volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@david_megginson could it be that it's BECAUSE you haven't been on there much that their algorithms haven't seen you show interest in much, so they don't have much to show you?

My Facebook feed has plenty of content, but I can imagine if I wasn't on there regularly to click on cat pictures* the algorithm wouldn't show me more cat pictures.

*not necessarily an actual interest

@Wolven nonsense: there's plenty of use for things that are quick and dirty. The key is knowing that's what you're getting and being mindful about its limits.

Often enough in everyday life we don't need the absolute guarantee.

@Raccoon well, what about the utility of "Zionist" also referring to non-Jewish people and institutions who promote the cause of Israel?

Seems useful to me.

There's also some nuance to Israel existing. You can get into issues of how large its borders should be and what sorts of governments it should have.

@hittitezombie correct, and the order was illegal because Congress had never passed a bill granting authority for such an order.

That there was no bill giving legal authority is the whole issue.

@antares

@fluxed ... Democrats in Congress failed to make bump stocks illegal.

Let's call them out for their inaction, let's hold them accountable.

@steter SCOTUS is handing out bump stocks? Where do I get mine?!

But no, that's not at all what happened.

The people we elect to Congress, and keep reelecting, wrote a law such that bump stocks were legal. And we reelected them anyway.

We should stop reelecting morons.

We should not let them escape accountability by blaming the courts for their own actions in office.

@BohemianPeasant extreme?

The recent court rulings simply said that presidents have to follow the laws.

Heaven forbid!

Trump broke the law, and SCOTUS called him on it. That's not exactly the sky falling.

@jay_chi what actually happened is worse than that.

Trump didn't sign a bill that made bump stocks illegal, and that's the whole problem. Instead, Trump acted without legal authority, so Trump himself acted illegally against gun rights.

We need to be pointing that out everywhere we can.

@hittitezombie, to @antares 's point, that's not a bill.

@maeve sounds like Democratic Senator Chris Murphy doesn't know how the US government works. The Supreme Court can't just do that.

Or, more likely Murphy is counting on scoring political points by saying these things that he knows very well are false.

@SocialJusticeHeals no, you have that backwards.

The question was not whether bump stocks were excluded but whether they were included. The exact opposite.

And they pointed out that Congress wrote the law fairly specifically, focusing on the operation of the trigger, and bump stocks because of how they functioned didn't fall under Congress's definition.

Again, the people we keep electing had every opportunity to change the law if it needed changing. If the focus on the trigger was the wrong standard then they could have fixed it to the right one.

But once Congress wrote the law with that level of specificity, SCOTUS was right to point out that Trump acted illegally in trying to implement a ban.

@Dan_Ramos Massie's barking up a fake tree here.

Nothing required Smith to have gone through the nomination and confirmation process. Garland did, and that gave Garland authority to hire employees like Smith.

@BeAware@social.beaware.live how about putting it this way: we here ARE broadcasting content that companies are free to use, and so many of us don't know we're doing that.

Do companies use it? Well I imagine so, and it might be largely undetectable. As Fediverse grows it seems like a goldmine for training AIs, collecting marketing stats, etc, all without encumbrances of TOS agreements.

But sure, you're asking what has actually happened, and what's actually happened is that all of these users are making content available to companies. That part's true.

And my personal focus is that it's being done without the consent or knowledge of so many users here.

@hankg he didn't, though.

It sounds like you're not familiar with the enormous amount of pushback Trump has received from Republicans on those topics, the criticisms he's received from the GOP about how he handled Jan 6th, the non-Trump related criticism of the border bills, and on and on.

I know a lot of people around here don't like to actually listen to Republicans, but these stories about what goes on in their party just aren't accurate.

Just for example, the border bill was being rejected by Republicans long before Trump said the first word about it. In fact, that's one of the tricks Trump does routinely, he'll see which way the wind is blowing, jump on the bandwagon, and then claim after the fact that it was him all along.

As for this case, SCOTUS didn't decide to interpret the statue being egregious. In fact, the justices were unanimous in accepting the statue, with even the dissenters embracing it in their dissent.

It's all there in the ruling.

@SocialJusticeHeals that's incorrect, though.

Congress wrote the law that left bump stocks out and has had plenty of years to change the law.

Congress made that ruling, if you want to put it that way, when they defined machine guns in statute. That the courts.

@nicholas it's not about me, but about you.

I'm trying to figure out what you're talking about, and you're not really helping with your obsession over me.

Let's talk about you and what you think. I'm just not that interesting.

@dcjohnson as long as we're clear that it's all based on the voters.

It's not big money preventing government from doing things. It's voters voting in support of these policies.

So if you want change you'll have to bring voters around to your perspective. However, realistically that's not going to happen any time soon, and that's the reality you have to work within.

Until you can somehow create this massive shift in the entire population, your tax ideas are nothing but idle theory.

@Island_Martha I don't know what you mean.

We're talking about it happening, so it did?

@Free_Press

@hankg I mean... facts.

But sure, have a nice day.

@hankg I think the key there is to reconsider just how much power Trump has when push comes to shove.

Yes, he has his cult of followers who are happy to believe and repeat that black is white, but so many serious figures with actual significance don't so much follow Trump as they try to deal with the gadflies that are such a hassle.

One example of this is when Trump has to reverse some dumb position he took because he didn't know how the world works. His cult will pretend he always believed that, but the significant figures in the GOP will have gotten in touch to correct him, as one does a small child.

But yep, this is an occasion when we should be loudly highlighting that with this ruling, Trump broke the law to take peoples' guns away (whether we want that or not).

It's the real way to marginalize him. Promoting him as powerful only amplifies his power.