volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@notabird no, that's what the law looks like.

The democratic process passed the VRA with certain features and without certain features. The court merely respected the act of Congress made by those we elected.

If we want to change the law to provide more access to courts, great! Our legislators can do that at any time.

But this is really the opposite of authoritarianism. This is respecting limits on authority.

@marcelias

@AlliFlowers it's also important to point out that different instances have different features.

Just for example, the instance I use has practically no limit on post size and supports quoting of posts, among other additions to the standard Mastodon feature set.

@ctrlxcvz @HistoPol

@arstechnica send? No.

If folks want to participate in a big experiment in survival on Mars, let's go for it. It would be their choice, and there are plenty of people willing to do it.

Framing things like this as sending overlooks agency.

@ScriptFanix well they satisfied the legal review to say that they didn't unduly endanger any rare species.

We have safeguards in place through which experts analyze their plan, and they can't operate without satisfying the experts about issues like this.

@Gustodon

@davidpmaurer@mastodon.sdf.org but you're missing the thing that I'm trying to emphasize here, that I wish got emphasized much more often: you say the count is so close, but we voted for that count!

You say two to five elected officials have a crazy amount of power, but that's because the rest of the people that we voted for, that we empowered, maintain that situation.

Hell, at the extreme the representatives that we voted for can at any point even eject those two to five people if they are misbehaving. If they are so damn obstinate that they are interfering with the performance of the chamber, my representative and yours could vote to expel them.

So let's stop re-electing the idiots who maintain this bad situation. Let's stop re-electing the ones who put up with the crazies.

But we can only hold our own representatives accountable for their actions if we stop acting like everything is up to only five members.

That just gives a pass to all of the other representatives who could be doing something to fix the problems.

@simonbp I don't know why you would bring up the survivability of crew on a ship that was designed not to have a crew in the first place.

I call the rocket launch successful because it met the goals set out to define success.

It's kind of off to declare it a failure because it didn't meet some goals that you personally had for it, to replace the goals of the actual launch provider putting it up.

@JBShakerman well the problem is that the philosophy of judicial independence of the Supreme Court that insulates it from interference by the other branches also kind of insulates it from the sort of enforceable ethical rules that so many seem to be wanting.

So yeah, any code of ethics is going to be somewhat phony because that's just how the US federal government is designed.

You can't really have it both ways. Either the Supreme Court is independent or there can be enforcement brought against it. The two are kind of contradictory.

@atrupar

@freemo well I think it's worth saying that different people aren't excited about voting for him for different reasons, and for a lot of us that reason comes down to his poor performance in office.

I really don't care if the guy is senile or not, if he does a good job. But Biden has not.

He has really screwed up in just about every aspect of the role of president.

If his presidency meant that his handlers had taken charge and appointed capable people to do the work in the face of his senility, great! I'd keep him on no matter how his mental state is.

But that didn't happen.

@davidpmaurer@mastodon.sdf.org but it's not about any one representative since it takes cooperation of all of the representatives in both chambers to act.

We really need to push back against these narratives that try to frame congressional action as up to any one figure.

Yes, that makes for simple and dramatic story telling, but it lets a whole bunch of representatives off the hook for poor performance.

@syeedali some instances support that but most don't.

The one I use, qoto has that function in case you're looking for a recommendation.

@errhead I'm referring specifically to the ActivityPub standard, not Mastodon.

AP lays out the requirements that instances communicate with each other, manage inboxes and out boxes, and all of this other stuff.

It is not a lightweight protocol.

@silverpill @lps @Revertron @kzimmermann

@lps oh, no, that still requires a lot of resources. The instance still has to participate in the AP transactions, has to deal with retrieving content, etc.

ActivityPub is not just expensive when it comes to publishing content. It also has to communicate and retrieve content and display it to users.

@errhead @Revertron @silverpill @kzimmermann

@silverpill if you read through the ActivityPub standard, the protocol is designed to scale with number of instances, and it is a scaling factor larger than simply linear.

You say AP is very easy on resources, but that flies in the face of so many instance operators experiencing meltdowns and surprise hosting costs when the resources exploded far higher than they expected.

Which makes sense because, again, the protocol is designed in a way that involves exponential increases.

@lps @errhead @Revertron @kzimmermann

@davidpmaurer@mastodon.sdf.org but you're describing the democratic process.

We elected these representatives, and if we don't think Congress is doing a good job on issues like this then we need to stop re-electing the same people.

However we end up re-electing so many of these representatives, so we are pretty much confirming that they are doing what we want them to do with the VRA and other topics.

If the people we elect to Congress are dismantling the law, well, yay democracy.

@bigzaphod go for it.

There are very safe ways to do it.

@TSAguilar46@mastodon. we have positive evidence that it's not a genocide as independent press agencies around the world have confirmed that the government sent civilians away from the battlefield.

It was not even about doubting a genocide. It's about having positive proof that it's not a genocide.

@Devilstower whoever said it was good enough?

This was never intended or expected to be the final version of the launch platform. It was always slated to be a test article, that wasn't going to be good enough, that was going to help make better ones going forward.

@davidpmaurer@mastodon.sdf.org well that headline is a bit sensational.

If the VRA needs reform, that's fine, let's calmly ask our representatives in Congress to make the needed changes.

But politico is being a bit hysterical to talk about this as a devastating anything.

@errhead I'm referring to the design of ActivityPub at the core of Fediverse.

If you're talking about something else that's fine, but it's not what I'm referring to.

@lps @Revertron @kzimmermann