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
@alwillis yes, LOOKS.
These headlines are misreporting what happened. They LOOK bad, but what can you do? The opinion is public, so anyone interested can go see what they said for themselves.
But if people are going to believe these headlines despite the Court itself saying the exact opposite, well, I don't know what more can be done to get past the looks.
@alan so again, I'm not saying I have THE right answer because I don't think there is A right answer, only tradeoffs.
For me personally, though, it's exactly that elevation of faction that I'd object to.
I want to talk about how how this candidate is doing their job regardless of faction; I don't want to build faction into the system, as we have enough issues with that as it is.
In fact, I'd say the present state of the US House is exactly the trainwreck that happens when folks focus on what factions deserve instead of each member working for their own individual constituents.
@BohemianPeasant but that points squarely to the problem that's going around today, where the Court respected the law written by the democratic process, but instead of holding lawmakers to account for engaging democracy well, everyone's yelling at the Court for saying, yes, democracy matters a lot.
And so we'll fail to hold our congresspeople accountable for not reforming laws.
It's a bizarre picture, but in the end, we have to have better civics education and current events reporting exactly so people know how their government works.
Because right now, this is a GREAT example of elected officials escaping accountability.
@petergleick sometimes the reason an argument winds up in dissent is because it's legitimately not a good argument.
So we can read the law that Congress passed. We don't have to go read the losing opinion when we can read the actual law with our own eyes:
@bigheadtales yep, now read the part about bribery, since that's what you were talking about:
"Importantly, because bribery can corrupt the official act, Congress treats bribery as a far more serious offense than gratuities. For example, if a federal official accepts a bribe, federal bribery law provides for a 15-year maximum prison sentence."
Not only does the SCOTUS insist that bribery is a crime, but bribery being a particularly significant crime was core to their ruling.
They ruled that in part BECAUSE bribery is criminal, the 1986 revisions to the law take that into account.
@mhjohnson jawboneing is just a informal term for what the administration was doing with encouraging the stories they wanted to get out.
@bigheadtales I linked to the Supreme Court take on what the Supreme Court said.
And according to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court said the opposite of what you're quoting here.
I don't know who you're listening to, but they're telling you wrong as you can read for yourself directly from the Court.
@AmericanScream sure it made economic sense. How do I know? Because it resulted in economic activity that left all parties better off.
Just like any other monetary transaction.
@Dhmspector I showed you the question that's before the court.
It doesn't matter one wit what you think his lawyers said in the district court, that's not the question before this court.
@AmericanScream prove the rule?
No the exception disproves what you said!
Maybe YOU can't really use crypto for anything day to day, but be careful about projecting your own personal experiences on everybody else and making assumptions based on that.
In the end you're not going to convince anybody of your perspective when it requires us to ignore our own experiences that don't line up with what you're saying.
You just end up sounding uninformed.
@petergleick well it's more that regardless of whether the justices are OK with it or not, that's the law that Congress passed a while back.
And if we want the law to change we need to stop reelecting congresspeople who maintain this status quo.
@uzi careful: sometimes those buy local, know your customer campaigns are themselves examples of corporatism.
Sometimes the best solutions benefit from efficiencies of scale, but others put their fingers on the... scale... to prop up less effective groups.
@BioGeoMeFi. That's not what the ruling said at all, and the LA Times should be called out for these misleading headlines.
In fact, in the ruling, the Supreme Court went out of its way to emphatically recognize the illegality of bribery. That was a core part of the decision. But as happens so often, it doesn't matter what efforts the Court might make to head off misinformation, these reports go viral anyway.
What the Court pointed out was that the people we elected to Congress changed the law a while back, and the Court respected the legislative process. It wasn't the Court making a change, it was an entirely different branch of government, and if we want to have the law revisited, we are welcome to ask them to fix it.
But we're not going to get there by blaming the Court for something they didn't do based on something that was the opposite of what they said.
@alwillis Well I don't know about the rest of us, but what that headline is doing is misreporting Supreme Court decisions, it seems 🙂
No, the Supreme Court did not wipe out anti-corruption laws here. That's not what the ruling said. What it says was that Congress changed the law decades ago so that it applied to some cases but not others, and the Supreme Court simply respected that legislation.
The Supreme Court didn't make the change. The people that we elected to Congress made that change. And if we don't like it, we should probably elect better people.
But this headline is completely wrong compared to the actual opinion, and it's this kind of thing that leads so many to lose faith in journalism today.
@AmericanScream you say that and yet I spend Bitcoin on meaningful things often enough.
Maybe you don't, maybe your experiences are kind of narrow, but if you're interested in this topic, then I think you probably need to know that people do spend Bitcoin meaningfully without converting it to something else.
I've bought everything from food to landscaping services paying in Bitcoin without any conversion, just off the top of my head.
@rayhindle no, because SCOTUS is not sitting to judge Trump here. They cannot grant him immunity under this case.
This case is mainly procedural, and that doesn't get enough attention. It's mainly a question about when an accused former official can challenge an accusation itself, regardless of guilt, and that goes beyond Trump.
All of these people thinking the Supreme Court might or might not throw the book at Trump misunderstand that this case has little to do with Trump's actual guilt or innocense.
@bigheadtales no, that's the opposite of what SCOTUS ruled.
They emphasized that bribery is illegal, but Congress passed a law in 1986 that broke gratuities out from bribery.
The ruling goes out of its way to recognize the 15 year maximum sentence for bribery under the law.
@curiousgawker oh, I would frame that slightly differently: it's not that he was found guilty of interfering with an election but that he was found guilty of lying.
The reason I frame it that way is because in the course of this case Trump wasn't merely bloviating or exaggerating or using the other language that his supporters have always excused. Instead, he was flat out lying to his supporters about substantial matters, things like lying about what he was actually charged with for example.
Trump supporters don't care about the election interference. But it is possible that they might start caring if their own loyalty was being betrayed, if they started to notice that Trump is lying to them about these starkly factual issues. It's part of the railway to undermine the guy.
Unfortunately it seems too late to change strategy now.
@curiousgawker Well what they say is that they do like the cops on the ground even as they criticize the management.
Yes, it is a simplistic version of the world, but that's what they promote.
@AmericanScream I don't think that's right.
An enormous function of Bitcoin is that since you control your wallet you can spend without relying on anyone else disappearing.
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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