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
volkris
boosted
Techbros: self driving cars are inevitable!
Also techbros: prove you are human by performing a task that computers can’t do, like identifying traffic lights.
@GabeMoralesVR@mastodon.gamedev.place
One wrinkle that's worth highlighting is that the federal public health officials work for him.
It's not even a shadowy "they" that he's sticking it to. It's his own agencies, his own executive branch.
Effectively he's sticking it to himself, which makes it that much more absurd.
And yes, conservative media has already been having field days with this, calling him out for this inconsistency and making fun of the press secretary over it.
Right, and that's part of why I think Google's approach is the wrong one: if someone doesn't disclose that their ad is AI generated, it gets tricky to prove that it was, as once a person is under suspicion--if they ever become under suspicion-- then they'll be in the position of proving the negative, which may be thorny to work through.
Even as an election rolls on.
Better to seek ads with verification right up front, digital certificates and chains of custody, showing that they couldn't have been so manipulated or generated.
I've been hearing Canadians complaining about how those policies are harming them in their everyday lives.
Perhaps don't run right to the conspiracy theory, and consider how other individuals feel the brunt of these regulations?
It might be that these politicians are simply responding to the people they're seeking support from?
It strikes me that what you might be looking for is a simple web browser.
Browsers have so much capability these days that apps seem like unnecessary silos.
I just really wish we'd go the other way with this sort of thing.
Instead of requiring ads to disclose AI generation, and hoping they cooperate with the requirement, I'd rather see ads prove that they were NOT AI-generated, or otherwise manipulated, so that we can have faith that the content is real instead of a promise that it's not faked in one particular way.
Musk is a troll. You're talking about him, so his trolling is working. Yay, I guess.
But you're still missing that he paid the amount that the site was worth to him, or else he wouldn't have signed the deal.
He can whine all he wants about it, but that doesn't change the history, that the site was worth to him what he paid for it, or else he wouldn't have agreed to the purchase.
But in the end, he's getting SO MUCH attention out of the whole thing, including your attention, that it sort of seems like he's getting his bang for his buck.
It's hard to see how else he could have used all of that money to get so much reaction, to troll any harder.
Oh, I completely agree that multiple accounts have their place.
I'd describe that as multiple identities: work identity vs social identity. I'm 100% on board with that.
However, what we see around here are individuals with a single identity feeling like they have to set up and juggle multiple accounts for the same social identity because they want to use different features of different interfaces.
It's an unfortunate hassle where a person within a single identity would like to have a single follow/follower list and such but doesn't feel like they can because they want to post both written word on Mastodon and music on whatever that interface is called.
So yep, two different use cases, I'm talking about the second one.
@BradRubenstein @kevinrothrock
You say Elon bought Twitter to avoid getting sued, and even if we focus on just that statement, Don't you think avoiding getting sued is a pretty valuable thing?
I mean, your own statement reinforces what I'm saying!
Oh gosh, this is the wrong direction to be going.
On ActivityPub we should be consolidating accounts, not building clients to indulge and encourage multiple accounts.
And yes to XMPP. But keep it out of ActivityPub, which is really not a platform that's conducive to private content of any sort.
It's just the wrong tool for the job.
@kevinrothrock
Doctorow seems to contradict himself, answering a question about legal, not technical, barriers by describing what end up technical barriers.
But I don't know how this ideal would translate into implementation anyway. ActivityPub is built on walled gardens at the instance level, which may be better or worse than one centralized walled garden, but it still leaves users at the mercy of the folks running the instances.
It's a huge fault in the core design of ActivityPub.
This sort of framing is really unhelpful, though, even as it's sadly common these days in #USPolitics.
The US system doesn't work without consensus, and it's adamantly not about individuals like McCarthy or McConnell.
The representatives in the House and Senate that Americans elected represent strong disagreements. We should be talking about how our elected representatives have to find common ground to move forward, not about the Senate jamming the Speaker of the House.
That dramatic line misses what actually goes on even as we're relying on the gears of Congress to turn.
These folks all represent disagreement. They all need to find agreement.
From the article it sounds like this is libraries leaving an organization that doesn't meet their needs, not conservative lawmakers doing things.
If the ALA is putting its stances ahead of the members it's supposed to be serving, well, it's pretty reasonable to expect membership to decline.
But then, other academics, including ones I know, appreciate being able to teach and do their work without DEI distractions hanging over their heads.
It's a sword that cuts both ways.
The report misses that Alabama DID revise their congressional map as ordered, and they did so in keeping with what the Supreme Court actually said about the law, including the VRA.
The lower court didn't like even the revised map, which is fine, but it doesn't mean the state defied the law.
So now there'll be an appeal to see if the lower court has legs to stand on or if it's exceeding its authority, misreading the law.
It's funny: half the news stories claim Alabama was thumbing a nose at the Supreme Court, and the other half say it was helping the Court rule the other way.
Which is it? Is the state pro or anti SCOTUS?
In reality, both of those narratives miss the legalities of what's really going on, trying to wrap it all up in hyped up drama, unfortunately.
@jhavok@mastodon.social
Oh.
It by definition works exactly that way.
The borrowing has nothing to do with it except that it's part of the price Musk paid because of the value he placed on the transaction.
Ha, like I said, I asked what YOU meant by it. A TON of people use the term to mean something different, and that's OK so long as we can figure out what different people mean by the word.
But still, in your reply I see a lot of what the word, to you, ISN'T but I still don't see what to you it IS.
To you it isn't just Mastodon or AP, but what IS it?
If you're talking about sharing research on Fediverse keep in mind that some Mastodon instances offer features like math formatting using tex formatting.
Some instances offer it, most don't. That's the kind of thing to check up on.
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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