volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@PeterLudemann My favorite example was listening to BBC reporting in their news break what officials said about a shooting, and then immediately after hearing their normal programming reading off social media posts that were contradicted by the official report they had just broadcast.

Official investigations had found one thing, but never mind that, let's broadcast dramatic tales that we are reading off of Facebook!

I hear that kind of thing all the time from BBC.

@lauren

@maccruiskeen Well that's simply not factually true.

Yes a lot of special interest groups try to promote that idea, but it's not true.

@parismarx

@lauren but none of that changes that we elect and re-elect these same people, showing that we approve of the way they have been operating in office.

Like, yeah we can make all the excuses that we want for what they are doing but at the end of the day, we are re-electing these people.

I think we should not be re-electing these people. I think that we should hold them accountable for what they have done and not get distracted by these side stories, but that's just me.

For example, if you want to say that some politician is taking bribes but we re-elect that politician, the problem there isn't the bribe the problem is that we reelected the person taking the bribes.

We really need to stop re-electing the same politicians doing bad things, and I think we really need to focus on that and not let them pass the buck.

@maccruiskeen I mean they would say comply with the law...
@parismarx

@lauren again my point is that we elected those people. And we re-elected those people. So apparently we were okay with it.

It all comes down to we get the government that we vote for.

@lauren I think that you are missing that all of what you are referring to is rooted in the people that we voted to empower to government.

It's not about AT&T.

They are merely complying with the situation that we all voted for, the regulations that were promulgated based on our votes.

Lied? No I don't think so. I have watched over and over again when the people that we voted into power, elected and re-elected, set up the incentives for them to do exactly what they did.

And let me emphasize re-elected. We keep re-electing the people who set the stage for this, so apparently we are happy with it.

I think we should stop re-electing these people, but I'm in the minority here, and I really think we should emphasize that we should stop re-electing the officials who put us into situations that we don't like.

@Weedkiller it's not bullying.

Here is the pay they offer, and if that's not worth it for you you don't have to take it. If it is enough pay such that you are better off in the end, maybe you might take it.

It's no bullying. It's just an offer that the employee can choose to accept if he wants to.

@maccruiskeen as you can see their position is not that they want to blow it up but rather that they question its legal structure.

In cases like these the case ends up being about making the effort stronger with more legal basis if anything.

Any effort on shaky legal foundation is problematic. Pointing that out is not wrong, and often enough is part of the process of putting it on better legal foundation.

@parismarx

@Weedkiller I mean, they have appetite for pay, and that's what the employment relationship is at its heart.

@parismarx

@parismarx what? Federalist Society doesn't have a position of wanting to blow up the NLRB in the US.

Heck, they make content talking about how it fits in with US law.

Seriously, FedSoc has become basically the butt of kooky conspiracy theory, and that needs to be called out.

They do good work.

@lauren well, if the public is willing to pay the cost of those services I'm sure AT&T would be happy to provide them.

The problem isn't AT&T. The problem is that public institutions like governments aren't stepping up to buy what the people need.

@TheConversationUS that's a misframing of what's going on.

It's not that the House is holding up aid. It's that it's up to the House (and Senate) as to whether it's right to give the aid.

It's like saying I'm holding up money for McDonald's because maybe I don't want a Big Mac.

No, this framing gets it exactly backwards.

@PeterLudemann it's an incredibly low bar, though. Even if that low bar raises for the others, well that just speaks to how awful the others are.

Raising the standards to the level of BBC's broadcasting social media posts that are contradicted by actual investigators' findings just isn't saying very much.

I can't talk about what journalism is like in other countries, but at least in the US, and apparently the UK, there is very good reason that so many have lost faith in the institution.
@lauren

@simon_brooke

Yeah, but you can't eat firewood either, and that's part of why money is so much better at storing value: you're better able to convert widely accepted money into food than you'd be able to convert timber.

Your storage of those things is inefficient. It requires much more space and effort than it takes to store money, which is why humans created money in the first place.

Instead of wasting space storing value as goods, money means we can spend that space and effort building habitation that is so desperately needed by others right now.

@Eceni

@Jimijamflimflam what in the world?

Trump tried to emphasize the rule of law and use it to question the election!

The claim that Trump trained the Republican party to hate the rule of law is completely at odds with his emphasis on it at the end of his presidency, not to mention his complaints against Biden.

@LeftToPonder@mastodon.social I think you're missing that so many aren't simps for Trump as much as opposed to what they perceive to be governmental corruption.

Trump just happens to be the one benefiting from it.

So for goodness sake, stop throwing that meat to those people!

@lauren it makes even more sense when you remember the adage that Trump supporters often take him seriously but not literally.

So many Trump supporters delight in his trolling.

Posts like this only affirm them and promote that sort of talk, as it shows that you've fallen for the trolling.

No, it's not good, but recognizing that is the first step in opposing it.

@Cymphoni_Fantastique I wouldn't say we need to make middle spaces. I don't even really know what that means.

I would say we ALL need to spend more time actually understanding each other instead of just buying into othering and stereotypes about what "they" believe, and in particular about what lost causes "they" are.

When I teach I know that it's my job to meet the students where they are. Part of that is listening to them directly to see where they are, and not accepting what some third party says about where they are.

I don't think it's about sparking as much as it's about inviting. It's like dancing. You invite your partner to move in a certain way, but that requires engagement to figure out what invite to send and how to send it.

In our society we have way too many people operating based on claims about people, instead of understanding of the people, and that just ends in toes being stepped on, which is no good for anyone.
@genoforprez @taylorlorenz

@PeterLudemann Oh gosh, this is where we part ways.

I actually listen to the BBC regularly... for the lolz, as the kids say.

BBC World Service programming is a joke, constantly putting out segments that are either laughably childish or outright misinformed/misinforming about its subject matter.

My point here being that governmental/public control of media isn't in itself a recipe for success.

In the end it all comes down to us, the consumers, the public. If we want to see bleeding then bleeding will be leading.

If we want propaganda or drama or sweet, sweet confirmation bias, we'll get it.

And apparently we do, so that's what we get.

We get the media and the government that we ask for.