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
@binaryhawk wow, no, you are falling for a conspiracy theory there. One that certain politicians really like to promote because it benefits them.
This has nothing to do with Trump.
Hundreds of Democrats voted to shut down the House, which I assure you has nothing to do with Trump, because they thought they could win some political points for doing so, and you are playing right into their hands.
@binaryhawk That's not really how it works though.
Each representative has been voted in by their own district. We keep re-electing these people.
If these representatives are putting their coveted seats above the well-being of the country, it's because we support their actions when we send them back to Congress based on what they have done.
It really comes down to the constituents who put them in power.
@drmike you seem to be really obsessed with Nazis here. That sounds like something you ought to take up with your therapist.
But it's not reality.
What you're describing is not at all what is happening over on the other platform. You're kind of going kind of nutso with your obsession there.
Again, have a chat with your therapist about that.
The rule is that it's a majority of people who have voted for any particular candidate.
So any representative is welcome to either vote present or not vote at all. It's up to them.
But part of the deal is whether you like any particular candidate or not, are you willing to keep the democratic process seized? Are you willing to keep the House shut down, the congress unable to pass or even debate legislation because you don't like the particular person serving as Speaker?
That's a pretty extreme position to take, but it is the position that the Democrats have taken at this point.
As far as I'm concerned all of these politicians are assholes, but we keep re-electing them. So whatever.
Let's just be clear that the assholes we are electing are shutting down Congress.
@drmike Right, but that's my point, just because you know who the person is, that doesn't mean what they're saying is right.
Great, I know this line is being spouted by a politician! Doesn't mean the first thing about whether the politician is being honest or not. Or knows what they're talking about.
That sort of thinking descends into ad hominem judgment.
@aisa or a good reason to rethink EU law.
@drmike I mean this is how we should always have been treating verified accounts, with lots of skepticism, not believing them.
So really I see this as an improvement.
Verified accounts always have spread misinformation and they always will. Maybe it's worth listening to them or not, but it's never worth trusting them.
Verified accounts just means it looks like it's coming from a human. But humans lie, or humans get the story wrong. So the verification was never a reason to trust what was being posted.
So great! We are figuring out not to trust these people that we never should have been trusting in the first place!
@lauren meh, I figure most of the time such positions are symbolic only with little actual impact.
So either the occupant of the position realizes that and sets their expectations accordingly, or they get really really frustrated.
Neither does any good.
@pglpm@emacs.ch no, I'm talking about Fediverse, or more specifically, I'm thinking about the ActivityPub protocol that runs it.
AP is all about delivering streams of content left and right from content producers to the applications and websites that want it. But the streams themselves are a little ephemeral so it's up to the end use to decide what to do with them.
So Fediverse might deliver an answer to a question, and while a platform like Mastodon might just throw it up on the screen for an hour, it takes a more specialized website to actually display the answer that was provided and keep it around for future users to find.
@Nonilex it's not just culture wars, though.
The administration was caught promoting politicized messages particularly related to health care that have nothing to do with culture, messages that sought to sink scientific information that ran up against officials' public messaging.
That's such an important part of this story.
@SteveThompson Well, it's not so much backing Biden as it is pushing back against the lower court.
I know that's being pedantic, but the details matter in legal procedings.
@marqle I'd say that so many mastodon users are requesting this feature that it's reasonable to say it needs to implement the feature.
Admittedly this is not objective, but it is a long-standing feature request. And I think I remember that the developers have agreed to it finally.
As if the pros don't want clicks? :)
FWIW, over the past year, particularly with regard to the Ukraine war, I've been struck by amateurs doing a much better job at assembling and presenting news than the professionals.
Professional journalism has simply really seemed to go downhill over the last decade or so.
@freemo@mastodon.acm.org
@lola no?
I don't know what you're referring to.
@Miro_Collas that sort of talk is dramatic conspiracy theory that lets our elected officials off the hook for their votes.
No, the people behind the Supreme Court's composition are Supreme Court justices themselves and presidents and senators that we elect.
We need to hold them accountable and not let them pass the buck to figures supposedly lurking in the shadows.
Don't like the current makeup of the Court? Push for the ouster of senators who consented to their appointment.
But that's not really how the #House rules work: any representative doesn't have to make a deal to either vote or withhold their vote.
If Democrats really wanted the House to reopen they could simply stop voting to stand in the way. That doesn't require any dealmaking.
When you start talking about deals, though, that gets REALLY complicated since this is more than just the Speaker. There are committee assignments and House Rules on the table at that point, which is a giant Gordian Knot to address.
@DemocracyMattersALot
@lauren it's an ax I've been grinding for years that we needed to normalize something like cryptographic signing to authenticate both text and visual media.
And so I'm particularly annoyed to see us get to the point I've been fearing for a decade, where such image manipulation is snowballing, but we didn't put in place norms to detect it already.
Siiiigh.
Nerds in academia have been sounding this alarm, but ah well.
@skry the thing is, sometimes a criticism is called out because it's actually not valid.
@witchescauldron well, I'd view Fediverse as a tool or as infrastructure, like the telephone network.
It's the communication framework that's available to solve whatever problem one might use it to solve.
Whether that problem is forming a community or transmitting weather reports is a separate question.
Maybe the tool will prove useful, maybe not.
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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