volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@haikushack@mastodon.social but people did create the art.

Every bit of AI art represents an instance of a person using the AI as a tool to create art.

It's like being against paint brushes because paint brushes can't feel so the art the paint brush creates is to be rejected.

No, the mistake is viewing the paint brush as acting on its own, just as the mistake here is viewing AI as acting on its own instead of being an extension of a human.

@jricole keep in mind that the Republican Party consists of different groups with vastly different, even contradictory perspectives, just united into one party by tenuous overlaps of consensus and overlap in practical convenience.

So it's not really a contradiction. It's just that different people in the same party can have very different ideas about the world, even if this party is the best for them to be aligned with for the moment.

Off the top of my head, one great example of that was this study I saw finding five distinct groups getting together to elect Trump that included one group of American isolationists and another group promoting global trade and international engagement.

They had exactly opposite core values, but the Republican offering served them both better than the alternative.

@evan does it count as offering to testify against them if he has offered to testify but is so out of touch with reality that he doesn't realize he's not doing them favors?

Like, if he thinks his testimony would help them because he just really doesn't know how any of this works?

@PhotoSniperFox That's about the state of things, but it's getting way too little attention.

@JenWojcik ha! Sorry.

I'm just a big fan of RCV.

Serious business! ;)

@JenWojcik they did use ranked choice voting, or at least there are reports that they went through the procedure of dropping the lowest ranked nominee until finding a consensus candidate.

The problem is that they don't need just the most well-supported one, they need a nominee that can gain near unanimous backing in order to overcome the math of the situation, and RCV can't help with that.

@acwhite Well, a technicality, remember that anyone who votes present is not counted as a vote against a nominee, so a nominee can lose more.

But yeah, it's a step closer, just like if I start walking east right now I'll be taking a step closer to Europe, but I'm almost certainly not going to get there.

He'll take the next step. There's a little optimism in my mind that this will overcome the mathematical realities of the situation.

@TNLNYC they did use it.

The problem is that they didn't all agree that they would all back the result of the vote, and so it didn't matter.

Ranked voting can help you figure out the candidate with the most support, but in this particular case they mathematically need almost unanimous support, and ranked voting can't help with that.

@spaceflight I think a better way to put it would be that they identified a potential problem, but more study will be needed to determine the actual environmental impact.

As in, here's a thing. What's the impact of the thing? Not sure yet, but at least now we know to go look.

@bazkie I'd say if anything at that point it's more along the lines of social expectations of polite behavior rather than responsibility.

You know, it's polite to hold a door or say hello to your co-workers in ways that promote a good working environment.

Part of the problem is that when you start talking about things a person didn't do you're also comparing their behavior against a standard that they might not even be aware of.

You know, if I do something then I can point at the thing I did and know that I did it. But, if there's something you would have liked me to do? Well, there could be an infinite list of things I didn't know that I didn't do 🙂

There are a whole lot of complications to the idea of holding people guilty for things they didn't do, and that's the practical, beyond the logical issues that themselves raise all sorts of issues with our conceptions of the world.

@Jimijamflimflam

@Nonilex the problem is that this sounds like Mark Meadows admitting his own guilt, but he has immunity, but without providing a smoking gun that would implicate Trump.

@chad I don't think anyone in there thinks they can get the overwhelming support necessary since the wackos refused to play ball and the Democrats are putting them in the driver's seat.

It's a mathematically impossible situation at this point.

They know it.

@freemo what was the solution?

@NanoBookReview Well it's complicated in a very important way: since policing is primarily a local or state matter, the Supreme Court has to have a certain level of deference to the other governments involved, requiring a high bar to call them out on individual cases.

This is critical because of how it points us to the importance of reforming local and state governments and laws, as they are the primary setters of police policy.

If you just skip ahead and talk about the Supreme Court, it lets all of those local actors unaccountable for being the real ones at the heart of this problem.

But of course, they love to avoid accountability.

@Jimijamflimflam One doesn't aid through inaction.

That's a logical contradiction, and echoes an acceptance of punishing someone for something they didn't do.

@marynelson8 The procedure for counting Electoral College votes doesn't leave it up to the Speaker, fortunately.

I don't know where this story is coming from, but I do see it going around, and it's not in line with the US voting system.

@prefec2 I get the impression from the screenshot that he was beginning to provide the alternative, but whoever took the screenshot cut it off @taylorlorenz

@prefec2 is that people who have been selected are not qualified then why would he use the phrase independent of their merits?

To me that pretty explicitly says that his point is NOT they are unqualified.

I think you're misreading the quote.

@taylorlorenz

@oldguy52 SCOTUS doesn't rule on science, though. It has neither the expertise nor the authority to such rulings.

That kind of decision gets made in Congress, and SCOTUS merely reinforced the laws that Congress has made, decisions that themselves should be scientific.

Whether the president's authority to regulate huge swaths of the area of the country should or should not be expanded is up to Congress. SCOTUS would be acting outside of those very scientific processes should it impose its own will on the law.