive branch that their classification in the Department of Labor policies were being revoked, they lost their jobs and they were reclassified as wage earners instead of salaried professionals, with a whole bunch of strings coming from that, restrictions on their abilities to control their work hours and stuff like that.

These aren't new laws. These are new policies coming from the president under the new administration, and it really screwed over a whole lot of them.

@guardian

@tiredaidworker Oh yeah, the Constitution absolutely does impose separation between the branches, and the framers of the Constitution wrote quite a lot confirming that it does!

And putting that aside, I would think that judicial independence is an idea that people generally can get behind.

We see other countries engaging in corrupt acts against their judiciaries, and one would hope we would hold ourselves above that, but here we have a drive to breach that independence. It's not a good look.

@md

You know the price of tea in China changes every day, right?

Probably, I don't know, some sketchy cabal behind that too.

@VPS_Reports@kolektiva.social

@VPS_Reports@kolektiva.social

You know you are spouting nutty conspiracy theories, right?

@tiredaidworker

Right because a bunch of sensationalist news articles have really messed with public opinion here.

But the separation of the branches is a critical part of the US system of checks and balances. Congress absolutely has no role in violating judicial independence by trying to order the judicial branch around like this. It's not only unconstitutional, but it is just a bad idea, the kind of thing you see in utterly corrupt governments around the world.

If the majority of the US public is in favor of it that just speaks to the sad state of civics education in the country today, that people would be so ignorant of the political science consequences of such an overreach.

But then, I guess that goes hand in hand with people buying into the sensational yellow journalism in the first place.

@gowin

This sort of thing is why I get a bit pedantic about saying, yes there is an algorithm pushing things into our face around here, the chronological feed is an algorithm, even though it is a simple one.

And like all algorithms it can be abused.

@badbede

Well what purpose do you prefer to embrace?

@DoesntExist@mastodon.social

Unfortunately, your experience reflects the design choices that were made for the underlying protocol that runs Fediverse.

Other platforms chose to be more focused on users, but this one is focused on instances instead, so moving from one instance to another is sort of a second thought.

This platform puts instances in the center of the design for better or worse. Personally I'm critical of it because of that, but it's too late to change it now even if we wanted to.

@thisismissem

Well be careful about falling into the trap of assuming that throwing more money and employees at a problem will solve it well.

Engineering just doesn't always scale that way.

Sometimes you end up with too many cooks.

@danwentzel

I think the general answer is, no, because the platform is providing a valuable service that its users appreciate.

Yeah, you have this act that you are grinding, but most people aren't very interested in your complaints.

@georgetakei

@georgetakei

That is a misrepresentation of the facts of what happened there.

@eribosot

Such an indictment is, as per the process in the US, unvented allegation, and even overlooking that, I think you're giving Trump a whole bunch more credit than I would, with his constant verbal vomiting that makes absolutely no sense and his apparent complete disinterest in how the world actually works.

So there are two problems with what you are saying, first the allegations might not be true, and second even if they are true, Trump is such a goddamn idiot that they don't prove that he's communicating anything that he knows at all.

So I've read the indictment. It comes across as amateurish and a bit baffling. Nobody has the high ground in that whole mess.

@allpoints

@Decad3nce

Well if you're actually interested in the topic, there are communities around the country that are very welcoming, and you could go hang out with them to see what it's like from their perspectives.

If I remember right the website has a list of ways to get involved with the community outside of the event. Burns like this are 100% built on people bringing their talents and efforts to the gathering, they are not like a show put on that people show up to, so communities are always looking for more people to join and get involved and contribute.

But to address your point, not everybody goes for an entire week, a lot of people show up for just a day or two as they can, and also for a lot of participants this is the one big thing that they save up for the whole year, saving all of their vacation days just to have this homecoming sort of experience.

Like I probably said above, I'm not a Burning Man sort of person myself, but I know a ton of people who are, so I am very well aware of friends saying they can't do this or that because they are saving it all up for the big burn.

And just to give one illustration, last week my friends were all sharing a meme about TikTok influencers not being able to fulfill the contracts to broadcast from the event because of the flooding, just highlighting how SO many people at the event utterly reject the rich and the influencers as being anathema to the spirit of Burning Man.

@Decad3nce

Are you saying that when listening to rich people talk about Burning Man you end up hearing that Burning Man is about rich people?

I mean the people that I know personally that I hear evangelizing it all the time, they are incredibly critical against those rich folks and that image of the event.

If I understand your reply correctly, it sounds like you are getting a very misleading image of the event because you are listening to people who present a misleading image of the event, which just makes sense.

@oldguy52

No, the solution to corruption in the judicial branch is spelled out quite clearly: impeachment.

If there's a problem then the solution is not to violate the independence of the judicial branch but to impeach and remove the individuals that are problematic.

And if our democratic process determines that there's no problem worthy of impeachment then there's also no problem worthy of violating judicial independence.

So vote for your representatives carefully. If you believe there's a problem with the court then vote for representatives who will address it and for goodness sake stop reelecting representatives who won't.

@GottaLaff