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
Ha, through letting him have a good shot at being president again? No thanks.
He had two years wasting away on the golf course and his polling numbers weren't looking particularly good except for these renewed efforts that get him back into the headlines.
We were done with him. He was on his way out. But apparently we decided, no, we want to keep him in the story, to keep him a threat to our system of government.
It didn't have to be this way, but it is the choice that Biden made, so okay.
The thing about the limelight is that the person wanting the light isn't in control of it. It's not his choice. We are the ones who decide for ourselves whether we want to keep giving Trump attention or not, playing his game or not.
And so with this prosecution our society is choosing to give him more attention, and we absolutely don't have to, but we are choosing to give him more attention and promote his re-election bed, validate his story that he is selling to his voters, and we are voluntarily choosing to make it more likely that he becomes the next president.
I think we should really think twice about doing that.
We should really think twice about whether we should keep giving the guy that attention and potentially power.
Personally I would rather this story end with him wasting away sadly on a golf course, ignored, crying about it, not being a martyr with his claims confirmed. But that's just me.
I still think that people are overstating the criticality of this.
If Trump heads off to play golf in obscurity, probably being pretty disappointed and not having the limelight anymore, that is a better outcome than some of the alternatives, including his being reelected president.
This is a tricky situation.
Well that's why the US legal system has appeals.
US Politics
Whataboutism?
@J12t@social.coop
Sounds reasonable.
US Politics
We've already seen Trump get a significant spike in the poles and seen Republicans lining up to support the guy in response to charges being leveled against him.
Again, do you want another Trump administration? Because this is how you get another Trump administration.
Yeah Biden can choose weather or not to prosecute Trump. That such a prosecution makes it more likely that he becomes president is definitely one consideration that Biden has to weigh has he considers whether or not to move forward with prosecution.
Like I said above, personally, I think Trump does more damage as president than he does out on a golf course crying about his own obscurity.
US Politics
The president is entirely free to choose to prosecute or not prosecute based on whether he believes it's for the best. Prosecutorial discretion is part of the job of leading the executive branch.
Every single day in this country there are crimes that aren't prosecuted for a whole host of reasons.
Executive branch officials are given the authority to decide which cases to follow and which cases to let go based on all sorts of factors before them.
So yes, Biden absolutely could choose not to prosecute Trump on the grounds that we don't want to validate his victim narrative and promote his presidential ambitions.
That's one of the responsibilities of a president.
US Politics
Well just to underscore what I pointed out before, this prosecution supports his bid to become president again.
Personally I think that would be a pretty big loss.
Which direction is the bigger loss, to allow Trump to go play golf and fade into obscurity, or to have him back in the White House?
I think this link might help answer your question.
ActivityPub has a lot of different moving parts and different platforms may implement different subsets of the standard. Fundamentally maybe it is basically different UIs, but still it's different UIs working with different parts of the standard.
So here is an example of how one platform, Mastodon, translates parts of the standard into its interface.
For example, the document shows that what Mastodon refers to as a toot is what ActivityPub refers to as a status (or something like that, this is from memory).
I'd say the argument is not that they are using adjoining instead of adjacent but rather that since the two words overlap in meaning, you can get to the same effect whichever one you choose to use.
It's not instead of. It's simply both. Congress could have used either of the synonyms, to the same effect, and it's really a stretch to insist on such a broad expansion of executive power based on what seems to have been mere stylistic word choice.
But it sounds like at least we agree that Kagan's dissent really missed the mark, not allowing for even the possibility of vocabulary she was apparently not familiar with.
US Politics
Well, would you like to see another Trump presidency? Would that perhaps be pretty damaging to the country?
This prosecution plays into his hands giving him quite a lot of rhetoric to help him seek another term in office.
The US has a long-standing history of prosecutorial discretion where every prosecution is judged not only by whether the person did it, but also based on whether the prosecution itself would be positive or negative for the country.
The US will survive either way. The question is whether the US would be better or worse should the president choose to move forward with this prosecution.
Wow this article is spinning hard to try to defend Clinton.
Yes, there was evidence that she broke federal laws. And there was evidence that she deliberately tried to hide it. That evidence came directly from Obama's administration and from her own admission, as she openly discussed her destruction of evidence pertinent to the inquiry.
It's even worse that this article can't even manage to make solid statements on its own terms, instead teasing meaning out of language that is pretty wishy-washy about how things seem.
I really don't know why it's so hard for us to say that both Trump and Clinton misbehaved. It's not like the one takes away from the other.
And no, just to make sure I'm not misunderstood, that doesn't say anything about equivalence at all. Both cases can be judged on their own, and both people held accountable for what they did regardless of the other.
Meh. An awful lot of GOP figures are more than happy to use this occasion to fundraise and confirm their rhetoric that they have been unfairly targeted all of these years.
I don't think it's much of a shock that Trump is getting indicted. Heck, that was kind of part of the conservative theory for a good while now. They're not so much losing their minds as they are nodding and saying, yep, saw this coming.
And of course quite a lot of people on the Republican side of things are happy for the off chance that this rids them of the guy.
But that's the problem, it doesn't sound like the normal rules would remove her from the case since she doesn't have those conflicts of interest that normally call for recusal.
So long as she is an active judge in that jurisdiction the normal rules say she should be on the case.
I've heard people make that framing over the years, and I really don't know where they come up with it.
The value of the scientific method is exactly that theories are maybe, leading to testing via hypothesis.
When I hear people saying theory is certain, they really get the whole point of #science backwards. If the theory was certain there would be nothing worth testing.
Just for completeness, the way I'd frame science is:
A model describes what you see
A theory guesses at how the model works
An experiment stresses the theory, trying to break it
A hypothesis is the stress point where the theory may break
You back yourself into a corner there, though, appealing to normalcy while saying nothing about this case is normal.
Well if nothing about this case is normal, then what does it matter if she's demonstrated behavior that isn't normal?
No, I don't believe it's right to give up that standard. We have existing rules of the road that we should apply even if we might not like the outcomes because the alternative is so much worse.
Giving up on the normal processes because we'd prefer something else in this particular prosecution threatens to win a battle but lose a war.
Well isn't that the normal standard?
If the judge has passed conduct that is unacceptable then she should be impeached. But barring impeachment, so long as she is on the job, the law professor's position you describe seems pretty reasonable.
Yeah that is some throwing the baby out with the bath water pattern of thought.
If Lemmy can be valuable to the Fediverse community then it doesn't matter one bit whether the developers are good people or bad people or smelly or have their in bad intentions.
This isn't like magic. The software will do what it is programmed to do regardless of the mindsets and motivations of the developers.
Well, what is his argument against?
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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