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
Well to go on about this just a little bit more, when I read the ActivityPub standard It really jumped out at me that the standard required these exponentially increasing numbers of internet connections to be opened and messages to be passed.
It's not just about reading source code, it's just looking at the design of a system that requires an instance to contact so many other instances to transmit so many copies of messages, one by one, that scales questionably.
There's just a bunch of elements where factors multiply and multiply so that as the system gets more load it has to spend exponentially more resources to address the load.
I think a lot of people have been caught off guard by how resource intensive ActivityPub is, just based on design choices that went into the standard that maybe weren't fully analyzed in terms of scaling.
I wouldn't be surprised if large platforms like Tumblr started testing and quickly realized that it was getting out of hand for their size, and they need to figure out a way to reign that in before they can really proceed.
What makes you expect the delay for ActivityPub?
Pennsylvania politics
If I understand the situation correctly, I actually like cases like these where the one with skin in the game is taking the hit to get their policies implemented.
It's like they really believe it.
I support your escape from the bonds of the character limit! 🙂
That's One of the main reasons I never used Twitter.
Any time gerrymandering comes up it is the tip of a very large and complicated iceberg.
But we can also look at some other things to confirm the division, things ranging from the Senate which is not subject to gerrymandering (but yes, is subject to population proportionality issues) through polling that shows both directly and indirectly, through things like historic lack of confidence in our institutions, that there is so much division and distrust these days.
There's always the issue of every generation thinking the new generation is worse, but in this case we have historical records to show that yes, things really actually are historically worse now than they have been.
So with such dysfunctional society, objectively by all of these different ways of looking at it, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that the representative body would also be dysfunctional.
Yep.
Unfortunately, the voting brought us to the point where agreeing to these sorts of rules is the only way to begin a session with any chance of anything that even looks like real work.
One funny thing is that after all this, McCarthy is probably going to be extremely safe from actually being ousted since should he go this whole process would have to start all over again, and nobody wants to see that.
They might have to go through a bunch of annoying votes to shut up the loudmouths, though.
volkris
boosted
All these people boosting stuff about #USPolitics #Speaker #SpeakerVote and none of them using hashtags so I can mute them. 😡
Exactly.
Like I said, some of them can be a little temperamental when it comes to getting just the right amount of light, and I think sometimes tap water might be bad for them, but bugs are sort of a special treat they don't really need to survive.
@maccath says those fly traps have been alive for years with not much to eat, and that sounds to me like a back door brag about having a clean house 🙂
No, the reason rules won't be broken is because if they break the rules their legislation is invalid and the courts will all throw it out and it will just not count towards anything at all.
For legislation to count it has to have been passed following the rules of the chamber.
It's like, the reason a random representative can't just declare a bill passed on his own and expect that to count is because it would not have been passed following the rules.
The rules decide how legislation can be passed.
Or in other words, anything that happens outside of the rules is technically not part of the House of Representatives.
Gotcha. But it can be a vegan fly trap just as you're a vegan human :)
Anyway, yep, I personally like having the weird... errm... eyecatching plants around.
It depends on the aesthetic.
Yes, the rules by which the House operates.
It's fine if the GOP doesn't give a shit about the rules, but the rest of the world does, and none of their legislation will be valid if not passed as per the rules of the chamber.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/HMAN-117/xml/HMAN-117.xml
If it helps, they don't NEED to eat animals to survive, in case that's a point of contention between you two.
The kid could grow one as just a neat looking plant.
They are a little sensitive, though, so hopefully your kid wouldn't be too upset if it doesn't work out.
Funny! I think something like that just happened to me five minutes ago.
@alaric I'm happy to take credit for that post!
Yep, had Democrats not chosen to vote in alignment with the fringe Republicans, they would not have been in a position to demand the extreme changes to House Rules that will assure them a seat at the table throughout the session.
Republicans would have been able to shut down the clowns with a vote of 200 to 20, and they would have been generally excluded from House procedures.
Instead, Democrats kept them mathematically relevant so they were able to demand rule changes that will harm Democrats.
It would have been nice if people spent more time considering the unintended consequences of their strategies.
Members of Congress don't vote to invalidate a presidential victory. That's not how the Electoral Congress process works in the United States.
There is no presidential victory until Congress acts, so there would have been no victory on the table to invalidate.
Outfits like ProPublica love to spin their stories regardless of annoying facts like these, though.
They're pretty awful and antisocial.
Republicans ranging from talk show hosts through members of Congress have flat out said that Jan 6th was not legitimate political discourse, should not have happened, and should never happen again.
I don't know where you're getting your news to have missed that, it's come up so regularly over the months, starting right on Jan 6th itself.
The different platforms have different user experiences and different capabilities, so a person will likely prefer one over the other, and that's great.
It's like saying you don't understand, if you're going to get a cell phone the only choice is Android.
Well, Apple products work better for some people and Android works better for some people. Each person can get the platform that better matches their lifestyle.
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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