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
Bluesky is already sharing, though.
They are still early, they are still in beta, and it looks like their documentation is incomplete. I imagine they will finish it in due time.
But so far it's looking like their protocol is better than ActivityPub in terms of empowering users, so I'm all for that.
#USPOL, TRUMP
@marchuff@mastodon.social that might be a reasonable way of thinking about him.
If I remember right (I honestly don't care) Trump doesn't drink, but he's had decades of practice disconnecting his thought processes so it's about the same result. It's just the habit he has formed through practice over all of those years, so that's what you get.
Her voters voted her into that chair.
To demand that she leave is to override the democratic process that put her into that position.
Don't like her being there? Fair enough. But it was the will of her constituents that she be there, and so she is.
#USPOL, TRUMP
@0xamit I think the thing about #Trump is that he's one of those celebrities who has spent so much time in character that he becomes the character.
And his character is this completely spineless, reactionary mouth that does nothing but respond to audience reaction.
You can see it when he says something in front of a crowd that the crowd doesn't particularly like, so he quickly pivots, says something they do like, and then doubles down on that path.
The problem is that he's become so practiced in constantly pandering to an audience that he's forgotten how to speak for himself, and that's what you're seeing here.
It's not that his brain is mush as much as his brain has been trained to work the crowd, so he's sort of lost without one.
Cw politics
No it has nothing to do with the GOP acting.
The Treasury's monthly report shows that they have plenty of revenue to service their debts. This is 100% executive branch business at this point, since the Treasury will have enough money to pay the debt, it must, as per the 14th Amendment.
And there's nothing the GOP can do to change that since they are not holding the executive branch at the moment.
Biden's Treasury has enough money to service its debts according to its own accounting reports. This is out of the hands of the Congress and 100% up to Biden, and if he directs the Treasury to spend money on things other than servicing the debt, that would be an impeachable offense.
Even his threatening it to try to get more borrowing power is pretty bad.
USpol, job growth
The problem is that job growth slowed down even as it was still trying to recover from pre-pandemic levels.
It wasn't so much phenomenal as it was measured and expected, reflecting the pent-up demand from a national lockdown.
There is no us and them, but them they do not think the same.
Cw politics
The limitation on presidents acting to unilaterally borrow against the credit of the United States is not in the 14th Amendment but in the body of the Constitution which assigns that authority to the Congress.
It's because we don't want presidents to have the power to by themselves obligate potentially generations of citizens to repaying the debts of today instead of spending money on the needs of tomorrow.
So no, the president cannot claim that power. It is clearly given to the other branch of government, as a check in the checks and balances arrangement.
That being said, the 14th Amendment DOES obligate the president to service the debts out of revenues in the Treasury, so if he orders otherwise, that would be impeachable.
Why in the world would rich people bother trading cash back and forth? That would tie up the cash so they would never be able to spend any of it on housing or cars or whatever, and I have seen rich people with houses and cars, so I know that can't be the case.
Also how do you put a stock in a bond?
But again, you say they buy back stock in their own companies? So they give up their money for that stock certificate? So they redistribute their wealth?
Rich people buy things. They give up their money because they want things to buy. They redistribute their wealth.
Again, I just don't think there's any use in denying this obvious fact even as we talk about ways to make society better.
For example, yeah let's tax rich people to pay for government. We can simultaneously say taxes on the rich are probably a good idea even while we recognize that the rich people do give up their money as they buy things and contract services.
The headline is simply false, though.
The Supreme Court didn't say anything about those prescriptions, so if doctors, pharmacists, or insurance companies are taking the step of refusing to serve these prescriptions, we need to call them out on it, and tell them to shape up.
We should not let them shift blame to a Court ruling that doesn't apply to the job they're supposed to be doing.
At this point Democrats can't get legislative majorities for their bold proposals, so without even the democratic branch on their side, it's kind of silly to start talking about packing the court.
It's not political interference, but rather the firewall that provides judicial independence in the US system of government.
The system of checks and balances prevents the legislative branch from imposing on the judicial branch like that.
IF the legislative branch thinks a justice is misbehaving, they should impeach them. Otherwise, that's that, and there's nothing left for them to do.
Yes, Republicans don't believe Thomas should be impeached. Well, that's that. Without widespread consensus that he should be impeached, that's really the end of the issue.
Ever hear of a rich person buying something? Maybe even buying stock?
Congrats. You've seen the rich redistributing their wealth with your own eyes.
It does no good to deny simple, obvious truth.
Same for press orgs, FWIW
Here's a link directly to the Citizens United ruling where you can see for yourself that Kennedy, not exactly a diehard conservative, laid out that the government could not stand in the way of voters receiving information from each other, ESPECIALLY as such restriction favors big, rich, and powerful voices who could get around them.
Citizens United was a decision in favor of voters.
The rest of your conspiracy theory rant holds just as little water as your misinformation regarding CU.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep558/usrep558310/usrep558310.pdf
If the voter does not matter in voting, then none of this matters anyway so why talk about it?
Fortunately, yes, voters do matter in voting, and it's pretty ridiculous to say otherwise.
@gwfoto@newsie.social
I really don't think we should be talking about the Court as if it is just another legislature.
For one, that's not how it functions. For another, that overlooks how frequently justices cross these supposed party lines to vote along other alignments.
But I guess we can go ahead and point out that RBG openly tried to game the system, and her strategy led to this situation.
@wherephysicswentwrong@universeodon.com
It's up to Congress, not Biden, to set the size of the Court.
@gwfoto@newsie.social
And heck, It might even be a good thing in some cases to make it harder for users to move between instances. It might be good for growing communities If people stick around for a little bit.
On a different note, we have seen scalability issues with ActivityPub where instances have taken a lot more computation and storage resources to run than was expected, again because of the core engineering designs of the protocol.
I hope Bluesky is designed to be more efficient, but I haven't looked into it enough to know whether it would be.
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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