volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@Daniel_Keppler That's the line the Democrats have spun, but they are lying.

They want to act like they have no control, but they absolutely do, as they have both the reins of the executive branch and an enormous amount of power in the legislative branch.

With control of the senate and enough in the House that they could do whatever they wanted with support from just a couple of representatives that they could pick off, Democrats have been in a pretty good position of power, that they have squandered for political reasons, acting as if they don't, because the American public would buy it.

No, it's not reality. That's not how the government operates, unless the Democrats want to act like they are feeble instead of actually getting their priorities laid before the government.

They are spinning a lie that relies on folks not realizing how the government works.

@Free_Press

@osma I don't think it's wise to immediately trust a Russian behind the lines report...

@angiebaby alternatively, presume every politician is willing to discard any pretense of ideals to get reelection, to get votes, because that is the direction voters are going.

Yay democracy.

@dougiec3

@RunRichRun

I mean, he's saying that definitively, but there is serious disagreement on the question.

He may not LIKE that there is disagreement, but there is.

@cspcypher Well can you post the latest here?

I don't want to go through a different platform to figure out whether there's anything worth watching on that different platform.

@ERBeckman

I think threads like those give too much credit to Trump as having any particular ideology at all. And that is really important because it kind of ends up playing into the very rhetoric it wants to expose and attack.

Briefly, the stuff that Trump vomits out of his mouth on a daily basis is just chaos that his supporters interpret whatever way they want to. They perceive him as supporting their cause when really he's just throwing out ink blots and letting them interpret them however they wish.

We shouldn't say that he's running a campaign to appeal to that kind of voter, because he's not. We should emphasize to everybody that he's not appealing to those voters to emphasize to those voters that he's not actually on their side.

This kind of thread ends up being sort of self predicting. By emphasizing the myth that Trump is appealing to those voters, those voters end up voting for him, so the thread itself is generating that support.

And we would not even be in this position if we never went down these roads in the first place.

We should always have emphasized what a loser Trump is, how he failed his own supporters, and then he would have been relegated to the dustbin, or jail.

@chargrille

@stefan aaaah I see, I think you were probably asking about instances inserting paid promotional posts instead of just run of the mill spam.

Although, gosh, that really does blur a line when an instance can not only show paid promotional posts to its own users but also broadcast them to other instances.

I remain critical of the design of ActivityPub with its focus on instances over users whenever a topic like this comes up. I thought about it for a second, and gosh, it's the same problem all over again.

@stefan I see plenty of spam on here.

I know there are people who say this place is great because they never see spam, and maybe that's the case, AND admittedly I don't see it every single day, but I do see it in my feeds here, so I know it is here.

And recently there were stories about having to block instances that were spamming a lot, so again, that just goes to show that there is spam on here.

So this isn't theoretical. It's here.

@stefan it's not much of a question since Fediverse DOES have ads right now, so yes, it can, as we can see with our own eyes 🙂

@hexaheximal Oh it is a social problem, but just block the bridge is the social solution.

The technical side is how that block would be put in place, but the decision to block is the social decision that you might decide to adopt if you care about this.

And it all goes back to the original social decision of putting content into a platform that is so focused on broadcasting content everywhere, including to bridges like this.

If you don't want content going to places like BlueSky, then your first question at social decision was to participate in a platform that would do just that sort of thing. Choosing to block the bridge is just the social decision to mitigate fallout from that first social decision of yours

@boris

@Rasta Well right.

Don't believe Elon or the politician. Or the Pentagon for that matter.

But that the pentagon doesn't take Elon to court over a supposed breach of contract against its own interests is a pretty noteworthy thing.

If the one supposedly with the most skin in the game isn't publicly complaining, well, that's really between them.

@wesselvalk No, not by design, and that's the point.

Bitcoin was designed to be agnostic as to the rewarding process per joule of energy. Tomorrow if people decided Bitcoin wasn't worth the energy and they stopped exchanging energy for the chance to get bitcoin, the network would react by lowering the difficulty level.

Because it wasn't designed with an increasingly less rewarding process per joule of energy.

That people have decided Bitcoin is worthwhile to exchange for energy doesn't mean bitcoin requires that energy. It just means bitcoin is valuable.

@mennodeij @davidho

@mennodeij but that's not what's happening with Bitcoin, though, despite all of the breathless sensationalized stories written about it.

It's just factually not how Bitcoin works.

@davidho

@Rasta you made a leap by going from the article's description of a politician claiming they could be possibly violating to flat out saying it was a violation.

We shouldn't trust these political hacks in the special interest committee in Congress to write the narrative that we accept.

If SpaceX is in violation of a Pentagon contract, that's really between the two of them, and the Pentagon should take SpaceX to court to settle it.

We should not believe politicians so uncritically, though, as they are likely just engaging in political stunts.

@dalfen again, there's a process to nullify all of the other processes, there's a process to skip all of the time limits if the chamber wants.

They police themselves.

@dalfen timelines can be waived as each chamber sets its own rules, including the rules for timelines, and the rules for changing the rules for timelines.

If enough members wanted the bill, they could get around the speaker with a discharge petition. If enough members didn't like the timeline around a discharge petition, they could get around the speaker with motions to change the timeline.

The only way any of that stands, the only way that the speaker gets his way, is if he has the general backing of the membership.

So, we elected these fools and we get the results of those elections.

@Daniel_Keppler I don't think it's going to be a great year for Dems but rather the continuation of a bad, what, decade? For Reps.

With both parties mired in mud, well that turns it into a bad time for us all.

I sure wish Dems had a decent candidate, but so far it's looking like they have a bench that is merely less awful, and only buy a hair.

Heck, even the missteps involved in the different prosecutions of Trump show that Democrats aren't exactly working with world-class figures. I'm afraid they're botching those prosecutions too.

@Free_Press

@dbattistella where in the world did Republicans promise to end civil rights if you vote Republican?

@TheConversationUS but that description is kind of self -refuting.

It's not that a second Trump presidency is a danger to democracy but rather a product of democracy.

I mean, I don't think he can win, but if he does, it reflects what the people want. Yay democracy.

I agree that it's more to do with things other than Trump himself, but that's exactly why it is a product of democracy.