volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@realcaseyrollins he didn't say the US is having Ukrainians slaughtered in the first place.

He acknowledged the price they were paying while claiming that it's in the US interest to support them, but that doesn't mean the US is making that trade.

Whether or not he's right is a different question, but no, he didn't say the US is having Ukrainians slaughtered.

@realcaseyrollins no, that's not what he said in the clip.

@AndrewHenry I mean they're not doing it out of charity. They are letting fossil fuels companies pay them for their services, so if you really want to go down that path, fossil fuel companies have less money at the end of the day as these insurance companies drain them of resources.

@MollyNYC Well, when the results don't match what you expect based on your beliefs of the world, that's generally a good sign that you should stop and re-examine your beliefs of the world.

That's just the scientific method applied.

In this case, I think you are wrong about who the GOP is running, and I know I have seen so many articles making the rounds that are so misleading. So I would suggest stepping back and reevaluating the messages you've taken from some pretty sketchy media outfits.

Because yeah, the fact that Democrats aren't running the table should be a pretty good sign that maybe those media outfits have been misinforming as to the candidates.

@feverspell

@colorfiend The problem is that if you have any more than two major parties then using the voting system that most of the country uses, wasted votes and split votes becomes a serious problem.

The fundamental problem is that our first pass the post voting system is awful. In some ways it is mathematically provable to be the worst possible voting system. We naturally formed and coalesced into two parties as a way to mitigate some of those problems, sort of setting up a better voting system by tacking on runoffs.

When people start talking about alternatives to the two parties without changing the underlying voting system, they're missing the whole reason we have two parties in the first place.

Until we fix the underlying voting system, we need to appreciate that the two party system is all about mitigating problems that would loom large. Should we give up those mitigations.

@JasonPerseus

@olimould it's just such a complicated situation because it goes up against not only generations of tradition but also institutionalized operations of the political party.

Traditionally, the incumbent president is assumed to be the nominee. It's pretty hard to overcome that barrier of tradition.

Practically, the incumbent president is the head of the political party, with all of the resources of the party to direct. He has a ton of money and resources at his disposal, so any challenger also has to compete against all of that.

That's not necessarily a good thing, but it is the reality, whether we like it or not.

So yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of Democrats trying to oust Biden from the nomination, but it's such a heavy lift to overcome all of that to make it happen.

@NoTwit Well think about it from the other side, where we've seen so many cases where voters voted for Republicans except for Trump, where ballots were pretty much right down the party line except for Trump.

Same thing here. Just because people were up for voting Democratic down ballot doesn't mean they would also vote for Biden.

@JoeChip

@hulavikih I mean, the Ohio constitutional amendment was an affront to direct democracy, saying that the people can't pass abortion restrictions even through the added layer of their representatives.

Constitutional amendments are necessarily antidemocratic, removing the choice from voters, so a whole lot of people are actually on Santorum's side here.

@wjmaggos What?

There are a ton of people on fediverse complaining about their experiences here, highlighting a problem of NOT having the algorithms.

If anything Fediverse is demonstrating that the algorithms solved problems.

@dragnucs part of the problem is that this moves server load from YouTube/Google/Alphabet and onto the often scaled back servers that run instances.

One of those, be careful what you're asking for moments.

I'm happy to let the rich corporation pay the costs of operating the service.

@hsurkemper *federated, not decentralized.

Centralized around instances.

@antares Well, remember that different states have different rules about appearing on ballots, so it can be honestly hard to try to appear on ballots as a backup.

State rules are geared around each major party having a single candidate, and getting a name on the ballot outside of that is a challenge.

@johnhenryus that generally means that for whatever reason your access to the post had been revoked.

Maybe the post was deleted, maybe you were blocked, etc.

Basically, you see the notification, and when you click on it the platform goes to double check that you were supposed to see it, finds out that you weren't, and it disappears the post.

In other words, for whatever reason, your previous permission to see the content has been revoked.

@tdietterich well, it's not equally dispatchable, but cost is really the complication here.

**Rightly or wrongly** regulators put up roadblocks that increase costs way higher than they have to be, so it sounds like this project was no longer able to overcome that hurdle.

@arstechnica

@realTuckFrumper it's a complicated question.

It makes it more likely that he will be the Democratic candidate, but it doesn't particularly make him more likely to win.

And there's a chance that Republicans will learn from this and campaign better, but meh, given that party it's unlikely they'll learn anything.

Really it's just sad for us all. We should want a better candidate running for office, but the victories make that less likely.

@colorfiend if you're familiar with legislative processes, every government around the country constantly puts up laws that nobody's really interested in.

That's just how the democratic processes work in the US system.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of special interest groups happy to put out sensational and misleading content to prey on members of the public who don't follow politics closely enough to know that what they're saying is manipulative.

That's the state of the US these days. Those bad actors do need to be called out.
@mjausson

@colorfiend You're kind of proving my point here.

Republicans aren't nearly as obsessed with this topic, and if you realize that, then you can fight more effectively for your issues.

@mjausson

@stacked_automation Well, kind of says all we need said, then.

@MarkhamHislop I mean, what exactly did they get wrong?

It's one thing to just say nu uh, but it's more compelling to actually point to the errors and correct them.