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
@acm_redfox What? No. That's not at all what this is about.
Anyway, we get the representatives that we vote for.
We get what we vote for.
We should probably stop reelecting the same people that keep failing us though.
@georgetakei No you do not.
It's not right that he's going to crash the global economy every couple of months because people are going to pay him less and less attention, and rely on him less, each time he does this stuff.
He really is self-defeating.
@stuffifound The thing to realize is that a whole lot of Trump supporters actually agree with this.
A large reason that Trump got elected was because so many became disenchanted with the government, regarding it as a joke, so they went ahead and elected a joke to run the Executive branch.
It's a feature, not a bug for them.
@proscience No those stories have been debunked.
Yes they were widely circulated on social media, but no they weren't true.
@realcaseyrollins is wrong that the US is some bastion of freedom, but that doesn't mean we should promote those nutty stories about arresting and deporting people for having expressed opinions.
Both are false.
My other reaction is, if you think those countries are so off course, well I'm not disputing that, but it is cause for maybe some consideration for how the US ends up being even worse than those examples.
Yeah, the US has serious issues with restricting freedom of speech. We shouldn't paper over that.
Australia and Canada might have troubling headlines where they restrict speech, but that only means the US needs to deal with its own headlines of cracking down on speech it doesn't like.
We won't improve to be better than them if we don't recognize that we have that improvement to make.
@KeithMcNeill this is one of those cases where it's really important to separate the country from the president.
By design, the US is not the president. He is just the bureaucrat at the top of one branch of the federal government.
The confusion between the two has often caused a lot of practical trouble in the last couple of decades at least.
@realcaseyrollins sure, the US is the most free, as long as you ignore all of the analysis saying it's not the most free, then it absolutely is!
You're begging the question to try to support your predetermined conclusions.
Or, on the other hand, specifically what in their calculation did they get wrong? Show me the math where they went astray?
Don't just reject their conclusion because it doesn't match your opinions.
@realcaseyrollins Well that's not particularly true either.
By some measures the US doesn't even crack the top 10.
No, domestic policy in the US is definitely not focused on freedom, everything from tax policy through drug restrictions through monitoring of communications in the US point the other direction.
I just have to laugh at this headline.
Chinese communist owned stores? That's funnily contradictory in itself, but add in the military part, an organization that by necessity has some communist-type structures involved, and well...
Gentleman, there's no fighting in the war room!
GOP Rep Introduces Bill After Discovering Chinese Communist-Owned Stores on US Military Base https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/gop-rep-intr...
@realcaseyrollins What?
You're referring to a governmental institution, an organization that constrains freedom, and projecting this freedom constraining organization as the free world... That doesn't make sense.
@Hoss Well, for example is there any doubt that a brick of gold is worth money? And yet that brick isn't doing anything related to laborious work.
So your framing just doesn't match what we know to be true. It's not an accurate framing of money in society.
@Hoss No, you're oversimplifying what money is and how it works, and so you miss the way that it dovetails with modern financial systems.
volkris
boosted
incompetence levels are 50% and steady
(50%) ■■■■■□□□□□
@rootschange what?
High profile cases have been ruling against billionaires and corporate interests, from overturning of Chevron through some of the financial services rulings of late.
This story of billionaires buying the Court are clickbait that just doesn't really match the rulings coming out of the Court.
@juergen_hubert I think you're overestimating the rationality of the Trump administration.
They're so irrational that when you're pointing out market size they'll be more interested in the color of the shoes of the negotiator.
You don't have to fight the fight. If you're too weary of it, take a break. That's understandable.
But that's where the fight is.
There's no getting around that. If you want/need to fight, then you have to engage the frontline where it is, not where it would be easy.
@theguardian_us_opinion I don't think such a commentator has a good view of what's going on from the inside.
Arguably this is the promotion of science in America as resources are going toward solid science and being taken away from ineffective or inefficient efforts.
That's positive for science, and we're seeing that on the ground, first hand, even as those who were comfortable with the status quo complain loudly.
@vij it's not at all like that.
If you follow the Court and understand the cases--which far too few people do--then you can see how the reasoning gets from there to here, and see how the rulings make a good deal of sense.
It only seems like a coinflip in the context of reporting that misleads their readers, or at least fails to properly describe the cases.
@MusiqueNow that's just how the US system was designed, though.
The judicial branch, like the other branches, was intentionally designed with limited powers over the others.
After all, we don't want these unelected judges to have too much power because often enough they would make orders that you and I wouldn't like.
@mystech this is a longstanding issue, where our elected lawmakers wrote obviously problematic laws long ago, and we kept reelecting lawmakers uninterested in fixing those laws.
Remember that during the midterm elections, and let's start holding lawmakers accountable for these laws. Let's stop giving them back their power after they failed so solidly.
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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