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
@sgirlprivacy@universeodon.com
They don't though. That's not how the pay of CEOs works.
The company has to choose for itself, with legal fiduciary responsibility, whether it wants to pay the CEO more. It has to choose to part with that money, it has to choose to take on that expense because it believes the expense is worth it for whatever reason.
There are laws regulating how this process works specifically to make sure that CEOs don't get to just choose their own pay regardless of shareholder value.
Remember, every dollar that a CEO gets is one that the company has chosen to lose because the company, again for whatever reason, believes it is better off giving up that cash to keep this CEO employed.
@sgirlprivacy@universeodon.com
I always roll my eyes because this is not the figure of merit.
We pay our electric bills in dollars not in proportion of money that so-and-so makes divided by what the CEO makes. It just doesn't matter what the CEO makes. What matters is what we make.
All of this division and comparison is just distraction, and it undermines the fight for better pay for all of us.
It doesn't matter that the grass is greener on the other side. We're trying to get this side greener!
This reminds me of the Rick and Morty quote of, that was always an option.
I believe it was the Social Web Working Group
See https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#social-web-working-group
@antipode77 @paul @HistoPol @fediversereport @fediversenews @Bluedepth @darren @juneussell
Honestly, Mother Jones has such a bad reputation of bias and outright misreporting that it's one of the few outlets where if I see a story is coming from them I just discount it immediately.
It would be great if they cleaned up their act someday, but that doesn't seem like it's going to happen anytime soon.
And I say that as someone who is normally a big fan of avoiding shooting messengers. Mother Jones is just that untrustworthy.
Yeah that's one of the trade-offs considered by the ActivityPub engineering: they decided it was more important for content and reactions to be transmitted right away, even if that took more resources, than to build in batching functions like other systems have gone for.
When you see people complaining about hidden replies and stuff like that you can see why they would side on that side of the spectrum.
@antipode77 @paul @HistoPol @fediversereport @fediversenews @david @Bluedepth @darren @juneussell
Yeah the funny thing is that some conservatives who have spent quite a lot of time jawboning about the vaccines being a scam are now having to come to terms with Trump being the one behind the scam.
To be clear, I know they are wrong about the vaccines. I utterly disagree with their position that the vaccines are worthless and all of that. They are stupidly wrong about it. But, if they believe the vaccines are. a scam like that, then they have to come to terms with Trump's involvement in them.
And I've just been really looking forward to seeing how they deal with that.
Yeah, authoritarian tyrants throughout history have often enjoyed claiming their power through such propaganda.
Well either way, even if you think the circumstances warrant giving such power to a leader, a second question is, what in the world makes you think this administration is competent enough to wield the power effectively.
I mean, lick those boots, but at the same time, make sure the person wearing them is actually capable of doing good and won't just be a screw up.
@HistoPol @antipode77 @The_Onliest @paul @fediversereport @fediversenews @david @Bluedepth @darren @juneussell
Bad news: dedicated servers are centralized 🙂
@JaneImber whether or not those resources could have been used for the priorities that you personally find favorable doesn't change the authoritarian issues with the process.
it wouldn't have made a difference here.
Because that's like requiring you to save for the full price of a house before allowing you to buy one, taking the option of a home loan off the table.
Banks aren't required to hold depositors' cash because it would prevent people from taking advantage of modern finance systems.
There are reports that Biden's administration blocked exactly such an arrangement.
But yeah, to redirect money to bail out depositors who were irresponsible with their deposits is to encourage just more such irresponsibility in the future, setting up incentives for the next failure, and the cycle repeats.
We shouldn't be transferring resources away from the good actors like that.
It's another way to frame the public risk and private profit.
This was one of the big criticisms of Dodd-Frank, that it put too much power in the hands of big banks at the expense of the small ones.
We went there anyway, and the folks pushing the law celebrated.
So here we are.
I mean, it is possible for citizens to understand what their government is doing, you know.
Yes, it takes a little effort to be an informed citizen, but it is an option, and probably shouldn't be so tossed aside.
@darlulittledeer@universeodon.com
It's a weird thing to say simultaneously that Biden had no control over this and also he used his control over this to reduce drill pads.
Wow, you're going full authoritarian pretty lightly there.
Oh, not at all. What's driving the cost is the fundamental inefficiencies involved in a distributed system.
Centralized systems have efficiencies of scale that decentralized systems inherently lack, as the nodes must coordinate among themselves and duplicate their efforts and resources.
Well I guess if you're talking about taxpayer subsidization of these services that's one way to address the cost, but it's about paying the cost, not avoiding it.
And of course, the process of issuing those subsidies further politicizes the matter, arguably contributing to Balkanization.
@paul @HistoPol @fediversereport @fediversenews @david @Bluedepth @darren @juneussell
I had been waiting for it, and a few weeks ago it finally happened: I saw high profile, mainstream conservatives have to try to reconcile their celebration of #Trump as having delivered #COVID vaccines through Operation Warp Speed against their denunciation of those same vaccines as scams upon the American people.
Those two parallel lines of thought couldn't coexist forever. At some point they were bound to collide.
And I, for one, had spent about a year with my popcorn ready to watch.
Well, I didn't quite get the fireworks I'd hoped for. The commentators sort of acknowledged the conflict and settled on criticizing Trump for it--I guess the denunciation is the more relevant factor today--before swiftly moving on.
I sure hope to see that conflict rise to the surface more often in the future.
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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